I Am Alive (2 page)

“Don’t respond to her,” Ariadna whispers, and squeezes my hand. “Faustina wants to provoke you to do something stupid that could affect your rank.”

“Did a cat eat your tongue, Monster?” Faustina teases.

“I’m going to be a Ten!” I shoot back, although I shouldn’t have. Like my dad said, I know that no one’s ever been a Ten. I can’t imagine what a Ten would look like, or what kind of talent he or she would possess.

“Speaking of Tens,” Ariadna says. “Who’s that hottie?”

I follow Ariadna’s gaze, as does almost every other student. Murmurs stir the air around me. Everyone is looking at the six soldiers guarding a criminal. A boy who looks a bit older than us. He is wearing a black leather jacket with silver pins, and is strangled by the soldiers who are struggling to get a grip on him. One soldier buzzes him with an electrical prod so he’ll stop resisting. The boy’s hands are already chained behind his back, and his feet too. He has his knees bent to his chest, so he won’t scrape the asphalt. Something strange inside me longs to see his face. Maybe because Ariadna thinks he is a hottie. Ariadna usually thinks boys are cute. Hottie is a whole other level for her.

I need to see his face.

The boy’s thick, silky black hair dangles down his forehead and covers his eyes. His haircut is rather unique in a wildish way, like musicians or motorcycle riders. His ears are pierced, and his arms are lankly but well-built, with a tattoo on each arm. One is of a golden tiger-like figure. But it’s the second tattoo that steals my breath away. It’s a Nine.

“Who is he?” I ask aloud, my curiosity escaping my lungs. “How can they treat a Nine like that?”

“That’s Leo,” a boy behind me explains. I know him. He is that sneaky boy with freckles and red curly hair. Timmy. I don’t usually talk to him, but I’m ready to listen if he knows about the hottie whom I can’t take my eyes off. The urge in me to look into his eyes increases. I want to brush away the hair covering his eyes.

“Is he some kind of a celebrity I don’t know about?” even Faustina couldn’t hold back her fascination.

“He was a famous singer once,” Timmy explains. “He had that hit song three years ago, if any of you remember it. It was called ‘I Am Alive.’”

“Really? That’s him? The boy who won the Burning Idol TV show when only sixteen?” Ariadna finally spoke. “I loved that song.”

“That’s him,” nods Timmy. “He was ranked a Nine that year. Some girls were ready to throw themselves off a bridge for that guy.”

“
I am alive, I’m a Bad Kid, I’m a Monster, and I won’t back down
,” Ariadna hums the chorus to the song, as if hypnotized.

Since I don’t remember the song, I pull out my iAm to search for it.

“Don’t bother searching for the song. It’s banned,” Timmy says.

“Banned? Is that why he is chained?” I wonder.

“Do you actually live here on this planet?” Timmy wonders. “Yes. It is banned because he dedicated the song to the…” Timmy glances around suspiciously, and lowers his voice. “
M-M-Monsters
,” Timmy usually stutters when excited, or afraid. “His name is Leo Van Ark,” I am falling in love with his name. “A Nine. A celebrity at sixteen who foolishly decided to rebel against the Summit with his song. He was unranked and exiled from Faya for the last four years. I wonder what brings him back.”

“I wonder why a guy like him chooses to oppose the Summit.” I sigh.

As if he’d just heard me, Leo suddenly raises his head and looks at me.

My heart feels like a ball of fire stuck in my chest. Although it burns, I don’t want to let go of it. Leo is handsome, in a wicked sort of way. There are cuts and bruises under the tattoos on his arms…some healed, some recent. Trying to avoid his piercing eyes, I am looking at his edgy jaw line. It’s as if it was drawn carefully by an ancient artist, fleshing out every detail. Leo’s lips are sealed and tense, as if he is afraid to open them. The visible pressure spreads up to his reddened cheeks and tightened jaw.

The girls are almost hypnotized by him. The boys want to pick a fight.

I encouraged myself to stare back at him. Leo has ocean-blue eyes, with a strange shade of honey-color in them, which you could easily mistake for teardrops at first sight. Such strange eyes. I feel like I’m standing in front of an angry hurricane. I have never been looked at so intensely. Of all the girls here, why me?

His stare doesn’t last long though. One of the soldiers buzzes him again, and Leo moans in pain. Why doesn’t he open his mouth? Ariadna grip my hands as the soldiers pull Leo away. She sensed that I was foolish and could have followed him. I give in to her reason and stand still, but feel parted from something precious to me. It’s illogical.

