The Remedy Files: Illusion (5 page)

CHAPTER 6
 

“Evangeline, hurry!” Jacqueline’s loud knocks on the door force me out of my daze.

I’ll have to remember to ask Gavin if he’s seen a difference with my eyes lately as well. If it becomes obvious to everyone, it could alert Doctor Bordine again.

I quickly slip out of my night tee and shorts and put on the polo and pants that Jacqueline picked out. I open up the door to find a pair of black boots shoved in my face.  

Jacqueline is tapping her left foot as I grab the boots from her grip and clumsily try to slip them on my feet while walking to the hallway door.

“About time!” Jacqueline yaps as she follows me out. She prefers to be early for mealtimes unlike me who waits until the absolute last minute.

We take a sharp right out of my room, entering the hallway that carries us to the cafeteria. We fall in line with the hasty pace of other 14-17 Level classmates that must have been running slightly behind as well.

Since today is the Annual Archaeological Dig for Level 17 students, we will be handed special breakfast sacks filled with bagels, cream cheese, bananas, turkey slices and a carton of milk. These are a few of the food items considered delicacies and the Annual Digs are the only times we are able to have them.

“Good morning, Evangeline.” The monitor attendee states in a robotic tone as I swipe my wrist under the cafeteria scanner. She never looks up from her screen as she hands me a black paper sack filled with the breakfast goodies and two blue Remedy pills. I never learned her name, but in part that’s because in the three years that I have been in this building, she has never once made eye contact with me or tried to say more words than what’s required of her.

“Good morning, Jacqueline.” I hear the monitor say in the same monotone voice behind me. I pause and let Jacqueline catch up with me before we join the rest of our classmates.

“Well, I hope that’s one job I do not get.” I say with a roll of my eyes. Jacqueline laughs, which echoes faintly in the large concaved cafeteria.

“Are we going to have any trouble this morning, girls?” Ms. Kay suddenly appears, her high-pitched voice hard to ignore. She fills in for the Level teachers at every Archaeological Dig so she can take all the findings back to the Community Museum where she works. She is very strict and for some reason has displayed an obvious distaste for me over the years. Jacqueline has even commented before on how Ms. Kay seems to intentionally seek me out every time she’s around and then makes some threatening comment about my attitude or actions. It’s the most bizarre thing as I’m pretty certain I’ve never done anything to warrant that reaction.

“No, Ms. Kay.” Jacqueline quickly responds the same time I sweetly say, “Good morning, Ms. Kay.”

Ms. Kay’s eyes stay narrowed in on me. She is not pleased with my response. Instead of replying, she looks at Jacqueline, gives a single nod, and walks towards the wall of the cafeteria where the other Level 17 students had started to gather.

Joline once told us that she overhead some teachers talking about how Ms. Kay lost her husband years ago. One of the teachers said it was a random accident that Impetus kept quiet. The other teacher said she heard it was at the same time the Lighthouse Legend occurred. Either way, the death of Ms. Kay’s husband was due to an unfortunate accident since he was still fairly young.

The consequences then lead to her being forced out of the Paired living quarters and in with the Unpaired, making her change her name from Mrs. Henlinbeen to Ms. Kay to honor the consistency name rule (A233) within Impetus. “In the pairing of two community members, the Community Board will choose a new last name that will represent the two members as a family. They will then be called Mr. and Mrs. with their decided new last name to follow the salutation. Unpaired will be called Mr. or Ms. with their first name to follow the salutation. If a pairing is broken due to death or other unfortunate circumstances, the remaining pairing’s name will be changed to follow the rules of the Unpaired with a Mr. or Ms. and their first name following the salutation.”

Within one week of the accident, Ms. Kay was removed from her role as the Cooperative Manager and reassigned as the Community Museum Director which she has done ever since I could remember. Some people have said they haven’t seen Ms. Kay smile since all of that occurred. Personally, I can’t imagine ever seeing her smile.

I loop my arm with Jacqueline’s. “I suppose we have to be good today.” I wink at her as she stifles another laugh.

