Independent Study Page 16

  Tomas continues. “Your dad would have been able to identify all the plants there, but I couldn’t. I spotted poison sumac, prickly poppy, and the red-flowered jessamine that killed off Scotty Rollison’s goats when we were kids.”

  The red flowers are another wartime mutation; they’re filled with pollen that attacks the immune system.

  “Since I didn’t know all the plants, I tucked the bottom of my pant legs into my boots and stuck with the path I knew wasn’t going to kill me. I walked across the poison ivy, reached the other side, and moved on to the next station.”

  Smart. Although, by the way he scratches at his left calf, I’m guessing he might need some salve.

  Tomas doesn’t seem to realize he is scratching. His eyes are far away. Lost in a memory. “There were fifteen of us first years when we started initiation. Only eight made it through. Five of us from the colonies and three from Tosu City. The rest . . .” His voice trails off, but I know the ending to the sentence.

  The unsuccessful students were Redirected out of the program. Removed from the University? I picture Obidiah being loaded into the skimmer and feel tears threaten again as I grieve for students whose names I don’t know and wonder about those I care about. What has become of Stacia? Did she survive the Medical Induction? And what has become of the others? Will I see their faces on campus, or will they join the ones in my dreams?

  I take Tomas’s hand and entwine my fingers with his and then tell him about my experience. The scavenger hunt. Picking teams. The snake. The airfield. The trek around the city that showed how much work still needs to be done to rewind the clock to the days before the wars. I don’t tell him about the conversation I had with Michal before moving to the residence or about the rebels. Not yet.

  Tomas’s hand tightens around mine when I mention teaming up with Will. Ever since listening to the recording, I’ve wondered if Tomas’s subconscious remembers the events I outlined on the Transit Communicator. But now I’m forced to consider whether my dream was right. If this dislike of Will is proof that Tomas’s memories of The Testing are intact.

  Ignoring the gnawing anxiety, I tell the rest. Being maneuvered into climbing into the steel box. My certainty that I had been abandoned. Choosing to free Damone despite his horrific behavior. Reaching the final task. Learning that Dr. Barnes and Professor Holt are watching my every move. Waiting for me to do something that will result in my elimination from the University. My Redirection.

  I hug my arms to my chest as I tell of Rawson’s final moments. The hands that pushed him and sent him stumbling to his death. The shattered reaction of the girl who killed without understanding what effect her act of frustration would bring. Finally, the guilt I feel over my part in the loss of Rawson’s life.

  “It’s not your fault, Cia.” Tomas shifts so he is sitting across from me. His eyes meet mine with fierce intensity as he reaches for my hands.

  “I know.” I do, but part of me still believes my choice in teammates would have made a difference.

  I glance down at my hands held tight in Tomas’s and notice he no longer wears the bracelet of the Early Studies colony students. Circling his wrist is a heavy gold and silver band. Etched on the center disk is a stylized tree underscored by three wavy lines. The tree is an obvious symbol for a field of study dedicated to revitalizing the earth. The tangible proof that Tomas has become a part of something I am not tugs at my heart. For the first time since we left Five Lakes, we are not part of the same team. Separated by symbols. Maybe more.

  Removing my hands from his, I know it is time to find out how great the divide between us is.

  Chapter 12

  “I’VE STARTED HAVING dreams,” I say. “Like my father.”

  Before I left for The Testing, my father told me about his dreams. Dreams filled with a decaying city and explosions that ripped apart flesh and bone. Whether the dreams were real or imagined my father couldn’t say, but he shared them with me in the hope they might prepare me for what was to come. He used the dreams to demonstrate a lesson he needed me to learn. Not to trust anyone. But I did.

  The way Tomas stills and the wary look in his eyes makes my nerves jump. “How long have you been having them?”

  “A while.” The scars on my arm tingle, and I swallow hard. “I don’t recall everything yet, but I remember some things.”

  His eyes search mine. “What do you remember?”

