Beyond the Distance

Chapter 1

Through all the years bearing his parents' criticisms, Acton could agree with just one of them: he was stubborn.

It was the twenty-fourth of Azia, the middle of winter when the world was deep in hibernation and everything around him held the eerie tranquility of silence and death. As he slipped across pavements covered in black ice and stumbled over piles of hardened snow, he thought that perhaps it was a mistake to make plans under such treacherous weather conditions, but he needed to see Keona again after three years of isolation, and he couldn't bear the thought of spending his sixteenth birthday with the family that insisted this isolation was for his own good.

Entering the café in the town center of District 27, he removed his gloves and coat, and found the table where she sat, awaiting his arrival. Taking the seat across from her, they shared a brief greeting and placed their orders with the waitress, and then they settled into the cozy intimacy of their two-seated table.

"Acton," she said, placing her hands over his. "It's been so long. How have you been?"

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Same as usual."

"With the weather and the fact that it's your birthday and all, I can't believe your parents were okay with you coming out here. I thought they would've been against the idea."

His hands tensed beneath hers. "Yeah, well, things change."

"They aren't happy that you're here, are they? I mean, they wanted to celebrate your birthday with you, didn't they? And your brother..."

"They couldn't care less."

"Are you sure about that? They've always been concerned about how you spend your time out."

"They don't care. And if they do..." He glanced at his reflection in the window beside him. "There's nothing I can do about that now."

His mother had discouraged him from coming to District 27 and insisted he stay home with the family for his birthday, but he saw his family every day of his life, and just this once he wanted to see something else. His parents were worried about his safety, or so they said, and it all sounded good, but he despised the overbearing nature of their concerns, and the exhilaration of finding that moment to escape was much too sweet to deny as he passed his six-year-old brother, Nate, with a quick goodbye and an anxious glance behind him before closing the front door and hurrying down the sidewalk toward the station that would take him to District 27.

They couldn't stop him from seeing Keona forever, and he had no time to wait on their fickle approval.

It had nothing to do with her at this point, anyway. His parents spoke of her as though she was the problem, but she was nothing more than the symbolic manifestation of the problem, and Acton knew the difference. Keeping him away from Keona would never resolve his parents' concerns, as it was his own behavior that troubled them most. Over the last eight years, he had grown comfortably distant from them,

keeping to his bedroom in the evenings and on the weekends, since he couldn't easily gain their approval to go out, and keeping himself busy with reading materials and personal writing. If they had any clue what he was reading and writing, their words never betrayed them, but their concerns indicated their suspicions.

It was their burden, though. They were the ones to abuse his trust, and he had every reason to keep a secret or two from them. Keona had been fostered in his home until she was seven, and after sending her away to live with his aunt and uncle "for a short time," it didn't take long to realize that she would never return, and he would forever be stuck with an aloof family compartmentalized by their own selfish preoccupations. The warm safety that his home should've provided was absent, and Acton felt no more at ease among unfamiliar faces and environments than he did among family.

He was eight when Keona was taken away from him. It was the moment his childhood innocence was ripped away, the moment he realized that reality wasn't as pretty and optimistic as he once believed. His father's twitching fear grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him out of his peaceful world of wildflowers among swaying grasses, and woodlands just beyond his home. He ripped that innocence out of Acton's hands and tossed it into the dusty corner of their attic with that notebook he had accidentally been holding as Keona—Mari, as she had been known in his family—covered her eyes and sobbed on the floor. Eight-year-old Acton searched for reason and purpose behind his father's erratic movements as he paced the creaking floorboards, but there was no meaning to uncover. Without explanation, she was sent away less than a week later.

If only he had understood the significance of the words in those notebook pages when he was eight... but it didn't matter. Keona was much better living away from his parents, just as he was better off without them in this moment. And he knew what those pages meant today as he watched her unsuspecting reflection on the café table.

"Do you remember the attic?"

Her head tilted curiously. "Remember the attic?"

"Yes. The darkness, the single yellow light bulb, the dust, the musty smell... the creaking floorboards."

He noted the surprise in her large, green eyes and took another sip of lemon water, setting the glass down with a self-conscious clank. "Of course you must remember. Eight years ago—"

"Oh, you're referring to that... Of course I remember. Your father was very upset with us. That was around the time I moved in with Scott's family."

"Yes, that was when you were adopted by my aunt and uncle, but... Do you remember the wooden trunk in the corner? Do you remember the papers inside?"

"That's why your father was so upset with us. He didn't want us messing with his papers. They were personal to him."

He didn't care about those damned papers. He sipped his water again and looked out the window at the figures moving through the white sunlight. The winter air stole the warmth of the café as another customer entered and took a seat at the table behind Keona. After so many years, how could he tell her what these papers had done to him? How could he tell her what these papers meant?

"You're still upset about it," she said. "You still think it's your fault."

He sighed. "No, there's more to it than what I thought when I was eight."

"But it's still bothering you."

His eyes locked with hers briefly before averting to his hands on the table. "Yes, that one day changed everything."

"I don't understand."

Despite hiding behind the black hat and scarf around his nose, the man who had taken his seat behind Keona had a familiar set of dark eyes. Acton had seen those eyes countless times at his front door, threatening his father and demanding he follow a set of orders dictated by his mysterious commander. The way he casually glanced at Acton from behind his open newspaper distressed him.

"Perhaps we shouldn't talk about this now. I'll tell you later, when we have a moment alone..."