Variant

“Because you were trying to escape,” Becky snapped, and then glanced up at the cameras self-consciously.

“Look at you,” I said, raising my voice. “You’re afraid of people you’ve never even seen. Do you think this school could run without our consent? What would have happened if you Society guys just refused to take Wallace and Maria?”

Becky opened her mouth, but I kept talking. “What if all of us tried to leave-all seventy-four of us? Let’s just build some ladders and go. No one is keeping us in here except us.”

Becky sat down at the desk. “It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple,” I insisted. “That’s all there is to it. Maybe the only real person on the other side of those cameras is that woman who dropped me off. She’s just some rich crazy lady, all alone, screwing with our heads.”

“No.” Her voice was firm. She stared at me for a long time, not saying anything. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but her eyes bore into me, and I couldn’t read the emotion on her face.

“What is it?” I insisted. “What’s stopping us?”

A tear boiled up in Becky’s eye, but it didn’t drop. She spoke barely above a whisper, and she had turned her face away from the cameras. “I don’t know. Something. Back in the spring four Society kids tried to escape. They were working together, on guard duty. They didn’t make it.”

“What stopped them?”

She wiped her eye with the back of her thumb and then turned away. “Let me take you to the infirmary,” she finally said. She tapped the computer screen with her fingernail. “According to the schedule, Anna is on call.”

Becky stood and opened the door. She was all Society. When logic and reason conflicted with obedience, she just ignored them.

I followed her down the hallway. She passed the basement stairs without a look. I’d thought that was the way to the infirmary.

“I think you’ll like Anna,” Becky said. “She’s from Pennsylvania, too. Maybe you guys know some of the same people?”

Yeah. Because it’s really small.

She turned a corner and opened a small door. It was another set of stairs, old and narrow. She held the door for me as I went in, and then let it close behind her. As soon as it shut she put her hand on my arm.

“There are no cameras in here,” she whispered.

I waited for her to continue-she wanted to say something, but looked scared.

“What?”

“I-I just wish you would stop,” she said. “I don’t know a lot of what goes on here. But there are two things that I wish you’d understand.”

She took a deep breath. “First, detention is death. We don’t know much about it. There’s a room downstairs for detention. You get put in the room for the night. In the morning, no one is left in there.”

I cut her off. “Then how do you know they kill you? What if it’s like the closets in the dorms-like they’re secret elevators or something.”

Becky was trembling now, and she folded her arms to stop from shaking. “I haven’t ever seen it. But there’s blood sometimes.” Her voice was wavering. “On the floor.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but couldn’t. She was watching my eyes.

“What’s the other thing?” I finally said.

Becky shook her head, like she was trying to clear a thought. “No one ever escapes. People make it over the wall sometimes-the security guys have seen people do it. But they’re still caught. Like the ones I told you about. I don’t think we’re the only ones who guard the wall.” She stared into my eyes. “That’s why I’m Society. I want to stop people from going to detention and from trying to escape. This place isn’t so bad. Why risk…” Her voice trailed off.

“What?”

“No,” she said, stopping me with her hand. “That’s enough. The cameras will notice if we’re in here too long.” She pushed past me and hurried down the stairs.

“We’ll have to get out of here eventually,” I said, calling after her. “We’re not going to live the rest of our lives in this school.”

She refused to turn and look at me. As she reached the bottom of the stairs she threw the door open, seeming almost relieved to be back with the cameras. I had to jog to catch up with her as she sped to the infirmary.

“Here we are,” she said, her voice cheerful but her eyes not yet recovered.

“Becky,” I began, but she put her finger to her lips.

“I have to get ready for class,” she said. She turned to the girl sitting behind the infirmary desk. “Anna, this is Benson.” Before I could say anything else, Becky was out the door.

Anna didn’t even bother inspecting the welts. She hardly even glanced up-just pointed to a basket of individual packets of medicine on the desk. She said she always had a constant stream of bruises and aches on the day after paintball.

I took the pills and swallowed them with water from the infirmary drinking fountain. When I stepped back into the narrow basement hallway, Becky was nowhere to be found.

Returning to the old stairway, I plodded up the rough cement steps, taking a tiny amount of pleasure in knowing I was out of the school’s sight for a few minutes. When I reached the door I paused, not wanting to go back out in front of the cameras.