131Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgzzBA251Mg
Delilah was working harder than ever in her seemingly confined world. She bent down again, making her back scream in pain. Her thick gloves made her hands wet and slippery; the gloves slid off her wrists and she slid them back on. Then she placed her hands around the roots of the weed she was pulling and yanked as hard as she could. It didn’t budge.
“Come on!” she muttered, adjusting her grip on the plant. She harnessed her strength from being a box-mover in Area 45, the factory Area, and tore the weed out of the ground. She stumbled back from the strength of the weed. Once she regained her footing, she stared at the weed that caused her so much trouble. Its thick stem continued far below where the dirt level was. Numerous roots sprawled out from where the stem finally stopped like spindly legs.
No wonder that blasted weed was so hard to pull, she thought, chucking it into the composter. The leaves fluttered behind the heavy stem, making obnoxious flapping noises.
Delilah looked up at the sky. It was gray, as usual. Thick, ominous clouds lurked just above the smokestacks in the distance. She inhaled deeply. It was fresher than usual today; she only coughed three times instead of her usual eight or nine coughs. She could smell the dirt surrounding her and the scent of mint and other herbs growing in her Area. She surveyed the other laboring farmers. All of them had their backs hunched, and the people with long hair were constantly brushing it out of their faces. Dirt streaked every face. Delilah was glad she had short, puffy hair instead of long hair.
Her jacket, originally a light tan, stained deep brown and green after countless years of working on the farms in Area 23. She pulled off her gloves and looked at her light brown hands: cut, bruised, scarred, and dirty. She sighed and unbuttoned one of the pockets on her jacket. She stared in its darkness, trying to discern if it was still there. She saw the rings and exhaled in relief. She had just become “of age” a day ago. She saw what happened in her mind as she thought of becoming “of age,” which was a weird occurrence. She never had things pop into her mind as she thought about them.
She saw, or was it felt? She felt a searing pain in her head as she saw the Hoallies surround her and put a strange metal device on her head. They had roughly tightened it, rushing away once it was on. Then there was pain. A blinding, horrible pain shot through her brain. She saw, or heard, herself screaming as the pain diminished. Then she couldn’t see anything in her head for a minute. Then she saw herself seeing once more, this time in blurred vision. The weight of the metal head device was gone. Hoallies had circled around her. They kept saying a word, “remembering,” and Delilah knew what was happening as she thought about coming of age. She was remembering.
She remembered feeling strange as the Hoallies stared at her. She remembered feeling like she was floating and yet sinking at the same time. She remembered feeling like the room was spinning and tilting. She remembered feeling shaky. She remembered her head feeling too heavy, and letting the heavy, spinning, floaty, tilty feeling overtake her. She vomited all over the Hoallies, and her vision blurred once more. She stayed that way for a while, her head lolling to one side, then hanging in front of her. She remembered trying to speak, barely mustering enough strength to lift her head up. She remembered that the only thing coming out of her mouth was garbled noises, and she felt her head violently drop on her chest, sending sparks of pain through her face. She heard the Hoallies mention that she was the worst case they had seen.
“Worst case?” Delilah remembered asking, her words slurred and still jumbled. She saw the Hoallies whip their heads around at hearing her speaking, and they rushed towards her. The lights in the room were too bright, and the white walls and tiles reflected harsh white light straight into her eyes. She was sitting on a chair that was stuck to the ground. In one corner of the large room, electronic devices were covering every inch of the wall. Another wall was made of glass, and on the other side was a dark hallway. Other people of age were lined up, waiting for their of age ceremony. They stared into the room blankly, their expressions all the same.
“Now, you’re going to feel weird for the next few weeks,” one of the Hoallies explained to Delilah. She tried her best to make eye contact with the speaking Hoallie. “You might feel a weird thing in your stomach, or maybe something in your chest. That’s completely normal.”
Delilah looked around the room and saw a few Hoallies wiping vomit off their coats. A pit began to open in her stomach, and she began to make weird sounds with her mouth and throat. Water seeped from her eyes and wet her entire face. The Hoallies frantically comforted her, saying soothing words and trying to make her smile. Eventually, she was feeling better and even doing something called “laughing.” She remembered the Hoallies ushering her out of the room, leaving Delilah alone with her weird feelings.
“Delilah!” a voice called. She registered a violent shaking and realized it was the person shaking her shoulder.
“Wh- What?” she stammered, rapidly blinking. “What happened?”
Her roomate, Brini, looked into Delilah’s bright green eyes with her deep blue ones. Concern was written all over her face.
