Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased.
By day three, May had me up and walking. “You’re doing great,” she gushed as she escorted me from my bed to the opposite side of the room.
My legs were still wobbly, but getting out of the bed felt good for a change. I’d only been immobile for three days, but it felt like an eternity. I wasn’t the type of person who liked to stay put for too long. Before my accident I was always on the go. A few hours earlier, I had reached the point where I contemplated pulling strands of my hair out just to give myself something to do. “So, how long do you think it’s going to be before I can return to what’s left of civilization?” I joked.
May smiled. “I’m going to recommend that you stay in the infirmary at least one more night.”
“That’s all?” I questioned. Honestly, I expected her to say two more, at the least.
“Do you want to stay longer?” she asked, trying to keep a serious face.
I couldn’t reply fast enough. “No.”
“Well, then.” May helped me back into bed. “Tomorrow it is.”
Finally something I could look forward to. Tomorrow, I was going to be in my own room, I could see my friends, and if Frankie didn’t pull through, I was going to get to the bottom of the Colin Martin situation. But, I had a lot of faith in my kid sister.
An hour later my mother came in and brought my lunch. She set the tray down next to me and kissed me on the cheek. “And how’s my brave girl doing?” she cooed.
I rolled my eyes. “Mom, you’re talking to me like I’m two years old. I’m a big girl. I’m fine.” Now I was walking. I was able to use my arms too. The only part of me that wasn’t the same was my memory. Not all of it had come back yet.
Frankie checked in with me every few hours reporting some piece of gossip that had no value to me. Like Colin flirting with Molly Edwards or that Mr. Baker had a massive booger hanging out of his nose and no one bothered to tell him. She might have more to report but she was probably waiting until my mother left. My parents were always scolding her for being a big mouth.
What pissed me off more than anything was that Colin didn’t seem concerned at all? He went right back to his flirtatious ways. Closing my eyes, I envisioned him running his hand along Molly Edwards thigh and it made me grind my teeth. I thought there was something between us. I thought he cared about me, the way I cared about him, but I guess I was wrong.
“So, Mom,” I changed the subject. “What am I missing out there, anything good?”
My mother rubbed my hand. “Not really, if you ask me, you’re better off in here alone. I’m sure you don’t want everyone asking you a million questions if you don’t even know the answers to them yourself.”
I nodded. She was right. I didn’t feel like facing the crowd. For one, like my mother said, I didn’t know the answers. And two, even if I did, what if I couldn’t handle the truth? Then I’d be barraged by question after question, feeling like I was drowning in a deep, dark pool of misery. I imagined I would feel a lot like May did, every time someone asked her about Monica.
My thoughts were interrupted when my mother rose out of her seat. “Where are you going?” I asked. She just got here and she was already leaving.
“Your father and I gave that letter we found with your things to Mark Baker. We’re supposed to meet with him to discuss it.”
I nearly shot up out of my bed, outraged. “What? Why in the hell would you do that?” Mark Baker was a sneaky, conniving weasel of a man who could not be trusted.
My mother shrugged. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but your father thought he might be able to help.”
“Right,” I said sarcastically. It pissed me off that my father was such a poor judge of character. Mr. Baker, walked around here like he owned the place. Technically, my father owned the place because he was the one who started building the underground colony and invited the other families to join. Mr. Baker took his position on the council way too seriously. I said before that we needed the rules and order to avoid chaos, but he took it to the extreme and the cost didn‘t matter. Mr. Baker would sacrifice his own children for the sake of our little colony, and that struck me as the type of person who was obsessed with control, order, and being superior to everyone else. A lot like someone else I learned about when I went to an actual high school—Hitler.
“I’ll be back later,” my mother announced as she waved goodbye to me at the door.
“See you later, Mom.”
Shortly after my mother left, Grace stopped in to check on me. We made small talk for about an hour, then she left because she said she was on kitchen duty for dinner. Which meant that she was serving the food.
Frankie rushed in minutes after. She lingered at the foot of my bed, with both of her hands clamped over her mouth. Her eyes were bulging out, like she was going to explode if she didn’t say what she needed to soon.
“Well.” I looked around the room, warily. “Did you find something out?”
She nodded, lowering her hands. “Something. Something big!”
“Tell me!” I yelled, then caught myself. “Tell me,” I repeated in a lower voice.
She skipped over to the chair next to my bed and plopped down into it. “After lunch,” she began, “I followed Colin Martin to Mr. Baker’s quarters.”
My stomach lurched. “Did he see you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Are you sure?” Sometimes when she was hiding, she wasn’t so subtle.
“Yes!” She waved me off. “Just be quiet and let me finish.”
“Fine.” I urged her to go on with my eyes.
“So, where was I? Oh, yeah. I followed Colin into Mr. Baker’s quarters and his father and Mr. Edwards were already there. And then, they all started whispering amongst each other.”
“Well, what were they saying?” I found it odd that they were all meeting in secret like that. And why without the other council members?
“I could only make out two things,” Frankie said.
“And?”
“And the only two things I could make out was the word lottery and a name. Your name, Georgina Carver.”
After Frankie left, I replayed several different scenarios out in my head and none of them worked out right. Maybe they wanted me to go back out there because I’d only found one thing on my list. Or maybe it was because I disobeyed and wandered off when I was told not to. Yeah, I wasn’t buying any of it. The lottery was supposed to be random. So, why was my name being brought up again?
Seriously, hadn’t I suffered enough? Mr. Baker should have hoisted his own rotund body out of that hole and went looking for supplies. Someone needed to kick that bastard off his high horse and it looked like I was going to be the one to do it—as soon as I got out of this damn bed.
Chapter 14: Same Old Me But Not
Let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.
“Good morning, Georgina,” May greeted me with a cheerful spike in her voice.
“Morning,” I said glumly. I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, but I was still seething over the information I collected from Frankie the night before.
