POSSESSION, Book 1 in the Possession Trilogy

Chapter 11

11.

On my fifteenth birthday, my mother plunked a plate of steamed cabbage in front of me. “Only one more year.”

I guess that meant “Happy birthday,” in cruel-mother-talk, but I didn’t understand it. So I wolfed down the “meal” and escaped to Zenn’s.

He gave me a watch. Not a piece of tech with alarms and cameras and voice recorders, but just a watch that I could wind when I needed to. He’d found it in the Abandoned Area and fixed it up. The arms were shaped like arrows and pointed to numerals plated in gold. It only told time, but his gift meant more to me than any expensive tech-thing. I must have started crying, because he wiped my cheeks and slid his hands up my sleeves and over my bare arms.

A forbidden touch.

His hands felt rough from his training in school. With his skin on mine, a thrill zinged through my body.

Then we kissed, sealing our commitment to each other. I remembered how warm his lips felt pressed against mine. 

Why I was thinking of kissing Zenn while lost in the stupid forest in the City of Water, I don’t know. Maybe because of how he’d always protected me. Or maybe because he understood my need to live an uncontrolled life.

Or maybe because he loves you.

My heart leapt in my chest. In fear. Number one, because the same stupid voice was back. Number two, because I wanted to believe it. And that hurt too much.

The day Zenn left for the Special Forces, we snuck to the edge of the forest before the sun rose. Every step was painful, because each one brought us closer to goodbye.

But he didn’t say it. He crushed me in a desperate hug. I cried into his neck, staining the collar of his starchy new uniform. He cupped my face in his hands and leaned his forehead against mine.

“I’ll come back,” he whispered. “I promise we’ll be together, okay?”

I didn’t answer, because it seemed like he was trying to convince himself as much as me. He kissed away my tears and repeated himself. I thought he’d tell me he loved me. He didn’t. But it was etched in the lines of his face. I felt it in his touch.

I turned around and headed back to the Special Forces compound. Back to Zenn. But every step felt wrong. The voice hissed that it was right, and I stopped.

“Shut up. Leave me alone.” My words sounded so loud in the empty forest. “I’m making my own decisions now.”

I stood there, breathing in and out, in and out. I closed my eyes and filled my thoughts with Zenn. His angular jaw. His warm hands. His mischievous smile.

His image was replaced by Jag and then my dad.

And I knew.

My dad was waiting for me in the Badlands. I could feel it the same way I’d once felt Zenn’s skin against mine.

And Jag was, well, as close to free as I’d ever felt. I wanted to feel that way all the time, and that meant leaving the Goodgrounds.

I pivoted, and ran back the way I’d come. Next week, my sixteenth birthday would be in the Badlands. Possibly alone, but hopefully free.

I am going to the Badlands, I told the world, the Thinkers, anyone who was listening. Then I imagined what birthdays might be like in the Badlands. How people could make their own choices. I thought of Seaside, and how I could finally be free.

Lost in thought, I stumbled and fell. Pain engulfed my knee, matching the strumming loneliness in my heart. The sun would rise soon anyway, so I curled into a ball and tried to push away the agonizing memories of my life before Zenn had been chosen for the Forces.