We join our classmates in line and lean against the white concrete wall while munching away at the special breakfast. Comments are spoken between bites about how good some of the food tastes and how we wish we had them year round. We watch Ms. Kay walk around, hushing smaller groups as they chat and directing them to the line of other Level 17 students if they were supposed to be a part of our group. Once the twenty of us were rounded up, Ms. Kay claps loudly to get our attention and then leads us out the cafeteria side door. Immediately the noise difference from the buzzing of the cafeteria to the quiet stillness of Impetus is apparent in what sounds like a
whoosh
as we change environments. 

Once outside, we hike the incline that leads to the maintenance building on Road C. Jacqueline and I wave at Mr. Frank as he waters the plants that line the edges. His gray hair has thinned out a bit as well but despite it all, he still has a smile that lights up Impetus. Several times throughout the years he has caught Jacqueline and I “testing the waters” with the community rules. But he has always just chuckled and turned his back whereas other adults would have made sure we were caught.

“Hi girls!” He smiles, waves, and turns back to water the plants while whistling a somewhat melancholy tune that sounded a bit familiar. I could have sworn I’ve heard Gavin hum a similar one before.  

Caroline turns around and scrunches her nose at us before flipping her long, red hair ponytail and turning back in line. She leans over to Adeline and whispers something in her ear which causes Adeline to look over her shoulder at us and quietly giggle. 

Jacqueline flips her hair dramatically mocking Caroline, links arms with me and makes a bunch of random chatting noises in my ear. I laugh much louder than I intend to and immediately cover my mouth. The line stops moving as Ms. Kay finds her way to the back where we are standing, now with our eyes adverted to the ground.  I can see the shadow of her short ragged curly gray hair as she stands in front of me and I have to bite my lip from laughing again.

She clears her throat, “Is there something funny, girls?”

The four of us all shake our heads no in unison. Today is not the day to miss out on.

“I expect that I will not hear another peep from any of you for the rest of the day unless you’re called on to speak.”

We all nod our heads. Ms. Kay swiftly turns around, marching back to the front of the line. After a minute or so, the line continues to move and our commute resumes.

We walk in silence until we get to one of four digging grounds in Impetus. Ironically it is the same one I visited yesterday and I can still see the faint lines of my scribbles in the dirt. This one is the largest and gets less light than any of the other locations. The last time we were here for a dig was for the Level 7 one. It is very dark and sometimes hard to see the details of our Digs.

Apparently in the community of The Before that used to stand in place of Impetus, there were several warehouses with underground layers that were located where now each of the digging grounds are. In an effort to salvage as many items as the people of The Before could, tons of random objects were thrown in the warehouses to be stored in hopes that the buildings would protect them over the years and that history would ultimately be preserved. During the final wars, all of the buildings were burned down but since there were so many underground layers to each warehouse, many of the stored items were never ruined.

Each Level is allowed one Dig a year in place of asking all of the questions that we are forbidden to ask. If a student slips by asking two prohibited questions a year, they are banned from taking part in the Dig. Since it’s every student’s favorite activity, it’s an easy incentive to keep us obedient. We all want to be the first ones to see something that possibly no one else in our time has seen. It’s as though it makes us a little bit smarter than those that haven’t yet seen it, heard about it, or had any clue that it ever existed.

Ms. Kay then collects the most interesting of all the items we find and will display them in the Community Museum. It is fascinating to see all of the possessions people in The Before had that no longer exist. Every time we do this dig or take a field trip through the Museum to see what other Levels have discovered, it’s always highlighted how The Before was saturated by a multitude of items that were continually being replaced by newer models or different versions. 

“They just couldn’t keep up.” Our Level 12 teacher had noted during one field trip. “Everyone else had something bigger or better on the horizon. Then mixed with the emotions that existed, they all felt the need to compete with and ultimately destroy each other over all these things that were complete rubbish. I mean, what could you possibly want this for? It’s just pure laziness.” He said, pointing to a display with a card underneath labeled “Radio”.

Ms. Kay stands by the maintenance building, handing out shovels to each of us as we take turns grabbing them. Then she goes through the usual rules about if we find something, it is not ours but property of Impetus and if we take anything that is not documented, it is punishable by law. Of course when someone finds an item, it is required for everyone to stop digging long enough for the student to describe what the object is and their theory on why it played an important part in The Before. For anyone who can correct a person on their theory with their own educated guess, that student will receive extra credit if they are right.

