As soon as rec time comes around after lunch the next day, I'm back in my little spot by the fence. I feel anxious and uneasy, and my heart is thrashing like a caged bird, and this is probably a really bad idea.
But Roan isn't here.
I don't know why I thought he would be, except that he'd said he hoped to see me again. I'm surprised by how disappointed I am when he doesn't show.
It's not just because he was beautiful, or because he didn't recoil from me, or because he said that people on the outside do care about us. It's also because I have spent my whole life in the CC, surrounded by the same people, day in and day out. Roan is something new, something different, and I want more than the tiny glimpse that I've seen.
But if he's not here then I should go.
I don't, though.
I sit on the grass in front of the fence, and I wait.
Above me, birds wing their way through the sky. I want to fly with them, to feel the wind ruffle my feathers and the heat of the sun on my skin. I want to dance through that beautiful, free sky, and never come back down.
"Caia."
I hear his voice before I see him, and the way he says my name makes me feel strange in a way that I can't quite decipher.
Roan is standing behind the fence, watching me. The way the sun catches his hair makes it look like it's limned in gold, and his eyes are the colour of the sky.
My heart jumps into my throat, but I can't tell if it's excitement or nerves.
The first time I met him, I was angry and suspicious. Now I don't know how I feel.
Roan smiles, sunshine-warm. "You came back."
"So did you."
"I did say I wanted to see you again." He moves closer to the fence. "I wasn't sure you would come back though."
"Neither was I." I have no idea why I'm being so honest with him.
He sits down opposite me. His clothing is simple; dark blue trousers that I think Taffy says are called jeans, and a light grey jumper that hugs the shape of his body, but it's so different to my CC uniform that I can't stop staring at it. I want to drink in the sight of him for as long as I can, because he is a new shard of colour in my world.
"How do you choose your clothes?" I blurt out.
His eyebrows go up.
"It's just . . ." I fiddle with the shapeless hem of my own jumper.
"You always have to wear that, don't you?" Roan says.
I give a small nod.
None of the books we are given to read contain pictures – though the front covers are usually illustrated – and I've often lingered over lavish descriptions of clothes, imagining all the colours and fabrics, imagining the feel of them against my skin. But how do people on the outside choose what to wear every single day? How are they not overwhelmed by the sheer choice?
"A lot of it's down to personal taste." Roan leans back, resting his weight on his palms, looking as relaxed as a sunbathing cat. "You go shopping, you try on the things you like, and if you can afford them, you buy them."
"But how do you find things you like? How do you know what you like?"
He hesitates, looking down at himself. "I'm not sure how to answer that," he admits.
Because he's never had to think about it. It's a choice that he takes for granted, never even realising that he's doing it.
"What's your favourite colour?" he asks.
"Blue," I reply. "Like the sky."
Like his eyes.
"Okay, so that would be a start. You might look for blue clothes," he says.
I try to picture it, slipping on something blue like I'm trying on the sky.
"It's about what you feel comfortable in. I have a friend who wears leather trousers almost every day, and not everyone likes that look, but she does, and that's all that matters. Who cares what other people think?" Roan says.
He says it like this is something that I will one day be able to do, but I don't know what happens when I leave the CC. I'll be free of this place, but I will still belong to the government themselves, so for all I know, I will still be stuck in a drab uniform for the rest of my life.
"Can I . . ." I hesitate. There's a strange need in me. "Can I touch them?"
Roan's eyes soften with something like pity, and he presses one arm against the fence. I reach out and run my fingertips along the sleeve of his jumper. It's softer than my uniform, and even though there's nothing special about it, it's a little piece of a world I'm not allowed to see, and I can't seem to stop stroking it. And Roan lets me. If he thinks my behaviour is odd, he doesn't say anything.
"Your world is pretty different to mine, isn't it?" he says, when I take my hand away.
"I don't know. I've never lived on the outside."
He winces a little. "Yeah, that was stupid of me, sorry." He lifts his gaze to the fence that towers over us, to the gleaming twists of barbed wire that top it. "I know that Seconds live their whole lives in this place, but I guess I've never really considered the reality of that."
