Commencement Day

I am a soldier. I do not want.

While the Council didn't select me for the Workforce Section of my dreams—my lanky frame has yet to gain an ounce of muscle in two years, and I think my eggshell bones are refusing to mend sheerly out of protest—things could be worse. I could be in the Sanitation Section, referred to with a less savory "s" word by most, or in the Contamination section, whose latest fleet of workers returned with radiation boils splitting their skin and whose families likely won't see them leave our installation's medical ward. Worse still, I could be Sectionless, left to beg at the fortified walls of the country's municipal installations for scraps of food and enough clothing to fend off the fallout.

I am a soldier. I do not want.

I roll the Military Section's motto around in my mind, words sloshing back and forth like the murky water that pulses beyond the installation's ocean-side wall. Raindrops patter along the brim of my patrol cap, and a few stray droplets drip from my tightly knotted bun and dampen my uniform collar. It's a dreary day but not a dangerous one. The Council's meteorologists tested the precipitation in the early hours—more water than acid—and deemed it safe to carry out Commencement Day. The very words makes my stomach summersault. Commencement Day.

My boots click against the paved street, and my rifle thumps against my back in unison with the hundred other soldiers marching like ants toward the capitol. It takes everything in me to keep from making an about-face and running in the opposite direction. I don't want to be here today. I don't want to do this today.

I am a soldier. I do not want.

Two years ago, I was not a soldier. I was one of a thousand anxious students seated in the capitol's domed lecture hall, scorecard in hand, waiting for the results of my Workforce Section. Averagely intelligent, above averagely artistic, my instructors assumed I would live out my days in the Arts Section, constructing historical depictions of the Council's greatest achievements for the enjoyment of our citizens. The truth is that our country will always need more soldiers than artists, and there's no aptitude test necessary to follow orders.

In the end, we all follow orders—my Workforce Section is merely the only one that doesn't pretend we have a choice in the matter. The Council instructs us, grades us, and decides our Workforce Section. It chooses how far we advance in our careers, who within our Section we marry, and how many children we are required to have. Everything is tactical, structured around the survival of our brothers and sisters at war with the contamination outside the perimeter walls, which makes personal attachments a liability to the cause. Emotion is weakness. Emotion renders you Sectionless.

We reach the marble capitol building, and its prominent dome rises in the gray sky like the skull of a giant whose eye sockets we've repurposed for gaping entrances and whose nose and mouth are still buried in the earth below. My throat tightens as we march through the rightmost socket and into the lecture hall. From the ground, the wooden seats stuffed with students are a dizzying ocean of ashen faces. At the center of the circular hall is a marble stage, and a Council leader stands on it with hair so white and so fine that I'm not entirely convinced it isn't a dusting of dandruff over his bald head.

Our formation halts at the north end of the dome, and though we aren't authorized to move so much as a muscle, I cannot keep my eyes from roving up and down the sea of students. I search and search until my azure eyes meet a matching set in the eighteenth row.

Her thin lips quirk up in the hint of a smile, but her eyes are wide and wild. I examine the way her left hand is clenched around her scorecard while her right clings to her crutches like they're a life raft. Her slender legs look skeletal, strapped into their hulking metal braces, and I can tell from the rust stains encircling the joints that Mother and Father haven't helped her oil them since I left. But why would they—so dedicated to the cause that they never once celebrated a birthday, didn't bother showing up for my Workforce Section Commencement Day, and never wrote a single letter to me in the two years I've been gone—ever help their youngest daughter clean and oil the braces that let her walk?

If she is not strong enough to do it herself, she is not strong enough for the cause.

Their words never deterred me from sneaking out of bed to oil the small joints by flashlight, nor did they keep me from scouring the streets with her after class for bolts and straps. Because the truth is, no matter what the Council orders or the mottos say, I love her. I loved her the day Mother came home from the medical ward with her tucked in a scratchy wool blanket, and I've loved her every day since. She is the best friend I was never allowed to have, the confidant I was never meant to keep, and the other half of a beating heart that was never mine to share.