When she completes her speech, which I’m pretty sure we could all repeat verbatim since we’ve heard it every year, we spread out on the large dirt pile. Jacqueline gives me the thumbs up sign and walks away to her usual place by Ethan. She has shown more interest in him in the past few Levels of school, always talking about how funny he is or how he purposely turned his back on Caroline just to talk to Jacqueline instead. If she doesn’t become the next Doctor, I wonder if the Community has agreed upon her match with Ethan. She has so many different opportunities. I can’t quite say the same for myself, though.

I pick the spot where I was laying the day before. The rock that kept me company is still there, waiting for my return. “Hi again.” I whisper to it, sticking my shovel in the ground close to where it’s sitting. Within just minutes of digging, my shovel connects with something hard. Strange, because it usually takes much more time before finding anything.  I throw my shovel to the side, drop to my knees and dig with my hands.

My fingers grasp around a solid artifact as I hoist it out from the dirt. Keeping my hand carefully concealed by the shallow hole I dug, I hold it in my palm and wipe the dirt off with my thumb as best as I can. The figure has a gray steel frame, smaller wheels, and what looks like a chimney on top of it. I can’t believe I’m holding this. It’s a smaller version of the machine that has been chasing me in my dreams. It is exactly the same thing down to every detail!

I look around quickly. Every student is immersed in their digging. Ms. Kay is over in the corner helping Ryan with the proper way to efficiently dig. I slide the figure in my pocket and pull my shirt over it to make sure it is as hidden and secure as possible.

Glancing all around, I take one more look to make sure no one noticed my completely unlawful move. For a moment, I thought I saw a shadow around the edge of the maintenance building. When I blink, it’s gone and nothing else appears and no movement occurs.

I pick up my shovel and begin digging again as though I had not found anything yet. I whistle like Mr. Frank and Gavin do but then realize how normal that seems with them but how overly suspicious it makes me. I just have to hope I find something else soon so I can get out of here quickly.

My mind is racing. This item was just inches under where I laid yesterday. I didn’t even have to dig deep.

Usually I am intentionally the last student to leave a Dig because I like to find out about what everyone else discovers; but in this moment, I am unable to focus. When Shaline shouts out that she found something and begins her speech describing the object’s details and her theory on its existence, I struggle to concentrate on the words she’s saying. 

All I can think is that
it
once existed. The subject of my nightmares once lived in The Before. How could I have known this?

CHAPTER 7
 

Most of my favorite memories in life revolve around my visits with Gavin. He simply makes things better, and I like having a secret friend that no one else in the community knows about. It’s no surprise that our relationship has always been a calculated balance of instinct and transgressions since our first meeting was initiated by me breaking an Impetus law.

I was walking back home after a Level 6 school field trip when a bee buzzed past my ear. We had identified bees and their pollination process earlier in school so I was eager to see them in action. I veered off the path, separating from my group, and followed the bee to the edge of the thickets.

Even as a little girl, I would tend to get focused on one particular thought and immediately disappear inside my head. If one thing is consuming me, I’m not able to think about much else at the time. So as the bee seemed to push his way through the thickets, I followed absentmindedly, not once considering the law that I was about to break for the very first time.

The bee landed on a flower patch just a few feet from the outside wall. I lay down on my stomach and watched as it flew around, elegantly dancing among the flowers. It reminded me of the way the younger children in the Levels 0-4 Home splash around as the Caretakers give them their evening baths.

I heard a loud crunch, waking me from my hypnosis that the bee’s dance had put me in. There was a boy, leaning against a tree not far from me, eating an apple. He looked different than the other boys in Impetus. His brown hair was extremely shaggy, defying the closely shaven hair requirements standard for all males. But his eyes stood out the most to me. Even from the distance between us, I could see they were a bright blue color unlike the dark eye colors in Impetus that I had become accustomed to. He had a casualness about him that went against the very formal standards of our community.

