Chapter 7
— In Eden —
​
Jessica leads me into the prow-shaped entrance hall, a big, empty space with a model of an old-fashioned sailing ship suspended from the ceiling. I follow her into a sunlit atrium, with six levels rising up around us. The plexiglass railings on each level have different colors: blue, green, pink. The Elites seem to love glass about as much as swimming. It’s all display and no privacy. When I look up, I see students walking along the galleries on each level.
“That’s Shane Borgman, he’s an even bigger creep than you,” Jessica says loudly as we sweep past a freckled boy with red, scruffy hair. He looks up with a scowl while Jessica continues,“Please don’t embarrass me by hanging out with the total losers. It’s bad enough that you’re wearing my old clothes. They’re sooo last year.”
We stop in front of an office labeled Security.
“OK, time to get you tagged.” Jessica opens the door.
I glance at the two guys in white uniforms who are sitting in the office. Their expressions are blank, like robots.
One of the guys pushes a glass tablet toward me. “Put your thumb on the screen.”
I press down and my photo and name appear, along with the number 7121.
“OK, citizen 7121. This is your ID card. Don’t lose it.” The guy pushes a small plastic card with my photo toward me.
“Sure,” I mumble.
“And here’s your e-pad for note taking.” The second guard hands me a flat, rectangular see-through piece of plastic. My ID number is imprinted in one corner.
“Don’t I get a pen as well?” I ask.
Jessica snorts with laughter. “It’s e-lec-tro-nic.” She presses a small, white button on the side of the piece of plastic. The e-pad turns white and a neon alphabet appears across the bottom. “You write notes by pressing the letters,” Jessica explains, “and you can select your school assignments, homework schedules, and calendar at the top. Today is Wednesday, so you have math, starting in five minutes, followed by politics and English.” She hits math and a classroom on the fifth floor lights up while an arrow appears, pointing through a 3D map of the school. “If you select the subject, it shows you the room that it’s in and the route to get there.”
“Thank—” I start, but Jessica continues talking.
“But you have to pick up your things from your locker first.” She swipes her finger across the screen and selects a location on the second floor. “Which is here! And by the way, you better hurry. Miss Li really hates it when we’re late.” With that Jessica spins around and stalks out of the office.
I give the security guys a helpless stare, but they don’t even blink. Clasping my new e-pad under my arm I run along the hallway. I reach the second floor in three minutes flat. The lockers are in a U-shaped alcove, a series of square, illuminated compartments with frosted glass doors. Here and there kids are rushing up to them and tapping at the glass. When they do, the frosted glass turns transparent and swings outward. So that’s how this works—but which one is mine?
I notice the numbers. 4490, 4500. These must be the citizen IDs. I look for 7121 and find it on the left, at waist height. At that moment the bell rings. Groups of chatting students break up midsentence and scatter along the hallway, like shoals of minnows disturbed by a thrown rock.
I press my finger against the thumb-shaped dent in the glass door and at once the contents are revealed in a mellow orange light: a neatly folded red-and-white competition swimsuit, a red swim cap and a pair of white goggles, one shoulder bag, and a red sports bag embroidered with the image of a big, slim, gray fish. Then there’s a set of bottles: shampoo, bath gel and the by now familiar GermAloid. According to the blue label it’s some kind of antibacterial foot gel. Guess the Elites are paranoid about warts. Quickly, I stow my e-pad in the shoulder bag, then scoop all other items into my sports bag. By the time the glass of my locker has frosted over again, I’m three minutes late. I sprint to the math room.
“Miss DeLora, I presume.” A petite woman in a short-sleeved, black blazer, her dark hair done up in a bun with two black sticks stuck through it, welcomes me with a disapproving expression. “You missed one-tenth of this class!”
I feel the blood rushing to my face as everyone in the room stares at me. Flustered, I slip into a seat in the front row. There are no desks, only weird wire stands attached to the right armrest of each chair. I look around the class and see that the other students are all tapping their e-pads, set onto the stands in front of them.
“Problem, Miss DeLora?” Miss Li is standing over me with a frown.
