When I wake up, my door is still locked, so I guess Gran Rey hasn't gotten up yet to unlock it. This actually makes me smile. It means I get to read until breakfast. There's no clock in my room, but there's one in his office. Once he unlocks my door, I can check the time.
Day four. I've been alive for four days. This reminds me that I didn't write in my diary yesterday. I quickly scribble down what happened. Two messy paragraphs cover the front of the page, but I just shrug and lay back on my bed to read.
***
I almost didn't hear the click of the lock. I quickly glance at my page number, 418, and jump up. I open the door quickly and catch Gran Rey walking to his desk. He turns around with a surprised expression. He probably didn't expect me to pop out of my room so quickly.
"What time is it?" I ask.
He checks the clock on his desk. "Seven-fifteen."
"And breakfast is at seven-thirty?"
"Yes. That's when it's supposed to be ready."
"Okay, thanks." I rush back into my room, smiling at his confused expression. I lay back down on my bed and lift the book to a few inches from my face.
Eventually, I hear a knock on my door. Is that the first time he's knocked on my door? It's the first time he's actually come into my room without me screaming my head off, I remind myself. "Come in," I call.
He opens the door. "It's seven-thirty in case you wanted to know."
"Oh. Thanks." I check the page number again. 430. I set the book down reluctantly and stand up.
"Have you reached page four-eighty yet?"
"No. Fifty more pages to go. I need to get dressed so if you could..." I make a shooing motion with my hands.
He rolls his eyes and walks out.
I quickly change into shorts and another oversized T-shirt. This one is black with the words "Snowflake Sunset" in neon green lettering. For the first time, I wonder whose clothes I'm wearing. With a cold feeling in my stomach, I realize this could have been Tony's room. Gran Rey's friend that owned the book and died could have slept in that room. The thought makes me shiver.
I walk outside. Gran Rey isn't here, so he probably went downstairs already. I walk out of his office and almost run into girl. She's tall and blond, with a narrowly-shaped face. Her eyes are brown. We stare at each other for a second.
"You're Elien," she observes. I can't read her expression.
"Yeah. And you're...?" I shut the door behind me.
"Carey. I manage our resources. Has anyone mentioned me?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Did they also tell you I advised Gran Rey to get rid of you?" Her expression is still unreadable.
Hostile. I brace myself for a fight, but try not to let it show. "No."
"Well that's what I did. And I still don't trust you." She looks down at me, practically giving me a condescending glare, before continuing her walk to the stairs.
"Sorry," I say halfheartedly. I follow her at a distance. Maybe she doesn't want to kill me, but she would definitely be on the side of "getting rid of me." I guess I'll have to prove myself to her eventually.
Once I get my breakfast, grilled cheese toast, I walk outside and locate Dorthene. It isn't hard because her hand is waving frantically in the air from where we sat on my second day here. I quickly walk to them and sit on the cold concrete rock next to her.
"Good morning," she says. Dig, Cour, Kram, and a couple people I don't recognize by name are here. "This is Bone Crusher." She points to a medium-sized boy who looks like he could possibly only crush a bone with a bulldozer.
I try not to smile as I nod to him. My mouth is full, so I think I succeed. Kram signs to me that Bone Crusher keeps breaking his own bones by falling or tripping or jumping off rocks. I nod to him too.
"And this is Joey." Dorthene points to a girl who gives me a smile and a little wave. I wave back, this time smiling because I'm done chewing.
"Hi," Joey says.
"Hi." I take another bite.
"So what are you supposed to do today, Elien?" Dig asks me. I state to answer him, but my mouth is full. He laughs. "Sorry. Bad timing." I give him a slight smile and try to finish chewing.
"Stop harassing her, Dig." Cour scolds him sarcastically.
"I'm not harassing her, I'm just asking her a question."
"If you keep harassing my best friend, I will punch you in the face."
