Destiny Webb

     It was a hot day for the middle of October and the room was unbearably stuffy. Pulling the clinging shirt that was stuck to my sides, I stared in desperation at the clock and willed the last two minutes of the day to go by faster. Somehow, after five sessions of the Effects of Bonding, Mrs. Harold was still able to drone on about what made a good homemaker. 

     Looking around the room, the sight of my former classmates hanging on to every word this woman said made me sick. It was as if we hadn’t watched our mothers’ do the exact same things all of our lives. Why were we wasting our time? 

     Turning my gaze to the window, I was ready to be heading to the outskirts of town with Raven. The next class was the last Bonding session, and a week later Jason I would be married. We were both worried that after that, trips out to The Cave would be nonexistent. Shuddering at the thought, the bell rang and I was up and out of my seat before anyone else.  

     “Allie?” Mrs. Harold called from the front of the room. Stopping in my tracks, a couple of the girls I had graduated with giggled as they walked past me. Chewing my cheek, I made my way to the front of the room. 

Mrs. Harold waited until the rest of the girls had left the room while I stood there awkwardly. When we were alone, she loudly cleared her throat and peered over her glasses at me with a stern look.

     “I don't think you’ve taken this course very seriously, Allie. I know your wedding is still a couple weeks away, but I’m not sure you’re ready.” 

     My jaw dropped and I suddenly felt nauseous. I didn’t see the point in taking the Bonding course, but I had kept my opinion to myself, knowing it was unwanted. Really, I hadn’t objected to any of the things that had been pushed on me since graduation: Jason, wedding, already, talks of a baby. 

     Raven seemed to be the only one who understood that I didn’t want any of the things being preached to us. Together, we had watched the world around us operate in such an oddly organized way, too perfect and synchronized to possibly be natural. Growing up, we had always poked fun at it in secret and rejected the notion that we would follow suit. As we found ourselves facing adulthood though, our promises of doing more, or leaving, like Pop had wanted to at our age, seemed to be dwindling.

     “I’m going to give your parents a call tonight and discuss everything with them. Our next session is the last, hopefully we can bring it all together before then.”

     No one had told us what would happen if we fell off-course, not that I agreed with Mrs. Harold’s assessment. It wasn’t fair considering I had done everything necessary to pass the course. I just wasn’t excited like all the other girls. 

     Upset, but not wanting to get myself in any more trouble, I nodded without saying anything else. WorkForce was a punishment that I wasn’t sure extended past graduation, but I wasn’t trying to find out. Once was enough of an experience to not want to go back and I could already hear what my parents would say if I got sent off before the ceremony. 

     “You can go, Allie,” Mrs. Harold dismissed me. “Just remember what I said.” 

     “I will, Mrs. Harold.” 

     With that, I was rushing out of the class. Raven was waiting for me under the shade of a tree. Her birthday wasn’t for a few months. So, fortunately, she didn’t have to deal with Mrs. Harold until the next session. Raven was taking a House Plants and Herbs course.

     “What was that all about?” Raven asked when she saw the irritated look on my face. 

     “I’ll tell you when we get to the house,” I whispered under my breath so none of the other girls around would hear. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here.” 

     Like we normally did most days, after any ”Voluntary” Life Skill courses we had, we walked to Raven’s house. Her parents worked late at the hospital every night. Once at her house, we’d discard our attachments to our coordinated lives and exchange them for the simple garments we had hidden under a loose floorboard. 

     “Toby took me out to lunch today,” Raven told me hesitantly as she tossed me my pants and top out from under her bed. We couldn’t talk about Mrs. Harold until we got out to The Car. While Toby was a safe topic to be discussing in her room, she still seemed nervous, which led me to wonder where she was going with this.

     “Oh, yeah? How’d that go?” I asked nonchalantly as I changed. Toby was the guy that Raven had been Paired to be with. Up until now, she had been pretty against the idea, feeling about Toby how I felt about Jason. The tone in her voice made me suspicious that she was rethinking things.

