Every Day in May (grand prize winner) ✔

May 31st

I just read your letter, Theo. I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me blush. I'm sorry for the worry I caused you. My absence the last day and a half was unavoidable. I didn't get a chance to tell you what happened—our meeting was so brief, we could only exchange a few words before I had to leave again.

If not for Jeffers, I would have been outside your door before one in the morning on the 30th, just like always.  Every night, I cross the canal that borders the Tower District before heading through Abundance Park and down to the shore where the entrance to the passageway is hidden.  Jeffers caught me just as I had reached the canal's narrow footbridge.

"I told Graden you've been shaking your guards." He grabbed my arm and started dragging me back along the bank of the canal.  "He underestimates your craftiness, little spy."

"Let me go, Jeffers."  I struggled to release myself from his grip.  "I know what I'm doing."

"Do you?"  He pulled me along until we came to an alley.  "What would happen if you were caught?  You'd be recognized—you know that don't you?  You don't belong there, especially creeping around the Heir's bedroom in the middle of the night.  Do you want the Dissent to succeed in taking down the Leader?"  He hissed this last part; I imagined that's how he sounded right after his throat had been slashed.

"Of course I do.  I also know I'm doing the right thing.  Haven't you always lived that way yourself, Jeffers?  Aren't you your own moral compass?"

Jeffers snorted.  "Hardly."

"I think you are and I think you know I'm right.  We need to save Theo.  His father can fall, his father's advisors, the rest of the Loyalists, they can all go down, but Theo?  No." I shook my head and again tried to break away from him.  It was hopeless; Jeffers stood like a colossus blocking the only exit from the alley.  I gave up, sank to the ground, my head lowered onto my knees.

 "I'm sorry, kid, I really am, but Graden's right on this one.  Plus, if something happens to you on my watch, he'll have my ass." He offered me his hand.  "Come on, let's go."

Instead of picking up your letter and leaving you my own, I found myself back in my dorm room at school, faced with double the usual number of babysitters in addition to the ever vigilant Jeffers.

Graden's extra men weren't really the problem. They were all stationed remotely—one on the roof, another under the tree outside my window, one at each of the school's three exits, and two more across the street. I could handle all of them, but Jeffers wasn't going to let me out of his sight.

"Lucky for you, this is my day off."  He folded his hands behind his head and leaned his chair against the wall.  "I told your headmistress that the Leader ordered a bodyguard for you.  Guess I get to be your study buddy today."

There was nothing I could do but spend the rest of that night and following day fretting over my broken promise to you—what did you think when you realized I hadn't shown up?  Did you assume I'd been caught?  Did you wonder if I'd abandoned you?

The day moved at an infuriatingly slow pace.  After school, I ate dinner with Jeffers staring quietly at me from the corner of my room.  As irritating as his presence was, it did afford me the opportunity to ask him about the odd statement I'd overheard the Tower guard say the other night.

"Jeffers, do you think the Leader knows what we're planning?  Has he, I don't know...changed the guards around or increased their patrols or anything?"

 Jeffers set his bowl of half-finished potato stew down on my bedside table.  "The Leader?  He's too deluded to acknowledge that the Dissent might still pose a threat.  But yeah, he has been changing the guards' schedules.  There's no logic to the way he's been going about it that I can tell.  Having their shifts changed around has been pissing off the guards, not that any of them will outright say so.  He snaps at us, too, even more than usual.  He keeps threatening to turn us out into the street—minus our heads."