No one else seems to be shocked that she just called me her best friend. My eyes turn to Kram and he starts signing something to me. "Don't look so surprised. Basically, anyone who's her friend she calls her best friend. It's just what she does."
I mouth the word "oh" to him. He smiles.
"Elien, now that your mouth is empty and it doesn't count as harassment anymore," Dig shoots a look at Cour, "what are you going to be doing today?"
I look at him blankly for a few seconds before dramatically taking another large bite of my toast. Then I stare at him in defiance.
He facepalms. "Elien! I'm trying to be nice." Cour stands up and starts moving toward him. He leans away. "Elien, do something, she's going to kill me!"
I just shrug and gesture to my mouth innocently, trying to chew my food and smile at the same time. Cour grabs him by the shirt and puts her face right up to his. "If you harass her one more time," I can tell she's trying to keep a straight face, but she fails and bursts out laughing. I swallow my food so I can laugh too. Cour sits next to him and gives him a playful shove. He shoves her back.
"Sorry, Dig. I would have helped you, but my mouth was full." He rolls his eyes. "Gran Rey said I could have today off. It's been a long three days, so he's letting me do what I want today."
"And what are you going to do?" Dorthene asks.
I shrug. "What else? Sabotage the colony." Cour laughs loudly at my joke, but Bone Crusher and Joey just look at me. "Guys, it was a joke. I'm not trying to hurt the colony in any way."
Unless I am. Unless I'm just waiting for the right moment to explode. Unless the other me takes over and hurts more people.
"That's against the rules, Elien," Dorthene scolds sarcastically.
"What? Making a joke or sabotaging the colony?"
"Well, sabotage can get you a punishment of cleaning out the outhouses, but the joke is a definite exile or execution," Dig explains with mock sadness.
"Oh, well in that case, I take back the joke. I wasn't joking, guys."
Kram gives me a thumbs up so everyone understands what he means. "Good."
"By the way, what are the rules? Gary told me you can't murder, get drunk, or get high. But no one else told me what the rules are."
"Well you can't murder or basically harm anyone else," Dig says.
"Unless it's self-defense," Dorthene adds. She probably said that because of what I did to Dan yesterday.
"And there's no stealing other people's stuff or going through their stuff," Dig continues.
"No trespassing, basically, or violation of privacy. And no girls in the boy's room and no boys in the girl's room," Cour winks at me. She's probably thinking about our conversation yesterday.
"What about, like, transgender... people?" I don't know how to put it, but they understand what I mean.
Dorthene answers me. "When that comes up we kind of just... Make a decision on it. There's not really a set rule for it."
"Okay."
Dig keeps going. "No inappropriate behavior like nudity; disrespect because of race, gender, religion, et cetera; and no raping." He looks like he's done. Is that it? I can't think of anything else that would have to be a rule.
"I believe the exact words are: no non-consensual intercourse," Cour corrects him.
"Well I wasn't going to keep it kid-friendly like Gran Rey wanted it." Dig rolls his eyes.
"There are no kids here," I realize with surprise.
"Yeah. They were all evacuated from the city. Only some people stayed in the city. Our youngest here is..." Dig glances around. "I don't see her, but Yina is sixteen."
"That's kind of old though, right?"
"The adults have been gone for five years. She was only eleven then."
"How old is the oldest person?"
"Well, they drafted all the eighteen-year-olds and some of the seventeen-year-olds. Pretty much everyone under thirteen wanted to go when they evacuated everyone. Some stayed in the city with big siblings or friends. After five years, the oldest you'll find someone here is twenty-two."
"Who's the oldest?" I ask.
"Carey. Linda is a close second, then Josh. And on and on."
"How old is Gran Rey?"
He pauses. "Twenty?" he says slowly.
"Yes, he's twenty. His birthday was last month, remember?" Bone Crusher says.
This surprises me. I thought he was younger. "I wish I knew how old I am." Suddenly, I feel something strange in my mind. It's a tiny thing I can't grasp. Something tells me it's a memory. When I try to focus on it, it disappears.
