SWAB (A Young Adult Dystopian Novel) (18 page)

“They are stupid, really stupid.”I put my hands on my hips and wondered where my brother’s common sense had gone. The next five tries ended much the same, a tangle of limbs smashing into the mats. More bruises and a bloody nose, but none of that seemed to dampen their spirits.

“I actually got some lift that time,” Gray boasted.

“Yeah, right before crashing,” Nathan shoved him. “Besides, that blonde chick wasn’t looking at you, her baby-blues and honey-browns were on
me
.
” He tapped his chest with his thumb.

I knew it was a lie. The assistant was preoccupied with untangling a knot in her hair. Besides, she was like, ten years older than them. Most of the scarb were older than us. I’d only seen a few that would really qualify as teenagers, but they might have just been really small. There were no children. Saki told us that none survived the Change.

Nathan and Gray climbed up the ledge for a sixth time. Coach Cyrus still offered nothing in the way of instruction. He looked rather bored, in fact. “It’s time to fly,” Nathan said while Cyrus wasn’t watching, and he jumped before Gray could. Instead of flapping his arms like a wild man, he tucked them into his sides. His body fell about five feet when his two thin wings unfurled to their full six-foot length, causing his body to glide forward instead of dive.

He let out a whoop. “I’m flying!” he shouted as he glided forward about forty feet. He was doing fine until another flier dove down too fast in front of him, causing a whoosh of air to unsteady the balance of his wings. He flapped them frantically to try and straighten his course again, but the momentum sent him spinning, arms and legs flying like a windmill. Within seconds, he was a moaning pile on the ground again. I didn’t even bother to run to him, and sure enough, he managed to pull himself back onto his feet.

I expected him to show some sign of distress, but instead his fist shot triumphantly into the air. “I can fly.”

“No, son,” Coach Cyrus’ voice rang out. “That was gliding. Not flying. It’s a good start, though.”

“
Gliding
not
flying
,” I heard Nathan repeat mockingly. “Well, it’s still better than Gray can do.”

I laughed.

“I think it’s time we get to the laboratories,” Jack said crisply from my right. I had almost forgotten he was still here. I could’ve watched Nathan all day. I didn’t want to miss his first real flight—that would be like missing a baby take his first steps—but I remembered my promise to Nathan. I had to follow the plan.

So, I sulked after Jack and took one last look as Nathan climbed back up the rock wall.
Sure wish I was a flier. At least I would have something fun to do.

“Oh, don’t be such a complainer.” Jack rolled his eyes like I was an annoying four-year old he couldn’t shake. “Maybe the labs will be more interesting than you think.”

That was about as likely as Jack deciding to skip work and take a holiday to Cancun. But he did surprise me when he said, “Origin just told me he wants to speak to you again.”

Chapter Seventeen

Assets

What do you say to a beetle? Do you ask it about the weather? How the underside of a leaf looks when it rains? If it’s ever fallen in love?
What would humans think if they saw me gazing into the tank of the tiny bug
?
He was sleeping in the crevice of a dark rock.
Would they think I’m crazy?

“I want you to organize these files,” Jack instructed me from the other side of the room, where stacks of papers were piled haphazardly on the counter. “Saki’s been on my case about them for weeks now.”

I can’t imagine why.
I groaned at the mess. He showed me how to put the papers into piles according to the labels on the top left corner of each. The small white clock on the wall above the door ticked away three arduous hours as I put ‘Subterranean
Pterourus glaucus’ in one, ‘Black-winged Melanoplus bivittatus’ in another, and so on. Pictures of tiny blue spiders and the underbelly of a ‘Woolly Bear Caterpillar’ dotted the pages, along with both typed and handwritten notes. Jack spent the entire time looking at slides under a microscope.

I grew more and more impatient every minute. Nathan was learning to fly somewhere high above, everyone else in the colony seemed to have important work to do, and I was stuck down here in the stuffy lab, being babysat by a grumpy old scientist.
Is this Saki’s idea of keeping me safe? Hiding me away from everyone and boring me into submission?