  “Not much. Mostly flashes. Malachi dying. Will smiling over the barrel of a gun. You and me plotting to prevent the memory loss.” My heart slams against my chest as I wait for him to say something. Anything. The silence lasts a minute. Two. Each second that passes stretches my nerves. Pulls at my heart until I can’t take it any longer. “You remember.”

  Sorrow, horror, and an emotion I can’t identify flicker across his face before his features go blank. “Remember what?”

  “Everything. You took the pills. You kept your memory of The Testing. All this time. You remember.” I scramble to my feet even as my conscience is pricked by the fact that I too have some memories. That the Transit Communicator gave me a glimpse into the past. Something I never shared with Tomas.

  But that self-reproach burns away as I hear guilt and fear snake through Tomas’s words. “I didn’t know how to tell you.” He climbs to his feet and holds out a hand I refuse to take. Pacing the small area between the windows, he says, “We were each supposed to take one of the pills, but I didn’t have time to get you one before they gave out the results. I thought there would be time. I’m still not sure why I took one of the pills before getting my results. Maybe I was hoping the medication would wear off before they performed the memory erasure. You wouldn’t think I went back on our agreement, and I wouldn’t have to remember. But I do.”

  Pain blooms deep at the confirmation of Tomas’s betrayal. Hot anger. Icy terror. How could he not have told me? I force myself to stay strong and not give in to the rush of emotion. There are things I have to know if I want to survive. Answers that only Tomas and his memory can give.

  I take a deep breath, swallow down the suffocating hurt, and will my voice to stay steady. “Dr. Barnes is watching me. Something I did during The Testing made him think I’m some kind of threat. What did I do?”

  “I don’t know.” The words and concern on his face ring true. “You figured out how to remove the identification bracelets, which allowed us to talk without being overheard. Maybe Dr. Barnes is wondering about the silences that occurred when we left them behind.”

  A possibility I’d already considered.

  “When you realized the bracelets contained microphones, you were worried that Testing officials recorded our conversations before we reached The Testing Center. I didn’t think they would bother since they had cameras watching us, but maybe they did. Dr. Barnes could have heard you mention spotting the cameras or you telling me about your father’s dreams.”

  The idea that Dr. Barnes might know about my father’s flashes of Testing memory makes me shiver. But while that would give Dr. Barnes cause to strike out at my family, I can’t imagine why my pre-Testing conversation with Tomas would draw his attention now. Surely, if that discussion was recorded, Dr. Barnes and the other Testing officials would have listened to it before finalizing their decisions about who would attend the University.

  If Dr. Barnes were concerned about those things, he would be targeting Tomas, too. But Tomas hasn’t been assigned nine classes, and he has not had a sense of being watched more closely than anyone else. Which means something else has prompted Dr. Barnes’s interest. Something Tomas doesn’t remember or refuses to say. I will have to figure out Dr. Barnes’s motivation on my own.

  Now there is only one last thing to ask.

  I look into Tomas’s handsome face. His gray eyes are filled with worry, guilt, and love for me. I yearn to touch him, but keep my hands firmly at my sides. I open my mouth to speak the words that have the potential to shatter everything between us.

  But I can’t do it. />
  I would rather live with speculation and uncertainty than lose the one piece of my life that connects me to my home and family. The alternative is too painful to think about. If that brands me a coward, so be it. I do not want to face being here at the University alone.

  Tomas takes my hand, and I let him web his fingers through mine and pull me back to the ground. I lean my head on his shoulder and try to ignore the hollow ache I feel. We talk of inconsequential things—the size of the rooms at our residences, our guides, the attitudes of the first-year Tosu City students.

  “The ones in my house didn’t have any interest in talking to those of us from the colonies until after the Induction. Maybe that was part of the reason for those tests. To make us realize that, no matter where we grew up, we all have the same problems to solve. We’re not that different,” Tomas says.

  I wonder if he’s right. Are the Tosu City students more likely to think of us as equals now?