“No, no.” I fish my e-pad out of my bag, switch it on and search for the equations that everyone else has open. Miss Li gives an exasperated sigh, takes the e-pad from my hands, taps a few icons and puts it down on the stand in front of me. In the top corner of the screen is a live video of our classroom and of Miss Li glaring at me.
Are they recording this?
“Ignore the video. It’s for home revision purposes,” Miss Li says. “You need to be looking at this.” She taps a section that says matrices. “This is just a quick refresher for the exam.”
I look up at her. I’ve never done anything like this before. We only got taught basic arithmetic in the FRS and the Valley.
Miss Li shakes her head, muttering under her breath. “Career exams a month away. What in seas’ sake is Principal Preen thinking, sending me an FRS student now . . .”
Five minutes before the bell, Miss Li returns and snatches up my e-pad. “Four out of fifteen exercises correct. Well, I expected zero.”
With a shock I realize that this is probably the closest thing I’m gonna get to a compliment.
I hurry after Jessica and the crowd of students from my class, heading along the flashing route that my e-pad has mapped toward the politics room. And then I see him. Diagonally ahead of me. The boy from the Valley. My heart makes an involuntary leap. Blond locks hide his face from the side. He’s taller than most of the students and stands out in his white shirt. In his left ear he’s wearing an earring. A silver shark’s-tooth-shaped stud. It has a pattern of cut out triangles. I wait for him to turn, to notice me, to meet my gaze. Will he recognize me? What will he say? My feelings are tumbling one over the other. The elation at seeing him, the fear of what will happen now. But he doesn’t look back even once, he just walks through the crowd as if the rest of the students didn’t exist.
I turn my face to the ground to hide my blush. Last thing I want is for Jessica to know that she’s right. But can it really be? Can the boy who rescued me from the Valley be the talented young officer who Governor Proctor wanted me to meet?
Keeping my head down, I follow Jessica to the third floor. Politics is followed by English and marine biology. The teachers all react pretty much the same as Miss Li, but each class is even worse than math—if that’s even possible. As for the students—nobody talks to me. By the end of marine biology I catch some girls staring at me and giggling. I’m sure I have Jessica to thank for that. When the bell rings for lunch I can’t get out of the classroom fast enough.
“Hey, FRS! Who let you out of your aquarium? Lab fish over there.” A guy with a mop of black hair deliberately steps in my way so that I bump into him. He smirks and points at a glass tank by the window. “See the uncanny resemblance?”
I knock my elbow into his side as I push past him and hurry from the room, a sick feeling in my stomach. I hope they don’t actually experiment on animals here!
In the lunch hall Jessica sits down with the two girls from the volleyball beach. They’re both wearing pastel yellow, like her. Halfheartedly, I turn to their table.
“Na-ah,” Jessica says. “Don’t even think about it! This is an Elites-only table. So scoot.”
“Why are you sending her away?” one of the girls from the beach asks. “Isn’t she like your new—”
“My new what, Kayla? Adopted stray? House invader? Yeah, she’s my house invader.” Jessica waves her hand at me. “Scram!”
I turn and find a quiet table for myself, finish the meal from the school Nutrigators, then hurry out of the lunch hall. I just want to be alone somewhere.
Jessica’s voice echoes in my mind. Ararat’s golden boy . . . So why did he save me? An FRS-girl breaking the law? And what will he think when he finds out why I’m here? The drowning girl that he fished out of the Valley—at Eden Academy as the future swimming sensation. He’ll know there’s something wrong. He’ll know I’m a fraud. What if he tells someone . . . ?
Wham!
I knock right into someone.
“I’m so sorry . . .” I begin but then my heart stops. It’s him. It’s GG.
He blinks, as if he’s gazing into a bright light. We stand frozen, our eyes locked. I can see him fight to hide his emotions as the recognition kicks in. In his eyes there is shock . . . joy . . . also worry.
“I’m Naya.” I hold out my hand. I have to say something to break the silence.
In a flash his frozen expression is a replaced with a polite smile. “Gillan, welcome to Ararat.”
