The Five Unnecessaries

Chapter 22 - Part 1

We left the drop-off point and walked for hours before taking a break. It was amazing that it didn't feel awkward to speak to Megan, although most of our conversations were about Central, the Republic, and the horrible taste of meal bars. She was able to give me more details about the warehouse section and where more children hid. She couldn't return for months. Patterson had instructed us to avoid a certain sector and not look too familiar, or someone might recognize us and connect the dots.

"Police are dumb, but they aren't that dumb," Megan agreed.

We were sitting by the heating unit, listening to our MCUs review Common Phrases 10. There was just one problem: I wasn't listening. I had the earphones on, but there was no file playing. Instead, I was looking through Protector profiles, searching for the quote that had made Collin so upset. I could barely remember what generation it was from—twenty years ago, maybe? The profiles from the 167th were familiar, but none of them stood out.

"Do you know what day it is?" Megan asked out of nowhere.

I stared at her across the heater, the waves rippling from it in the chilly night air. There should have been a fire in its place, with my brothers and sisters around it. It made the day of the week, or anything normal, hard to pinpoint.

"I don't remember. Is it Wednesday?"

She let out a long breath. "I don't know either. It feels like we should know. I think it's a Wednesday because there's only a month left in spring and I looked at the star charts before we left. By Wednesday, we should see Mars, right by the moon. And I think that's it. If not, we could just say it's Wednesday."

I pulled away from my MCU as the last file ended. Nothing had connected Collin's reaction to the quote, but I wasn't even sure I had chosen the right generation.

"Did you and your dad watch the stars a lot?" I asked.

"Yeah, about every night. At the clearing up on the ridge."

I sat up to lean on my elbow. "My dad used to take me there once in a while when he hunted late at night."

"When? We stayed there almost every night, an hour before midnight."

"About two o'clock. He'd sleep, wake up, then we'd go." I realized the tragedy of it and spoke more to myself. "Just enough to miss you."

We both stared up at the sky.

"I heard you like to write," she said after a moment, "and were in the art track at school. Not the most popular track compared to math or science, but I was glad your parents let you do what you wanted to do and didn't make you do math."

"I thought you were good at math?" I asked, surprised by her jealous tone.

"Being good at something and liking it are two different things. It did get me into the Academy, which is what I wanted all along, so it all worked out. But to be honest, I hate math."

I laughed. "Who told you I was in the art track at school?"

"I wondered, so I called in a favor. There's a lot of show-offs at the Academy, and Lynn looked you up for me a few years ago one night, when the teachers weren't paying attention. I wanted to know, yet I never bothered to ask when we were both in the same school."

She paused, but I didn't want her to feel guilty.

"I didn't ask much either, did I?" I said.

We were both silent for a moment, as if to acknowledge how much time we had lost. But when she mentioned a funny story with one of our second-year teachers, I laughed, which made her laugh louder. We shared school memories for hours. I told her about Olivia, the twins, and the stories I would tell at bedtime. I told one of my favorite stories as she grew tired, one that began with, "Once upon a time" and ended with, "happily ever after."