Kristen Simmons: Article 5

“Yes,” I answered, trying not to read too much into his smile. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.” He reached for my hand, and I tried not to be stiff and awkward, but I was, because this was Chase; we’d grown up together, and so what? Maybe I’d loved him for my entire life, but he didn’t think about me that way because… well… we were friends.

Oh.

“Do you like… pb and j? Because you used to, and that’s what I packed for lunch.” I finished lamely.

“Yes. Truth?” His thumb skimmed along the inside of my wrist, and my whole body reacted as if I’d been shocked. It scared me how much I liked it, how much I wanted more.

“Sure.”

“Would it be weird if I kissed you?”

We’d stopped walking. I hadn’t even noticed until he shifted his weight, the leaves crunching loudly beneath his feet. He laughed, then cleared his throat. I couldn’t look up. I felt like glass, like he could look inside me and see the truth: that I’d waited half my life to kiss him. That no boy I’d ever met compared to him.

He leaned down, so close that I could feel the air warm between us.

“Do you dare me?” he whispered in my ear.

I nodded, my pulse flying.

He lifted my face gently. When his lips touched mine everything within me slowed and melted. The tightness in my throat disappeared, the nervous tingle in my chest eased. Everything faded. Everything but him.

Something changed between us then, a spark of light, of heat. His lips pressed mine open, teasing first, then tasting. One of his hands pulled me nearer, the other slid under my hair, pressing beneath the band of my loosened ponytail. My fingers longed for his skin and found his face, traced the strong lines of his neck.

He pulled away suddenly, breath uneven, gaze piercing mine. His arms stayed locked around me, though, and I was glad, because my legs were weak.

“Truth?” I whispered.

He smiled, and my heart soared. “Truth.”

“EVERYBODYup!”

I snapped alert at the man’s voice booming off the bus’s elongated compartment.

Morning light glared in through the windows, and I sheltered my face—swollen from my earlier crying jag—from its cheerful mocking. I wasn’t sure if I’d slept or just drifted in and out of consciousness. Since we’d left Louisville, I’d relived Chase taking my mother at least a hundred times.

Rosa and I had talked some more. She’d been charged with an Article 3—her cousin had claimed her as a dependent on her tax forms, which didn’t exactly fit the whole one-man-plus-one-woman-equals-kids thing—but since the West Virginia state line we’d been silent. Cool as she was, Rosa couldn’t fake shock. We were a long way from home.

The bus hissed and slowed to a stop outside a large brick building. Implanted in the dying grass alongside the drive was a green metal sign with glowing white letters:

I looked around anxiously, wondering, hoping, that there was a separate building for my mother. That maybe they’d brought her here to rehabilitation, too. At least that way we’d be close and could straighten out this mess together. But my dismal intuition was right. There were no buses following ours.

We filed out of the seats one at a time. My back and neck ached from spending hours confined to the same position. As we exited the bus, soldiers holding batons flanked us on either side, as though we were running the gauntlet. Rosa blew a kiss to the man with the black eye, and his face reddened.

From outside the bus, I had a better view. We stood before an old building, like the kind you see in history books surrounded by men wearing ruffled shirts and curly wigs. It was red brick, but some of the bricks had faded to gray, giving the illusion that its flat face was potholed. The front doors were tall and freshly painted white and bordered on both sides by stout columns supporting a triangular overhang. My eyes wandered up six floors, squinting in the fresh morning sun. A copper bell hung dormant in a tower on the roof.

Across the street behind me was a clover-patched knoll, and on it a long set of stairs that descended to an open pavilion and a more modern, glass-plated building. Another set of stairs disappeared below this level down the hill. It looked like one of the old college campuses that had been shut down during the War.

When I turned back toward the main building, a woman had materialized at the top of the stairs. Next to the soldiers she was petite but even more severe. Her shoulders arched back beneath her snow-white hair. Her whole countenance seemed to withdraw into each orifice, making her eyes look overly large and sunken and her mouth appear toothless when closed.

She wore a white buttoned-up blouse and a navy pleated skirt, thin enough to show the bones of her pelvis jutting forward through it. A baby blue handkerchief hung in a sailor’s knot around her neck. The MM appeared to be apprising her of the situation and awaiting orders, which seemed odd to me. I’d never seen a woman in the FBR’s chain of command. As the woman glared down the line of girls, all the things I didn’t know, all the uncertainty, swelled within me. Things may not have been perfect at home, but at least I’d known what to expect—at least until yesterday. Now nothing felt familiar. Nowhere felt safe. I hunched, grasping my hands together to keep them from shaking.

“Great,” Rosa said under her breath. “Sisters.”

“Is she a nun?” I whispered back, perplexed.

“Worse. Haven’t you ever seen the Sisters of Salvation?” When I shook my head, she leaned closer. “They’re the MM’s answer to women’s liberation.”

I wanted to hear more—if the Sisters of Salvation were meant to counteract feminism, what was a woman doing in charge?—but just then her head snapped to the soldier beside her.

“Bring them in.”

We were led into the main foyer of the brick building. Here, the floor was tiled and the walls were painted nursery-room peach. Beneath a staircase on the left, a hallway lined with doors extended to the end of the building.

One by one we were brought to a rectangular fold-out table where two check-in clerks, wearing the same white and navy uniforms, waited with files. After Rosa had identified herself in an overdone Latina accent, I stepped forward.

“Name?” a clerk with braces asked me without looking up.

“Ember Miller.”

“Ember Miller. Yes, there she is. Another Article 5, Ms. Brock.”

The frail but menacing woman behind her smiled an inauthentic welcome.

Article 5. That label was like a pin under my fingernail every time I heard it. I felt a rush of heat rise up my neck.

“Just call me Hester Prynne,” I mumbled.

“Speak clearly, dear. What was that?” asked Ms. Brock.

“Nothing,” I answered.

“If nothing is what you said, all the better to simply be silent.”

I looked up, unable to hide the surprise from my face.

“She’s a seventeen as well, Ms. Brock. She ages out in July.”

My heart skipped a beat.

They can’t possibly hold me until I’m eighteen. I’d considered the possibility of a couple days, or until we could arrange the citation money for bail, but July eighteenth was five months away! I’d done nothing wrong, and my mother, whose only crime had maybe been irresponsibility, needed me. I had to find her and get back home.

Katelyn Meadows never went home, a small, frightened voice in my brain said. A citation suddenly seemed too easy. An unrealistic punishment. Why would they waste money hauling me here if just to send us a bill? My throat tightened.