forest, and they saw my bloodied knees and scraped arms and elbows. Maybe escaping was something that all the students tried when they first got here. Even Becky and Isaiah—maybe even Laura. Maybe their devotion to the rules and the Society was something that came from months and years of failing to escape.
I looked down the row at the other V’s. Curtis and Carrie were awake, softly talking, though Curtis’s eyelids were drooping low. Mason was asleep, his head hanging forward, chin against his chest. Lily was next to him, snoring just loudly enough that I could hear it a few feet away. Jane was beside me, eyes closed. I could feel her body move with each slow breath.
There were hundreds of stars in the rectangle of sky above us. Thousands maybe. I stared at them. I’d always heard about stars like this. I heard that you could see lots of them once you got out of the city, more than just the few dozen brightest ones that could break through the city lights. It seemed like I’d maybe seen a view like this once or twice, though I couldn’t really remember where. Maybe it was just on TV.
As I looked upward I felt a surprising thrill of freedom. I could see so many things in the sky that I never got to see back home—things I’d only heard about. If I got out of that well and got a better look I could probably see the Milky Way. Maybe a planet or two.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
Jane’s voice was soft, barely a whisper.
“Yeah.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Sore. Do you think I’ll get detention?”
She took her eyes off the sky for a moment and looked at me. “I don’t know. It depends on whether the school believes Laura and Dylan.”
I wanted to turn to her, but we were so close together that our noses would probably touch, so I kept my face toward the sky. I also wanted to ask her more questions. How had others gotten over the wall? Did they plan ahead? Take supplies? But I felt guilty. Jane and the others had come into the forest to rescue me. I didn’t know if that was a risk—maybe they’d get punished for it. To ask more questions about escape didn’t seem the best way to thank her.
“It’s cold,” she said. She reached out her hands and flexed her fingers open and closed a few times, and then folded her arms again.
“We could start a fire. Would that be against the rules?”
She smiled. “We don’t have any matches.”
“We don’t need them,” I said.
Jane raised an eyebrow skeptically. “You were a Boy Scout?”
“No,” I said with a little laugh. “But I’ve seen lots of movies.”
“There are movies that teach you how to start fires?”
“Sure. Didn’t you ever see Cast Away?”
Jane shook her head.
“Never? What about the Discovery Channel—Man Vs. Wild, or Survivorman? Heck, I think they even had to make fire on Lost.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen any of those.”
“What?”
“I’ve been in here for two and a half years.”
“Those are all older than two and a half years. Cast Away is way older.”
Jane shrugged and, much to my surprise, rested her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled good—a little like honey. I thought maybe she wanted me to put my arm around her, but I didn’t.
In the window in front of us I could see my dim reflection. I looked just like everyone else. In the low light I couldn’t make out any facial features, and I was just another white T-shirt in a row of white T-shirts.
“Why don’t we break this window?” I asked quietly. “Get out of the cold. What’s the punishment for that?”
Her answer was sleepy and hushed. “You can’t break it. People have tried, but it’s bulletproof or something. Keeps us inside.”
I nodded. The unbreakable glass made it a prison—a prison we now wished we could get back into.
Shortly before she fell asleep, Jane touched my arm. “Don’t go anywhere tonight, okay? The Society aren’t the only ones who guard the wall.”
“There are guards out there?”
“I don’t know. There has to be something.”
Just before dawn the doors unlocked. In the morning silence we heard the buzz and click even as far away as we were. The Society kids must have spent the night close by; we could hear their groggy shouts of relief, and the sound of the doors opening, before most of us had even stood up. We followed drowsily, a few guys giving the others footholds to climb out of the window well. I was the last out and had to have Curtis and another V pull me up—my side aching with pain as they did so. No one bothered to say much.
Even though everyone had dismissed the lockout as normal, I was expecting something different inside the school. Maybe they forced us out so they could work—paint the walls or install new security cameras or put iron bars on the doors. But nothing was different. This happened all time, they said. Just a stupid test.
Let’s give them ten sleeping bags and see how they divide them up.
When we got back to the dorms, I went to the showers and turned the water up as hot as I could stand it. I washed the dirt and rocks out of my knees, and inspected my cuts. Nothing was serious. A deep purple bruise had appeared on my left side, but even that wasn’t as big as I’d expected. It felt a lot worse than it looked.
By the time I was finished and back in the room, Mason was getting dressed in camouflage.
“What is that?” I said.
Mason frowned and pointed at the ticker. “No class today. We have paintball.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
He sighed and pulled on a camo jacket over an olive green T-shirt. The jacket was mostly light colors—tans and browns. “This is our version of high school sports. Paintball, war games, debate, chess.” He paused and grinned. “It’s like the nerds meet the military.”
I fingered the pair of plain tan sweatpants that hung next to my uniform and then glanced back at Mason.
“Why do you have better clothes than I do?”
“I spent some of my points on it. And you’d better do that, too, when you get some.” His serious face broke into a smile. “You’re going to get slaughtered out there.”
I picked up the gun. It was powered by a canister of compressed air, and a large kidney-shaped hopper on top held the paintballs. “This is crazy.”
“I know,” Mason said. “Some people think that they’re training us. Like, this school is some kind of breeding ground for super soldiers or something.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” he said, sitting down to lace on a pair of boots. “Because they don’t train us. If the government was in charge of this and wanted us to be learning tactics or something, wouldn’t they sit us down and teach us how to do it?”
“I guess so.”
“Rats in a cage, Fish. Rats in a cage.”
At ten minutes to ten, we left the building, heading out to the woods. It looked ridiculous—more than seventy kids, all in varying degrees of camouflage, trotting out of a school. A few of the outfits were plain, like mine, but some were elaborate. Not only did they have camouflage, but some had fake sticks and leaves attached to their clothes, and a few looked almost like Bigfoot—long hairy grass hanging from almost every inch of their bodies.
“I’m saving up for one of those,” Mason said, admiring a Society kid. “It’s called a ghillie suit. Snipers use them. If you’re wearing that and you crouch down in a patch of grass, you’re invisible.”
In a way, the walk was exhilarating. I’d never actually played a school sport. And, even though this one was bizarre and fit right in with all the other random crap at Maxfield Academy, it sounded like fun.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Curtis.
“Welcome to paintball,” he said cheerfully, as though nothing had happened yesterday—to me or him. “We’re
