"You made it."
Vin was waiting for me in the shadows by the pawn shop as I walked down the worn dirt roads of the Land of Escapees to him. Earlier in the day, we had agreed to meet up with each other that night, everything we wanted to talk about and tell each other during the day needing more time to come to the light.
We had chosen to meet in secret at sunset, hiding us from my friends. The only one that had even met Vin, to the best of my knowledge, was Mia, and she seemed to not be fond of him. She didn't say anything outright, but it was clear in her body language that she felt uncomfortable by his presence. And I was sure that Parker, who was the most cautious out of all of us, would react similarly, if not worse, than she did if he were to meet Vin. Emery's reaction was something I could not guess, but also wasn't something I would risk.
I already knew Vin was completely harmless, just a kid who was trying to hide, someone just like us. But they didn't, and I did not have the energy to do the amount of convincing it would take for them to see it.
"Yeah, I'm here."
Vin smiled. "I was going to ask you what you wanted to do, but I found something cool earlier and wanted to show you," he said, hardly containing his excitement as he explained. "I found an old abandoned suburb not too far from here and, get this, they actually left stuff from before this mess behind. I wanted to show you the finds and maybe they'll even be useful at your shop. You could probably sell some of these items for a great exchange, or a lot of money, or however it works here."
If I was being fully honest, what Vin was describing was not what I was expecting or something I was fully interested in, but he made some solid points. This could be very useful for business. More importantly, it was something with Vin.
"Yeah, let's go."
And so we went into the night, out of the Land of Escapees and into the real world, into abandoned rural lands I had not seen in the longest time.
It wasn't often that I ventured out of the Land of Escapees. No one really left often. There was a common fear amongst those who were hidden that leaving was toeing the line of a death sentence, the lighting of a beacon that would lead danger to all of us. The only ones who left frequently were the ones nominated as traders, usually those who were marked as Unfavorable due to being kleptomaniacs in the world before, who were assigned to retrieve items from the outside world. Whatever food, clothing, hygiene products, even the rare luxuries they could find to bring back were all fair game. It was how we made our economy, with the exchanges of traders and pawn shop owners like myself and Mia and other folks who were willing to exchange for what they needed.
I had not been afraid of the outside world before Shane was taken. There was no reason to be scared, considering how well hidden I had believed us to be.
But now, I knew better. I knew we weren't as hidden as I wanted us to be, as anyone would want us to be. Danger was right outside our borders, waiting to strike at any given moment.
But it didn't matter, because with Vin, I felt safe. I felt like nothing could touch us and take us away. Not when we had each other.
"So, where were you from before all of this?"
Vin's question drew me from my musings, brought me back to real life, to him. A deeply personal question, one I had a slight suspicion in the back of my mind that he would ask, but one that I still wasn't prepared to answer. There were some things I hated talking about, that I didn't even tell Mia, Shane, or the boys.
But yet, with Vin, I was more comfortable. Not enough so to tell him everything I had seen, especially from after the government's takeover, but enough for him to know some of my backstory.
"I came from a more southern area of the state. A small town I'm pretty sure no one but people who live around it have heard of. Really dull place. Our biggest attraction was a McDonald's. Not even an interesting one with a playplace for the kids or anything. Just a boring old McDonald's."
Vin chuckled. "Sounds thrilling. I grew up in the heart of Albany. You're making me take it for granted now, with your lovely tourist trap McDonald's. No hate to your hometown, though."
"Oh, no, I don't mind hate to the hometown. It really did suck. Not as much as things suck now, but it did suck when I was there."
Some would call it negativity, but I considered it honesty. The awfulness of the town was a running joke amongst most people I had known in the world before the government.
"What was your family like before all of this?"
I almost felt myself freeze at the question. It was a sensitive question, and not just because of my siblings.
The reason I was tagged as an Unfavorable could all be traced back to my father. He was an unkind man, one who never treated his children right while his wife sat by and watched hurt spread through the family line.
Grace was the only one who was quiet. The only one who took his scorn and kept her head screwed on correctly, as the government would see it. She took it with grace, held her anger in, kept calm and silent about all of it.
