Rite of Rejection (Acceptance Book 1) (4 page)

Another burly guard barks for each of us to find a chair and sit down. His booming voice echoes off the high ceiling and we scurry off like ants to find a seat as if we’re playing the children’s party game. When the music stops, the child without a chair is out. Only there isn’t any music and I don’t want to learn what happens when you’re “out” in the PIT.

A middle-aged man bustles into the room and nods to the guard like an old friend. Without a word he walks to the first chair and flips back the thin sheet covering the tray. I crane my neck to see what he’s doing. On the little tray a row of needles glint in the overly bright lights like something from a history museum. I drop my eyes and focus on keeping my breaths even, trying not to think about what is happening to the girl across the room. It doesn’t take long for him to reach my chair.

“Put your hand on the reader. I need to make sure you aren’t bringing any nasty diseases into the PIT. I’ve got enough to deal with without having to treat an epidemic.” The doctor’s words are breathy and monotone. He must have given this same speech to each girl in the room.

For the second time today, I put my hand on a reader. At least this one I’m familiar with. I was just at the doctor a few months ago when I turned sixteen. The reader that day came back with a clean bill of health. No sign at all of the apparent evil I’ve been fostering inside.

The scanner beeps a single shrill note. “You’re clear, but I’m not taking any chances.” He picks up the biggest of the needles. A pale-yellow liquid sloshes inside the barrel of the injector. “This should kill off anything you’ve got and inoculate you against most of the filth in there. Though I’ll never understand why we waste the medicine on a bunch of Rejects.”

I want to yell that this is all a mistake, the Machine malfunctioned, I shouldn’t be here. But I don’t, because the Machine doesn’t make mistakes. Instead I sit perfectly still and take the old-fashioned injection intended to kill off the hidden diseases I must be trying to smuggle into the PIT like contraband bobby pins.

I say nothing because it won’t change anything. I’m not Rebecca Collins of 47 Terwilligers Lane, MidWest Territory. I’m nobody scum, worse than dirt on the bottom of this doctor’s buffed-leather shoe.

I sit in my chair, rubbing at the injection site. A small lump lies just beneath the skin. The last girl gets her shots and we’re led to another room. We started our assembly-line initiation keeping a safe distance from each other, but we’ve found a certain comfort from bunching up together. It feels safer standing huddled together shoulder to shoulder, though I’m probably not the only one who realizes how false that sense of security is.

A slim girl near the front of our pack is the first to be shoved down into a single chair. I should be worried about what will happen next, but I’m not. If they were going to kill us, they wouldn’t have wasted the medicine.

A tall man with the sleeves of his red uniform rolled up to his elbows puts down his Noteboard and walks to the chair. The other guard shouted, but not this one. The dead look in his eyes says we aren’t worth yelling at. He grabs the long, dark hair of the shaking girl in the chair, and with one swift snip of scissors I didn’t know he had, her hair is gone. He grabs an electric razor and cuts it so close to her scalp there’s nothing left but tiny dark pieces that cling to her head in fear of being the next victims to our emotionless barber.

A girl on the edge of our group lets out a huge sob. She sucks in a ragged breath and then breaks down into uncontrollable wails. Our group moves as one to isolate her. It’s wrong. We should move to embrace her, give her comfort. Less than an hour and the PIT has already hardened us.

The crying girl with long, silky black hair collapses to the floor. The barber pushes another girl into the chair and before her faded dress hits the plastic back her auburn locks hit the floor. The black-haired girl is screaming, but I refuse to look at her. I keep my focus on the barber relieving another girl of dark-brown tresses.

There’s a blur of movement in the corner of my eye. The panicked girl bolts up off the floor and dashes back to the door we came through. The door slides open and every head in our huddled mass turns to the sound. Two guards march in, each one grabbing her by an arm and lifting her off the floor. Her rail-thin legs kick wildly as her screams smack through the tense air.

They force her into the chair and hold her head while the barber hacks away. He steps back from the chair, a mound of straight, black hair covering the floor. The guards pick her back up and drag her out of the room to who knows where. I should care. I don’t.

I want to cry. Not for the girl dragged away, but for me. Crying would be a release for the pressure building up in my chest, but I don’t have any more tears to give. The barber finishes off our group and my own blonde curls are added to the piles of hair covering the floor.

“Alright, beauties. Let’s move it. Dinnertime.”