     “It actually went well.” Raven sounded surprised as she pulled her shirt on and confirmed my suspicions. “I was thinking about asking him to come hang out with us one day.”

     Shocked by the sudden change in heart, I raised my eyebrow at her. 

     “Are you feeling okay?”

     Rolling her eyes, Raven just shook her head in frustration and walked past me, heading in the direction of her backyard. We slid our way through the part of the fence in Raven’s backyard that someone before us, probably Pop, had loosened to get through. In silence, we made our way into the orchard that was behind her house. 

     I grabbed a couple of oranges off of the tree and tossed one to Raven. Quietly eating our fruit, we made our way down the shaded row until we reached the safety of nature that waited on the other side. 

     Once we exited the lines of orange trees that led up to the woods, it was like a weight was lifted off of both of our shoulders. Sighing in relief, I looked at Raven as we made our way into the naturally lined trees that provided us more protection. 

     “So, what changed?” I asked her freely. 

     “I don’t know,” Raven exhaled. “I don’t know how to explain it, Allie. It was like he just understood.”

     “Understood what? What do you mean?” I panicked, after Mrs. Harold’s talk, any other potentially troubling situations would for sure get me sent somewhere. “You told him about The Car?”

     “No,” Raven scoffed. “Of course not. Pop would be mad if I just brought someone out here without knowing anything about them. I have to make sure I can trust Toby first. I sure wish I could introduce him to Pop.”

     “Listen to you!” I pleaded, trying to talk sense into my best friend. “Did you drink the Tea, Raven?” 

We had always joked that the Tea was what turned our parents into such robotic people. Both Raven and I were revolted by the drink. Surprisingly, Pop had hated it too. 

     Raven’s grandpa wasn’t like any of the other adults we knew. At least, not when we were away from listening ears. Pop was always around when Raven’s parents weren’t. When he passed, we both took it hard. Raven and I had been best friends since practically birth.

     “Ouch, Allie,” she bit at me. 

     “Well?” I retorted sarcastically. When she didn’t say anything, I continued. “Yesterday, you were talking about ditching our weddings with me and now you're telling me you want to bring your groom out here. You literally changed your mind overnight. What am I supposed to say, Raven?”

     “You could have given me longer than two minutes to try and explain!” Raven snapped at me. 

     We had reached the cliff we had to climb to get to The Cave. The Car was parked in it, safely hidden from sight. Pulling ourselves up over the discreet ledge, we made our way into our secret little safe haven. Out here, we were safe from the constant need to look over our shoulders and in The Cave, we were safe to be ourselves.

     Pop found The Car out in The Cave when he was our age. He said it was shortly before he married his wife who Raven and I had never met as she had passed before we were born. When we were in middle school, he started bringing us out on days like this, and he would tell us all about the things he had discovered since finding The Car. 

     The Cave was filled with things that Pop had found in his secret adventures. By the time he had started taking us out, Pop had reached an age that no one questioned what he did with his time. Pop took advantage of that freedom. 

     There were gadgets and tools that we had never seen before we started going out there. Pop told us they were from people called ‘Campers’ that went and occasionally slept in things that weren’t houses. A concept that was unsettling to Raven and I, but a part of me secretly really yearned for that kind of freedom.

     Raven plopped into her favorite place to sit, something called a ‘hammock’ that was suspended by two hooks screwed into the rock wall. In a spot cornering the hammock, was a large cot that was filled with a bunch of pillows. Grabbing the handheld radio from The Car, I made my way and settled into my spot on the cot. 

     “Okay,” I apologized. “I’m sorry. I won’t freak out this time.”

     Raven looked at me with pursed lips. 

     “I don’t know Allie.” Raven shrugged. “I just feel like Toby’s more like us than them. Maybe we aren’t the only ones.”

