The Rule of One (The Rule of One #1)(3)
I’m surrounded by thousands of students dressed in the same white linen uniform as I am, identical except for the strips of color that identify which placement level each student tested into. Although Mira and I are only eighteen, we’ve been placed in the most advanced rank of sophomore year, entitling us to the color purple. Flashes of the various tiers race across the lawn: purple, blue, red, green, and the lowest, yellow. What rank you graduate with determines the rest of your life. A purple diploma lays the world at your feet.
I make a swift right toward the eastern side of the quadrangle and observe that most of my peers have color-coded umbrellas covering their prudently coiffed heads, either to block out the Texas heat or to shield themselves from the prying surveillance cameras that line every corner.
I arrive at my destination, Tower Hall. Before I enter the ivy-covered building, I quickly close my own umbrella and turn on my smile in anticipation of the Facial Recognition System scanners.
The unavoidable surveillance cameras inspect every person entering any building on campus. The cameras can sweep through a crowd of a thousand people and know in an instant if a face doesn’t belong there. No need to scan individual wrists for security—that only happens if you draw attention to yourself.
In the corner of the entrance hall, a uniformed Texas State Guard scrutinizes the system’s monitors. I peer at the screens as the cameras connect my face with my name, which is programmed in the database. “Ava Goodwin—Approved” flashes across the monitor, and I mentally send out a small thanks to the universe that Mira and I share identical features.
Two sharp bells ring from the speakers, and I dutifully fall in line with the crowd that leads into the main hall.
Choirmaster Dashwood paces up and down a raised platform, his arms fervidly moving to the music as if possessed. He leads the mass of students—we only vaguely deserve to be called a choir—with a passionate focus that I find admirable. My own heart slightly racing, I close my eyes tight as I sing the slow, impassioned song, not needing the large hologram projection that broadcasts the lyrics.
Mira and I grew up watching hologram recordings Father gave to us of our mother singing at her piano. Sometimes he’d watch with us, sitting on the floor and leaning against our twin bed in the basement, captivated as our mother performed a private concert. The four of us, together, a secret family that can only exist inside a basement.
I’ve memorized everything about her—she seems so real in them. As children we became obsessed with music, less out of a desire to mimic what our mother loved and more out of a need to be closer to her. That longing ache of desperately wanting something I never actually had in the first place, I’m learning, is the pain of true disappointment.
“And move to the chorus. Louder!”
I sense a change in the room and crack my eyes open to find Halton entering the doorway. His carriage not quite straight, his gawky shoulders nevertheless yearn to be elegant underneath his impeccably neat white uniform with its bold purple line slashed across his body. His dark hair has a slight oily sheen to it, although I’m certain he washed it this morning. Despite all his attempted grandeur, he can’t keep his real self from seeping out.
He walks irritatingly slow, taking his time, knowing his tardiness will go unremarked.
The choir continues to sing while he finds his place next to me, forcing another student to slide down the riser. His bodyguard, Special Agent Hayes, falls in line beside him, attempting to blend into the choir by wearing a school uniform. Mouth firmly closed, the middle-aged man isn’t fooling anyone.
“Ava,” Halton says to me with a formal nod. His stare lingers, as if he expects me to pick up a conversation in the middle of the song.
I close my eyes again, pretending not to notice.
It’s seen as a great honor to have Halton’s favor, and he damn well knows it. I don’t care how powerful your family is. Power won’t win my attention.
The heat of his gaze on my face becomes too much. I open my eyes again and turn to face him. Usually he’d have backed off by this point, but Halton just stands there staring at me in his quiet, privileged aura, not bothering to sing with the rest of us.
What do you want? I challenge with my eyes.
The choirmaster gives a loud clap clap clap in my direction. “Goodwin, eyes to the front!”
Angry with myself for being publicly reprimanded, I snap my head around just as the music abruptly cuts from the speakers with a wave of the choirmaster’s hand.
“Thoroughly unremarkable. If that performance is to enlighten the Texas Legislature on the importance of art programs, I pray you are all geniuses at math and science. Memorize by tomorrow. Dismissed.”
For the first time in half a century, Strake is reestablishing its choir program. The performing arts were deemed an unessential use of money while millions of people were starving to death and dying from superstorms. Singing belonged to the past.
This year is different. In an unprecedented, lavish affair, Governor Howard S. Roth, the influential leader of Texas, envisions a grand spectacle for the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Gala commemorating the Rule of One. Our youthful voices raised in unified song will surely lull the people into forgetting we are celebrating that we are controlled to the point we can’t even choose how many children we have.
The governor will spare no expense. Next week distinguished delegates from every state will all converge onto Dallas to celebrate, including the president himself. The Lone Star Network speculates this momentous occasion will culminate in the president announcing his support for Roth’s own presidential bid next year.