Rising From The Ashes

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

There are rebels within the society. I never even noticed my whole life, but today I found out that not everyone is okay with the way things are. They have found their own way to survive and I know that I should hate them for it, but I don’t. If anything, I am jealous.

-The diary of Lucinda Jane Waders

“Where did you get this?” I demanded, waving the book Sadie had given me in her face.

“Calm down! And stop waving that thing around before someone sees it!” she replied, looking just a little panicked. I continued to scowl at her, but shoved the book back into my bag.

“Well?” I said expectantly and she sighed.

“I might have taken it from my mom. She doesn’t know or she would kill me, but when I realized what it was I had to read it,” Sadie told me with a sheepish smile.

“But why did she have it in the first place?”

“Because apparently they caught somebody with a bunch of illegal things and had to confiscate them, the book was one of the items. They put my mom in charge of sorting through it all and I got curious,” Sadie shrugged.

“Do you know what they would do if they found you with this?” I asked her, still very angry with her.

“Arrest me, I guess, but how would they possibly know I had it? I doubt anyone even noticed it missing and it’s not like they just randomly go around searching teenagers,” Sadie defended and I continued to frown at her.

“You should have at least warned me about what I was carrying around,” I told her flatly.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not like you can tell just by looking at it what it really is. Anyone that saw it would just think it was a regular book,” she said and I nodded because she did have a point. “So, did you like it?”

“Umm,” I started, trying to figure out how I wanted to answer that. Truthfully, I loved the book. It was the most interesting thing that I had ever read before. But then it felt so wrong to enjoy something so much when it is illegal. My feelings were more then a little conflicted.

The reason the book was such a big deal and is considered to be illegal for any citizens to be in possession of is because it is from before the wall was built. The Officials don’t like us having anything from back then because they say that the people during that time period obviously weren’t thinking clearly and they don‘t want us to be corrupted by the ideas of lunatics. They took away all books, music, movies, and everything else from during that time.

Of course new movies and things were made to take their place, but there was one major difference. All of the new movies and things only featured woman and girls. Although, there were some guy characters in a few of the books I had read, but they were always the villain. The book that Sadie had given me, though, wasn’t like that at all.

It was a love story, something I had never really heard of before. When I first began to read it and started to understand just what I was reading, I was furious. I couldn’t believe Sadie would ever give me something that was so against everything I and the rest of our society believed in. I was practically ready to turn it in, but then I got curious. The book actually was pretty interesting and once I calmed down enough I realized that I really wanted to know what happened next. And so I finished the book.

I felt guilty the entire time I was reading it, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. The whole idea was such a foreign concept to me that I found myself hooked. I wanted more, even though I was terrified to admit such a thing to myself.