Four

The dining hall we’re led to is nothing more than a long, concrete building with tables and benches running the length of the room. Half the tables are already filled. At the far end of the room, a line of people with torn, dirty clothing and bent shoulders hold bowls and cups, waiting to have them filled.

The guard who brought us here is gone, probably off to herd the next group through the rejection gauntlet. I get in line and grab a slightly cracked bowl and cup from a tin barrel. When it’s my turn, I get a scoop of thin stew from a woman whose dead stare tells me she’s given up. Another similarly discouraged woman plops a crusty slice of bread down into the middle of my bowl. I dip my cup into a barrel of what I assume is water and face the crowd of tables.

The other girls from the bus are huddled together at the end of a table in the corner. Their heads are all tucked down with their chins on their chests. Several of them wrap trembling arms around their torsos as if they fear without the support they would fall apart. Their blubbering mass makes me sick to my stomach. I’m not strong or brave, but my mother would die a million deaths of shame if she saw me collapse into a wallowing puddle of incompetence on my first day. Keeping my distance, I make my way to a mostly empty table against the opposite wall.

I stare into my bowl. Despite my growling stomach at the ceremony, I’m not hungry anymore. Still, I don’t know when or how I’ll get my next meal. There aren’t any spoons so I lift the bowl up to my mouth and sip at the watery broth. It’s a struggle to keep from spitting it right back into the bowl.

My mother isn’t exactly known for her cooking, but even her worst meal tastes like a king’s feast next to this sorry bowl of stew. I push out painful thoughts of my mother and prod a finger into the slop to investigate, but nothing inside is recognizable. It tastes like rotten potatoes. It probably is.

A small boy, maybe eight or nine, covered in grime from head to toe shuffles up to the table next to me. His baggy clothes hang off his thin frame making him look even smaller. I had no idea there were children in the PIT. What kind of place is this?

“Excuse me, miss. If you aren’t going to eat your bread, I was wondering…maybe…”

“Of course.” My response is instinctual as I fish the hard slice out of my bowl.

The boy grabs the thin bread from my hand and scurries away to the other end of the room without a backward glance or a mumbled ‘thank you’.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” A woman’s voice calls out above the soft din of conversation filling the room.

I follow the sound to my right where a young woman sits at the table a couple seats down with a few others. Her clipped, strawberry-blonde hair sticks up in all directions giving her an off-balanced look.

“Are you talking to me?” I’m not sure if I’m supposed to respond to her statement or not.

“Do you see anyone else sitting next to you?” The girl slides down the rough bench until she’s right next to me. Three additional strangers repeat her movement until I find myself in the center of a mob of new faces. None of them are smiling. I sweep the room for a sign of the red guard uniforms, but if they’re there, they’re lost in a sea of washed-out blandness. Not that it matters. I don’t get the impression the guards care what happens to us in here. “You just wasted your bread. We only get one of those a day.”

“I didn’t waste it.” I focus on making my words strong, but even I can hear the slight wobble at the end of my sentence. “That little boy looked like he was starving.”

“That little boy won’t see a crumb of that bread,” the girl says. “The Unders all work for one of the bosses. They look for suckers like you who don’t know any better to scam for their bread. It all goes to the boss who couldn’t care less if one of them fell over from hunger.”

“Unders?”

“Some kids never make it to their Acceptance ceremony. They get picked up, usually for something small like stealing bread so they don’t starve to death. The Cardinal doesn’t take any chances and sends them straight to the PIT.”

“How…how do you know this?” Locking up criminals is one thing, but some of these kids look like primary-grade students. I don’t want to believe her, but I might. Her voice commands authority…like the Cardinal.

“Three years in here is an eye-opening education.” She grins wildly, her yellowed teeth menacing behind her stretched lips, and flashes me a small wink. “Name’s Elizabeth, by the way.”

I’m not sure if I should be introducing myself to Elizabeth. She looks like the kind of person who could go from friend to fiend in a heartbeat. But my mother would be horrified if a couple hours in the PIT undid all those years of social etiquette training. I stand up and hold out a shaky hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Rebecca.”

“Alright then, Becca.” Elizabeth jumps up from the table and dips down into a deep curtsy. “Let us be the first to welcome you to the PIT.”

“Okay, Elizabeth, I think that’s enough teasing for one night,” one of the guys says. His black hair is even shorter than Elizabeth’s, but not by much. I’ve never seen anyone so dark in my entire life. His skin is as black as night, making the whites of his eyes shine brighter than everyone else’s. “I’m Daniel,” he says, extending his hand across the table.