And now she's here, facing the Council's judgment. I know she'll get something brainy and never sleep in a tent or shovel out the sewers when they clog, but it hurts to know she won't be a soldier. In the back of my mind, there was always the hope that we'd be sent to the same Section—that we would see each other again—but the fantasy is over. I can no longer pretend she will be with me. Unlike my parents, who will receive her address to ship her clothing, I will never know what becomes of her. I won't know what installation she's assigned to, I won't see her grow up, I won't talk to her again, I won't—

I swallow my thoughts before they become too poisonous, ignore the heat prickling the corners of my eyes, and force myself to focus on the Council leader as he rattles off names. Students stand one by one, walk from their seats to him, and hand over their results. He gives each scorecard a cursory glance to ensure the name and score match what was received by the Council, then designates a Section.

Military Section gains three hundred and fourteen cadets from the first four hundred and fifty names. Some look ready for this. Others, like me two years ago, look as if they want to scream a mistake has been made, that they weren't meant to see combat, that they were trained in education and the arts—but like me, they are smart enough to stay quiet.

"Thebe Carter."

My heart seizes in my chest, air sucked from my lungs like the world finally decided to give into the crushing vacuum of space, and I am trapped within the ringing box of my ears as she gets to her feet. Where everyone else was silent, she clanks down the staircase like keys dumped on marble. The stiff braces squeal as her knees bend, and even the stony-faced soldier beside me dares a wince.

An eternity passes before Thebe reaches the stage, and the Council leader gingerly plucks the scorecard from her hand as if her condition could spread to him through contact. My blood boils at the sneer curling his lips as he looks her over, and my hands—already in fists by my sides as I stand at attention—coil so tightly that my nails dig painful crescents into my palms.

"Sectionless."

No. My throat closes just in time to keep the agonized moan in the pit of my stomach from rising to my mouth. No, that can't be right. My knees wobble as the lecture hall lights go momentarily dim. I sway. I blink. I fail to breathe. It must be a mistake.

She's not physically capable of being in the Military, Sanitation, Contamination, or Labor Sections, but those aren't the only duty assignments. I've seen her work complex mathematics in her head, pull apart broken electronics to fix them in minutes, and read at a college level before losing all her baby teeth. She could be an engineer or a researcher for the Medical Section. She could be a records keeper for the Council. There's simply no way she received a score that would leave her Sectionless.

But then again, there's no way I received a score for anything but Arts.

If Thebe is surprised, she doesn't show it. With more grace than I could ever muster, she steps down from the stage and walks toward the two others deemed Sectionless. Both sobbing. Both braced at either arm by guards.

The Council leader continues his duties as if he hasn't just shattered my soul like glass, and I am utterly numb by the Commencement's end. I barely register my captain's call to arms, saluting the Council leader as he exits. It's only when my captain shouts his subsequent order that I return to life.

"Give me six soldiers to escort the Sectionless to the perimeter. Time now."

He's barely through before I fall out of formation and make a mad dash to stand before him. I shoulder-check, I shove, and I do not apologize. Even though I know no one else wants this assignment, I run for it anyway. By the time I reach the front of the formation, five soldiers are already lined up in two columns, and a stocky corporal is ten paces shy of being the sixth. I throw my body forward, boots pounding against the stone floor. I've never been the best runner—I've never been the best anything in my battalion—and the space between me and the small formation seems insurmountable.

I slip into place a fraction of a second before the corporal. My heart pounds, and my lungs burn, but I pull myself together and lock my gaze straight ahead. There's a fine line between a sense of duty and wanting this too much. I could be swapped out in a heartbeat if I appear too eager.

The captain eyes me with what my paranoid heart screams is suspicion as the Sectionless are brought before us. The guards situate the two, blubbering Secitonless between our first four soldiers, and Thebe is shoved roughly into the space between me and the soldier to my right.

I want to look at her, but I don't. Her eyes burn into my cheek, and my face reddens from the intensity. But the captain is still watching like a hawk, contemplating whether I am predator or prey, and I cannot afford to be the latter. I flex my jaw, draw my shoulders back, and ignore the bead of sweat tickling my neck.