     “I’ve said that a thousand times. Why do you think that though?” I implored, still not understanding. We had had this discussion a dozen times about bringing our friend Luke out here. Every time, Raven denied the possibility anyone else was capable of having our mindset.

     “Toby just… It was like he was trying to be all for it, but something kept stopping him. Or like… I was listening to him and would be thinking something and I don’t know… it was just weird.”

     “Weird how?” I said in frustrated confusion as I turned on the handheld radio, one of Raven’s and my favorite gadgets Pop had found. Fiddling with the knob, I adjusted until the static had disappeared and a tune we had found out was called a ‘song’ came through clearly.

     “It was almost like he could hear me… like as if I had actually said what I was thinking. Like he stopped talking because he heard what I thought.”

     “Huh,” I sat the radio down to listen. 

     "Has that ever happened with you and Jason?"

     "No," I told her plainly, omitting some of the truth.

     What Raven was saying about Toby sounded like what happened with me and Luke, not me and Jason. Luke had been one of our good friends since grade school. We never told anyone, not even Raven, about the connection though in fear we would get in trouble. Surely, our parents and teachers would have condemned the unnatural way of communicating and sent us for Realignment. 

     “And, what’s weirder, is I think I heard him too.”

     That had never happened with Luke and me. Our line of communication seemed to be one-way only. As kids, we had tested our theory, and its boundaries, silently. While Luke could hear the thoughts I directed towards him clearly, I only gathered strong ideas from him. As I tested this without other people knowing, I realized I was pretty good at guessing people’s moods.

     His knowledge of what I did made us able to communicate in our own language as I learned how to interpret his responses. I’d never thought about what it would be like if I could hear him too. I thought I was just different.

    “Would you care if Toby came out here with us?” Raven interrupted the processing of my puzzling realization.

     Raven sounded nervous and I looked over at her to see her cheeks were red. She was looking down at the pillow in her lap. The question had surprised me. Raven hadn’t even wanted Luke to come out here with us. It was a sacred place to her though and I couldn’t tell her how I knew Luke wouldn’t say anything. Seeing Raven this way, I knew I had to say yes.

     “If you let him come out here, you need to let Luke out here too.” I argued in Luke’s defense. “It’s not fair. Luke at least knows about The Cave.”

     “Okay,” Raven agreed with a sigh. “We’ll see if we can find some clothes for him and he can come out with us this weekend?”

     I looked at my best friend in shock. I had been trying to get her to let Luke come out for the last two years. One lunch with Toby alone and she had turned into a different person. Six months of meetings and dates with Jason and I hadn’t felt anything like that. What did it mean that that was how I felt with Luke?

     “Deal.” I agreed with a smile, my irritation gone. “Are you going to tell him or anything before you do?”

     “I was thinking I’d bring him out past the orchard or something first, you know?” 

     “That’s probably a good idea.” I paused, then thought of a more important question. “Do you think you’re going to be happy marrying him? Do you think you ‘love’ him?”

     “I don’t know…” She trailed off. “I still don’t even understand what happened.” 

     “It’s so weird.” I said with a look of discomfort. The idea of being married to Jason was unsettling and made me feel trapped. I wondered to myself, if I had felt this way about Jason, would I feel different about the marriage thing? If I had been Paired with Luke instead would I? How quickly Raven’s feelings and thoughts on Toby had changed scared me. 

     “I know,” Raven agreed with another sigh before she changed the subject. “What happened with Mrs. Harold?” 

     Rolling my eyes, I repeated what had happened with Mrs. Harold to Raven whose frustration matched mine. High school had been easy enough to fake through. I didn’t know what to do about this. 

Most of the teachers had just assumed Raven and I were off daydreaming about who our parents were going to Pair us with. Most of the girls around us were doing the same. Never did they think twice about us the way Mrs. Harold obviously had questioned me since Day One.

     “What do you think your parents are going to say?” Raven whispered, worried for me. 

     “I have no idea, but I know I better be on my best behavior next week. Or, maybe I shouldn’t. If they send me for Realignment, they wouldn’t make me marry Jason, right?” 

