Article 5

Well, maybe some of them weren’t, anyway.

“You… you can’t tell, Ember. You can’t.”

“And what’s stopping me?”

With an audible intake of breath, Sean flicked the strap off the gun at his waist. I could tell by his round, conflicted eyes that he didn’t want to shoot me, but that didn’t stifle my fear one bit. In that moment I remembered Randolph’s baton on my throat, and Brock’s whip on my hands, and wondered why I thought this soldier wouldn’t be capable of the very same or worse.

I fought the urge to run.

“She said the next guard will be through in a few minutes!” I shouted. “How are you going to explain why Rebecca was here if you shoot me?” I was shaking now. I hoped neither of them could see it in the darkness. He wouldn’t shoot me. Not for this. He couldn’t. There was too much risk.

Please don’t let him shoot me.

“Sean,” Rebecca said softly. He lowered his hand, but I still didn’t breathe.

“What do you want?” Sean asked. In exchange for my secrecy he was going to cut a deal.

“I need to get out of here. I need to find my mother,” I said, my voice getting hoarser the more I talked.

“We have to go!” Rebecca’s voice squeaked higher. She was looking over her shoulder, presumably for the next guard on rotation. Now that I said I’d tell Brock, she was afraid I would tell everyone.

Sean sucked in a sharp breath. “And if I help you, you swear you won’t tell the headmistress.” He wasn’t asking. He’d taken another step forward, placing himself between me and his girlfriend. I was surprised at how lean he looked now, with his face drawn in fear. How large his eyes seemed. The thin lines of his mouth.

“No. Sean, no!” Rebecca was pulling on his arm like a child. When he continued to stare at me, she pushed past him, standing inches away from me. “If he’s caught he’ll get in trouble. Serious trouble. You don’t—”

“Miller,” Sean prompted, ignoring her.

“Yes. I swear. You get me out, and I won’t tell Ms. Brock.” I felt a piece of me break inside, suddenly remembering the horror in my mother’s face when I’d told Roy to leave our home. I had been trying to do the right thing, but hurting someone else to accomplish that goal was almost unbearable. It was not so different now, even though I hardly knew these people.

“Okay,” said Sean. “I’ll… figure out something.” He kicked the log I had been hiding behind.

“How? When?” The blood was rushing back through my body at his assent.

“Not now. She’s right. The next guard will be rotating through soon. You have to let me think.”

I was disappointed, but I knew it was the best I would get tonight.

“Thank you… Sean,” I said. Saying his name made him feel infinitely more real, like a boy I could have known in school. His shoulder jerked. His face was full of contempt.

A moment later, Rebecca shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over to him. They looked at each other for one long moment. Even in the dark, I saw her face soften.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

One of his hands rested awkwardly at the base of his neck, as though his muscles were too tight. He shrugged into the jacket and disappeared into the darkness.

Rebecca’s face was hard again when she stomped back toward our room. Reluctantly, I followed, mad that I was tripping and stumbling while she walked nearly effortlessly. I reminded myself that she had made this trip more than once.

When we got to the window three from the left, Rebecca shoved open the frame—much harder than she would have if I had been asleep inside, I’m sure—and nimbly hopped up, her hip resting on the sill. Then she ducked back and rolled onto her bed. I followed suit a lot less smoothly.

Once inside, we were engulfed by awkward, strained silence.

“How could you?” she finally blurted. In the muted moonlight from the window I could see that her face was flushed from the cold and anger. “I should have let you run, just like that Rosa girl. I knew you wanted to. I would have, had I known you’d blackmail me! How could you?”

All of the anger and fear and shock broke through in one hard stroke.

“Me? You are such a hypocrite! I asked you for help and you ignored me! Spewing that crap about summer camp and loving it here, sucking up to Brock. It’s all lies! You’re ten times meaner than her; you just hide it better.”

“You’re absolutely right. So what?” She put her hands on her hips.

My eyes widened. “You need to be medicated. Seriously. And I’m not an idiot because I believed you. You’re just a damn good actress.”

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

I sat on my bed, facing her. She sat on her bed, facing me. It was like we were children again, having a staring contest. It was Rebecca who finally broke the silence.

“You’re putting him in danger for no reason,” she said. “No one escapes. You either leave with your exit papers, or you leave in the back of an FBR van.”

“What do you mean?” I choked. My fingers drew to the bruise on my neck.

She made a small wincing noise. “The guards have orders to shoot anyone that makes it off the property.”

My sore hands grasped each other atop my skirt. That was why Sean had reached for his gun. He could have pretended I was escaping. No one would have questioned him when they saw my dead body so far from the dorms. I felt an instant surge of affection for Rebecca. Had she not been present, and had Sean wanted me dead, I’d be bleeding out in the West Virginia woods right now.

But then again, I wouldn’t have been out there in the first place if she hadn’t snuck out.

“Do you think they’d really do it?” I asked, without much question. I’d seen the cold, dead looks in the soldiers’ eyes. I could picture several I’d run across—Morris, Chase’s friend from the arrest, and Randolph, the guard here—killing a girl.

“I know they would. The last one they…” she hesitated, looking back toward the window, wondering, I knew, where Sean was. “She was Stephanie’s old roommate.”

Rosa was now Stephanie’s roommate, I realized with a pang.

Rebecca swallowed. “Her name was Katelyn. Katelyn Meadows.”

CHAPTER 4

“KATELYN Meadows,” I repeated, dazed. She isn’t on the Missing Persons boards. Her family moved away after the trial.

She wasn’t on the Missing Persons board because she wasn’t a Missing Person. She was dead. I was glad the bed was behind me, because my knees promptly gave way.

“She was a nice girl,” Rebecca said. “I try not to like anybody here—they always get weird. But she was all right.”

“I know,” I said quietly. I remembered her picture clearly from the posters around school, and before that, from her smiling face in my junior history class.

“Did you know her?” Rebecca asked.

I nodded. “Not well, but yes. We went to school together.”

“Oh.” She bit her thumbnail, lost for words.

“When did it happen?”

“I guess about six months ago. She was just about to age out when Brock asked her to stay on as a teacher. And when Brock asks you to stay on, she’s not really asking.”

I am the law here, Ms. Brock had said when she’d whipped my hands. No, I didn’t imagine her invitation to become a teacher had sounded anything like a request.

Six months ago I’d been just starting my senior year at Western. It should have been Katelyn’s senior year,