The captain's sharp gaze leaves mine at last as he commands our small formation to depart. We march in silence toward the tall, slate perimeter wall, trading the cool interior of the capitol for the smattering of rain that's grown heavier since our arrival.

Thebe's steps are quick and choppy at my side, struggling to keep pace before she loses her footing about a hundred yards from the wall. I break stride to catch her, my calloused hands encasing her back and arms, and warmth like tea on a snowy day bleeds into my veins.

"It's about time I got your attention," she whispers, voice so playful—so her—despite the circumstances, I'm unsure whether I want to laugh or cry. "I thought I was going to have to throw my crutches down the storm drain before you'd say hi."

"You have to keep walking," I instruct, though my voice doesn't carry the authority I've trained to project. I withdraw my hands from her, but as I march, I let my knuckles brush back and forth against hers.

"It's kinda hard when you and your ginormous colleagues take one step for every six of mine," she grumbles back, though she keeps up nonetheless.

While her voice sends bolts of joy crackling through my body, the Commencement eats at me. By the time we are fifty yards from the wall, I can no longer contain myself. "What was your score?" I blurt. I can't live not knowing.

"Forty, forty, thirty-eight, forty," she answers simply, and I gasp. "I know, right? How does it feel being related to someone so much smarter than you?"

She got a nearly perfect score, my brain shrieks, and a cold sweat tugs at my skin. What is she doing out here?

"You can't be Sectionless," I exclaim, unable to keep my voice down and blatantly ignoring the disgruntled side-eye from the soldier beside us. "That's impossible."

Thebe lets out a faux gasp. "Did you, Rhea Carter, just insinuate that the Council is wrong?" She chuckles.

"This isn't funny, T."

"I never said it was," she counters, serious now. "But in a world where we don't get to choose anything, I think I'll choose to be happy today."

My heart splinters and the shards puncture my lungs, and I find it so, so hard to breathe. We're at the wall, and two burly guards peel back the iron gate.

"Why would you ever choose to be happy today?" I argue, turning to her only to find her looking up at me, eyes shimmering with a light that shouldn't be there.

"Because today I get one more talk with you, and what's better than that?" She flashes me a quick, brilliant smile before slipping past me for the gate.

While the other two Sectionless are drug screaming by their arms, Thebe waltzes forth as if floating. On the outside of the perimeter, she takes a moment to trace her hand along the gray stone as if painting it with her fingertips, and the other Sectionless are thrown over the threshold into the muddy grass at her feet.

One of the gate guards shouts an order, and the iron bars begin their heavy, lurking journey back to the wall. Thebe waves goodbye as the first bar passes before her face, and my vision blurs. My eyes are hot, my lungs are on fire, and I can't remember what oxygen tastes like.

I am a soldier. I do not want.

What an ugly lie.

For one endless heartbeat, I am no longer in control. My rifle sling rubs across the nape of my neck, and a second later, the icy chill of the weapon sweeps across my hands. I don't register moving my lips, but I hear my voice as if playing on a distant speaker, demanding the guards to stop the gate. The gravel before me is a thousand miles away as it crunches beneath my boots, and while the rain weighs down the dirty blonde coils of hair framing Thebe's face, I don't feel a single drop.

One of the gate guards stretches out a hand, and the world clicks back into place. I swing my body to face him and jerk away from his reach. The rifle trembles in my grip as I point it at his chest. I don't know that I would shoot him. I don't know that I wouldn't.

Eyes trained on him, I slip through the narrow opening between the iron gate and the wall and slowly backstep until I'm at Thebe's side. As soon as I'm through, the gate shuts with a clang of finality.

"Fancy meeting you out here," Thebe remarks, as if I didn't just throw away my career, my only source of food and drinkable water, and my shelter from the contamination outside for the one thing we've been trained since birth not to have—emotion. "Why'd you decide the grass was greener on my side?"

I don't know, I want to say, but that's not true. Because I love you, and I can't stay in there knowing you're out here, I want to say next, but I can't bring myself to tell her that either. While I know it's love I feel, it's never been spoken, and I'm not sure I know how to say it yet.

Instead, I return the rifle to its home between my shoulder blades and answer, "Because, in a world where we don't get to choose anything, I choose you."