  Tomas pulls me close. I lay my head against his heart. Its beat is steady and strong. Quietly, he says, “I meant to tell you that I kept my Testing memories, but I didn’t know how. You were so happy when The Testing was over. So much like the girl I graduated with back home. I wanted to give you time to just be happy. I promised myself I’d tell you after your birthday, but I could never find the right moment. The subject would change, or you’d smile and kiss me and I’d put it off. I kept telling myself that I’d do it tomorrow.”

  He’s not wrong about the subject changing. I knew Tomas had something to tell me, and I didn’t want to learn what it was. I was a coward. Terrified that whatever secrets Tomas harbored would shatter my fragile hope that the stories on the Transit Communicator weren’t real. I didn’t want to face the truth, so I ran from it then. Now I have to face my fears.

  “What happened to Zandri?” The words are barely a whisper.

  Tomas stiffens beside me. The hand that was stroking my hair stills. He knows the answer, but says nothing. Part of me wants to pretend he didn’t hear the question. Everything inside me screams to walk away now before I lose everything. But I don’t, because I don’t want to be like Damone. Because Zandri deserves better. Because if Tomas was behind her death, then I have already lost everything. I just don’t know it. Pretending otherwise is a lie. I have had enough of lies.

  I turn my head to face Tomas, and my words are stronger this time. “During the last test, what happened to Zandri?”

  Tomas’s eyes shift away from mine. “I don’t know.”

  Something inside me shuts down, and I pull away from him. “That’s not true. You had her bracelet in your bag.”

  Silence. This time I refuse to be the one who breaks it. Tomas finally does. “What do you remember?”

  Nothing. Just my whispered, sometimes unintelligible words asking Dr. Barnes about Zandri’s fate. His laughing response that I should already know. Finding the bracelet among my possessions. Not knowing what it meant. Only that I had found it in Tomas’s bag while trying to keep him alive after Will’s final betrayal. In the darkness, I assumed the bracelet was from another Testing candidate who was killed during the test, but I was mistaken. Tomas met Zandri on the unrevitalized plains of the fourth test, and he never told me.

  But my secrets aren’t the ones in question now, so I say, “It doesn’t matter what I recall. I want to know what happened. You saw Zandri. I know you did because you took her identification bracelet off her bag and put it in your own. Why? What happened to her? What did you do?”

  Tomas clenches and unclenches his hands, and suddenly I am not here. I am standing on the cracked earth. Back in the Testing area. My left arm aches under white bandages. My skin itches and is coated with sweat and dirt. Tomas stands in front of me, looking travel stained and tense as his hands clench at his side. Next to his hands, hanging from a sheath strapped to his pants, is a knife. A knife streaked with blood. There are hundreds of ways the blood could have gotten on Tomas’s blade, but only one that explains his silence now.

  “You killed Zandri.”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “A mistake?” Part of me has desperately held out hope that Tomas was not responsible. That’s the part that begins to scream. “How do you kill someone by mistake? Zandri was our friend.” More Tomas’s friend than mine. She flirted with him. She might have even been in love with him. And he ended her life.

  I can’t stay here. I’m on my feet and bolting for the exit, but Tomas is fast and gets there before me. Not just fast. Years of working side by side with his father on the farm have made him strong. I kick and push, but no matter how I fight, I can’t move him out of the path of the door.

  “You have to listen to me.” Tomas clamps his hands on my shoulders, and I jerk back. I can’t bear to have him touch me. I want to lean into the warmth and security he has always provided, but I won’t let myself. Not anymore. The safety I feel with him is a lie.

  Tomas removes his hands and runs one through his dark, wavy hair. “You have to listen. I never intended to hurt Zandri. You left to find water. Will and I fought. I was so angry. Mad that I was injured. Angry that you wouldn’t leave Will behind and that you stormed off and left me there with him. And I was furious that we were out in the middle of nowhere because Dr. Barnes and his people wanted to see who would kill in order to succeed. Will walked off carrying the canteen with the last of our water. He probably thought taking it would keep me from leaving, but I didn’t care. I picked my bicycle off the ground and climbed on, thinking I’d come find you. That’s when I saw her.”

