Someone backhanded me across the face. Another person stomped on my toe. Still, I pushed forward. I wanted to be in the front of the room for this. My attention switched to my father who was pacing nervously across the front of the room. He was worried. And when my father was worried, that wasn’t a good sign.
My mother stood against the wall with Frankie, her arms outstretched. “Georgie! Over here!” she shouted. But her shout was faint. The chatter in the room was so loud I could barely hear myself think.
I turned sideways, squeezing myself between people in the first row. “Sorry,” I said as I kicked someone in the shin by accident.
“It’s okay Georgie,” Colin commented. “I like it when you get physical.”
I continued sliding down the row. “Colin, I don’t have the time or strength to deal with you right now!”
When I was inches away from her, my mother grabbed me, pulling me toward her. She kissed my forehead gently, examining my face. “What was that about?”
“What was what about?”
She squinted. “What were you talking about with the Martin boy?”
I peered over my shoulder and caught Colin grinning at me. I faced my mother. “Nothing. He was just asking me a question.”
My mother threw her hands over my shoulders as I put my back to her. “Oh, what about?”
Why was she suddenly so interested in what I was speaking to Colin about? She knew I talked to him on a daily basis. “Nothing important.”
As Mr. Baker stepped forward, the chatter in the room died down to silence. The meeting was starting. “Alright everyone! Thank you for coming!” he shouted, his loud voice ricocheting off the walls.
The small bulge in his stomach jiggled as he fidgeted with his fingers. He was nervous too. What the hell was going on here?
He removed a white handkerchief from his back pocket, wiping away the beads of sweat that drizzled down his forehead. Hushed chatter broke out through the room as Mr. Baker cleared his throat. Again silence.
Then, he gazed around the room, a stern look on his face, commanding the attention of the whole room.“Family members, we ask that you remain silent until this meeting is over!”My father stepped forward, standing next to Mr. Baker. All of the worry I noticed in him earlier was gone. “The council has taken a vote and we’ve decided to conduct a lottery!”
Even though the room was asked to remain silent, after that last comment, people began shouting. My father took command of the room. “Quiet down!
The truth is, we need more gatherers, to go above ground and search for supplies! The council has decided to randomly select two teens, a boy and a girl. All of the kids between ages fourteen and eighteen will be entered into the lottery and at the end of the week two will be selected at random!”
I stole a glance at my mother. The look on her face, pure outrage. “Damn it Doug!” she yelled. “How could you? These are our children!”
Then one by one, the protests started flying.
“They are too young!”
“You men, are the ones that are supposed to be doing the gathering!”
“Have you lost your minds?”
“What about the cannibals? You expect us to just send our children to their death’s!”
Me, I was so baffled that I didn’t know how to react. I glanced over at Colin who mouthed, “I told you.” Then I peaked at my mother, whose eyes looked like they were about to shoot lasers into my father’s flesh.
The room started spinning. I winced, getting nauseous. Gatherers. The lottery. The news hit me all at once. I started falling forward, my eyes rolling back into my skull. But before I could hit the ground my mother caught me by the arm. “Honey, are you okay?”
I shook off the dizzy feeling. “Yeah.”
Mr. Martin, who lingered behind my father and Mr. Baker, strolled forward confidently, his tall, lanky limbs looming over the crowd in front of him. “This decision is final!”
“Come on!” my mother shouted. She grabbed me and Frankie by our hands, pulling us toward the doorway.
As we passed my father, my mother gave him a look of
pure hatred. She was right to be angry. If she would have kept something like this from him, steam would have blown out of his ears. It was probably best for my father’s sake if he stayed in the council room for a another couple of hours. Because if he came back to talk to my mother now, I’m pretty sure she would have killed him.
Later on, I sat in the mess hall with Grace and the usual crowd. Colin sat across from us and
he was joined by Molly Edwards. Molly was one of those girls that had to wear a bra at the age of ten. Because of that, she got a lot of attention from the guys.
I watched on in horror as she slid her hand along Colin’s thigh. “Ugh,” I whispered into Grace’s ear. “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.”
Grace laughed. “What’s wrong?”
“Molly makes me sick.”
Grace looked over at Colin and Molly, observing their public display of affection. “Some girls have no self-respect.”
I wondered if Grace would think of me in that same way if she knew what went on between Colin and myself. Normally, I told her everything but, this was one secret I couldn’t tell anyone. Not because I cared about what everyone thought.
It was just because I didn’t feel like having my business aired out around the colony.
My eyes wandered over to the opposite side of the mess hall. Geez, my mother was still pissed off at my father. They weren’t even sitting at the same table.
When my father finally did come home from the council meeting, It was like there was an explosion in our room. Their shouting and carrying on lasted for hours. In the past, they had always been so loving toward each other. But in my mother’s eyes, my father had betrayed her. And unfortunately for my dad, my mother was one of those people that held grudges.
There was an instance
a year back where my mother and Mrs. Martin couldn’t agree on some topic of conversation. I couldn’t remember what the topic was exactly, but I remembered my mother’s words afterwards. “Annie Martin, the nerve of that woman!”
My mother didn’t speak to Mrs. Martin for three whole months. And what my father had done was way worse than a simple difference of opinions.