Sometimes I wondered if something was simmering under her cold exterior, something that wanted to break free and burn the hurt that happened under our roof. But she never let her fire out, kept it frozen under a stone cold shell that almost protected her from a much darker fate than she would've faced had she let it out.
She did let it out eventually, when the world we had known had fallen down and it was a little too late to let her fire catch, but that was something I would rather not think about considering the fate it had led her to.
At least she had a chance at survival had she played by the rules, something she had done for sixteen years. At least the pain she had experienced was less than the pain Andrew and I had to, her privilege as the oldest child letting her skate by many times.
At least she was never physically hurt by our father, unlike Andrew was. It was that, I felt, that truly pushed him over the edge to being an Unfavorable. The physical abuse he endured turned him bitter, shortened multiple fuses that should not have been shortened. He learned how to retaliate quickly, sometimes violently.
If any of us should've been flagged as Unfavorable, it should've been him. Not that anyone should have ever had to handle the government that took over our world, but if I were an agent, I would've seen the reasoning behind why he was flagged.
He deserved better than his fate. Even if the concern about him having anger management issues was justified.
Now my flagging for the same reason, I didn't understand it. I wasn't nearly as short tempered as Andrew had become. Now, I would admit to being angry. The way my home life was structured did make me angry, and anger made me loud. Louder, apparently, than whoever was watching me to flag me for the new order of things wanted me to be.
Absolute bullshit, if one was to ask me. I had seen more people, all of whom were significantly more violent and bitter than I was, get marked as Favorables than I could count on all of my fingers and at least half of my toes.
I wasn't going to tell Vin all of this about my family. He didn't need to know.
"I had two older siblings. A sister and a brother. Grace and Andrew."
"Had?"
"They're dead."
"Oh. I'm sorry for your loss."
I wasn't planning to tell Vin, but it slipped out. And for the first time in two years, it didn't hurt as much as it usually did.
"It's fine. It was two years ago."
"What happened to them, if you don't mind me asking?"
And that's when I went silent. Even if the hurt was more subdued than usual, I wasn't comfortable telling the story of how my Favorable sister put down her life for my Unfavorable brother, but they both lost their lives anyway.
"You do mind," Vin harbored a guess at my stance, reading my silence correctly.
"Yeah."
"Alright, you don't have to say anything."
"Thanks."
The silence between us hung heavily after this interaction, neither one of us knowing what to say, how to move on from the information I had shared.
Until Vin broke it again.
"We're here."
When the government took over, suburbs were abandoned if they were not destroyed or rebuilt. Favorables and their parents were taken to shiny, refurbished cities the government set up just for them. The suburbs were obsolete, some destroyed to build Favorable cities over them, some destroyed just for the hell of it. Some untouched, abandoned in the past two years. Some used as Unfavorable hideouts, even though they were considered more dangerous than hideouts in other locations.
I knew this suburb wasn't a hideout, despite the states of wreckage and overgrowth taking over it would've been seen as a valuable disguise.
Have I even seen this place before?
"Where are we?"
"The outskirts of Albany"
I still wasn't completely sure if I had seen this place before. It had been two years since I had even wandered into this area, and I could imagine that it looked quite different than it did when I had potentially seen it last.
"Follow me. I have something specific I want to show you."
"What is it?"
"A surprise."
"Oh, boo. Surprises suck."
In the state of society I knew, a surprise usually consisted of something unsavory and government tainted. More often than not, that was the news you were an Unfavorable or a fleet of government guards on your ass, capturing you for being one.
"Why's that?"
I had let it slip my mind that Vin was part of the Favorables until recently, and had not yet learned all of what it meant to not be one of them. The risks, the dangers, the constant fears of the Unfavorable livelihood.
"Surprises aren't always kind to Unfavorables."
"I get it now. I promise it's not a bad surprise though."
"Just tell me what it is."
Vin sighed with a flair of drama. "My grandmother's old house is in this area, completely untouched. I went in earlier and I made us something to eat."
That is a good surprise. First one I've had in a while.
"How romantic."
"That's my middle name."
