Gone (Parallel Trilogy, Book 1) (14 page)

I also noticed that the students’ lunches were either a tiny serving of salad with dressing on the side, a miniscule fruit salad, or a power bar and a bottle of water.

This obsession with weight was getting to be too much for me. It’s true that in my world people were pretty obsessed with how they looked, but there were plenty of people who didn’t seem to care or at least ate normally.

I found an empty table and sat in a chair before pulling out my apple and cheese stick. I felt very self-conscious sitting by myself, but I wasn’t brave enough to join any of the students sitting at the other tables. I took a bite of my apple and just as my mouth was completely full, a girl walk up to my table.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked.

I shook my head, not able to speak as I tried to quickly chew and swallow the bite of apple.

She smiled and sat across from me. She was just as thin as everyone else, but she had thick brown hair that fell below her shoulders.

“I’m Anne,” she said.

“Hi. I’m Morgan.”

“You’re new here, aren’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

She laughed and the sound was contagious and I smiled.

“It’s just that this is a pretty small school, so it is kind of obvious when someone new starts.”

“Well you’re right. I am new.”

“Where are you from?”

Several answers came to mind, but I decided that trying to explain that I came from another universe might not be the kind of answer she was looking for. “I’m from Fox Run, up north.”

She reached into her backpack and pulled out one of the power bars that seemed to be so popular. After carefully unwrapping it, she took a small bite. “How long have you lived here?”

That was a good question, one that I didn’t really know, so I made a guess. “A couple of months.” I didn’t really like the idea of having to make up answers to all of her questions, so I decided to turn the conversation in another direction. “So, what classes are you taking?”

She rattled off her schedule and I pretended to listen as I kept eating my apple. “So what kind of stuff is there to do around here?” I asked as I opened the cheese stick.

“Nothing too exciting, unfortunately. People mostly like to work out, go on bike rides, stuff like that.”

Wow, I thought. That’s horrible. “What about movies? Or malls?”

“Malls? What’s that?”

I almost choked on my cheese stick at her question. How could she not know what a mall is? “You know, a place with a bunch of stores where you can shop or eat?”

She looked at me kind of funny, like she thought I had lost my mind.

“I’ve never heard it called ‘malls’ before.”

“What do you call it?”

“The plaza.”

Huh. That’s different. “Well, do you have any of those around here?”

“The closest one is the next town over.”

“Okay.” This conversation was too weird for me. I stood. “Well, I’d better get going. It was nice to meet you, Anne.”

“See you around,” she said.

Just as I turned to leave, the most gorgeous boy I’d ever seen came up to Anne and sat next to her.

“Hi, Connor,” she said. Then she looked my way. “Morgan, this is my brother, Connor.”

Her brother? Suddenly I had nowhere to go. “Hi, Connor.” I gave him my most alluring smile.

He grinned back and his teeth were white and perfectly straight. The brown of his hair matched Anne’s, but that’s where their resemblance ended. Where Anne had blue eyes, his were a silvery gray, the color emphasized by his tan face.

“Morgan’s new around here. I was thinking we could take her with us to the plaza.”

“That sounds great,” Connor said. “How about it, Morgan?”

“Yeah, sure.” I was more interested in spending time with Connor then checking out this plaza, but that could be interesting too.

“How about this afternoon?” Anne said.

I didn’t know if Mom had set any rules for that kind of thing, but I decided I could find that out later. “Yeah.”

“I have to be at work at six,” Connor said. “But I can go right after school. Will that work for you, Morgan?”

I thought I should check with Mom before going somewhere, but like a loser, I didn’t know my own phone number. But she had told me I’d need to find my own way home. A smile curved my face at the thought. And she would be at work, so she wouldn’t even know I was late, as long as I could convince my siblings not to tell. “Yeah, that will work.”

“Great! Meet us out front after school.”