“Lil. Look around! It’s time to go back!” she cried, gesturing around. “What happened? You’re always on time!”
“I… remembered,” Delilah explained, her mind somewhere else. Her voice sounded strangely alien, even to her own ears.
“Oh.”
They walked past the farms, now shrouded in darkness. They clambered up the steep hill, without any grass to cling on to. Clouds of loose, dry dust plumed up as they placed their hands or feet on the ground. Dry sticks from long-gone trees stabbed their exposed palms. They finally walked down the well-paved road, their boots barely making a sound on the smooth surface. In the distance, the faint sound of a bleating goat could be heard from the neighboring Area, Area 22: the livestock Area.
Delilah looked over at her roommate. Brisi had been there for her, even if she couldn’t really remember it. Delilah knew her roommate so well that she knew when something was up. Brisi’s deep blue eyes would begin squinting shut, and she would screw her face up into strange expressions, adding deep wrinkles on her forehead, mouth, and nose. She would be silent and have her mouth set in a tight, thin line, her lips turning white and blending in with her pale skin.
“Bri,” Delilah asked tenderly, “what’s the matter?”
Brisi sighed and paused. “I don’t know. I’ve just got, like, a weird feeling. Like something is going to happen.”
They resumed walking.
“Well, what do you think will happen? Something bad?”
“Yes. Something bad. I’ve got this weird churning feeling in my stomach, and the back of my neck is tingling,” Brisi explained. “Any time I get this feeling, something horrible happens shortly after.”
“And because you have this feeling, you’re…” Delilah paused, trying to find the right word, “angry about it?”
“No, it’s not anger, Lil,” Brisi said. “It’s stress. I’m stressed about what’s going to happen! I don’t know what it is, or how to stop it. I can’t control this anxiety! I need to know! I’m going to go insane, Lil!”
Delilah looked at Brisi walking on the smooth road, and began seeing her roommate differently. Instead of a cheery, freckled, happy face that occasionally turned wrinkled from fear, Delilah saw a stressed, anxious girl who put on a happy facade for her roommate. Before, Delilah saw deep blue eyes that held not a care in the world. Now, she saw the worries, the fears, and the stresses swimming under the surface.
Delilah stopped abruptly, drawing Brisi’s attention. Delilah walked over to her roommate, her arms outstretched for an embrace. Brisi saw this gesture of kindness and began smiling. Delilah could tell her worries seemed to float away as she allowed Brisi to fall into her arms.
“Talk to me if anything else is wrong,” Delilah said, comforting Brisi. “I’ll always be here.”
“Thanks, Lil.”
Finally, they arrived at their boarding room. It was a small, gray box made of four basic concrete walls (supplied by Area 47: the concrete Area). There was a single door made of flimsy wood and no windows. As Delilah and Brini entered the room, Delilah was met with a feeling of something. She felt small and hopeless, standing in the room.
“Bri?” Delilah asked quietly.
“What’s wrong, Lil?” Brisi responded, turning to see what was wrong.
“I feel something. What is it?”
Brisi stopped in her tracks. She turned and looked at Delilah, and saw the despair and worry displayed on her face.
“Explain what you feel to me,” Brisi instructed. She sat down on the thin mattress of the bunk bed and looked thoughtfully at Delilah, who was pacing around nervously.
“I feel so small looking at our room. Like it’s just barely able to protect me and you! And I feel so exposed walking into the room. It feels dangerous, Bri! I don’t know what I’m feeling, but this situation feels dangerous!”
Brisi, having been “of age” for much longer than Delilah, jumped onto a theory quickly.
“You feel hopeless, bleak, and sad. You also feel vulnerable,” she explained. Delilah didn’t know what that meant, but decided to not ask any questions. She took a deep breath, then surveyed the room, as she did every night. Dark, bare walls, no rug. One rickety bunk bed with thin metal bars as the frame. Paper-thin mattresses and rough tan sheets. No pillows.
Everything was normal. Delilah sighed with relief. She strode over to the changing corner, the corner she and Bri had decided they would change in and not ever look at, and began to change her pants. She set the dirty, wrinkly, baggy pants in the dirty clothes pile, where she would take them to the Washing Room in the morning. She slung off her jacket, but not before taking her rings out of the front pocket she always kept them in. Then she pulled on her bed pants and bed shirt, before walking back to her bed and covering up in the rough, scratchy, completely uncomfortable sheets. She was so exhausted that she didn’t say goodnight to Bri, and didn’t hear her roommate telling her goodnight either. The only thing she knew as she fell asleep was the comforting feeling of the rings enclosed in her fist.
131Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFSXu5Qz1w1
