Undiscovered (Unremembered #1.5)(6)

I had already convinced myself that I was dreaming. That any minute I would wake up in my lonely apartment, faced with another boring monotonous day of life in this prison.

“How come you’re not in school?” I asked her. If she was sixteen, she should have been in our classroom. The Diotech school was divided into three groups: primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary school was for the youngest kids: three to seven, after they graduated from the compound day care. The secondary school taught the kids aged eight to twelve and the tertiary school was home to us crazy teenagers. After you turned eighteen, you were “encouraged” to leave the compound (which was code for “kicked out”). Unless, of course, you showed significant promise as a scientist, in which case, you’d probably be recruited into one of the advanced training programs. I had no intention of showing significant promise.

She tilted her head in curiosity at me. “School?” she repeated like she’d never heard the word before. And then she did the oddest thing. Her eyes blinked rapidly as if she were a high-speed DigiCam snapping a thousand photos a second.

“School,” she recited. “An institution for educating children. A large group of fish or sea mammals.”

I burst out laughing. But the laughter was quickly choked down when I saw the mirthless expression on her face. She was not making a joke. She was being completely serious. A massive lump started to form in my throat.

Who was this girl? I was beginning to think the answer was more complicated than I could ever handle.

“Yes,” I replied warily. “That’s what a school is. Why aren’t you in it?”

Her eyes got sort of glassy and she shook her head. “I don’t understand the question.”

“Never mind.” I decided to try another tactic. “What are you doing way out here?”

Once again, her answer came without hesitation, making me feel as though I were asking my slate for a location on a map. “I live here. It is safe here. It’s not safe out there.”

She pointed to the concrete wall I had scaled. And as she did, I caught sight of a strange mark on the inside of her left wrist. I reached out and caught her hand, pulling it toward me.

She flinched in surprise, but didn’t pull away. Her skin was warm. Velvety. Perfect. Touching it shot tiny prickles of fire up my arm. It was a heat that felt familiar and foreign at the same time. And I instantly knew I would crave it long after I let go.

Gently, I turned her palm over, revealing a thin black line etched into her skin, running below the crease of her wrist. It looked a lot like a tattoo. The kind people used to get with ink before they invented flash implants.

When I glanced up, I saw that Seraphina wasn’t looking at her wrist, she was looking at me. She was studying me, like a scientist studies a pod of data.

I brushed my fingertip slowly across the length of the mark, marveling at how amazing it felt to touch her. How forbidden it felt. Even though I didn’t know why.

“What is this?” I asked, looking into her brilliant purple eyes. Something mesmerizing coursed between us. Words without letters. Music without sound.

“It’s a scar,” she told me, gently easing her hand out of my grasp. Once again, she spoke in that confident, measured tone. “I’ve had it since I was a baby.”

I knew it was a lie. No scar looked like that. But I didn’t care.

She could lie to me or tell me the truth or tell me nothing at all and it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t change how hopelessly I wanted to touch her again.

“What is your name?”

“Lyzender,” I told her.

“Lyzender,” she repeated and the sound on her lips rendered me useless. “I like Lyzender.”

I wanted so desperately to ask what she meant by that. Was she referring to the name itself or to me? But I couldn’t bring myself to utter the words in fear that her answer might crush me like a bug on the desert floor.

So I simply replied with a similarly vague statement. “I like Seraphina.”

Her lips twitched in what I swore was the hint of a smile, but it vanished quickly. “I did not choose this name.”

My smile was big enough for the both of us. “I did not choose mine, either.”

Something caught her eye then, and she was on her feet faster than I could process her movement. Her speed startled me. I was convinced I had imagined the blur around the edges of her frame.

No one moves that fast.

I pushed myself up and followed after her. She was standing by the edge of the small yard, crouching down to examine something along the base of the wall.

I knelt down next to her, half afraid and half fascinated. My heart was pounding as I tried to track her line of sight. What was she staring at so intently? What was making her stand so perfectly still?

“What is it?” I asked.

“Shhh.”

“What is it?” I asked again, this time in a whisper.

Carefully her hand stretched out. Her movement was an exact contrast to the smear she had left across my vision only moments ago. Now she was slow and controlled. Like the robotic arms they used for surgeries.

I didn’t even realize my breathing had stopped.

My eyes followed her fingertip until it landed gracefully atop the feathery white sphere of a dandelion seed stem. When her skin grazed the downy surface, she recoiled, like she’d been burned.