This, I felt certain, had to be a test. They give them to us every couple of years.
When we were six, it was who can hit a baseball the hardest?
I won that one.
When we were ten, they laid out fifteen tiny cups, each filled with a different liquid, and told us to pick which one was poison.
Marcson got his stomach pumped that night.
There’ve been other tests too. Fighting in rings. Racing motorbikes. Breaking codes.
Now we’re twelve. I knock into the kid in front of me, which lets me know we’ve come to a stop. The bags are ripped from our heads, taking strands of hair along with them.
Adult me and young me look around together.
Sleeping, adult me swears some more. I hate this one. It’s the first time one of us dies.
Young me doesn’t know that yet. All he sees is that we’re in a clearing. Man-made. The trees press in all around us except here, in this perfect circle of broken earth, where machines have dragged the forest away. Tractors, diggers. Their claw marks are still fresh on the ground.
The air smells like soil mixed with motor grease and something sweeter. I see the source of that scent. There’s a cluster of tiny white flowers on the opposite side of the circle. Mosquitoes buzz in my ears and nurse on my blood as I blink in the bright sunlight. I was right. The sun is directly overhead, illuminating a cloudless sky.
In front of me are at least a hundred tall wooden poles, each staked into the ground about a foot apart, clustered in the rough shape of a circle. They’re narrow, just wide enough to stand on. High enough to shatter something when you fall.
That’s strange, young me thinks.Why so many poles?
Old me already knows the answer.
There are only twenty-five of us in my cohort, Sons of The Order, all born the same year. Such a neat, perfect number. Too neat. Even back then, young me found that odd. Adult me still thinks it strange.
Now I hear more shuffling noise, the crunch of leaves and sticks, the low murmur of voices. It’s another line of blindfolded and bound kids being led in. These ones are smaller. Some are curvier. One of them steps on the white flowers, crushing the delicate petals, grinding them into the dirt. My chest gives a small, involuntary twinge.
I catch myself.
Seriously? I’m upset over a fucking flower?
I clench my jaw. Force the feeling down. Break it apart. This isn’t a place for gentleness. For weakness. Not even the kind that smells sweet. By twelve, I’d already learned the most important lesson, anything soft in this world either gets used or broken.
The other group keeps coming, single file, their line stretching far back into the trees. There areso manyof them. At least three times more than there are of us.
Without fanfare, their sacks are pulled away.
I gasp.
It’s thegirls.
This is new. We’ve never been tested together before.
My eyes find Samantha’s across the circle. She mouths,what the fuck?
I shrug, trying to act calm, but inside I’m a little awed she said it so boldly.
When I swear, my father washes my mouth out with soap.Literally. He pries my jaw open, wedges in a bar until I gag, then pours water down my throat until I’m choking, convinced I’m going to drown on dry land. I’m left soaked and sputtering, bubbles foaming at my lips. Swearing around him has become my own private rebellion. I do it quietly. Half-hoping he won’t hear. Half-hoping he will. Because then, at least, he notices me.
Samantha turns to Thomson next and mouths the same thing. She gets the same response.
I’m never quite sure what to think of her. Sometimes she’s kind, like the time she split a slice of cake with me at Marlene’s birthday party after mine fell on the floor. Other times she’s cruel, like the last Fourth of July, when she pushed me off the dock in front of everyone, laughing as I hit the water.
My father had beensofurious. He got out the whip and lashed me across the back, spitting out angry words with every strike. Said it was shameful. Said arealAshford doesn’t get knocked down by agirl. Said next time I better push back.
