I’m sorry. I have to find him. Eva will understand. -Rhett
That’s what’s hastily scribbled on the sheet of paper. Just that. Just three choppy sentences. That’s all Rhett left us. That’s all we have of Rhett now. He said he wouldn’t go after Hunter! I thought I’d convinced him! My heart hammers against my ribs and my blood pounds. I close my eyes, trying to remember everything about this morning. What could I have missed? How could we not have known?
My eyes fly open and I remember. Rhett whispered something into Lexie’s ear. I noticed it at the time, I just didn’t think…
I whirl around to face Lexie, who’s holding the paper, hands shaking. “You knew,” The words come out harsher than I meant, but I can’t bring myself to care. “You knew he was going to run, and didn’t tell me!” My voice is shaking.
I rip the paper from Lexie’s hands and wave it at her. “He says that I should understand, well guess what? I DON’T!” I yell the last words at her.
Lexie’s face fills with shame and slowly rises to meet my gaze. “You’re right,” She says simply, covering her face with both hands.
“How long have you known!?” I demand, I can feel my face turning red from anger.
“From the beginning. He started thinking about leaving a few days after Hunter disappeared, but…” She trails off into a fit of shaky laughter. “But it wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” She manages to finish.
I recoil quickly, “What?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be today! He was going to leave next week and… and I was going to go with him! He didn’t tell me about this, ok!? I was supposed to be with him!” She says the last sentence through tears, but I can’t give her sympathy. Not now.
“And what about me? What about Elaine?” I hiss.
“You… Rhett and I- well, we didn’t think you’d come. That you’d understand. We thought… we thought you might try to stop us,” Lexie admits, looking away from me.
“Stop you!?” I scream at her. “Dang it, Lexie! I’d do anything, anything, to stay with Elaine!”
And I realize, in that moment, how true it is. My mixed feeling about the Purification and whether it’s a good change or not, isn’t relevant. I don’t want the Purification. I never have. Not if it means I have to leave the one person I’ve ever let myself love.
“You should have told us,”
I glance up in surprise, it’s Elaine who says this.
“Eva would have understood,” Elaine takes my hand and squeezes it.
“Rhett’s going to get himself killed,” Lexie whispers, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “And it’s all my fault,”
I don’t tell her she’s wrong. I don’t know if she is. Maybe Rhett will get himself killed. Maybe it is Lexie’s fault. All I know is that we need a plan, a plan that doesn’t include me getting Purified.
***
The Wilds. When someone is trying to escape the Purification that’s where they go. It’s where Hunter went, and where Rhett probably followed him to. The Wilds used to be part of the United States. They used to be the western states, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and everything west. Until they rebelled. There were some states that were skeptical of the Purification, but a single state could do nothing about it. So the Western states banded together. They formed an army and attacked the government. Then, the western states were obliterated. They were buried and left for dead. They became uninhabited by United States citizens. They became The Wilds.
***
Elaine and I walk back to our dormitory together. We leave Lexie in Rhett’s room and Kyle to report Rhett’s disappearance. My thoughts are racing, jumping from one thing to another until I can’t keep up anymore. I don’t know what to do. In all of my seventeen years of living I’ve never felt this lost. Before now, nothing mattered. Nothing I did for eighteen years would matter, it would get erased the second I got Purified. Sure, I thought about what would happen if I ran away, everyone does, but I was never going to do it. Never even seriously considered it, really. Now, it’s different. Now one of my closest friends is gone, my best friend is in pieces, and I can’t leave my sister. I can’t. But can I risk running away? It’s not about my life, I’d risk my own life in a heartbeat, but can I risk Elaine’s? No, I’d never put Elaine deliberately in danger. Never. But is it worth it? Just this one time? I don’t know. And that’s the problem right now. I just don’t know. Thinking about running away and Elaine and the thought that I can’t leave her, arouses memories I haven’t thought about in a long time. Memories I buried on purpose.
Traditionally, a person has two roommates in their life in an Unpurified City. An older one, to take care of them when they’re young, and when the older one gets Purified, a younger one for them to take care of. Before Elaine, when I was younger, my roommate was Katilyn Presscott. She was the only person I was close to, the only person I trusted. I didn’t understand the concept of the Purification back then, didn’t understand when Katliyn was ripped from my life forever. I remember the searing pain that followed the days when I was alone in my dormitory. I remember feeling like I was wounded, bleeding out day after day. The bleeding never seemed to stop, or the pain. Then came Elaine. Tiny, one-year-old Elaine, who’d just come from the special dormitories where the government keeps newborns. Elaine, who I raised and cared for. Elaine, who stopped the bleeding and healed the wound left from Katilyn. I guess what my thoughts are trying to tell me is, I can’t live with it. I won’t be able to live with the thought of having another person being taken from me, or the thought of putting Elaine though having someone stolen from you. Maybe I knew all along that this would happen. That the choice would become clear. Because there really only is one option, I have to run away.