But it was a memory, or the shadow of a memory at least. I almost remembered something.
"You're older than sixteen, that's for sure," Dorthene says. She was the first person I asked about my age to. That was so long ago.
"And under twenty-two, I think." Cour stares at me intensely.
"She looks young," Joey says.
"Looks can be deceiving. It's the mind that counts," Cour responds.
"Well then I'm barely four days old. Happy Birthday to me."
Kram laughs silently. It makes me smile watching him shake from laughing.
The bell sounds for everyone to start their work. I stand up and offer to take everyone's napkins and cups. They didn't give us plates for breakfast. "I can take your cups and stuff. It will help you get to your jobs faster." I wink at Cour.
Her face explodes into shock. "Did you guys see that? She's bragging. She's bragging!"
I make my face look surprised. "Why would I do that? I know you all work so hard at your jobs." I roll my eyes as I take Kram's cup.
"Are you guys going to let her do this?" Cour asks, but three of them are already walking away.
"Don't worry, Cour, you can tell me off at the end of the day." I shrug and start to walk back to the building.
She laughs. "You just wait, Elien."
I turn around to walk backwards. "I'm looking forward to it." Then I turn back around so I don't run into anyone. I walk inside. I throw the napkins in a large trash can along with everyone else, then set the cups down in a tray. I can't imagine doing all the dishes three times a day. I wonder how many people are in Sentrus.
I walk back to my room and lay on my bed. I pick up the book and open it to the page I left this morning. I keep reading. The next chapter starts a huge change in the countries. Until now, each country has been promoting itself, showing propaganda of heroes and patriotism. This chapter has an almost evil mood to it. Now the propaganda attacks the other country. Rather than wanting the public to support its own country, they are meant to despise the other country. It works for both sides while neither gains an advantage in the war. People just keep dying.
It's very depressing. I can't think of a way out. All I can do is keep reading and reading. I don't even notice when I pass page 480, but somehow I reach page 547. Almost all the cities have been wiped out. Barely anyone survives, but they keep fighting. Each side is furious with the other for destroying their country, so they keep going.
Eventually, it gets to a point where both sides have a chance to completely obliterate the other at the same exact moment.
There was a choice made in every heart between yielding and destruction; saving and murdering; bringing hope and bringing devastation.
I turn the page anxiously, but it's blank, as are the rest of them. There's an acknowledgements section, but nothing to continue the book. It just ends. There is no ending, no decision made, nothing.
It actually shocks me. I stare at the blank page for a few minutes, trying to understand why the author would build up to a cliff-hanging climax just to cut it off and not finish it. I set the book down on my lap. I stare at the cover, which depicts complete blackness divided by a thin line of light. Then a small dot of light is reflected on each side. The words Halfway to Devastation shimmer at the top, and the author's name sits right below them. Adam E. George.
When I walk out, Gran Rey is waiting at his desk, writing on some lined paper. He looks up and asks, "Did you reach page four-eighty yet?"
"I finished it." I'm still kind of shocked at the ending.
"Oh."
"Why doesn't it end?"
"It kind of did." He shrugs.
"You know what I mean."
"Fine. Sit down and I'll tell you." I sit in the chair, placing the book on the desk in front of me, and listen to him. "The book was published around the middle of the war, about the time when most people wanted it to end. Basically, the author wanted people to notice what was happening. Using the book, he described a war that ended with a choice. He wanted people to realize that this was the choice that would come in the end. It's called Halfway to Devastation because the book is only the first half. The choice of the people afterwards was the last half. Not enough people got his message, so here we are, all the way to devastation."
"Do you know what happened to him?"
He picks up the book and turns to the inside of the back cover. A picture of the author sits above a small paragraph of words. "It says here he was drafted. When he refused to fight, he was eventually killed." He closes the book.
"Alright. So what were you going to tell me about the city after I finished the book?"
He leans back in his chair. "Story time."