“That’s exactly her plan,” Jack answered.

Oops, I forgot about him being able to read my thoughts.

But since the topic was open, I thought I might as well keep it that way. “Why?”

“You are young, naïve, and ultimately a threat to the colony,” he answered, like it was a line out of text book.

Me, a threat?
I thought about the night before and my light show. A lot of the other scarb had seemed threatened, but, I didn’t understand why. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.

“We would have sent you to extermination a while ago, if you hadn’t possessed certain …abilities that are valuable to the colony,” Jack went on while putting a new slide onto the stage of his microscope. Jack and I might not have liked each other very much, but at least he was straight with me.
So I’m a threat. But I still didn’t know why.

“Abilities? Like what?” I demanded, putting my hands on my hips. If there was something keeping the colony from killing me, I wanted to know what it was.

He peered at me with one yellow eye and then returned to his slide. “I think it’s time you got back to your work.”

So much for being open with me.
Clearly, there were things he didn’t want to tell me yet.
I’m just a dumb fly caught in a spider web,
I fumed as I went back to the files. I felt completely helpless against the scarb. They were threatened by me for reasons I didn’t know, but they still wanted to keep me—again, for reasons I didn’t know.
This is such crap.

Another two endless hours passed. Still, the Origin beetle slept.
I guess he’s not to interested in talking to me after all.

Every once in a while, Jack would snap at me. “Please keep your thoughts to yourself. The colony’s intentions are none of your business.”

I couldn’t take it any longer. I stood up to leave, just to get out of there, go anywhere besides that stifling room with the completely
unhelpful scientist. I felt Saki coming down the hall toward our room before I saw her.

“Yes,” Jack agreed to my thoughts of escape. “I think that will be enough for today.”I hated that he beat me to the punch so that even my leaving seemed like his idea.

“How was it?” Saki chirped cheerfully, but one look on my face—or one read of my thoughts—told her enough. “Thank you, Jack,” she said hastily, leading me out of the room. We didn’t speak as we walked up the steep hallway to the upper level to the dormitory. I could sense everyone else all congregated in the great room. I was the last one.

“Things will get better, you know,” Saki said lowly as we approached the dorm room.

“Like when you start telling me why I’m really here?” I shot back at her.

She didn’t answer. “Dinner will be served in the common room tonight.”

“Fine,” I huffed, not even bothering to care, and went around her into the common room.

Just as I had sensed, everyone else was already there. Nathan and Gray played ping-pong at a table that must have been set up while I was gone. Travis and Jorge went over the mechanical blueprints for the machines used in the shipping yard. Mrs. Weatherstone read a book on the couch. Officer Reynolds slept at her feet. Only Derrick wasn’t actually in the great room. I could sense him just off to the left, behind a closed white door.

I needed to talk to someone, but Nathan and Gray seemed to be having so much fun, I didn’t want to bother them.

“Dinner is in half an hour,” Mrs. Weatherstone told me as I went around the side of the common room.

“Thanks,” I mumbled and gave Derrick’s door a gentle knock.

“Just a second, Cat,” Derrick’s deep voice came into my mind. It shouldn’t have surprised me that he knew it was me, but I guess I was still getting used to the idea that we all had scarb senses now. Human customs, such as knocking or calling someone on the phone to talk to them, had become unnecessary. There was no privacy.
Even in my own brain.

The door opened. Derrick wore a gray uniform.

“Did you start training today?” I asked.

“Yes, mam.” Derrick gave a fake smile. “I’m an official Fiskar supply shipper-in-training.”He pushed the door open wider. “Come on in,” he offered. “You need to talk.”

“Thank you,” I entered his room and let out a whoosh of air. The room was small and consisted of a tidy bed, desk, and nightstand with a lamp—just like all the others—but his room had a whiff of freshly cut grass and soap to it, just like he did.

I sat down on the chair while he sat on the edge of his bed. I dove right in. “I’m ready for that thought control lesson you promised me. Today was awful. Jack knew every little thing that came into my mind.”I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’ve got to get a hold on this. Will you please teach me?”

