Undiscovered (Unremembered #1.5)(7)

“It’s…” she started to say, but it was as though the words failed her.

“White?” I guessed lamely.

“Beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” I asked, looking between her and the weed.

If anything they were rare. Diotech had managed to eradicate most weeds thanks to the work done in the Agricultural Sector. And the grass planted around the compound was genetically engineered to repel weeds. But every once in a while, one slipped in.

Like this one.

“Beautiful,” she said again.

“You’ve never seen a dandelion before?”

Her head spun to me so fast, I was afraid she would get whiplash. “Dandelion.” She tried out the word, smiling at the way it felt on her lips.

“Yes. Dandelion. It’s a weed.”

“Weed,” she repeated, and I almost had to laugh at what was beginning to feel like a game. “A wild plant growing where it is not wanted.”

I considered her definition. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Why isn’t it wanted?”

I shrugged. “I guess because they get in the way of other plants.”

“But it’s more beautiful than other plants.”

Once again I looked from the small white globe to her. “It certainly is.”

She reached out again, her fingertips grazing the top of the cottony head. This time, however, her touch was too strong. The sphere dissolved beneath her hand, half of the seeds fluttering to the ground like snow, the other half scattering into the wind.

She gasped and watched the airborne fibers fly away. For a minute I thought she would cry, and I wanted so desperately to reach out and catch them for her. Scoop them into my hands and reassemble them onto the stem like a hopelessly tiny puzzle.

But she didn’t cry.

She didn’t show any emotion at all beyond the initial gasp.

“It’s gone,” she said with a chilling detachment.

I nodded. “They’re very fragile. I think people used to wish on them.”

“Wish,” she echoed, and when she didn’t spout a definition ten seconds later, I knew she didn’t understand the word. I was starting to see a pattern.

“Like this.” I scooped up what was left of the dandelion seeds and held them in my palm. “Now, think of something that you really want.”

She tilted her head, confused. “I don’t want anything.”

“Everyone wants something. There’s always that one thing that will make your life better. When you lie in bed at night, what do you feel is missing?”

She still didn’t follow me. “Nothing is missing.”

“Then you’re lucky,” I mumbled, sounding more bitter than I intended.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s okay,” I said, holding my palm up close to her perfect pink lips. “I’ll make a wish. “You just blow.”

She did.

I closed my eyes as the warm, sweet air from her mouth brushed against my lips. For one perfect second I could taste her and I caught the briefest glimpse of what it would be like to kiss her.

My hands trembled to reach for her. To touch skin. Run fingers through hair. Memorize the shape of her cheekbone.

But I held myself back.

It was too much. Too soon. For her. For me. For these concrete walls that seemed to hold her in.

I glanced up at them, questions piling up in my brain.

Who is this girl?

Why is she locked up out here?

How will I ever get enough of her?

“Does anyone else live here with you?” I asked, pointing to the house.

She stood up, turning to look at the house. I couldn’t see her face when she answered. “My father.”

This wasn’t the response I expected. “Your father?”

“He will be back soon.” Her gaze clicked toward the steel gate built into the concrete wall. “You should not be here when he does.”

I started to panic. At the thought of being caught. At the thought of having to answer to someone who locked his daughter in a house in the middle of a maximum security research compound. But mostly at the thought of leaving. My heart constricted when I considered the possibility that I might never see her again. That this hypnotizing girl was destined to live in the back corners of my memory, fading more and more each day like the metallic sheen on a new hovercopter.

And then she said, “Will you come back?”

And my heart swelled back to full size, kept on swelling until it was inflated and ready to pop.

“Is that what you want?”

She thought for a moment. It felt like an eternity. “Yes. That is a thing that will make my life better.”

I grinned like an idiot. “Then, yes,” I promised her. “I will come back tomorrow.”

And for the rest of the day, for the entire walk home and the long, empty night that spanned ahead of me, that promise glinted like a beacon. Illuminating my way in the dark. Making every other light source look dim in comparison.





6: Return


“Tell me again what we’re doing,” Klo demanded for the fifth time. I’d been walking through an abandoned field in the Agricultural Sector for the past twenty minutes, my gaze cast downward, my mind lost in thought.