     “You’d think,” Raven laughed at my extreme, stubborn plan. “But, knowing them, they would.” 

     We both drifted off into our own thoughts as we listened to the radio. I’d have to leave it out in the sun when we went back today. The radio was powered by the sun, just like some of the things we had in town.

​

‘There’s stars in the sky tonight,

But none of them shine as bright,

As the light within your eyes...’

​

     The song wasn’t as fast as the ones I liked. Raven looked like she was enjoying it though as she stared out of the opening of The Cave that looked over our town. A dreamy gaze had come over her and I knew she was thinking about Toby.

     Leaving her to her thoughts, I reached beside the cot and picked up a book I had found in the pile a few days ago. The black cover had gold lettering on it and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before as it strikingly stood out against the others. I hadn’t even read half of the books in the pile, maybe it just had been buried under the others.

     Raven wasn’t as into the books that Pop would bring back like I was, but it never stopped him from bringing back as many books he could find for me. Rarely, were they ever anything we could find in our library filled with textbooks. They were usually the most exciting adventures. 

I was always surprised that Raven wasn’t more excited over the worlds that were so different than our little home. Like the good friend she was, she’d listen as I excitedly explained all about whatever imaginary world I was consuming at the time. 

     Raven was much more enthralled by the relationships in the tales, more specifically, the ones in which two people ‘fell in love’. The depths of emotion in the love stories I told her about were nowhere close to the platonically boring connections we saw our parents around us. They weren’t able to read each other's minds though, which was odd. 

     As I started reading the black book, I wondered if Raven would like this one as it was about a girl sneaking out of her town similar to how we did. She probably wouldn’t like the violence. As tough as Raven was from years of Pop hammering his beliefs and theories into us, she tended to be more willing to bend than we were. The sun was getting closer to the horizon and we knew we needed to start heading back. Raven and I put our treasured things back in their places. 

     “You have to make sure he understands that he cannot tell anyone.” Raven stressed as we looked for clothes for Luke and Toby. We didn’t trust anything from home after the stories Pop had told us. They would have to wear whatever we found. “Not even - ” 

     “Raven, I know.” I reassured her. “Luke has wanted to come out here for so long. He’s not going to mess up his one chance.”

     I would see Luke at my house tomorrow when he and his mom came over for a dress fitting. Luke’s mom was the seamstress making my dress for the wedding. To make the situation better on me, Luke just tagged along to hang out.

     “He better not.” Raven grumbled. “I don’t want a reason to try one of the weapons.”

     “Oh, whatever,” I scoffed and gave her a doubtful look. “Like you would.”

     Interrupting us, a walkie-talkie that I could have sworn I had turned off the last time I used it shortly buzzed with static before it quieted with a beep. Raven and I looked at each other, spooked out by the sound. We hadn’t heard a response from a walkie-talkie since Pop was alive and out exploring.

     “Did you...?” Raven asked quietly.

     “I turned it off the last time I messed with it.” I assured her.

     “Maybe it’s just running out of battery?” She pondered.

     “But, it was off.” I stressed. 

     ‘Hello?’ The person was followed by more static and another beep.

     Raven and I screamed as the voice on the walkie frightened us. The clothes that we pulled out fell to the ground as we grabbed each other. Holding each other in fear, we waited to see if there was another attempt at contact.  

     ‘Hello?’ Anyone there?’

     Frozen, Raven and I exchanged looks of anticipation, hoping the other had an idea of how to respond. As Raven took a step back, I could see her hands trembling. 

     “What do we do?” She asked in a whisper. 

     Moving past her, I picked up the walkie-talkie and held it up to my face. So many times I had wished for someone to answer my calls out into nothing, waiting for a response.

     “Allie! What are you doing?!” Raven panicked. 

     “I’m going to figure out what else is out there.” I decided suddenly. After the turn the day had taken, I needed something good to get me through the rest of the night that was bound to be miserable. 