"Is that so?"
"Nah, I don't have one. Maybe I should legally make my middle name Romantic. Imagine that, Vincent Romantic Summers. It's perfect."
That was the mood for the rest of our walk, jokes and sarcasm and laughter that cut through the night. A light mood breaking through the heaviness life seemed to hold, a heaviness that was hard to feel with how accustomed I had grown to it. Maybe when you're in turmoil for so long, normalcy seems lighter than it did when it was normal. Maybe that's what everyone always meant when they said not to take things for granted.
And maybe I did take the world before this one for granted. Maybe everyone did. Maybe we all took small towns and shitty public schools and sibling fights and the so called perils of maturing for granted.
If only we had known what would become of the world. Then maybe we would've cherished the moments we had. So many "if onlys" and "maybes" existed, plaguing me as Vin and I made small talk on our way down a preserved suburban road, chasing me to his grandmother's front door and inside a dimly lit living room.
"Here we are. Kind of abandoned looking, I know, sorry. She decided to check out of life before this mess, so no one's lived here in a good couple of years."
Despite it admittedly having a slightly abandoned look, Vin's grandmother's living room had a charm to it. With a near identical look to the kind of interior designs one would expect to see in a vintage magazine, it was clear that this was a home once loved. And plus, I had been in places much more run down and abandoned than the one I was standing in now.
If only the air didn't feel heavy in a way it only ever seemed to when something was amiss. The only times I had ever felt a weight like this in an environment was when something around me reeked of deceit, danger, or both.
It had to be some sort of residue from when Vin's grandmother resided here, as I had never felt this way around Vin before. He was safe, I knew it.
"I already have food on the table. It's not much, but it's a warm meal and probably nicer than the scraps Favorables leave behind," Vin said, taking me away from the suspicions clouding my conscious and taking my hand, leading me to a small dining room that also looked straight out of a magazine despite the slight touches of ruin among it.
And Vin was right about the meal. It wasn't much by normal world standards, consisting of spaghetti with tomato sauce, dino nuggets, and a loaf of what looked like freshly baked bread. But it was a warm meal, and it was better than what we had become accustomed to.
The one thing I could continuously credit Favorables with over the years was that they wasted a lot of food for people who were supposed to be perfect models for society. While this may sound like a bad thing, and most definitely was for environmental reasons, it was a great thing for Unfavorables. We couldn't quite go into a store in a Favorable city and buy food without causing an uproar, and growing our own food was limited due to both the fear of a food source attracting Favorable attention and because we couldn't bring our plants with us if we had to flee. The easiest way to feed ourselves was to scavenge for scraps and hope that the Favorables blamed raccoons or something, assuming they didn't exterminate them all.
The scraps weren't always incredible, usually consisting of food that was either usually good but half rotting or something not quite tasty but was discarded due to their inability to understand what exactly the labels on the containers meant.
It was rarely a warm meal either. Fire was prohibited in the Land of Escapees, and likely in other hideouts as well, due to its ability to alert Favorables and the government of your location. Electricity was available in the Land of Escapees, thanks primarily to Parker, but microwaves, toasters, and other cooking equipment were not readily available.
And so Vin's warm meal for me was a treat, a present I had not expected to hold so dearly to my heart until it was right in front of me.
"It looks amazing."
"Right? I can't cook very well, and I wouldn't be able to read the recipes left here if I tried, but I can make pasta and dino nuggets at least."
I laughed. "I have never been so happy to see dino nuggets in my life. How did you do this?"
On our way to Vin's grandmother's home, every house on the street was blacked out. No light coming from any porches or any windows. Nothing looked as desolate as the surrounding suburbs, but everything on this street was still clearly abandoned. Even the streetlights were shut off, the only light we had from the setting sun as we walked together.
This house, at the very least, had some dim lighting, but how was that possible when electricity was absent from every other location in the area?
Vin shrugged. "There was still a generator left in the basement. I was able to get it working so I could do this for you."
I had not thought to listen for the telltale hum of a generator running until that moment, but even with my attention on that noise, I still couldn't hear it. It was possible that it was a newer generator running, though, or that it had repair work done on it in the not too distant past, so I didn't read into the absence of a mechanical hum too deeply.
