I spend the rest of the next few days learning how to be an Instructor. I practice and re-practice all the skills I spent my life learning, and do exercises to get used to teaching instead of following. I’m allowed the usual breaks -- breakfast, lunch dinner -- but they’re not eaten in the dining hall, like before. Everything I had at the Core is now replaced with a Mask version. Our own dining hall, our own infirmary. The only times I see the Differents are when I’m passing through their buildings and things of the sort. I also don’t get to talk to anyone I used to know. I’ve seen Captain a few times, but she looks different. More closed off. We crossed paths once and she glanced at me and appeared to shrink into herself. Whatever they’ve done to her I feel responsible for. Maybe if I hadn’t run away she would still be free.
As for Bear, I’ve heard rumours about him. The Masks working in the teaching departments and even the cooks talk about him sometimes during our meals and in the evening. They say that he’s completely out of control. No matter what they say to him or do to him, he won’t stop.
“Last week he wouldn’t stop talking over me during the lesson I was trying to teach,” one of them, an Instructor-in-training, had said one evening. “I asked him politely to quiet down and to pay attention but he just kicked his feet onto his desk and started talking even louder about how his friend went missing about a month ago. He’s going to start a riot or something, that boy.”
“He certainly started a food fight,” one of the cooks had grumbled. “Had to call in at least five of the cleaners and it took them several hours to finish clearing everything up.”
“Have you heard he’s also got this band of people who think like him now?”
“No, what happened?”
“A few others, 1139 among them.”
“Oh, not him,” an older Instructor said sadly. “He was a good student last year.”
“They won’t stop kissing in the halls. It’s honestly disgusting to look at,” someone else added. That was when I had gotten up and gone to bed at that point. Hearing them talk about Bear like that had made me think about Lyra. If any of these people found out about her, or even the redhead girl, I would certainly be hated even more. At least most of them don’t know who I am. For now.
As for Arden, I hadn’t seen him at all. Ever since the plane landed I’ve been certain that the Masks have been doing everything in their power to keep me from seeing him. I don’t even know what I’d do if I did see him, but I just want to know he’s okay.
And one evening I do.
I’m coming back from the Masks’ infirmary, where I had spent the afternoon because of a bad headache, and I find a maskless boy with dark hair wandering about the halls, looking lost. At first I don’t recognize him, or I think it must just be someone that looks like him, but then he comes up to me and starts speaking. I think he asks something about directions, but I don’t hear anything. The blood is rushing to my ears. Does he recognize me? Does he know how much trouble he could get in for being here?
Whatever he’s saying, I don’t let him finish. “Arden?”
Realization lights up behind his eyes, and he glances over his shoulder. “I wasn’t sure if it was you or not.”
The back of my neck prickles, that pain-mixed-with-numbing feeling stirring just under my skin. I don’t like it. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I’m lost.” He shrugs. “Can you help me back to my own building? Maybe then we can catch up on things we’ve missed. I haven’t seen you around at all and I feel like they’re trying to keep us apart.” The sentence makes me flinch and I have to restrain myself from clapping my hand over his mouth. He notices. “What?”
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The Normals | ✓
Science FictionWhen Arden stumbles across a half-conscious, bloodied girl at his local train station, he doesn't know what to think. But once she tells him what happened to her, he gains a whole new perception of his world. Arden lives in pretty much the perfect s...