     “What if it’s o-”

     Taking a deep breath, I didn’t wait to hear what else Raven worried about. With a wave of courage, I pressed down the button to talk. 

     "Hello? We’re here. Over."

     Raven and I anxiously exchanged scared expressions while we waited. There was no response though. Pressing the button again, I repeated my call to whoever was out there. After a few minutes with no response, Raven broke the silence. 

     “Allie. We have to go.” She was starting to worry about the time. “C’mon, turn it off.” 

     Disappointed, I knew Raven was right and I turned off the walkie-talkie with a sigh. Putting it back in it’s spot, I picked Luke and Toby’s clothes back up and we exited The Cave. Once we were down the side of the mountain, we practically ran back through the orchard to Raven’s backyard to make it before sunset. 

     We didn’t dare utter a word about what happened after we left The Cave. It would be a mystery left for when we returned. When we got back into Raven’s room, we changed back into our normal clothes and stowed our secret ones, along with the ones we’d brought for Luke and Toby. 

     Both of us had messages from our mothers on our phones, a rare occurrence. Apathetically, Raven pressed the button to listen to the voicemail. I could hear her mother’s booming voice on the other line.

     "Raven, you’re father and I both got asked to stay tonight. You’ll have to be okay fending for yourself or maybe you can go over to Allie’s if her parents are okay with it.” 

     “Well, that’s not surprising.” Raven scoffed as she rolled her eyes at me. “Do you think I can spend the night?”

     “I’ll ask. Let me listen to this first.”

     The knot in my stomach was unsettling as I clicked the voicemail. Giving Raven a nervous look, I put my phone on speakerphone so she could listen with me. 

     “Alexandra. I am so disappointed that I had to find out about what happened from Mrs. Harold and not you.” I rolled my eyes at her formal tone. “When you get home we are going to talk about what’s been going on and why Mrs. Harold seems to think you may need to go into another Path or go to the Realignment center. Why didn’t you or Raven answer your phones?” 

     “What does that mean? Another Path?” Raven asked when the message had ended, sounding just as confused as I did.

     “I don’t know,” I responded as dread filled my stomach.

     Kicking myself for missing her call, or not trying to go home and talk to her first, I called her back quickly.

     “Allie, where have you been? I tried calling Raven too and neither of you answered.” My mom was short with irritation. 

     “Mom, I’m sorry.” I apologized, quickly pulling out my normal excuse. “We went for a run. I didn’t want to lose my phone.”

     “Well,” my mom snapped, “you need to get home, now.”

     “Okay, I’m coming,” I agreed quickly, trying to appease her. Raven gave me a nervous look as I braced myself for courage that was a lot harder to find than answering the stranger had been. “Mom? Raven’s parents are working tonight. They called her too while we were on our run. Can she stay with us tonight?”

     “It won’t change the fact that we have things we need to discuss.”

     “Yes, Ma’am,” I said, deflated. I had hoped Raven would be some sort of protection from the wrath I knew was coming. Hanging up the phone, I waited in the doorway as Raven grabbed her things and threw them in her backpack. 

     “At least I get to be there when you talk to Luke.” Raven said, happier than she was before. Since Pop passed, she always stayed at my house when her parents were working to avoid being alone. I had a feeling she had thought my mom was going to say no, too. 

     “And you’ll get to see how ugly my dress is.” I laughed, trying to distract myself from the anxiety building in me. When Raven was ready, she locked up and we walked to my house a few blocks over. 

     “How are we going to tell Luke?” Raven asked once we were on my street. 

     “You aren’t going to do anything.” I told her confidently. “Just let me take care of it.”

     “What are you going to do, Allie?” Raven questioned with suspicion thick in her tone. Smiling knowingly, I was going to show her that I knew what she was talking about with Toby, but she’d have to wait to find that out. Maybe, between the two of us, we could figure out what it meant. 

     “You’ll see.” I assured her.