Countdown (on hold)

Three years, five months, five days, twenty two hours, fifty minutes before

It was only three hours since I started riding Carrot, but my countdown changed from six days to five days because of the time of day I’m expected to meet my soul mate. I never really understood how the times of the countdown work, but if I hit a button on my bracelet twice, it’ll tell me what time of day I will meet my soul mate.  I decided to see what time I would meet my soul mate. Nothing came up when I hit the button twice. It couldn’t be broken, and if it was, the government would have noticed right away and would have come to fix it. I let it pass, I really didn’t want to know what exact time I would meet my soul mate, but I did want to see how long I would have to wait to meet him.

It was always a family tradition to press the button to see how long you have to wait until you meet your soul mate at breakfast, but since Theo had to be an attention stealer, I didn’t get to. I decided to press the button, I wouldn’t be doing anything against the rules; you’re allowed to see how long you have to wait whenever you want to. No rule breaking here, which was very important to do. Rule breaking, breaking the rules set by the government, is very lowly thought of and is the worst thing you could do for your family’s repetition. A family who has a child who has broken the rules is shunned, but after a certain period of time decided by the government, the family doesn’t have to be shunned by the town anymore.

Theo would never break the rules, I knew that for a fact. He does things only to please our parents, never to disappoint them. Theo only allows himself to get A’s on tests, nothing lower, and will study every day to make sure he will get an A. and if he doesn’t get an A, he does extra credit work set by the teacher. But getting A’s on tests aren’t apart of the government set rules; they are on the rules set by our parents, which the government had to look over to see if they were acceptable and not encouraging government rule breaking.

There were many rules about the bracelets, but the basic government rules about the bracelets were simple.

1.    Never take your bracelet off once you get it. Exceptions to that rule are if your bracelet is broken and is being fixed by the government, then it is okay.

2.     Never talk bad about the bracelet and its idea. No exceptions.

3.     Never discourage a young child that the bracelets are a bad idea. No exceptions.

4.      You may date someone before you meet your soul mate. You are not allowed to develop feelings stronger than friendship with that person.

5.        You are to marry you the bracelet says is your soul mate. No exception.

6.         If you run away with someone other than your soul mate, there is no coming back and being welcomed back to town. No exception.

The last rule scared me. Running away from your family with someone you think you love, and then, if it doesn’t work out between you two, you can’t be welcomed back to town. I doubt I would ever run away with someone other than my soul mate. What if I made a wrong decision with someone who I thought was my soul mate, but he really wasn’t? I wouldn’t be able to see my family or friends again. But what if the bracelet made a wrong decision with me? I don’t think I would be able to fall in love with a stranger if it happened like that. The bracelet can’t make a wrong pairing; that why they were invented, to make the right two people fall in love. I shook the whole idea out of my head for a while, I didn’t want to think about how potentially I could be breaking the rules, even though I was just thinking about the bracelets in a negative way depending on how you thought about them.

I looked down at my bracelet, and I thought about taking it off, just for a minute. But what if I got caught? That would end horribly, for me and for my parents. Instead of taking it off, I pressed its button instead. Three years, five months, five days, twenty two hours, fifty minutes, flashed across its tiny screen. I didn’t have to wait that long, which was good. Some people had to wait many more years than my measly three until they were supposed to meet their soul mates. Theo was one of those people, I believed.

My parents didn’t talk about their experiences with the bracelets, and if they did, it wasn’t much. I knew no history about the bracelets. As far as I was concerned, no one knew the history for the bracelets besides the government. It wasn’t part of our curriculum in school, which meant its history wasn’t important. We only learned important parts of our history, not the history before us. 

Our social sciences class, where we learned about our history to the bracelets and how we should act with one another, covered most of the same stuff from grade one to grade thirteen, the last government required grade to complete. Basic stuff like how the government came up with the idea of the bracelets and why they did. Or why the government chose our city, which was once a city called Los Angeles, to relocate. And are there other cities out there in our country, which was once called North America.

There are other cities out there, we don’t interact with them though. Three cities, the one where I lived being one of them, made up our ‘country’.  Our ‘country’ was ruled by the government and everyone in our ‘country’ has a bracelet. The people who run off with someone who isn’t their soul mate live in the woods. Right when I started grade eight, and our social sciences teacher explained that you can run away, but that it is frowned upon and that you would be disowned from the city if you did. If for some crazy reason, I do end up running away, I wouldn’t mind much besides missing my family, they have a nice little community there. It looks peaceful and everyone there looked much happier than in the city. Some couples even were raising children in the woods.

One couple I noticed from the city, a young mother who looked like she was expecting another baby, and her partner. I remember they both graduated a year ago, because it is required for everyone with a student in the school, to attend the graduation. The mother I noticed because she was very beautiful and her father used to work as an enforcer of the rules. He doesn’t have that job now.

I remember when she ran away, it was a disgrace to the whole city. The first born daughter of someone who was supposed to enforce the rules throughout the whole town couldn’t keep his own daughter from breaking the rules. He lost his job immediately and her two younger siblings didn’t show up to school for almost two weeks. At least if Theo or I ran away, our parents wouldn’t lose their jobs.

*Author’s Note*

I know this isn’t the best chapter out there, but what’s coming is better, I promise. Since I actually have most of this in order and okayish, I’ll update. Comments and votes are loved thanks <3