“I’ll be there,” I said, then I left to go find my next classroom, a spring in my step. As I walked to class I thought about how things were suddenly looking up. It was true that I hated the way society cared so much about weighing the right amount and the way they had brainwashed everyone to agree, but I was still a teenage girl and if a cute boy showed interest in me, well then I was all-in. At least until November, when I would need to get back to the tunnel so I could get out of this insane world and get back home.

Chapter Fifteen

I managed to get through the rest of my classes without taking any notes, then went to the front of the school to meet up with Connor and Anne. They showed up five minutes later and I followed them to a beat-up looking car. To my surprise, they didn’t even seem embarrassed by the fact that the car had rust spots and dents.

I climbed in back and Connor drove while Anne sat in the front passenger seat. As soon as we began backing out the parking spot, Anne turned around and looked at me. “So Morgan, what’s your story?”

“My story?” I could see Connor glancing at me in the rear view mirror.

“Yeah, you know. Like why did you move here from Fox Run? Where do you live?”

I felt trapped and sort of tricked, like they’d invited me along to dig up information on the new girl and got me in a place where I couldn’t escape. My mind raced as I tried to think up a plausible story. But then it occurred to me that I could mostly tell the truth. I just had to pretend I was the Morgan from this world. She hadn’t done anything wrong and from what I had observed, it wasn’t uncommon to have a family member taken away to a F.A.T. center.

“We had to sell our house because my dad was taken to a F.A.T. center.” Saying it out loud bothered me. Like I was betraying him somehow.

Anne nodded, like she knew all about that sort of thing. “The same thing happened to my aunt. One day she was there, the next she was gone. But my uncle didn’t have to sell the house. I guess they had some money put aside that they were able to use.”

“Is she back yet?” I asked, thinking I might be able to get some answers.

“Oh yeah. This happened two years ago.”

“How long was she gone?”

Anne glanced at Connor. “I’m not sure. I think about four months.”

“Yeah, I think that’s right,” Connor added.

“Is that typical? To be gone four months?”

Anne looked at me a little strangely, like she thought I should know this, and I was sure I would know this if I had grown up with it. “It all depends on how much weight you need to lose,” she said.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” I didn’t really care what she thought of me. There was no point in worrying about making close friendships when I would be gone in a matter of weeks. “How many people do you know that have been taken away?” I asked.

Anne looked up as if she was doing a count in her head. “I guess about eight. Most people I know try to keep their weight in the approved range so that they don’t have to worry about it. But there’s always someone who has medical issues or just eats a little too much or just doesn’t get any exercise.”

I nodded, like I agreed it was normal to worry so much about the government taking you away for being overweight.

“It’s not as often that people are taken away anymore,” she said. “Do you remember when it went from people getting turned in to how it is now, where the government does weekly monitoring?”

I nodded again, and Anne appeared to believe my lie.

“Remember how awful it was? It seemed like every other family had at least one person taken away. My mom told me that so many people had to sell their houses to pay for it that housing prices crashed and the government had to start taking people in rotation.”

I just nodded, not having any memory of those events. But it certainly did sound awful.

“Here we are,” Connor said as we pulled into a parking lot.

Glad to get off the topic now, I looked around as Connor found a place to park. The parking lot looked pretty much the same as the ones I was used to. I climbed out of the car and walked with Anne and Connor toward what looked like the main doorway. The place wasn’t too busy yet; I assumed most people were at work or just getting out of school.

“Where do you want to go?” Connor asked me.

“I’m kind of hungry. Can we check out the food court?”

“The what?” he asked.

“You know, where they sell food.”

Confusion on his face, he said, “They don’t sell food here.”

Now I was confused. What was a mall, or plaza, without food? That was half the fun of going—to eat. No wonder there were so few people here. But I had to pretend like I belonged here, like I knew all the stuff they were telling me. Of course, just because they had ‘plazas’ with no food court didn’t mean it had to be the same where I came from, in the town up north. “I guess it’s different here than back home,” I said, which was certainly true, if home was the normal universe where I was from.

