The Normals | ✓

T W E N T Y - N I N E

After I’m done looking around the greenhouse and learning about the moonflower -- it’s a vine with blue-white petals that only opens its flowers at night -- I’m led down the fifth path in the courtyard, the one I was never allowed to enter. By now I’ve been pressured into wearing the mask and I don’t object. I don’t want people to see my face.

We arrive in the building (which I notice right away is significantly different to the others) and I’m taken to a comfortably furnished room. There are other Masks occupying several chairs in the room, talking quietly to each other while they wait for something. I sit down the farthest away I can from everyone and pull my knees up to my chest. Looking around the room, I make note of the exits, the windows, and possible things I could use to defend myself if needed. I’m not paranoid, I tell myself, I’m just alert. I’m prepared if things go wrong. That’s what I am.

Yet, when someone starts speaking above the hum of people talking to each other, I almost jump out of my seat. Feeling embarrassed, I realize it’s just a Mask who’s appeared in the centre of the room. He tells us how our new jobs here will work and explains each one. Looking around the room, I realize that yeah, the people here definitely do look new. Some of them fiddle uncomfortably with their masks while others shift in their seats and keep glancing around.

We’ll get used to it, I guess.

I find out I’m to be drafted as an assistant to the training Instructor. I groan internally, but am grateful they chose something based off of my existing skills and didn’t choose to make me publicly embarrass myself with something I’m not good at.

I follow the others destined to work in the physical jobs to a big gym that we only use in the winter, when it’s too cold to go to the field. We sit on the floor (how graceful) and listen as our jobs are explained to us. I don’t have much explained to me that I already didn’t know, since I’m basically just teaching people stuff I was learning only a couple months ago. Unfortunately for me, I still have a year of physical training left that I haven’t completed, so I’m supposed to try to cram as much learning in as possible during the times I’m not teaching others. It should be alright though, since the amount of people learning their last year of physical training should be fairly small. Only the eighteen-year-olds, and some of the advanced seventeen-year-olds. Most of the time, I’m told, I will be teaching the younger kids. The twelve-year-old kids, in their first year of actual serious training, to the sixteen-year-olds.

After our jobs are explained to us, the Instructors helping us along come to find us. I’m greeted by the one and only physical training Instructor, who’s been doing this job for as long as I can remember. She’s a lot friendlier toward me than she was while I was her student. Whether that’s because she doesn’t recognize me or because I’m now a Mask, I don’t know.

She extends her hand for me to shake. “Johanna. Pleased to meet you.”

“Johanna?” I ask. “Oh, that’s not me. Maybe I have the wrong job.” I turn my head to look around the room. Maybe someone can help.

She laughs. “No, I’m Johanna. Every dissimulo gets to pick a name for themselves to avoid confusion with the abnormis. Better think quickly of one for yourself!”

“But… the numbers?” I point at the number 5 sewn onto her shirt.

“Just to keep count of how many of us there are,” she replies, “and so that we can keep track of our own possessions. Clothes, dorm rooms, the likes. You’ll get your own number soon.” She starts toward a door at one end of the gym. “Come on then, I’ll help you get used to your new job.”

“Arthemis,” I say quickly. “That’s my name.”

She stops, turns around. “Then welcome to your new life, Arthemis.”

*****
A/N: gonna dump a bunch of chapters all at once before i forget to do it for the next 56 months :)
rip your notifs if you added this book to your library sorry lol