Running Scared

Rain drops cling to the window, illuminated by the candles in my room. I press my face into the glass to squint into the darkness; the lampposts outside haven't been lit yet but I can just make out the fine rain, so fine that it has turned to mist. The wind cradles it, making the droplets dance every which way, violent yet graceful in its movement. I long to be able to travel so freely.

A scuffle in the corridor makes me start, my forehead banging off the glass pane hard. I'm still waving the stars from in front of my eyes when I see it.

I have received a sheet of folded paper beneath my door. There's something familiar about it, something that makes me feel as if I have already seen it somewhere before. The colour of it, so old that it is closer to yellow than white, the edges jagged as if it has been ripped from a book...the last time I'd looked at this paper, it was on Grahame's desk, tucked away in his notebook along with all his secret thoughts.

I haven't seen Grahame since lunch. When I'd sat down at our table, his seat was vacant and remained that way. I'd grown worried and had pictured the worst case scenarios, thought that maybe he'd been taken and I'd never see him again. Waiting for my turn but the Enforcers never arrived.

Moving closer to a candle, I see his untidy handwriting scribbled across the page. Not much, just a line. Enough for me to understand, not enough for anyone else to make sense of.

"Meet me in the place where this started."

Presumably, he isn't referring to the cafe where he persuaded me to help him on the run. No, it must be the warehouse. Could I find my way back to it? I think so. Did I want to go? I'm not sure.

Yet fifteen minutes later, I'm slipping in through the gap in the broken door and walking into the middle of the room where Grahame had fallen that night, taking me with him. He's already waiting for me, knowing my curiosity would bring me here. He doesn't even pretend to be relieved that I showed up and I'm annoyed that I've become so easy to read.

I stop a few steps away from him and fold my arms over my chest.

"Well?"

His face pinches at the distance I've purposely left between us but other than that, he doesn't mention it.

"I have a plan - to get us out of this, I mean."

He pauses and I don't know if he's expecting me to whoop with joy or collapse with gratitude but I do neither. I've learnt to keep my expectations low.

"And what is the plan?"

"I'll show you. Come on, up here." he tells me, clambering onto a wooden crate and extending a hand for me. I grab hold of it hesitantly and hoist myself up beside him, staring out of the cracked window. "What do you see?"

"I don't see anything. Just the Community."

"You need to look a little further." he explains, taking my shoulders and guiding me closer to his side of the window, affording me a better view.

He points a shaky finger away from us, his nail clipping against the glass. I can see dirt from the greenhouses still trapped beneath it, making me think of shallow graves, so I force myself to follow his direction and see what he is suggesting.

The trees in the distance, guarded by menacing fences and barbed wire, are stripped bare, their skeletal fingers reaching for the unattainable; the feel of the sun against their naked branches. The growing cities have taken most of our wilderness but someone had the sense to preserve pockets of areas so that a little of our countryside was still intact.

It's a forbidden place though; the forest stretches beyond the Community's limits. Though we try, we cannot sustain ourselves entirely. Sometimes, we must rely on the materials of others and only a few of us are granted special permission to commute between cities to collect or deliver goods. These selected people are always accompanied by Enforcers. If this is his plan, then I can spot numerous flaws with it.

"You want to go in there? You're saying that a pregnant woman will cope fine in the forest? At least with the Cutters, I'll have a quick death."

This always seems to be the final point in all of our ideas now. I've stopped thinking about survival, moved onto the far less appealing yet much more likely conclusion that death will end this, no matter what. This isn't about living but prolonging my time. At least I've made my peace with it, unlike Grahame.

"We don't know what else is out there -"

"Exactly!"

He throws me a pleading look, silencing me.

"What I'm trying to say is, it can't just be this." he presses, glancing around at the warehouse hopelessly. "This can't be it for us."

I understand, of course I do. The destitution, the oppression we face every single day, constantly afraid. We've never questioned it - I've never questioned it - because we're all so damn terrified of dying. We're so wrapped up in it that we forget to live. If we wander the city, we're belittled, put a toe out of line, we will be punished, think bad thoughts and they will come for us. But not Grahame, not anymore. He has lit an ember in me that will not fade and it is bright enough to make me ask more questions instead of walking straight out of this warehouse. I'm not the same girl I was a few months ago.

"How do you propose we get past the Enforcers, huh? The fence is guarded all the time. We'll be handing ourselves over."

This is when he gives me a coy smile. I stare at him hard.

"What? It is, isn't it?"

"Not all the time. Attendance for the executions is mandatory for everyone. It's the law. I mean it, Amelia. Everyone."

"How can you know this?"

"After that last execution - " he pauses when I flinch at the memory of the woman's screams but I wave him on. My feelings are worth far less than this information. He continues more tactfully. "Well, after that, I heard some Enforcers talking to each other, saying how they had to get back to fence-duty."

The ember ignites, glows a little brighter, starts to burn in my chest. I'm daring to hope and it is a wondrous thing, something I experience so rarely that I want to savour it.

"Okay. Okay - say we do get out of the Community, what about the baby? No doctors, nothing. What about when I give birth? I don't know a single thing about pregnancy."

"I've been meaning to bring that up. You must have noticed I wasn't at lunch today? Well, I sort of broke into Dr Morgan's office." Grahame admits sheepishly.

"You did what?! If you got caught, you could have been killed on the spot by an Enforcer!"

"I figured she has to go and eat too, so I...well, I got into her office and found a few books on pregnancy. They were dusty because I doubt she's ever needed them. When a woman actually gives birth around here, the prison doctor is the one who deals with it. Still, the books have everything we need to know."

"What are you saying, Grahame?"

He's smiling, so much so that he looks crazy. Not just in his face too, I can see the way his arms and hands constantly twitch, like he's alive with this idea that we can get away - he's running on the hope that I'm trying to keep checked in myself.

"I guess I'm saying that - hypothetically - I can help you deliver our baby."