Kassy Tayler: Remnants of Tomorrow

Perhaps it is because they don’t have a care. They have nothing to worry about beyond what clothes they will wear tomorrow. They cannot see what is beyond their part of the dome. But I have seen it all, and I know this routine they live will soon be interrupted. The weather outside will change, the air around the dome will warm up and the inside will become hot and uncomfortable. Maybe then they will notice what is happening around them.

As long as they are comfortable, the royals have no reason to leave. Why would they, when they have at their fingertips everything they could possibly want to make their lives easy? I had no idea of the luxuries they have at hand until I experienced them for myself here in my father’s quarters. But even with all this ease and comfort I would not want to be one of the royals. Their sense of complacency has to be as confining as the locks that hold me in.

There is nothing more to see outside. I am weary and I am frustrated. I want to beat on the doors or kick something or someone. Instead I go to the bookshelves and look at the titles for what feels like the hundredth time. The names have become familiar to me: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, and a particularly scary story titled Frankenstein , by Mary Shelley. Reading them fills me with a sense of wonder at how the world was before the dome, along with anger that such knowledge was kept from the majority of us who lived inside. At least now I have a better understanding for the world as it was and, since I’ve been outside, can envision the stories actually happening. I pull a book of poems from the shelf, but they do nothing to distract me from my worries.

“When are you going to change out of those clothes?” Ellen asks, when she comes back for my breakfast tray. She has not said much to me since I’ve been here, so her question surprises me. I still wear my shiner clothes. I take them off each night before I climb into the soft, comfortable bed and put them on again after I wash each morning. My father provided me with a wardrobe full of beautiful dresses to wear, and I refuse to put them on. Wearing them would mean compliance on my part, and as my father well knows from our brief meeting before I escaped the dome, noncompliance is a part of who I am and the reason I am here. It may be a small victory for me to refuse his gifts of clothing, but it is one I will cling to for as long as I can.

“You are only making things more difficult for yourself,” Ellen advises in a condescending tone. “Your father has been most generous with you, yet you thumb your nose at him and try to escape.” She gestures to the boards on the window.

“If my father is so generous, then why am I a prisoner?” I ask.

“You are here for your own safety,” Ellen snaps at me. She doesn’t look at me, and hasn’t since the first time I saw her, when she carefully studied me and apparently decided that the sight of me disgusted her. Why, I don’t know. I feel the hatred emanating off her, and it is unpleasant at the very least. Her answers never change no matter how many times I ask her. Why am I a prisoner? Where is Pace? Where is Levi? When will I talk to my father?

Today she surprises me with something she’s never said before. “You should just be grateful that your father has acknowledged you as his daughter. If not for that, you’d be in the flames like the rest of the trash that litters our streets.”

“What?” I look at her, and in her blue eyes I plainly see her hatred along with something else that seems hauntingly familiar. As if she knows she’s revealed too much, Ellen clamps her mouth shut, picks up my breakfast tray, and practically runs from the room.

“Wait!” I call out and the door slams behind her. I hear the turning of the key. I run after her, grab the knob and twist it, knowing that it will not give. I pound on the door, just as I did the first time I was locked inside. “Let! Me! Out!” I scream in frustration. I lean against the door and hear the staccato of her footsteps as she leaves me alone until morning.

What did she mean by saying I’d be in the flames? Does that mean Pace and Levi have been burned like Alex? My stomach heaves at the thought, and I run to the water closet attached to my room as I lose my last meal.

Ellen’s visit has left me more restless than usual, if that is possible. I have to do something to fill my time until I am so weary that I will fall asleep. I am used to being active, and the hours of having no place to go and nothing to do try my nerves until I feel like screaming and pulling out my hair.

I go to the window. The sun is high in the sky now. I can sense it. I now know for certain that we did take shelter on the opposite side of the wall from the royals and that only a thick pane of glass divided us.

Break the glass. Lyon said that was the solution to bringing people out of the dome. As I gaze at the iron girders that soar from the ground upward to the sky, I see that it is that simple. The royals would still be protected within, but the dome could be opened to the sky and the sun and the rest of the population could go outside and prosper. But only after the rovers are dealt with.

So much to do for so simple a task. Doing it right means the difference between life and death for several people. If only I can make my father see that we all need to work together to make things better. If only I can make him realize that the decisions he makes are not the best for everyone. But before I can do that, I have to make him care about the rest of the lives in his care. I have to make him see that we all have something to offer for the greater good and that if everyone survives and prospers, then the royals will too.

I cannot convince anyone of anything as long as I remain locked in this room. There are too many people that I care about for me to sit and do nothing. I have to know if James and Lyon made it out safely. I am concerned about my friends Lucy, David, Jilly, and Harry, all part of the seekers who, like me, believed there was a world outside. They were all trapped inside the dome after the explosion and asked for our help by tying a message to the tiny leg of Pip, Pace’s canary.

I am also worried about Jonah, my cat, and Ghost, the blind pony that depends on me. Do they miss me as much as I miss them? Is someone on the outside caring for them, or have they been pushed aside and forgotten? Are my friends outside safe? Have there been any more rover attacks? Why are the streets we walked on when we came back inside the dome so deserted? They used to be home to the scarabs, the group of people who live on the edge of our society with no other purpose than to stay alive. The streets were strangely clear of them when we came back inside, and it has me worried about the lengths my father would go to.

Being stubborn has not gotten me the answers to these questions. I need to change tactics. It is obvious that my father is not going to come to me, so it is up to me to get to my father. I leave the window and go to the wardrobe.

The clothes inside were not made for me. The fabric is fine but old, with faded lace and adjusted seams. Luckily, I learned the effects of dressing nicely after wearing the yellow dress that Zan, Lyon’s daughter and Levi’s cousin, loaned me to wear to dinner one night. I do not want my father to see me as a shiner, beneath his notice as we lived beneath his streets. I want him to see me as his daughter and, more important, as an equal. Maybe then he will listen to what I have to say.

I search through the frilly ruffles and flowing sleeves contained in the wardrobe until I find something simpler and refined that reminds me of a dress that Jane wore the night we all dressed up for dinner. It is the same color as the evergreens from outside and has simple lines. The sleeves are long and the bodice is much more modest than Zan’s yellow dress. I go to the large mirror that adorns the dressing table in my room and hold it in front of me to judge the fit. It should work, although I am not sure about the abundance of fabric gathered up in the back.