  Blood pounds through my ears. My stomach heaves. I don’t want to hear about the death of the blond artist who was always so beautiful and confident. But I wrap my arms around myself as though they will provide a barrier against the chill seeping through my body, and I wait for the rest.

  “At first I didn’t recognize her. Her arms and face were stained with dirt. It wasn’t until the sunlight caught the gold in her hair that I realized who was staggering down the road toward me.”

  Closing my eyes, I picture Zandri outside of the Five Lakes school—her eyes laughing, the gauzy dresses she favored smudged with paint, and her golden hair shining bright in the sun. It’s almost impossible to imagine her as Tomas describes. Dirty and disheveled and dead.

  “She screamed when she spotted me and ran from me. I should have let her go. She might have lived if I hadn’t given chase.” Pain shadows Tomas’s face. Guilt weaves through his halting words. “But I had to see if she was all right. I knew you’d want me to.”

  The words slap my heart.

  “She wasn’t steady on her feet, so it wasn’t hard to catch up. When I did, she snarled and bit until I finally made her understand who I was and that I wasn’t going to hurt her. I never meant to hurt her.”

  Tomas’s face is pale. His eyes filled with grief. “She was so relieved finally to find someone she could trust. Then Will appeared, and Zandri went crazy. She lunged at Will, and he pushed her back and yelled at her to stop. But she didn’t. She accused him of sabotaging their team in the third test and then started shouting at me. Seeing me with Will must have scared her. She said that I couldn’t be trusted—that no one could—and attacked. She had a stick that was sharpened to a point.

  “She caught Will in the side, and he punched her hard across the mouth. Suddenly, I had my knife in my hand. She must have thought I was going to use it on her. Or maybe she wasn’t thinking at all. I don’t know, because I didn’t pay attention to her. I was too busy yelling at Will. Watching him pull out his gun. I threatened him with my knife. He laughed, which made me even angrier. I was glad I had an excuse to hurt him. I didn’t know I could be happy at the thought of causing someone pain. I don’t know why I listened to him when he yelled for me to watch out. But I did, and I turned.”

  Tomas looks down at his hands. “The knife punched through her stomach. I can still feel her blood as it drained her life across my hands. The next thing I knew, Will was helping me lay her on the
ground and she was gone.”

  There are tears on Tomas’s cheeks. My arms ache to reach for him, to soothe the pain and grieve with him for the loss of our friend. But I don’t know how to cross the divide our secrets have built between us.

  “Will grabbed Zandri’s canteen. I took the bracelet off her bag. We buried her in a dry riverbed.” He wipes the tears from his face and shakes his head. “I’ve replayed it a hundred times in my mind. If only one thing had gone differently. If I hadn’t taken out my knife. If Will hadn’t appeared when he did or yelled for me to turn. If you hadn’t left Will and me alone—”

  Disbelief steals my breath. “This is my fault?”

  “I don’t know.” Anger and guilt simmer in every word.

  Tomas might say he doesn’t know, but I do. I can see the accusation. The bitterness. The hurt. Tomas is angry. Angry he took a life. Angry he was put in the position to do so.

  Because of me.

  But while my choice to trust Will was wrong, I was not to blame. Dr. Barnes and The Testing officials put us on that patch of cracked earth. Tomas allowed his frustration with Will to boil over. He let his emotions get the best of him and drew his weapon. He will have to live with that.

  Some of what I’m thinking must show on my face because Tomas reaches out his hand and steps toward me. “I don’t blame you.”

  “Yes, you do.” My words are quiet. Calm. The truth. My voice is as hollow as my heart when I say, “It’s getting late. We both need to get back. People are watching.”

  Tomas doesn’t stop me as I walk around him and open the door, but his voice chases over my shoulder as I start to step outside. “You aren’t to blame, Cia. I am. But so is The Testing and every official who works for it. They deserve to pay for what they’ve done.”