I ignored them, tensely trying to see what lay ahead of me. They knew exactly where I was—might as well use the headlight. With my thumb I hit the switch, and the anemic, diffused beam told me my battery was getting low. Crap.
Then it was there ahead of me, only feet away. There was no time to stop, nowhere to turn, and I slammed tire-first into the old, gnarled tree trunk. My moped crumpled against it like tinfoil, and I watched almost calmly as my body flew slowly through the air and hit the ground so hard the wind was knocked out of me. Pa’s rifle was beneath me and my spine cracked against it as I slid in the dirt.
The world lit up again: the all-wheeler was right on top of me. Its driver saw me at the last second and stood on the brakes, making the vehicle skew sideways and missing me by less than three inches. I heard swearing and tried to suck in air, tried to stagger to my feet, prepared to run.
“Stop right there!” a voice shouted.
I raised Pa’s rifle and found my voice. “I have a gun!” I wheezed.
Several figures passed through the high beams. They were circling me.
“I have a gun!” I yelled again, more strongly, and set the rifle to my shoulder.
In one short day I had gone from a President’s Star hopeful to… what? A murderer? Was I really threatening to shoot another person?
I tipped the front sight up a bit and fired into the air, knowing the bullet would whistle over their heads.
Crack!
Something plowed into my chest, sending a starburst of pain radiating through me. After a moment of wavering I fell backward, the night sky losing its stars as my consciousness melted away.
I couldn’t breathe. Lying on the ground, I blinked, the world narrowing to a pinpoint above me. The last few stars twinkled, seeming to move, almost seeming alive. Just as the final black curtain was drawn over my face, I saw the stars align… into a dragonfly. A diamond dragonfly in the sky.
52
BECCA
“EXPECTATIONS.” STREPP LOOKED DOWN AT us from the steps leading to the chapel’s altar. “‘When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really does appreciate everything one does have.’”
Jesus, here we go again. I was still trying to suck up my crying over poor Little Bit. I’d seen three executions now, and they’d been so much worse than getting beat up by Tim. Some kids here had seen ten. Twenty. More. It was a wonder they were still mostly human.
“A man named Stephen Hawking said that,” Strepp told us. “And it’s the key to everything. If your expectations are zero, then anything you have is gravy.” She paced back and forth, sometimes putting her fist to her mouth as if it helped her think. “You may believe,” she said, facing us, “that you have nothing right now. You may believe that everything you had has been taken from you.”
Pretty much, yep.
“You would be wrong!” she said, jabbing her finger at us. Her eyes seemed to pick me out from the hundreds of prisoners. “You still have food. You have a roof over your head. You have companions. You have clothes and indoor plumbing.” Her eyes narrowed. “Picture what your life would be like if you had none of that!”
Oh, my God—was that the next stage of this horror show? I tried not to show fear, kept my face blank. Knowing Strepp, if she thought I was afraid of something, you could bet that I would end up with it.
“Expectations,” she repeated, continuing her pacing. “Expectations and discipline. A man named George Washington said, ‘Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.’”
Where this woman got all these dumb quotes was a mystery. She seemed to have a million of them tucked up her sleeve.
“What did Mr. Washington mean by those words?”
It was weird, but her pacing and droning voice were helping me calm down. I’d been so upset about Little Bit, but ten minutes of pointless yapping and my brain waves were smoothing right out.
“He meant—” she began but was interrupted by the comm system crackling to life.
“Guards, prepare for incoming!” a voice said, and everyone looked surprised except Strepp. Instead she seemed—almost victorious. Again she met my eyes, or maybe I was imagining it. But she seemed to look at me with that weird, triumphant expression. As if she knew something I didn’t.
Which of course she did.
53
CASSIE
I WAS SURPRISED WHEN I realized I wasn’t dead.