The constant crunch of the apple was a definite disruption to the show as the boy continued to eat. That’s when the realization that I was outside of Impetus walls suddenly struck me. I could tell the boy was watching me, so I didn’t want to admit my mistake. Instead, I shifted my body ever so slightly until I was able to glance back and verify that my feet were now indeed a little under the thickets. Hopefully that still counted as being obedient.

“That’s a bee.” His voice was deeper than the other boys I have heard.

“I know. We learned about them last week.”

“You’re in school?” 

I glanced up at him. “Yes, I just started Level 6.”

Silence.

I sat up to face him, pulling my body so that I could keep one hand still under the branches.  “You must be in school too.”

His shook his head.

Strange, he didn’t look like he was an adult yet. “You must be finished then.”

He laughed. “No, I’m only 11.”

I counted in my head. He was 5 years older than me. Why wasn’t he in school?

“What’s your name?” he asked. “You are not allowed to ask that.” I reminded him. He must have never learned the rules if he hasn’t been in school.

He rolled his eyes and threw his apple core on the ground. “Well, my name is Gavin.”

I hesitated but then replied, “My name is Evangeline.” I looked at the apple core with his teeth marks indenting it and whispered. “You should pick that up. You could be punished.”

“Evangeline. Pretty name.” He studied me carefully while ignoring my question.”Do you even know where apples come from?”

“From the co-op.” I announce proudly. That’s where our field trip was today so I had just learned all about the cooperatives and how they operate.

“Where does the co-op get them from?”

I had never thought about it before. Food was simply always ready when meal times began. While my level was touring the co-op, we had seen rows and rows of food that wasn’t grown in Impetus gardens. They never said anything about where that food came from and no one of course asked since that’s not allowed. But now that this boy is bringing it up, I really want to know.

He must have noticed the confusion on my face as he smirked with satisfaction. “Do you want to know where apples come from?”

A question that I never once considered now filled my mind. I needed to know the answer. “Yes.” 

Another smirk. “Okay, I will answer but you have to ask me.”

Apparently he doesn’t get that it’s prohibited to ask any question that contains what, why, where, or how. “I can’t.”

Gavin’s smirk disappeared and a very serious look crossed his face. “You can, Evangeline. Impetus just tells you not to. And you’re not in the community technically right now, are you?”

I took a deep breath and looked behind me, wiggling my fingers that were stuffed under the thickets. I couldn’t see anyone else through them because they were so deep. He’s right. I’m outside the walls even though I shouldn’t be. Whispering as quietly as I could I asked, “Where do apples come from?”

Chuckling as he took a few steps closer to me, Gavin replied, “They are grown in a different community far away then dropped off to the co-op during the Sleeping Hours.” 

This shocked me. There’s another community nearby? Why doesn’t anyone talk about it? And how are apples grown? How do they get them to us?

“Is that where you’re from?” I quickly sat up straighter and covered my mouth with my hands. Oh no.

Gavin bent down, balancing on his back feet to be closer to me. “You won’t be punished asking questions out here. It’s a good thing to do.” He glanced over my head and then turned his blue eyes back towards me. “It’s getting dark, Evangeline. You should get back to the Home.”

He was right. The sky seemed to be quickly darkening. I looked back at the flower but the bee had long since flown away and I hadn’t even noticed. I jumped to my feet and searched for a good place to crawl back through the thickets. I turned back to Gavin. “Where are you from?”

Gavin smiled, acknowledging the fact that I asked another question. “Tomorrow I will tell you that and anything else you want to know. Okay, Evie?”

I scrunched my nose at him before crawling back through the bushes. No one had ever called me anything other than Evangeline. Evie sounded so weird.

I was luckier than I knew at the time that I slipped through to the other side without anyone seeing me since I wasn’t very careful. I walked back to the Levels 5-9 Homes, my mind filling with ideas about questions I was never before allowed to ask.

Gavin said he would tell me more the next day, but I didn’t think I was going to return. Not until I talked to Jacqueline and she told me that there’s no way that a boy could be living in the woods. That’s when I decided I would go back and make sure he did exist. And if he did, I would just get a few questions answered.