He is literally the first student to have said that. He shakes my hand briefly. The touch sends a nervous tingle through my body. He’s even more handsome than I remember him. Boyish cute, with strength and confidence that lend him maturity.
Footsteps behind me break my trance.
“Scouting out the competition, Gallagher?” Duke steps into the hallway. Behind him are Kayla and the other girl that Jessica was sitting with.
Gillan gives a reconciliatory shrug. “Just introducing myself to Ararat’s newest member.”
“Yeah, well, back off. She’s on our team.”
Does he mean swim team? What! I’m on a team with Duke and Jessica’s minions? How . . . ? Why . . . ?
Gillan shoots me a quick look. Did he not know either?
“Guess your team needs the help more than mine,” he says to Duke.
“Guess we’ll find out now. If you actually stick around for class,” Duke says.
Gillan gives him a short nod and turns to an exit marked Swim Halls, but before he leaves he holds my gaze for a second. His eyes are as they were when we first met, drawing me in and locking me out at the same time.
“Come on, we’ve got twenty minutes for a game of Frisbee,” Duke says. He and the two girls walk off, leaving me alone in the empty school hallway. Some “team” they are. I walk through a glass door on my left labeled Study Area and cuddle up in an egg chair. I haven’t been there long when my e-pad gives an emotionless chime and flashes a notification: Lunch time ending. Next class: Swim class. Five minutes until my first swim class. The one I’ve been trying not to think about. The one that might be my last on Ararat. Or as a free citizen. I stare at the e-pad and chew on a fingernail. I guess it won’t matter whose team I’m on. I’m already shark fodder.
The bell rings. I take a deep breath. I walk across a pristine lawn to a gigantic complex of outdoor and indoor pools. Now I feel truly abandoned—here on Ararat, the verdant, hostile home of the Elites.
The chatter of the high school girls in the locker room rings like a wordless buzz in my head. There’s a lump in my throat and an odd drumming in my ears. I take my red swimsuit out of my sports bag and pull it on. It’s completely new, no stretchy, see-through patches, no worn elastic, but I’m too nervous to admire it. My heart drops to my feet as I follow the others into a bright hall with vast floor-to-ceiling windows. The filtered pool water is sparkling, crystal-clear. Along the inner wall run perfectly parallel spectator stands. Squishy plastic mats cover the floor to prevent anyone from slipping. The starting blocks are all a different color. A scoreboard and plaques with the images of the four team logos hang on the wall opposite. The team logos are repeated in the four lanes, on the turquoise tiles at the bottom of the pool. A shark in lane one, then a barracuda, then a seal and finally a ray. Up here the swim teams actually have cool names, not names of stuff you eat for dinner. Above the scoreboard is the crest of Eden Academy: a compass and a star, above the waves of the ocean.
“Listen up, team.” The voice of Eden Academy’s head swim coach echoes through the hall. Somehow I expected a classier, equally grumpy version of Coach Dench, but the sporty young woman who just walked in couldn’t be more different. She’s got blue eyes and blonde, chin-length, straight hair, and is dressed in a blue, shorty wetsuit, emblazoned with the school crest.
“We’re five weeks from the first stage of the swim tournament. Captains, take your teams and join Coach Milkins and the noncompetition squad in hall two for warm-up, then lead training in hall three. I’ve got our new champion to attend to.”
“Yes, Coach Janson!” the students call and plod out of the hall.
I notice that she’s not much taller than I am. She steps toward me shaking her head. “Look at that, our new champ. Still thinks she got dropped off here by accident. Well, don’t look so shocked. The government doesn’t make mistakes—or have you been skipping your FRS community classes?” I stand there, my mouth agape. She continues. “Yes, I know what goes on down there, but it’s a totally different ball game here.”
Her eyes flicker to the crest of Eden Academy. Omnia vincam, the motto says.
“I will conquer all,” Janson explains. “It’s Latin. The forgotten language. Makes you wonder what place it has in a society where talk of history is forbidden. But let’s not worry about that. For now all you need to know is how the knockout tournament works—and how to stay in it. Has anyone told you the basics so we can get you straight in the water?”