"Shall we eat?"
"Yes."
And so we sat, a variety of both playful and deep cutting conversations decorating the dining room as we grazed at the selection of food in front of us.
However, through the laughter and the friendliness between Vin and I, I couldn't help but hold onto a wary feeling. Something seemed off in a way I couldn't place a finger on. The air still felt heavy, and something about Vin was starting to not help the ambiance. As questions about each other bounced back and forth, he was seeming to act almost elusive, very unlike the Vin I had met the night before, the one brimming with charm and what almost seemed like joy. Now he seemed to be dodging questions and almost seemed to be lying about some of his answers.
Then again, I wasn't exactly innocent of doing the same thing. There were some things I just couldn't bring myself to answer. Personal points about my life that I wasn't ready to talk about with anyone, including Vin.
It was safe for me to assume that Vin was in the same dilemma. Even if he had just recently escaped the world of the Favorables after tricking his way into safety, it was still likely that he held trauma from the workings of the government. There was not a single person I knew who didn't hold trauma related to loss, whether it was the loss of a friend, a love interest, a sibling, a cousin, or any other family member or loved one that could be affected by current events.
Sometimes I wondered how the Favorables viewed these losses. Did they grieve the friends, siblings, loves that got deemed as Unfavorable? Did they wonder how it could've happened, how they could've lost someone so dear to them? Did they hold their losses near and dear to their hearts? Or did they think the people they lost to the Unfavorable marking deserved it? Did they think that they were better than the people they lost? Did they not grieve out of the fear that grieving the fate of an Unfavorable would subject them to the same fate?
"Ashe, stop rambling."
I hadn't even noticed I was saying all of this out loud until Vin cut me off.
"Sorry."
"That was a lot of thoughts."
"I didn't realize they didn't stay in my head."
Vin was trying to hide a smile and a chuckle behind his hand, but it was no use. I could see both things immediately slipping through the cracks.
"Don't laugh at me, I was being serious. How do Favorables handle that shit? What are they like?"
I had never been curious about what the typical life of a Favorable looked like until that moment. But then, sitting in front of one that defected and ran into the same path of life I was taking, I had questions.
"The life of a Favorable our age is...rigid. The government exerts a lot of control over them to make sure they don't turn Unfavorable. I don't know if this is constant, but at my school they had us hand in a survey every morning during homeroom to document our behaviors. Our feelings, how we manage them, who we like and who they are, what we consume throughout the day, pretty much every in and out of a person. Realistically, you could lie on these, make yourself seem more Favorable, but it was hard. It feels like your every move is watched, and maybe it is. Maybe the government does have surveillance on everything you do. I wouldn't know. They've also really cracked down on what people eat. Really pushing clean eating, trying to see if chemicals in food cause Unfavorables, I think. Some snack foods still exist, but a lot of them have been modified. Nothing tastes nearly as good as it used to, have you noticed that?"
Vin took a breath before continuing, seeming to brace himself before the next tidbit of information he spilled to me, something I would understand when he started explaining the world of the Favorables to me again.
"They also seem to have started deeming mental health issues as a mark of Unfavorables as well. I don't know if that was happening at the beginning, but I've noticed it more often recently, like in the past six months or so. I don't know if being a Favorable gives you mental illnesses or what, but therapy is becoming obsolete and brainwashing seems to be the new trend to cure people."
"That's really fucked up."
And it was. Out of all the reasons I knew someone could get tagged as an Unfavorable for, that one was the most messed up one I had ever heard. It sounded almost as bad as a lobotomy, maybe worse, actually.
"It is," Vin said as he nodded in agreement. "It's basically eugenics. The whole operation of the government is essentially based on eugenics. They think they can perfect human beings and eliminate all of those who don't fall under their standards of perfection. It's sick."
But yet, something in Vin's tone sounded off. He was pulling all of the tricks to show that he agreed with it being a sick concept, but something in his voice made me feel like he wasn't so sure.
