Escaping Eleven by Jerri Chisholm

Author:Jerri Chisholm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Teen & Young Adult Coming of Age Fiction; Teen & Young Adult Action & Adventure; Teen & Young Adult Fantasy Action & Adventure; Teen & Young Adult Loners & Outcasts Fiction; Teen & Young Adult Romance eBooks; Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction & Dystopian Romance eBooks; Teen & Young Adult Social Issues eBooks; Teen & Young Adult Survival Stories eBooks; Entangled Teen; Escaping Eleven by Jerri Chisholm; Hardcover YA FIction; Hardcover Young Adult Fiction; New Young Adult Fiction; YA Dystopian Romance;
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2022-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

I saw my father this morning. My mother was there, too—technically, at least. I asked her about that song, wondering where she herself had learned it, but she didn’t reply. She just murmured about the time, not lifting her gaze from her embroidery, not even once. It was an image of a simple table lamp casting a yellow glow, and it was more important than her daughter.

Dad cleaned my knuckles and slapped my face, told me he was looking forward to watching me fight. But he was more anxious, he said, to see me fight under a professional title. I lied to him once again and said that I was, too.

In less than a month, my peers must decide on jobs. In less than a month—less than four weeks—I will be free. That was always the plan, and now that I have the gun, I have my plan cemented in stone. No more will I wake from a deep sleep in a cold sweat, thinking that the compound is closing in on me and the beautiful world aboveground is forever beyond my reach. That beautiful world with its field of hollyhock and northern oasis is now firmly within my grasp.

Of course I can’t know for certain whether the so-called oasis actually exists. Nobody in the entire compound could know such a thing. But I know from my research in the Preme library that temperatures are more tolerable at night and the farther north you go. I know that, given the specifics rhymed off in the song’s lyrics, it has some bearing on reality. I know that, above all else, it gives me hope that I am desperately in need of.

And even though I know how unlikely it is, the possibility that Jack stumbled north when he was pushed out of the Oracle door makes that speck of hope balloon large enough that it could fill all of Eleven.

Sometimes it feels like a shame that I can’t just get past what happened to Jack, or that I can’t will myself to look forward to a lifetime in Compound Eleven. Look forward to adulthood here, starting a family, holding a job of servitude, whether it be in the kitchen or the Bowl or a factory. Maggie and Emerald and Hunter, they don’t dread their futures here like I always have. How they don’t, I do not know.

Maybe because their childhood wasn’t tainted by tragedy like mine was. Or maybe they are hardwired to be more positive than my brain will allow. Maybe they expect less from life or have taught themselves to extract more joy from its lighter moments.

Maybe they are the ones who are practiced at the art of survival.

But there are others who are unhappy. The protests that rise up every few weeks is one indication, although Katz’s visit to the Mean cafeteria may have put an end to that, at least for now. And even Wren isn’t content, and his life is far more comfortable than mine. But I remember his words in the Oracle: It is himself he doesn’t like.

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