I shake my head, waiting for the expected reprimand, but Janson looks like she expected that answer.
“Typical, they want you to check all their boxes, but they won’t tell you how. So let’s get you up to speed.” She walks up to a row of screens on the wall below the spectator stands that display information about the races. “We have three stages to our swim tournament, one at the end of each academic term,” she explains. “The Initials, the Midterms and the Finals. The singles categories are the ones you know: breaststroke, freediving, butterfly, and freestyle. Boys and girls compete in separate categories. The race distance decreases with each tournament stage. That’s four hundred meters for the Initials, two hundred meters for the Midterms and one hundred meters for the Finals. Excluding freediving, which is always a one hundred meter race. The tournament is knockout. That means one competitor gets cut in every stage. So in the first stage we have four swimmers per race, in the second stage three and in the final stage only two. All clear?”
Yeah, crystal. I won’t make it past stage one.
Janson goes on. “We also have a mixed relay. It’s a team race, two girls, two boys, every participant swims fifty meters of a different style. The team that comes last is cut from the relay, same as for the other categories. Nice and easy, right?”
I nod.
Janson turns around to the starting blocks of the Sharks, Barracudas, Seals, and Rays, which are arranged in the order green, red, black, and yellow. “You’ll be swimming in the same lane, lane two, for all competitions.”
So I guess I’m a Barracuda. Duke’s on the red team. Figures. He’s pretty hot-headed.
But why do I have to be with them? I look at the team photos on the wall. Everyone who crashed the volleyball game at the beach is a Barracuda. Jessica, Kayla Sommers, Mia Coote—Jessica’s other minion—and the two black-haired guys from the volleyball beach, Marlo Carter and spiky-haired Ezekiel Wright. Duke is team captain of course. I look at the photos of the other teams. I would literally rather be with anyone else. The team captain of the Sharks is a black-haired girl, called Soraya Diaz. The Rays have Shane Borgman, the red-haired boy with freckles, who Jessica insulted in the entrance hall. And the Seals—
“Ah, you spotted your competition,” Janson says. “Gillan Gallagher. He used to be my best student. Swept up all the medals. Now he’s in Aqua8 so much, I hardly see him.”
I suppress a nervous flutter of my heart. “Don’t all top swimmers join Aqua8?” I ask.
“Get drafted, more like,” Janson corrects. “But Gillan got called up earlier than the rest after he lost his family. He’s an officer already. Youngest of his rank.”
My heart stings when I realize that Gillan is an orphan. What kind of ruthless system takes advantage of such a cruel circumstance to conscript early?
“Training will be in hall three every afternoon at one thirty,” Janson continues. “You can do extra training during your free periods, any time you want in any of the indoor or outdoor pools and—did you get your bottle of GermAloid?”
I nod.
“Make sure you apply it every day,” Janson says. “It’s an antibacterial gel that keeps your feet clean. Any questions?”
I wiggle my toes. “Do I have to be a Barracuda?”
Janson raises an eyebrow. “Now there’s a question I hadn’t expected so soon. Already picked your sides?”
I shrug.
“School rules dictate ‘no family rivalry’,” she explains. “You’re in the Queen household, so Principal Preen decided that you’ll be in the Barracudas, same as Jessica. Now, let’s get you in the water, before they have both our asses.”
Did she just say asses?
I climb onto the red starting block and pull my new goggles over my eyes. They steam up instantly, blurring my vision.
“Ready?” Janson calls. “Dive!”
I jump and hit the water squarely. The added height of the block didn’t do me any good. My chest stings. Disoriented, I reach for the floating lane divider.
“So let’s put your technique to the test and see if you’re the butterfly prodigy they promised me,” Janson calls. “Who knows? The last genius they sent me as a freediver turned out to be a freestyler.”
I’m too nervous to laugh. This is the moment of truth. I want to grab my necklace for support, but it’s stashed away in my sports bag in the locker. After Jessica almost stole it on the volleyball beach, I didn’t want to draw any more attention to it. I won’t be allowed to wear it on the day of the competition anyway. Better get used to it.