I suspect our world is different in ways I can't begin to imagine. I've learned so much from Taffy, but it's not the same as experiencing it firsthand.
"What you said about the Trials yesterday . . . what did you mean?" I ask. "Who are you?"
"I guess I should start from the beginning. You know all about what happens to Seconds, right? They're illegally born and then the parents have to give them to the government, who send them here where they are assigned a first name, but no surname. If the parents have already named the baby, then the name will be changed. They are never allowed contact with that baby again, and are encouraged to pretend that it never even existed."
I do know all this, but inside I flinch a little at his last words. I know he doesn't mean it like that, but it's all I am to so many people on the outside – an it. Something that shouldn't exist.
"Beyond started life as an online forum for people who found out they had a Second sibling," Roan says.
"An online forum?" I say, not quite understanding the words.
He rubs his chin. "You know about computers and the internet and all that, right?"
"I know of it, but not how it works." It seems to be a big part of life for people on the outside, but it's not something that Seconds are allowed to experience.
"Okay, so think of forums as places online where people can meet to talk. They might use forums because they can't meet in person, or they might use them because they want to remain anonymous, that sort of thing."
That makes sense.
"So, most parents who have given up Seconds don't talk about it, but sometimes their firstborns still find out. Some of the people who first joined the forum had found photos of a baby that wasn't them, some of them overheard their parents talking, some of them had parents who did actually tell them because they thought they deserved to know, because they couldn't pretend that their Second child didn't exist."
"But why would they care? People aren't supposed to care about Seconds, even if they are related," I say.
"Well, luckily that kind of propaganda doesn't work on everyone. There are plenty of people who willingly accept the idea that Seconds are lesser people, who deserve being locked up in this place just for being born, but there are plenty more who don't. There are people out there who want to know their siblings, and that forum was a place for them to talk about how they were feeling. It was a place for them to talk about what they could do to change what's happening."
"Change it?" I echo, baffled. "The Firstborn Act has been law for thirty years. They're not going to change it."
"Laws change all the time, Caia, especially if they're wrong. Especially if they're in blatant violation of basic human rights, which the Firstborn Act is. Beyond knows that we can't repeal that – we're not trying to – but we want to stop what's happening to Seconds."
I'm still getting to grips with the idea that anyone genuinely cares about us. It goes against everything I've been taught these last sixteen years.
"Gradually, over the course of a couple of years, Beyond was properly formed. Some of our members have money and connections, and they used those to gain the backing of newspapers and other media, and to encourage interest among the general public. For a while it looked like it was working. People started paying attention. Pressure was put on the government and the CC in turn, until the CC agreed to allow random inspections, with all the findings made public."
"What were you expecting to find?" I ask.
"I don't know," he admits. "I mean, I've only been part of Beyond for two years, and all this happened before I joined, but they were afraid that the reason no one was allowed inside the CC was because the Seconds were being abused."
"And are we?" I ask.
Clouds gather in his eyes. "You wouldn't even know, would you? Not if it's all you've been taught."
"There are people in here who weren't born Second. I do have some understanding of the outside," I say, a little sharply.
He's not looking down on me, but somehow I don't want him to think that I'm completely ignorant of the world.
Undeterred, Roan continues: "As far as Beyond is concerned, the mere fact that the government owns Seconds is abuse, but not everyone sees it that way. Far too many think that abuse has to be physical and obvious. They think it means that Seconds would be living in squalor, or that the Handlers would be treating you all like animals, and when they realised that wasn't the case, when inspections of the CC revealed that Seconds were fed and clothed and more or less taken care of, the general public started to lose interest. They thought that as long as you weren't being physically mistreated, nothing else mattered. But that's bullshit. It doesn't matter if the CC appears to treat you well or not; the point is that you should be free. You should have the same rights as everyone else. You shouldn't be in this place. The people who started Beyond, the people who initially bonded over the loss of their Second siblings know that there's almost no chance they'll ever be reunited with them, but that's not what we're fighting for. We're fighting for freedom."
His eyes pin me in place.
"Caia, we want to put an end to the CC."