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Steela shifts her basket of broccoli to her other arm. “Thing is,” she says, “I’m one of them. You’re not. ”
“So?”
Steela looks at the backs of the people who had crowded around me as they fade into the town. “You’ve got to understand. The Feeders are simple people. If you complicate their world, they’ll get rid of you just to eliminate the problem. Why do you think they round up every person with a shred of creativity and jam them in a building clear on the other side of the ship?”
My first instinct is to protest, but then I remember the man in the fields. The way he clutched his trowel, the blade of it turned to me.
“You best head back to where you came from,” Steela says. Without glancing back at me, she continues on her way into the town. She walks briskly, and quickly overtakes the man from the crowd who spoke to me. He turns as she passes, and he catches my eye.
Then he starts walking back to me.
I take three steps behind me, almost stumble, turn around, and race away faster than I’ve ever run. This is not my measured run from before. I am not pacing myself, counting my breaths, conscious of my strides. I race like a monster is chasing me; I race as if they were chasing me. I cannot go fast enough. I tear through the tall grass of the fields, the thin blades slicing my skin like paper cuts. I break corn stalks as I pound through the field.
I run and run and run.
Past the hospital, through the garden, past a pond.
And to the cold metal wall.
I stop, gulping at the air, my heart racing in my ears. I reach up with one hand and touch the wall. My fingers curl into a fist, but it falls weakly to my side.
And that’s when I realize the most important truth of life on this ship.
There is nowhere to run.
22
ELDER
THE HATCH DOOR SLAMS SHUT. BEHIND ME, DOC AND ELDEST are talking in low, frantic whispers.
“Do you think it was—?”
“That’s not possible. ”
“Does he know?”
Pause.
“Of course not. ”
“Did you—?”
“Of course not. ”
But I can think of nothing but the stars.
It is like a piece of my soul had been lost, empty, and it is now filled with the light of a million stars.
They are all that I had ever dreamed of; they are nothing I ever expected.
How could I have ever thought the lightbulbs in the Great Room were stars?
I will never, never be the same.
I have seen stars.
Real stars.