“We’ll start with breaststroke,” Janson calls out to me. “Four lengths. We’re in the competition hall, so there are touchpads at the end of each lane. Make sure you tap your hand to them after each lap for the timer.”
I nod, swallow water and push myself into a forward stroke. It isn’t working at all. Halfway through the pool I’m still paddling uselessly, like a drowning duckling. I try not to panic. I’m no swimmer. I never was.
“Stop! Stop!” Relief and resignation take over when Janson calls out to me. “Who taught you breaststroke, kiddo? You swim like a sinking canoe. Split the water with your arms—like a frog.” She mimics. “There now, that’s better.”
The next stroke carries me forward half a body length. I swim on until the end of the lane.
“Nothing that a bit of training can’t fix,” Janson calls. “Let me see your freestyle.”
I kick off the wall and hurl myself forward. Water splashes around me. Left arm, right arm, left arm . . . I’m churning up the water too wildly, but just as I want to pause, to check where I am, my hand hits the touchpad for the fourth time. Janson looks at the competition display board. “Not bad. Definitely not bad. You could qualify with that. Now freediving.”
I wish she’d asked for butterfly. I don’t want another failure.
She sees my hesitation, walks to the poolside, and sits down. “Calm your breathing. When you feel ready take two more breaths. Exhalations longer than the inhalations. Then fill your lungs with air and dive. Don’t worry if you don’t make it very far, most students can’t do more than a quarter length. OK?”
I nod and take my time to steady my breathing. The water closes around me as I dive. I see the turquoise pool, the Barracuda logo below me. I push on in underwater breaststroke until the longing for air kicks in. Maybe I can make that quarter length. But the excitement raises my heart rate and suddenly that’s it.
I surface and see Coach Janson staring at the display board. “Impressive,” she calls out. She’s standing well past the halfway point. It can’t be . . . I did more than half a pool length?
“That was almost fourteen and a half meters, wouldn’t you say?” she asks.
I nod, unsure. There are numbers written on the side of the pool, but she’s standing on the closest one. If that’s the number fifteen, I did more than fifteen meters—but something in her expression prevents me from saying anything.
“Now show me that butterfly,” Janson says.
I’m no longer scared. The freediving boosted my confidence. Water rushes around me as I kick off. Suddenly the old thrill is back, the one I felt when I swam against Duke at the beach. The pool doesn’t seem twenty-five meters long anymore. It’s just a tiny pool. I dolphin kick, sweep both arms out of the water simultaneously and slap my hand against the touchpad for the final length.
Janson smiles at me. “Our school champ has some serious competition coming up, kiddo. We’ll wait to see how tomorrow’s training goes, but I think I’ll enter you for the butterfly singles and the mixed relay qualifiers. The government want to see victories, so let’s give them victories.”
I nod as I get out of the pool. I feel an odd buzz of excitement. I’m gonna stay here on Ararat. I didn’t fail. I didn’t embarrass myself. I didn’t put my friends or family in danger.
But as I shower off at the end of class I wonder how things will go from now on. I hate being a Barracuda, I hate being on a team with the bullies who have been tormenting me and my friends for months. And I might not understand why Gillan saved my life in the Valley, but I don’t want to be on a team with his rivals. That way I’ll never find out.
Deep in thought I walk out of the swim hall. The sun reflects off the various EV roofs as I walk across the parking lot. Green, blue . . . but in the space where Jessica’s EV was is a gap. She must have taken off without me. I’m figuring out how to get back to the Queens without her when I feel a tap on my shoulder.
“Naya DeLora?”
I spin around and my euphoria disappears. Behind me stands a young guy in a blue camouflage battle dress uniform, a handgun in his waist belt and a rifle slung over his shoulder.
I see him and I know it’s all over. Gillan must have told them. About the Valley, about everything. That explains his shock when he saw me. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t at swim class. He just wanted to tell them where to find me. And now they have.
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