Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(30)
I nod, understanding. It’s a shock, and I know that wherever I go I’ll have to lay low for a while, but when the hunt dies down, when they don’t find me, I’ll be able to see my family again. See Lark again. (Unless she . . . No, I can’t go down that road.)
“I’m sorry this is all so abrupt. I thought we’d have more time. There are things . . . But I’ll save that for later. I’m taking you to get your implants now, and then you’re going directly to your new foster home. Oh, there’s so much I have to tell you!” She throws her arms around me and for a second I feel like a little kid again, small and utterly safe in her embrace.
“It’s okay,” I reassure her. “I know it might be a while, but when I come back, you can . . .”
Her look stops me, chilled. “Rowan, you can never come back.”
I feel as if I’m dangling from the top of a wall high as a mountain, clinging by a single hold that’s starting to slip. I grasp at anything. “You mean, not until it’s safe?”
“Oh my love, never. You can never come home. You can never see any of us again.”
My hand slips and I tumble into the abyss.
She tells me how long they’ve been working to arrange this foster family for me, a chance at a completely new life where I can be real, accepted, walk the streets of Eden as a free individual. I listen numbly as she explains how I can have a new family, which baffled me before. I thought someone would take me in for love, for commitment to a cause, for belief that all people deserve to live. But no, it turns out someone is just doing it for the money.
Just like the way my family hid me—the extra, living child—some families with an eye to profit hide the fact that their one legitimate child dies. Instead of reporting it to the Center, they do whatever possible to make it look like the child is still thriving. Maybe they say she moved to another circle to help her grandmother. Maybe she supposedly developed an illness and rarely leaves the house. They hold the spot of the missing child, and all the while work with black marketers to find some second child to replace the dead one. Of course the family is paid an exorbitant fee for taking the child. It’s enough to set up someone in a whole new circle, if they’re clever enough to hide the source of their windfall.
Needless to say, it’s mostly people in the outer circles who hide a child’s death and hope to profit from it. Mom tells me that the family I’ll be going with lives in the next-but-one outermost ring. The slums, even more decrepit than Lark’s old circle.
I feel sick. I’ve become a financial transaction.
“Mom, they don’t know for sure who I am or where I live. Can’t I get the surgery and . . .” I was going to say hide out with a friend, but I can’t tell her about Lark. Mom would be so disappointed in me if she knew what I’ve done. And she’d believe that Lark betrayed me. Betrayed all of us. I wouldn’t be able to stand hearing her say that.
I can fight the truth in my own head, but if it comes from my mom’s mouth it will seem real. I don’t want to believe it. I can’t.
“I can hide out, just ride the autoloop for a few days, find a place in the outer circles to hole up. And then after a few days, a week, if no one has been here to investigate . . .”
Mom shakes her head sorrowfully. “It has to be now, and it has to be for good.” She seems to harden herself, standing and turning her back on me to resume throwing my every possession into the trash. I’m hurt, until I realize that she’s just trying to carry on, to protect me as always. If she gives in to emotion she’ll collapse and she won’t be able to protect me.
Protect me by giving me away to money-hungry strangers.
I grit my teeth. This is my life! Two nights in the city were enough to fill me with a sense of my own purpose and strength. I decide here and now that even though I have no choice but to go along with Mom’s plans, there’s no way in hell I’m going to stick with them for the rest of my life. I’ll get the eye implants so I can fit in with the rest of Eden. I’ll go live with the mercenary family that wants my family’s money more than they want me. But it won’t be for good. There will come a time when I can be with my family again. When I can be with Lark. When I can stand proudly and be myself, and be with whoever I want, even if I am a second child.
I can’t fight this now. But I see a battle coming. Resolutely, I pick up my favorite stuffed animal—a ragged chimpanzee I’ve cuddled with since I was a baby—and shove it into one of the garbage bags.
At that moment, Ash comes in, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Mom, with her back turned to him, flashes me an urgent, adamant look and shakes her head almost imperceptibly. I immediately understand: don’t tell Ash too much. But is that fair to him? To me?
“What’s going on?” he asks. “Why are you throwing away all of Rowan’s stuff?”
Mom composes her face carefully. “I’m not throwing it away, silly,” she lies with an ease that astounds me. “There’s been a change in plans, and the doctor who will perform her surgery is being reassigned tomorrow, so we have to go tonight, right now, to get her implants. We decided it’s best if she moves to her new house right away. Since we’re moving fast, we don’t have time to pack up neatly.” She turns to me. “But you don’t mind, do you Rowan?”
I gulp, but manage to say, “No, of course not. Who cares about a few wrinkles? I’ll iron once I get there.”