The truth was, I felt the same way my mother did. Normally, I felt life was too short and precious for a person to spend most of it angry. But what my father had done shook me to the core. I felt like a slave being tossed into an arena full of lions. I knew he was aware of what the new earth was like. He and the other council members had provided us with plenty of terrifying stories. So why would he agree to this?
Grace spoke up, pulling me from my thoughts, “Who do you think they’ll pick first?”
The bowls of food started coming around. I shrugged, pretending not to care. “They said we’ll be selected at random.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“No,” I lied. I hoped that she couldn’t tell I was lying. I wasn’t just scared, I was petrified. The uncertainty of what the earth was like now made me shudder just thinking about it.
And not to mention, the cannibals.
I had seen a ton of horror flicks of the walking dead that needed to survive by consuming human flesh. But these people weren’t dead. They were very much alive, so ravaged and ransacked by hunger that they resorted to eating their own kind. I winced at the thought of human teeth biting into my thigh.
“Georgie!” Colin shouted.
I snapped out of my trance, looking up to see Colin holding out a bowl of food. I snatched the bowl from his hand. “Thanks,” I said sneering.
“Whoa. Easy killer. You don’t have to bite my head off.”
Ignoring his comment, I spooned out my serving of food and put it on my plate. I passed the bowl over to Grace. “What I really want to know is how long they are going to leave us out there for?”
Grace picked up the spoon. “Who knows? Maybe a few hours.” She took her serving and passed the bowl down. “I just hope they don’t pick my name.”
“It seems inevitable that one way or another everyone is going to be picked at some point.”
“Maybe I should rephrase that then.” Grace shoveled a helping of food into her mouth. “I hope they don’t pick me first.”
“Me too, Grace. Me too.”
* * * *
Monday’s, Wednesday’s, and Friday’s we had school. On earth I had to go for five days, here it was only three. When the colony was formed it was decided that since the adults needed a lot of help around the colony to keep things running smoothly, that’d the school week would be lessened by two days. I was thankful for that. Even though I was a good student, I hated school.
The kids that went to school were divided into two age groups. Ages fourteen through eighteen were held in one room and ages six through twelve were held in another. There wasn’t enough room to split up each child according to grade, so splitting them according to age seemed like a much better idea.
Walking in to the tiny, condensed classroom, I stole a glance around the room. Eight wooden tables with detached benches faced a small dry erase board in the front of the room. The first four tables were already filled up so I meandered to the one in the back corner and took a seat.
Seconds later, after I had pulled out my supplies, Colin pulled out the chair next to me. “Is this seat taken?”
Before I could open my mouth to protest, he plopped in the chair. Grace walked in and eyed me. I shrugged, mouthing silently,
“Sorry.” She waved at me nonchalantly and sat down at the table in front of me.
My eyes shot daggers at Colin. “Shouldn’t you be sitting with your new fun bag?”
He looked up, puzzled. “Who, Molly?”
“It was Molly who was feeling up your thigh yesterday, wasn’t it?”
Colin let out a sharp laugh. “Do I detect a hint of jealousy.”
I opened my mouth, baffled. “Jealous, hardly.” I threw my shoulders back, staring straight ahead at the dry erase board. “Why should I care who you spend your time with?”
The truth of it all was that I was actually insanely jealous. Yes, I knew he was a bit of a womanizer. But I was under the impression that the kiss he had given me meant something. It meant something to me. Why not him? I mean, who goes around kissing people at random? Apparently, Colin Martin did.
Closing my eyes, I thought about the warmth of his lips as they gently caressed mine. The way a shiver ran down my spine when his fingers tugged on my waist. If Colin was a disease I would want to be infected.
“Good morning, students,” said Mrs. Edwards as she walked to the front of the room.
Bonnie Edwards used to be a high school teacher. She was a mousy, brunette with A knack for proper etiquette . She had a petite stature and when she moved her short, stubby legs, she looked like she was waddling. Her shrill, high pitched voice resembled the sound a cat makes when someone was trying to drown it. And the sound of her voice made my skin crawl. My eyes shot open as Mrs. Edwards walked over to the dry erase board. “Everyone focus on the dry erase board,” Mrs. Edwards screeched. I cringed, keeping focused as she wrote a math problem on the board. Yeah, today was going to suck. Big time.
Toward the end of class, Colin nudged me trying to get my attention. I ignored him, pretending like I was absorbed in doing my math. When I didn’t respond, he waited a minute and nudged me again. “What do you want, Colin?” I asked, not looking up from my notepad.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked.
I kept my eyes on the paper, not meeting his gaze.Every time I thought I had control of our complexity of a situation he threw a curveball at me. “Being mad would require me actually caring.”
He guffawed, “Jesus Georgie, why do you have to be so harsh all the time?”
I threw my pencil down and glared at him. “You really want to know?” My harsh attitude toward him was a way to cover up the way I really felt. Colin scared me. The way I felt about him scared me.
Now, he was probing me. And the only thing I could do was put all of my worries and fears out there.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
I exhaled. “I can’t tolerate guys like you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Guys like me?”
“Yes, guys like you. I went to school with hundreds of you. You’re full of yourself, you have a different girl every week, and your main goal in life is getting in her pants.” I lowered my voice. “And what happened between us, you might as well forget about it. Because it will never happen again.” Even though I wanted it to happen again. At least a dozen times more.