That night I struggled to fall asleep. Halfway through the Sleeping Hours, I could swear that when I held my breath, I heard the faint sound of a loud machine rumbling. I imagined it was the other community dropping off food for our co-op. Tomorrow I will ask Gavin more about that. And find out where he’s from. And ask him how he knows where apples come from. And why his eyes are so blue. I slowly drifted off to sleep, as endless questions filled my mind.

When I returned the next day to prove to Jacqueline that this boy in the woods was indeed real, I struggled to find the same opening the bee had effortlessly guided me through before. Apparently there are very few places in the thickets that are penetrable at all, which was something Gavin later taught me.

I found a spot, right as Mr. Frank had come around the corner of one of the steel sheds with a hose in his hand. I buried myself among the leaves, not moving, but watching as blood trickled across my left hand from one of the limbs scratching me during my quick dive in. I thought that Mr. Frank saw me at first because the little I could see of him seemed as though his head was facing my direction. But after a few moments that seemed like much longer, he eventually walked away as the noise of the waterfall from the hose in his hand and his typical humming of a song followed.

After a silent debate on whether I should just return to Impetus, or continue on my risky journey, I pushed through the thickets to get to the other side. I figured I would just take a quick glance, see if he was there, maybe ask one question and then hurriedly return to the safety of the community.

When I poked my head out, sitting on the ground with his back to the same tree as the day before, was Gavin. His head was leaning backward touching the tree, his eyes closed. He seemed to be sleeping. I just watched him for a moment. I had never seen a boy sleep before or observe one in such a hidden way. There was something mesmerizing about it- or maybe just him.

“Are you entertained?” He broke the silence but yet his eyes were still shut. 

“How did you know I was here?”

Gavin opened his eyes, bringing his head back to its normal position. “You’re already more comfortable with the questions, I see.” He flashed me a big smile, a dimple appearing in his chin.

I didn’t even realize that I had asked a question. They had been running in my head continually since the moment I met him. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had let one slip earlier in the day which would have been awful if the wrong person heard me.

I moved my hair out of my face with my hand since some of it was tangled up in the limbs and other strands were hanging in my eyes. 

Gavin stood up, and within a few strides was standing right in front of me. “You’re cut.” He grabbed my hand.

I immediately pulled it back. “It’s okay.”

“No,” he seized my hand again, turning it to see it better in the light. “Come here.” Gently he takes it in his own, and pulled me carefully through the rest of the thickets.

“Don’t- I should get back.” I tried to protest.

Gavin didn’t respond but continued to pull me over to a log where he took out a backpack that had been hidden inside. He scrounged around in it until he pulled out a tiny bandage and some ointment in a bottle.

After he poured a little ointment on the cut, he lifted his eyes to mine and asked, “Does that hurt?”

“What?”

“Nevermind.” He muttered and then covered the glistening cut with the bandage.

“Why would you ask if it hurts? That’s silly.”

“No reason.” He throws everything in the backpack again and stuffs it back in the log. “Just a game I play, I guess.”

However, I wouldn’t let it go. I had never been asked something so weird before. That’s when Gavin then told me about the books from The Before that he found that talked about all the feelings. I told him I wanted to read it, but he said instead he could just tell me about it by playing a game, which was the birth of the feelings game.

By the time I had to leave that day, I felt like I learned some new things that no one else in Impetus knew. I still hadn’t had many questions answered. Gavin was good at avoiding certain ones. I thought I could get him to answer them eventually if I just kept returning.

So I did. Every single day and Gavin was always there. In time, we would take walks while talking during our visits. Then we discovered the spot in the clearing that eventually became our regular meeting space. It had so many different elements of nature to look at and talk about, an abundance of unique plants and bugs that match. We both loved to explore and learn so it was a neat place to hang out at for a part of my day.

Thanks to Gavin’s help, I became really good at learning how to sneak in and out of Impetus. As I got older, I learned more about and became more aware of the dangers of my actions. But by that time I was hooked to seeing Gavin every single day. Even with having to keep him a secret, he was the best part of the day. Arguably, the best part of my life.

Twelve years ago was the start to Gavin and I, and it’s how we’ve been every single day since.