“Yeah, I guess,” Connor said. “So, what was it like where you came from?”

I smiled at the sudden interest he had in me. “Well, instead of calling this a plaza, we call it a mall. And all of our malls have places where you can buy food to eat.”

“Wow,” Anne said. “I’d like to visit where you’re from. How long does it take to get there?”

I almost laughed at her question. If only I knew the answer. But I knew she thought I meant the town up north. “It’s about a four hour drive.”

“Oh,” she said, obviously disappointed it was so far away. “Well, someday I’ll go there.”

Maybe I could get them to take me up north in two months. Of course I would have to convince them that there was something to see there. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I find a way to get back home. To my real home.

We continued walking down the plaza, sometimes going into stores to look around. The clothes weren’t that interesting and I was ready to go home.

“Hey guys?” I said. “I should probably get home. Is it okay if we take off now?”

“Okay. I should get some homework done before I go to work anyway,” Connor said.

When we got back to Timber Hills, I had a little trouble guiding them to my house, since we were coming from a direction I’d never been before.

“Still getting used to where the streets are?” Connor asked, a smirk on his face.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m directionally challenged.”

He laughed and I felt marginally better.

“Here it is,” I said as we pulled onto my street. “Thanks for the ride. And thanks for showing me the plaza.”

“No problem, Morgan. I’ll see you at school tomorrow?” Anne asked.

“Yeah,” I said, then looked at Connor, waiting for him to say something.

“See ya,” he said, which was less than I’d hoped for.

“Bye.” I climbed out of their car and shut the door behind me. When I got to the front door I realized it was locked. Expecting someone to be home, I knocked and rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Hoping the other Morgan kept a key in her backpack, I dug around, then smiled when I found a key in a small pocket.

I went into the house and noticed how quiet it was and wondered where everyone was. They should have gotten out of school shortly after I did. Anne, Connor and I had spent about an hour at the plaza, so I would have thought they all would be home by now.

Not sure what to do, I pushed aside my concern and went into the kitchen to find a snack. Mom usually had something for us to eat when we got home from school. Of course that was in my other life. In this world who knew what the deal was with snacks. Food was such a major issue for everyone, for all I knew no snacking was allowed. I certainly didn’t like that idea.

I explored the contents of the cupboard, but didn’t find anything that sounded good.

“This really sucks,” I muttered, craving one of my mother’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. “Wait a minute,” I said, an idea occurring to me. Maybe I could make my own treats.

Then I thought about the stupid pledge and how I was supposed to take care of my body and the whole “Healthy me, healthy world” crap that I was supposed to parrot. It was all so wrong and I felt a strong need to do exactly the opposite of what society said I should do.

But first I went into the living room and turned on the computer. I Googled the pledge and printed it off—I wanted to make sure and memorize it before class the next day—then went back into the kitchen.

With the ridiculous pledge in my pocket, I grinned with a feeling of rebellion as I found flour, salt, baking soda, butter, eggs, even some sugar, which surprised me. There were no chocolate chips, which didn’t surprise me. I wondered how long I would have the house to myself, but had made enough batches of cookie dough to know I could do it in less than fifteen minutes.

Having something normal to do made me feel really good. Almost like I was myself again. I started singing a song, a song that had been popular in my other life. Before long I had finished making a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, minus the chocolate chips. Scooping some up with a finger, I put it in my mouth and savored the sweet flavor. Even without the chocolate chips, it tasted wonderful.

Then I filled a cookie sheet with small lumps of dough and placed it in the oven. When the first batch was done and cooled, I ate several cookies before drinking a glass of milk. As I was taking the second batch out of the oven, Amy, Zac, and Brandon walked in the door.

“What’s that smell?” Zac asked as he walked into the kitchen.

“Morgan made cookies,” Brandon squealed. “Can I have one, Morgan?”

“Of course,” I said as I handed him a cooled cookie.