“I’ll see you here tomorrow before school,” and with that he turns back toward the main square.
I stare at him dumbly, watching his silhouette disappear into the afternoon sun. It isn’t until much later that I wonder how Harlan knew which quarterage was mine.
* * *
I was seven when my parents were Outcast. My father dropped Easton and I off at the Education center, the third floor where all children not of schooling age go during the day while their parents are at their assignments. I remember his gait being easy as we walked, telling us a joke about a lobster that five-year-old Easton thought was hilarious and that I, in my seven-year-old wisdom, knew was cheesy. We’d wished my mother a good morning before setting off and my father had kissed her on the cheek, an action so foreign it still brings a heat to my skin when I recall it.
I’ve thought about that morning so many times, trying to pinpoint something I must have missed. There had to be an anomaly I didn’t see—something that would point to what was about to happen. My parents must have said something, given some sort of sign, that would clue me into their decision to break the Keys. To alert me to their decision to uproot my entire existence.
Hard as I try, the morning remains the same, frozen in memory like ice on a pond. Routine, uneventful, and worst of all, happy. Aside from my father’s peck on the cheek, there’s nothing about it that stands out from any other morning. Except, at the end of the day, when all the other parents came to collect their children, Easton and I peered through the window, waiting for a father that would never come.
Instead, a man dressed in Covinus-issued navy came and told us of our parents’ banishment. He took us to our new housing assignment, the home of a middle-aged couple that had a deficit of children we were now expected to fill. We were never even allowed to return to our former quarterage; instead, another man in blue was waiting at our new home with a small box of our things. An entire box wasn’t necessary; nothing is really ours in Similis anyway. It all belongs to the Community.
Even then, as a boy with pudgy little fists and even pudgier cheeks, Easton took the news in stride. He was pleasant to our escort and charming to our new host parents. I, on the other hand, was anything but. I screamed my head off. I tried to slug our Covinus escort in the mouth until he took back his words. I held my breath until I turned blue, demanding to see my parents. I suppose, in that regard, I haven’t learned much.
In the end, none of it mattered. Our new guardians, Jakoby and Farrah, injected me with some sort of medicine they claimed would heal the rift in my mind and I fell into oblivion. I woke up hours or days later in my new bed with a headache and a throat raw from screaming.
I held on to my parents for a long time, through the whispers and stares. I’d slip their names into conversations and then glare defiantly, daring anyone to say something back to me. I would ask our guardians about them repeatedly until Jakoby’s endless patience finally wore thin and he admonished me for preying on Farrah’s nerves. He said that I, too, would be Outcast if I didn’t shape up.
Eventually, I stopped talking about them for Easton’s sake. Jakoby was right. I couldn’t be Outcast too, or Easton would be entirely alone. I decided to be better than my parents. I would choose my family over selfishness; I would follow the rules and I would follow them so well there would be no chance we would ever be separated. I never managed to do it well, but I did manage.
And what was it all for? I stubbornly kept my place in the Community instead of throwing myself to all my destructive urges so we would be together. And now, he’s dying. What will happen to me when he’s gone? Have I learned anything in the eleven years since my parents left? Or will I ravage myself the way I did when I was seven, screaming and railing against the Covinus until I’m finally Outcast? It will serve me right.
“Do you ever think about the day Mom and Dad were Outcast?” I ask.
Easton, who is perched on a threadbare chair in the living area of our quarterage, looks up from his homework in astonishment. I haven’t spoke of them since I vowed to follow the rules and we have nothing left to bring them to mind. All their clothes were reused, all their belongings never really theirs.
“Why are you speaking of such things?” His tone is reminiscent of Jakoby’s; scolding. I purse my lips in irritation that he favors Jakoby, but quickly push it away. It isn’t Easton’s fault he aspires to be like the only father figure he’s really known.
I shrug as if this conversation is casual even though it doesn’t feel that way. Maybe Easton really never thinks of it. Maybe that’s why he’s had an easier time; he accepts things as they are. “I’ve been thinking a lot about being alone. It calls them to mind.” The truth.
“Mirren, you aren’t going to be alone. You will have Harlan. You still have Farrah and Jakoby,” There is a crinkle between his brows that only appears when he’s worried, which is generally only when he’s talking to me. It emerges now, his face a mixture of anxiety and consternation. I hate that I cause him that, but I also can’t help myself.
“They aren’t my family. You are.”
Easton shakes his head, loosing a breath of frustration. “They are your Community,” he replies firmly and looks back down at his school work. Conversation over.
I stare at the top of his head, at the way his chestnut hair swirls around a cowlick at the back. It has always endeared him to me; that no matter how old he gets, he can never quite tame the childishness out of his hair. His cheeks and hands have thinned and angled, but he will always be a pudgy toddler in my mind, sticky fingers threaded through mine. Before he learned such things are unacceptable.
“Their hands,” Easton says quietly, as if I have somehow spoken my thoughts aloud.
“What?”
“Their hands,” he says again, meeting my gaze, hazel brown to emerald green. “I remember that morning, their hands…”
Easton’s voice trails off and the world slows around me. It’s as if it takes hours for me to realize something isn’t right, instead of the few milliseconds that actually pass. My little brother’s face freezes and his eyes roll sharply to the back of his head.
“Easton!” I cry, leaping from my seat and lunging toward him. I reach him just as he slides from his chair and begins to convulse on the floor.
I grab his hand. It feels wrong to the touch, cold and clammy. His body wrenches and shakes, as if something otherworldly controls his movements. They don’t seem natural, don’t even seem human, and I gather him to me, trying to keep him from tearing himself apart.
And then I am screaming. I know it because I can feel it, even if I can hear nothing but the labored pains of Easton’s breathing. I am screaming for help. For someone, anyone to come save my brother.
The convulsions cease as quickly as they began, and Easton lays still on the floor.
* * *
Hours later, I collapse on my bed, fully clothed. My entire body aches, either from trying to drag Easton’s unconscious form to get help or the sobs that consumed me afterward. The afternoon comes in flashes: the heaviness of Easton’s body as I tried heaving his weight out of the living room. Running into the street, my eyes streaming and my throat burning. The eyes of my Community watching another fall from grace for Mirren Ellis.