“You really don’t like being out of control, do you?” he said with a small smile at the left corner of his mouth. I didn’t think it was funny.

“Sure, I’ll teach you,” he said more seriously, putting his hands in his lap. “Okay, well, it’s really pretty simple. You have to use a lot of focus at first, but then it’s like riding a bike and it just becomes second nature.”

“I’ve been trying to focus,” I threw my hands up. “I try to block my thoughts from other people, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. How do you do it?”

The smile didn’t leave his face, but he was kind and didn’t tease me like Nathan, or even Ray, would have at seeing me so vulnerable. “You know the connection you feel to all the other scarb?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s how you control who you send thoughts to and how to keep others out. Anytime I think a thought I want to keep to myself, I tap into that connection with the other scarb and think ‘mine.’ I imagine blocking everyone else out. When I want to communicate with someone else, I simply find my connection to that individual, and direct the thought at only them. If I want to talk to more than one person, I just loop them into the connection. The only thing happens here,” he tapped his temple, “my mind. And here,” he tapped his chest, “the connection.”

That seems to make a lot of sense.

“I’ll give being Scarb one thing. They communicate a lot better than humans do,” he continued. “There’s not much room for error. We receive the messages from the other person in the way they intended to say them, and you can learn to send more than just words, too. You can send pictures and ideas, also. I’ll show you,” He scooted closer to me, so that our kneecaps were almost touching. “I’ll send you something, and you tell me what it is.”

His dark blue, four-irised eyes were right on me. A picture of a rainbow swirl lollypop came into my mind. I could actually taste the fruity sweetness of it on my tongue.

“Wow.”

“That was a memory,” Derrick explained. “Every function our minds perform can be shared with others if we want to. Now, I’ll show you how I can block you from my thoughts.”

He paused and stared at me. Twenty seconds passed, and I felt nothing, heard nothing.

“What was I thinking about?” Derrick asked.

I shrugged my shoulders and threw out a wild guess. “Dancing monkeys?”

“About my first day on the island,” he corrected.

“Oh. Let me try.” I closed my eyes to focus on the connection to the other scarb. I felt the glow of it in my chest. There was Derrick, strong and bright before me. Nathan and Gray bounced about on the other side of the wall. More beyond the room, on all levels of the colony. Some very high, some very low. I felt them all.

Next, I tried to do as Derrick told me, to block them out. “Mine,” I said, and then thought about the red and yellow quilt my mother used to put on the end of her bed. My eyes shot back open, and Derrick’s face filled my vision. I raised an eyebrow.

“A blanket,” he answered. “With red and yellow patches in a white twin bed.”

“Dang it. I really tried that time.”

“Like I said, it takes practice,” Derrick said patiently. “Try again.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and really focused on putting up a wall around myself while I thought of different things.

“A gray car.”

“A laughing clown.”

“A hopping paperclip.”

He guessed time after time, so I tried to make the thoughts more difficult.

“A piece of blueberry pie with anchovies and pine needles on a yellow sun-flower plate.”

“Cliff-diving while wearing a pink raincoat, Mickey Mouse gloves, and an orange parka.”

After a while, Derrick picked up on what I was doing. “Making your thoughts more ridiculous doesn’t keep me from seeing them,” he laughed. “This isn’t some guessing game. Focus instead on keeping me out, not making your thoughts more unpredictable.”

He put his hands on either side of my head, right above the temples. His touch sent a ripple of energy down my body. “Concentrate,” he said softly, but I could barely think with his face so close to mine. Again, the smell of sun-warmed hay filled my nostrils, just like it had at the dance. I wanted to breathe it in deeply and let the warmth envelope me. I felt my skin start to tingle, and then I remembered what had happened at the dance when I went all “glow-worm.” Something unexplainable happened when I was around Derrick. I couldn’t control it, and that scared me. I dropped my gaze from his deep blue eyes to the floor. He seemed to understand my hint and put his hands back in his lap.