Two more weeks had flown by, and those two weeks consisted of secrecy and avoiding Piper, and after two weeks our companionship could be delayed no longer.
We were walking around the circle, and we decide to take a shortcut down the alleyway. There were two glass buildings to the side of us, one that was at least ten stories in length and the other seemed to look like a dome that had a rectangle attached to it. The larger one was the offices where my father had worked his whole life.
I turn the corner and I'm met with that same face yet again, the face that's been imprinted in my mind since I saw him last.
I'm nervous when his eyes meet mine. Piper is going on and on about her father's new improvement in his the job, and how he is doing better things for the city. By now, Alexander has approached us, much to Piper's obliviousness.
"You know, Elena, I don't understand why my father does so much for the outsiders; they're not a part of our community."
"But aren't they people too?" Alexander's voice stuns Piper, and she turns around and almost screams at him for scaring her, but she knows better than to raise her voice in a public place.
Piper seems at a loss for words, and I place my hand over my mouth to cover my smile, but it fights its way toward the corners of my lips. Piper turns and knits her eyebrows at me. I've never seen her angry before, and I did not know anger existed with her. "What's so funny, Elena?"
I remember reading in the Bible in Proverbs of how people are supposed to defend one another. Maybe Alexander gets this.
This also makes me wonder, too. Piper has never been one to calculate or consider the opinions of others. She always yells at me as if I am not perfect, or if I do something to mess up. She always has something to criticize me about. It makes me wonder if Piper has been there for me really at all, ever.
I take a daring move, one that anyone could hear, one that anyone could notice. My mother used to say that everyone has a turning point in their life when they need to take a stand.
"Proverbs chapter thirty-one, verses eight through nine. Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy."
I've never seen someone so shocked, as if they were frozen in place. Maybe now I have a clear sense of how I looked when my father spotted me at the door. Piper looks bewildered, and confused, but Alexander just flashes a gentle warm smile at me.
"Where did you learn that?" Piper raises her voice, not too loud for others to hear, but loud enough to try to intimidate me. I suck in a breath, and straighten my posture.
"That is none of your concern," I reply.
"You've been breaking the rules!" She hisses at me. Maybe I was wrong; Piper has not yelled it out, she could have had me arrested by now if only she would have ran and tried to get away.
But just as I thought that maybe, just maybe, Piper has nothing else to say, she turns and bolts down the hallway. I take no chance and begin to run after her.
I didn't know that adrenaline felt like this. My mother told me it was a rush, and that it only came once in a while in a life threatening situation. I felt like my life was in danger, and my feet carried me like it was.
I turn the corner and I can barely see her flannel shirt through the large sea of people. Alexander begins making his way through the large crowd, despite the stares he gets. I'm the only person small enough to possibly make my way through the crowd to catch Piper.
I begin to plow my way through the people, hoping that maybe I can stop her. I call out her name several times, begging for her to stop, but she doesn't slow down.
I give up when I reach the end of the line and watch her jump the ring gate. There's no sense in chasing after her again. Alexander holds me back, his hands on my shoulders pinning me in place and turning me around. My legs are numb and feel like Jello and my lungs burn with every breath i inhale and exhale.
"Where are we going?" I ask through pants of breath. I hope that maybe he'll take me somewhere safe, but how much time would that buy me? People are searched for day and night all the time, and no one dare to question the state of unrest. People are taught to hold their curiosity inside of them, because expressing their opinions only causes trouble.
"I'm taking you home," Alexander replies.
I shake my head and stop, and he turns and frowns at me. "No, you can't take me home, not yet. Someone will find out. Someone will tell my father that I've been reading- and I can't live with the punishments, not yet. Please, Xander, don't take me home yet."
He furrows his eyebrows in confusion at me. "Fine, i won't take you home yet, but in return you have to tell me about you, and I'll tell you about me."
I raise an eyebrow, "Where are you going with this?"
He looks at me, and pulls me toward him, leading me down a narrow hallway, that isn't as wide as the one he came from, but one that turns and leads toward a small open square of town not many people travel to.
"Xander," I say, but he doesn't listen to me. "Xander," I repeat, "how do you know where you're going?"
He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket in his white button down shirt. It's a large piece of paper with drawings on it, in his handwriting of things he has seen.
"It's a map of the Four Rings Society. Maybe it's time you learn a little bit about me. I'm from outside the fence, and it may be hard to believe, but it's true. I escaped in with my father with a fake ID and a fake name. People believe my name is Thomas, and that's what everyone calls me. My father and I escaped in here about a year ago during the last power serge. We cut the circuit and slid in through a hole we cut through the wire in the electric fence, which is never on by the way. Anyways, we've been living in the Fourth ring as commoners for a few months now, maybe since the beginning of winter."
"How did you survive?"
"We survived off the donations of the First Ring. They would provide us with food and clothing, but heat was our only problem. My father and I learned a few survival techniques from an old textbook about how to make a fire."
"What's a fire?"
He shakes his head at me, "I'll have to show you sometime. It's hard to explain. You cannot touch it though, it's really hot."
"My mother has a stove," I say.
He nods his head, "But your stoves aren't like mine. You cannot see the heat or the flame, you just know that something makes your food hot and cooks it properly. Inside is a circuit board. If a fuse is broken, the power goes out."
"It's never happened," I say.
He nods his head, "Not to you, yes. The First Ring never struggles with problems outside of their jurisdiction."
I find Alexander to be such an interesting person, really, especially because he knows so much that I don't.
"Tell me, what are you really doing here?"
He laughs a little in response. We turn and head back down the alleyway. "What am I doing here?" He repeats, and I nod my head. He moves in to where his mouth is against my ear, and his hot breath tickles my neck.
"There are so many secrets..." he whispers, and then he pulls back and stares at me. "There are things I need to find out."
"Like what?" I ask.
He turns to head back down the alleyway, disappearing back to where he had first come from when I was just outside with Piper. I call after him, but to no avail. No reply. Just a shadow of where he stood. I know it's time for me to go home, and I wonder why anyone hasn't come for me yet. Maybe I should face the music, face my consequences.
"I'll tell you soon, but go home. We will discuss more tomorrow."
I swallow the lump in my throat and my stomach churns and ties into knots, and I suddenly feel like throwing up. It makes me wonder what Piper is doing right now. "What if I'm gone?"
He frowns, as if someone is pushing the corners of his mouth down. "Then I'll know. Word circulates quickly. I'll find you outside the fence."
"And then what?" I ask.
"I don't know," he says, "but nothing will happen to you."