“Now look who’s arrived?” Faustina pouts, with all her annoying friends following her act religiously.

When I turn around, I see Eva Hutchinson and her brother, Don. Eva stands about five steps shy of everyone else. She is slouching, and barely making eye contact with anyone. Her brother is holding her hand. Eva is a pre-Monster, but she insists on attending the Ranking. Her brother pulls out a breathing device from the box. I think it’s called an inhaler. I think she has asthma, or a mysterious illness that only the iAm knows about. And it’s probably what made her a Monster.

I remember asking my father about the iAm, and how it calculated results. He answered me from behind a newspaper, saying, “The iAm works in mysterious ways
.
”

“The Monster must die!” a girl shouts at Eva. Nines and Eights start to throw paper planes at her, urging her to leave. Faustina looks amused.

“Stop it!” I snap at the students.

“There is no point in standing up for her.” Ariadna pinches me, trying to hide her embarrassment. She doesn’t like it when I support a pre-Monster. Sympathizing with Monsters is a serious act of defiance against the Summit.

I ignore Ariadna, and do my best to bat the paper planes away. I can’t stop the insults though. Eva hides behind me, her hands on my shoulders.

“Don’t let her touch you. Not on your Ranking Day. Bad luck!”

The classroom door swings open. Mrs. Delacroix, one of our teachers, looks angry with the noise in the hall. I expect her to shush the Nines and the Eights. Instead, she looks at me, as if this is all my fault. “You,” she demands, pointing at me. “Follow me inside.”

“I told you it wasn’t worth it,” Ariadna mouths, looking sideways at the classroom door.

As I am about to follow Mrs. Delacroix into the room, I see Eva asking Ariadna if she has seen her iAm, which Eva seems to have lost. Losing one’s iAm is a crime. However, the Gatekeeper claims he has lost his electric cattle prod as well. This can easily downgrade him to a Monster.

Everyone else shoots me worried looks as I follow Mrs. Delacroix into the classroom. Everyone is afraid of her, and it could be bad luck to have her check my final test. Mrs. Delacroix is a Six. Schoolteachers usually are. She does look like a lovely old woman when you first lay your eyes on her, but she frightens the bejesus out of everyone. She and Mrs. Dunbar, our math teacher, both killed their children last year. Mrs. Dunbar is said to have sent her kids to the Wastelands across the borders. Mrs. Delacroix is said to have taken matters into her own hands. Parents killing their children isn’t big news in Faya. When the kids are officially predicted as Monsters like Eva, some parents decide to sacrifice one child to save the rest. If Woo hadn’t taught me how to work the system, my mother would have killed me by now.

I follow Mrs. Delacroix. Everyone around, even Faustina, wonders how I am going to stand being alone with Mrs. Delacroix in the same room.

Mrs. Delacroix opens the classroom’s door, using a magnetic card that can only be used from outside. As she closes the door behind us, I look at it worriedly. What if she decides to kill me like her children? I roll my eyes at my silly thought. Only Monsters get killed.

“Hand me your iAm, please.” Mrs. Delacroix stretches out her hand across the table separating us.

I obey silently as I examine her serious face. However peacefully she poses, I can’t stop imagining her killing her children. How did she do it? Did she drown them? Eat their hearts and livers, like the Snow White Queen? How can someone kill their own child, no matter how monstrous they are?

“I am sorry about what happened outside with Eva,” I say, as Mrs. Delacroix checks my iAm, connecting it to a master computer to check if I am cheating.

“Who is Eva?” Mrs. Delacroix says absently.

“Eva, you know, the…”

“Ah. The Monster.” She clicks her keyboard, her eyes glued to the screen in front of her. “Who cares about Monsters?” She takes a sip from her cold coffee.

“How can you be sure she is a… you know?” Sometimes I can’t bring myself to say the word.

“It’s so obvious. I called her parents yesterday to stop her from attending the Ranking Ceremony, but they didn’t listen. When I assured them that the iAms’ predictions were rarely wrong, and that she was going to be a Monster, they said that Eva attending the ceremony was going to be more of a last wish before dying.” Mrs. Delacroix licks her gummy lips, tasting the sweet coffee. “I hate when parents say that.”

