Forgotten

Chapter 10

        "HAVE FUN AT SCHOOL," I tell Hayley as she shoulders her backpack and straightens her dress. But the words are empty, and when I hug her, I think Hayley senses that I squeeze a little too tight.

            As I watch the bus glide off, carrying Hayley away from me, I get a twisting feeling in my gut, like someone has grabbed my stomach in their fist and is clutching it with increasing tightness.

            Liana's hand on my shoulder startles me, and I jump. "Don't forget that we have the seventeen-year-olds' orientation today," Liana tells me. "Better get changed."

            Once a year, there's an orientation for all the seventeen-year-olds in our city, which takes place at the huge auditorium near the town square. It's basically to inform us about what takes place on our eighteenth birthday and what will happen when we get to the east. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter whether we know what happens after the Cleansing or not because we won't remember the orientation at all. But it's mandatory, so Liana and I will be attending today.

            Liana and I quickly change into more formal clothes and head out to the square. We walk in silence for a few minutes before I say, "Four weeks. Four damn weeks. Then all this is...gone. You'll be gone, and three months after that, so will I."

            "I know," Liana sighs. "Just a few weeks ago I was so excited for my birthday. Now it's just the one-week marker before they take Hayley." She shakes her head and laughs without mirth. "I just wish I could freeze time. I'd live here forever if it would keep Hayley safe."

            I nod. "Same here."

            We make no more conversation until we enter the square and turn right into the big, black domed building that is the Darrington auditorium. Liana and I join the line of dozens of other older teenagers waiting to get to the registration desk. I turn and watch the marketplace behind me, which is functioning today even without the help of the seventeen-year-olds.

            It takes about ten minutes for the long line to finally trickle down to us. The official at the desk, a woman wearing a white lab coat, doesn't look up from her computer screen as Liana and I approach.

            "Last name?" she inquires shortly.

            "Parlett," says Liana.

            The woman types something into the computer, then glances up at Liana. "You're Stella?"

            Liana looks a bit taken aback. "N—no, I'm Liana. My homestead sister's name is Stella."

            The woman picks up a thick stamper from her desk and gestures for us to hold out our hands. She stamps us with a purple Federation emblem and our seat numbers, then says, loudly, "Next!"

            Liana and I proceed to the right of the desk and through the door into the auditorium. Liana squints at the back of her hand in the dark. "Row P, seats 54 and 55," she reads.

            When we find Row P and squeeze past the other teens to get to our chairs, we still have to wait about ten minutes before everybody's seated. Finally, a few lights come on, and we fall silent as Bureaucrat Jacklin walks across the now-lit stage and towards the podium on the far left. She pulls the microphone toward her and says, "Welcome, everyone, to your first and last Seventeenth Year Orientation. All of you are here because your eighteenth birthdays are in less than a year, and it's mandatory for the city bureaucrat to brief the seventeen-year-olds on the Cleansing."

            Jackson looks towards the screen and presses a button on a small silver remote on her hand. The Federation emblem comes up on a screen behind her, then a big white slide entitled, Seventeenth Year Orientation: Everything You Need To Know.