Zodiac Academy

20. Signature

  The woman pulled out a chair from her table and sat across from it. I took the seat and waited. Was she going to yell at me the moment I took a bite?

  "Go ahead and eat it. We value honesty in this household. You didn't have to tell me. You could have run away. But you didn't."

  Because I was starving. Nonetheless, I bit into that apple like it was the last one on the planet. The child sat next to the woman and watched me eat.

  "Get her a drink will you, Marella?"

  "Water, momma?"

  "Only if you can spare it," I added. I didn't want her to yell at me for taking the rest of her water too.

  After having two glasses of water and an apple and a homemade bar of something she made herself, I was ready to leave again. I had to get going before it got dark. Travelling in the dark had never been on my bucket list.

  "Thank you for your hospitality, ma'am." I stood up from the chair.

  "No problem at all. My name is Pearl. Come back to visit sometime. We're the only ones in this neighbourhood with an apple tree." She smiled at me warmly.

  How she could go from angry woman to welcoming was beyond me. I just nodded my head. "Which neighbourhood is this, by the way?"

  "Quarter Six, Quadrant Four," she replied. "We're house 2130."

  What? What kind of system was that? Were there six neighbourhoods? I hope that the rebels were in five and I had only walked through one of them.

  I stepped outside of their home. "Alright. I will do my best. Before I go," I called out quickly, stopping her from shutting the door completely, "in which direction is the Zodiac Academy? Do you know?"

  The woman bristled at my words. "I-I'm sorry for how I treated you earlier, miss. Good day." She slammed the door.

  What was that all about? Did she not like the system either? Who knew there were so many!

  I sighed and started my long journey down the road once again. At this point, I was ready to go back and ask Adeline for directions. However, since my stubbornness was stronger than that, I stomped down the road.

  Around ten minutes later a voice stopped me. "You're going the wrong way."

  I spun around. Jaxson was standing behind me with a map between his fingers. "I didn't get to Pearl in time to tell her she was supposed to help you. So here I am. Helping you. Once again."

  "I don't want a traitor's help," I spat.

  "Okay, one, ouch. And second, not even a friend who has a map?" He taunted me with the map. Waved it around like a flag.

  I growled before accepting. "Give me the map." I reached for it, but he took it away.

  "No can do, Aqua. I have to give it back at some point. I'll be the one to lead you back."

  "Lead us back home," I corrected. He snorted and left it at that.

 

  "Skirt," Jaxson yelled. "Aha, I found another one. Your turn."

  I looked around the bland area. Nothing around here rhymed with skirt and dirt had already been used.

  Halfway through our walk, Jaxson suggested we do something to pass the time. We ran out of things to talk about, I Spy died out quick, Would you Rather got boring, and mental tic-tac-toe had proved to be quite tedious with a childish player like Jaxson. Now we were rhyming.

  "Hurt?"

  He pursed his lips and nodded. "Flirt."

  "Avert."

  "New word. You picked last time. I choose," he paused, drawing out the vowel, "urn."

  "Learn," I replied instantly.

  "Churn."

  "Burn."

  "Fern."

  "This game is getting boring. Are we almost there yet? How far away is this dump?"

  "I didn't hear any words in there that rhyme."

  "I'll give you something that rhymes with lunch if you don't tell me how much longer we have to walk."

  "Still nothing that rhymed. And you're right. I'm getting hungry. Unlike you, I didn't get a snack break." He consulted the map for an unreasonable amount of time.

  "Are we lost?"

  "Shhh." He shoved his index finger at me. I contemplated breaking it, not gonna lie.

  "Aha!" he exclaimed. "We have probably ten more minutes. Approximately."

  "Approximately," I mocked.

  He shook his head but continued to walk beside me anyway. "Why are you so intent on becoming a Zodiac anyway?"

  I shrugged. "It's everything I've ever looked forward to. The day I would become a Zodiac is the day I would have a purpose."

  "Purpose?"

  "You know, have a job? Responsibilities? Privileges?"

  He nodded. "Sure. If you don't mind taking babies from their parents occasionally. Almost right after their birth."

  "They don't make everyone do that," I replied.

  He glanced at me. "Yeah, they do. It's one way they test your loyalty. If you can strip a parent from their newborn, you can easily follow any other wish the System might ask of you."

  "I don't believe you."

  How could they make every Sign do that? People had things to do. Surely they wouldn't have you drop your work just to go pick up a baby for your old school to teach. That's ridiculous.

  Jaxson gave me a look. I couldn't decipher what it meant. Did he really believe the Zodiacs weren't being true to us? They housed us for years. Clothed us, fed us, taught us. They didn't have to do that, yet they did. Why didn't he trust them?

  He crossed his arms behind his head. "Believe whatever you want, Aquarius."

  "Why don't you believe in the system?"

  "They killed my parents."

  "Leo doesn't seem upset. Shouldn't he be upset that the system supposedly killed his parents?"

  Jaxson scowled. His eyes scrutinized the road ahead of us. "Leo doesn't care. When we stopped receiving letters from our parents and getting them from some woman named Janice instead, he didn't care. Sure, he said he was sad but his actions said otherwise."

  "Oh."

  "That night he went straight to the Club and didn't leave for days. I think he just wanted to decompress."

  "And how do you know it was the Zodiacs that killed them?"

  He stopped walking to stare into my eyes. "Someone left a note saying they got what they deserved for disobeying the system."

  That was awful. But that didn't mean a Zodiac did it. It just meant someone felt they were disobedient and didn't exactly discourage the thought that they were dead? Any way you put it, it sounded absolutely terrible.

  "That still doesn't prove that a Zodiac did it," I said tentatively.

  He shook his head like I didn't understand. And I didn't. "It was signed with a symbol, Aquarius. A zodiac symbol that resembled a scroll wrapped close with a stem made of thorns used by a Zodiac from a long time ago."

  I didn't know what to respond with. I just nodded and broke eye contact. I slowly started to walk again, coaxing Jaxson to follow.