“I guess her parents saw no use in Eva attending the Monster Show.” I say. The Monster Show is the only way for a
Monster
to get ranked. A three-day-long deadly game show, that if you survive, you escape being a Monster. It’s pure entertainment that draws tons of money to the Summit. The show is broadcast worldwide, and the games are just sick. No one ever survived the Monster Show, not even Woo.

“You never know. Maybe Eva is special, and could be the first ever to survive the Monster Show and get ranked.” Mrs. Delacroix chuckles mockingly.

“How do you expect anyone to survive the crazy games and deadly puzzles in the Monster Show? It’s impossible. Besides, if someone survives the games, how are they going to live among us? Everyone will still humiliate them.”

“Yeah. And that’s the fun of it,” Mrs. Delacroix nods, as if both of us share a secret. “The Monster has to die,” she whispers.

“Do you know what’s going to happen to her parents?” I wonder.

“If they were Eights or Nines, they might have to only move to poorer suburbs. It’s all up to the Summit. Sadly, Eva’s parents are both Fives. They’ll be downgraded to Monsters. The Summit hates when they turn older people into Monsters.”

“Why?”

“Older Monsters are not fun to watch on TV. They’re slow, and lack motivation. It makes the show dull and boring. Do you know that Eva’s younger brother might be a Six? If I were her parents, I would have killed her years ago, and saved the family.” She smirks at her reflection in the monitor.

I start to feel uneasy being alone in the room with her. What if I turn out to be a Monster? Will she kill me on the spot, here in this room? I suddenly think of my family, but I know they will be fine. My younger brother Jack is a pre-Nine. He is the first in our family. We’re all usually Sixes and Sevens.
Anything you want to share with me, Mom? I promise I won’t tell dad.

“The Monster has to die,” Mrs. Delacroix lets out a long sigh, as she checks my name on the computer.

“Is something wrong with my name?” I ask.

“Not at all,” she says. “You’re ready to go. I think you will be surprised with your rank today, Decca. Let me just write your name in the system.” She started typing and licking her lips. “Don’t you wish all Monsters would just die? I can’t wait for the day we turn into a Monster-free nation.” She says nonchalantly.

I don’t comment. My eyes are fixed on hers. I can’t help but feel disgusted by her. Now that I know I am safe, I try and look for a human soul behind her eyes. I can’t stop imagining her killing her children.

“You have a big chance of becoming an Eight today.” Mrs. Delacroix looks happily at me. “You’re still a Seven though. Your score is very close to an Eight. Who knows? Maybe the iAm changes its mind.”

I am not pleased with her news. I keep staring at her. “How did it feel, Mrs. Delacroix?” I say slowly, my voice is unusually low and colorless.

“Excuse me?”

“How did it feel killing your children?” I feel a beast rising in me.

“How dare you ask me about—” She doesn’t complete her sentence, as she notices the sudden, dark change in my personality.

I jump over the table, and shock her with the electric cattle prod that I stole from the Gatekeeper outside. She buzzes like a fly, but I catch her before she falls to the floor. “Don’t you dare fall asleep on me,” I kick her. “I swear if you don’t do what I say, I’ll buzz you to death.”

“Okay. Okay,” she obeys, drooling uncontrollably. “What do you want?”

“I want you to switch the results on this iAm with mine,” I demand as I show her Eva’s iAm, which I stole in the middle of the fight outside. “Now!”

“But that is impossible,” she says, looking at me as if I have turned into a ghost. She wonders if I am the same girl she was talking to seconds ago. “The iAm is connected to a small receptor in your brain, right under your ear. It’s the size of a grain of rice. It can’t be removed, and I can’t change the results.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” I growl. “That receptor only gathers information about us and connects it to the iAm from the day we are born until we’re sixteen. Right now, the iAm and the Summit know that the owner of Eva’s iAm is a Monster, and that the owner of mine is a Seven. Switching the iAms now will work. I’ve been studying this for a whole year, and I know what I am talking about. There is a program that allows you to divert the iAm to a different receptor, which means a different teenager. This is how the Summit forges the results when they want to get rid of rebellious teenagers.”

Mrs. Delacroix, although still dizzy from the shock, must be wondering how I know all this. How I suddenly changed from that damsel-in-distress girl to a rebel. She takes Eva’s iAm, opens it, and starts working her magic.

“You know that this will make Eva a Seven, and you’ll become a Monster. Don’t you?” She locks the iAm, and types on the computer. I see Eva’s data and mine being switched. “Why would anyone do this? Why would you want to be a Monster?”