Seven (Completed)

CHAPTER 8 ~ Girls

CHAPTER 8

Girls

The cold lemonade seemed to relieve some of his tension so he drank up the whole glass before he was ready to hear what his parents had to say.

'Carlos, excuse my silence ... but I don't know where to start. You see, so many things happened in just a day and ... I'm afraid we will all need some time to adjust,' she said and looked at her husband, then back at her son.

'It's okay. It has to be really important, I get it,' he said.

'Actually,' his father commented, 'it's not as hard for us as for other families ... we've been somewhat lucky,'

'I-I don't understand this whole-'

'Let me start from the beginning then,' his mother said and a small silence followed that she received as the permission to start talking.

She grabbed a chair and sat in front of him, the sunlight that filtered through the yellow curtain falling on her eyes. They were hazel and youthful, just like Carlos'.

'You know that one of your father's friend, Trevor, currently works at the database of the Administration Center, don't you?

Her son nodded and a small, brown curl fell between his eyebrows.

'Well ... he found some suspicious files, reports and ... he talked to your father about it yesterday morning. There were files of all the girls inside the school, their names, ages and school performances.'

'How is that suspicious? I thought they had files for all of us,' he wondered.

'Yeah. That's what we thought too, at first. But there were special files, just for the young girls of the city, in a separate section of the headquarters. Then, we thought the files were there because of all the missing children. Maybe they kept copies of their information there as a precaution, to identify them,' she answered in a steady voice.

'That makes sense,' Carlos said. 'Wait, there's more?'

'Yes, Carlos,' his father responded. 'Trevor mentioned a list. A list of those girls. They were rated based on their academic performance. There were the names of two hundred and three girls on that list, including those who are missing the last couple days. And there was a red line, separating the first eighty of them from the rest,' his father said and rubbed the space between his eyes.

'I'm confused. Were they separating the best students? Why would they do that?' he asked, his eyes demanding an answer.

His mother spoke again. 'Trevor had a theory that your father and I agree with. We think that ... under the governor's orders, the girls below the line are being ... killed,' she said and Carlos' felt the room spinning in front of his eyes.

'There are way too many people in the city, Carlos. We believe the governor chose the men as the dominant gender and only kept a number of women, the most intellectually capable, perhaps. These girls are taken or-or killed just a couple of years before they take the tests and get placed in the community. That doesn't seem like a coincidence to me,' he concluded and Carlos' mouth dropped.

His parents gave him a moment to process all their theories and then his mother took hold of his hand. 'We thought you should know. And we're all hoping that this is not the truth. But there is high chance that it is,' she said softly.

Carlos removed his hand from hers. 'What do you want me to do now? What am I supposed to do now that I know all this? I can't ... I can't save those girls, mum!' he protested in confusion.