Maybe it was just the heavy, overly suspicious atmosphere of the house getting to me. It had to be that. There was no way it was Vin himself throwing me for a loop.
"Your original question was about whether they grieve Unfavorables though, wasn't it?"
I nodded. "Yeah, do they?"
Vin shrugged. "It's hard to say. I know I did, but I also was never quite a Favorable. I think a lot of them shut off their feelings, honestly. If they didn't feel, they wouldn't put a target on their back. If they felt too violently, they would put themselves at risk."
I couldn't help but notice that Vin sounded detached in his statement, like his heart wasn't behind the words he was putting between us.
"You lost someone, haven't you?"
That was the only thing I could possibly attribute Vin's detachment to. A loss he was still struggling with feeling. I understood that grief all too well, after all.
"You have too, haven't you?"
I had. Multiple people too. Both of my siblings and Shane. And there was something in me that wanted to tell Vin about them so desperately, but I couldn't. Not just because of my personal barriers around the topic, but because there was some instinct screaming at me to keep my mouth shut. Something was keeping me from saying the names and causes of loss for the three of them out loud. Intuition was telling me to keep those stories close to my heart and to not interject them into this conversation, into this house with bad vibes, into a medium in which I could never take them back.
Luckily, Vin was there to cut the silence.
"I did. One of my best friends. She was labeled as a slut because of some stupid rumors and they took her away.
That sounds a lot like Mia.
I knew it couldn't possibly be Mia, as she and Vin were hours apart, but the story of Vin's friend sounded almost identical to Mia's story. She was labeled the same way because of a swirl of rumors, which ended up putting the nail into her reputation's coffin and bringing her to our ragtag group of runaways.
"I'm sorry about your friend."
"I'm sorry about whoever it was you lost."
Silence hung between us for the first time all night once our condolences were shared. A silence that seemed to drag on forever, suffocating me as I fought for the right words to say.
However, Vin beat me to the right words. Or perhaps the wrong words, or the worst words for the moment, or maybe even comic relief, depending on the viewpoint.
"Do you want to come up to my room with me?"
I nearly burst out laughing at the request. "Oh my God, sex after dinner. I should've seen it coming."
Vin actually did burst out laughing. "No, it's not like that. I wasn't planning that. I just need a change of scenery. So you coming with?"
No.
The answer was immediate in my mind. No. Don't go with. Part ways and go home. Something was wrong with that place and I had been feeling it all night, even in the more lighthearted conversations we shared.
Yes, go with him.
My heart had a different answer, pulling me in the direction of Vin. It was clear my heart knew I had already fallen in love with Vin, even though my mind was in overdrive and denial. I had not wanted to fall, but I was convinced I had done so. I had broken the social codes I had lived by for the past couple of years on the run over a boy who had come into my life the previous night.
"Yes."
My heart's decision won as Vin smiled my way, taking my hand and leading me into the house, despite something in me screaming not to go.
And when Vin led me into an office space instead of a bedroom and locked the door, I knew I should've listened to that something in me that was begging and pleading to leave.
"Vin, what the fuck?"
"You absolute fucking idiot."
"What did you just call me?"
Vin chuckled as he pulled away from the door, slowly creeping towards me like a predator following prey. "You really didn't recognize me, Ashe?"
What?
If Vin was someone I had just recently met, what was there to recognize? He was a stranger up until the night before, how was I expected to recognize him?
And that's when I met his eyes, a taunting blue, and realized that I was, in fact, an absolute fucking idiot.
Vin had the same eyes as someone I knew back home. Someone I thought was long dead to the world, in servitude to the government for an Unfavorable status. A girl in the grade below me, whose parents were rumored to have a strong status with the government, and whose family had hated mine since the dawn of time, with me and her not being the exception to this feud.
And as she took off her sweatshirt, I realized that she was under government servitude. Just not in the way every other Unfavorable was.
It was with that realization that I also realized that I was in huge trouble. I was trapped in a room with a government guard who would turn me in with no hesitation, and I had no escape.
All I could do to save my life was stall a little bit and hope I could find a way out in the process.
"What do you want from me, Salem?"