“Hi.” I sit down and shake his hand, but I can’t pull my eyes away from his dark face. His smile is wider than Elizabeth’s. It isn’t scary, but he makes me uncomfortable in a different way. Like all of a sudden my skin doesn’t quite fit right.

“I’m Molly,” the other girl calls from next to Elizabeth. Her dark hair hangs no longer than Elizabeth’s but has the good sense to lay flat against her tan, petite face.

I finger what’s left of my own light curls and glance around the room at all the other short haircuts. Looks like we won’t be allowed to let our hair grow back. This is hardly the worst thing that’s happened to me today, but it’s more than I can handle running on so little food. The rims of my eyes flood and threaten to spill over.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.” Molly reaches across Elizabeth and hands me a yellowed handkerchief that looks ancient, but clean. “The monthly cuts aren’t as hard as the first one.”

“So,” Elizabeth pipes back in. “You don’t look like much of a threat to society. What are you in for?”

The others lean in closer to hear my answer. I feel the pressure of four sets of eyes staring into my face.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I dab at my eyes. The last thing I intend to do is cry in front of these strangers. “I failed Acceptance. I’ve been Rejected.”

“Yes, yes, Becca,” Elizabeth says, dismissing my answer with the flip of her hand. “But that doesn’t answer the question of why you were Rejected.”

“I…” I don’t know how to finish. If I say it out loud, it makes today real, but I can’t ignore the truth. “I’m bad.”

“Dress me in red and call me the Cardinal, we’ve got a live one here,” Elizabeth says, slapping the table and leaning back on the bench.

“What Elizabeth means,” Daniel says, shooting Elizabeth a look I can’t read, “is that you can hardly classify someone as only good or bad. Do you really think you’re a bad person?”

“I must be,” I answer without a pause. Now that I’ve said it out loud, it’s easier to accept. “The Machine is never wrong.”

“And before the Acceptance ceremony?” Daniel asks, leaning across the table and holding my gaze with his dark-brown eyes. “Did you think you were bad before the Machine?”

The intensity of Daniel’s stare makes it hard to concentrate, but I don’t need to think about my answer. I never considered myself bad, never. I’m not perfect, not by a long shot if you ask my mother. I’m not bad, but isn’t that exactly what the Machine said I was? The lights flashed red and told everyone in Cardinal City that I can’t be trusted to live with them anymore.

Daniel takes my pause for an answer. “How could you go your whole life and not realize you’re a bad person?”

“But that’s why we need the Machine. Because you can’t tell if someone is bad or not just by looking at them. The Machine protects us.”

“Correction,” Elizabeth cuts in. “The Machine protects them.” She hitches her thumb over her shoulder at some invisible group. “But what exactly it’s protecting them from is the real question of the day. Have you ever had a desire to hurt someone else?”

“What? Of course not. What kind of person do you think I am?” I slide farther down the bench, but Elizabeth moves along with me, like we’re attached by an invisible string.

“We don’t know,” Elizabeth says. “That’s what the questions are for. Have you ever taken something that wasn’t yours? Tried to cheat on a test? Wanted to kiss a girl?”

I can’t answer her; I can only shake my head back and forth. She thinks I’m some kind of petty thief or sexual deviant.

“Hmmm…a tough one,” Elizabeth says, tapping her finger against her chin. She glances at the others, her eyebrows raised. A silent conversation passes amongst them. Tilted heads, grimaces and shoulder shrugs take the place of words. Elizabeth turns her attention back to me. “When was the last time you thought something bad about the Cardinal?”

I slam my hand against the table, and my uneaten bowl of mystery meat clatters against the dirty top. “No, honestly, this is too much. The Cardinal is a wonderful man.” Except when he creeps me out by knowing more about me than I know about myself. “He’s leading us into the future.”

“Said like the perfect little student,” Elizabeth spits out from behind clenched teeth. “And everything the Cardinal does is just wonderful, is it? You agree with everything he’s done?”

I open my mouth to say ‘yes’, but can’t get the word out. I don’t agree with everything. No one can argue that things aren’t better since the revival orchestrated by the previous Cardinal. Crime was out of control back then. People lived in constant fear for their lives. With cooperation between the scientific and psychological communities, the Machine was invented, weeding out the criminals. When he died and the current Cardinal was elected to take his place, the important work of rebuilding our nation continued. The Territories are safe to live in again.

But I don’t think all the new rules are as great. The mandatory marriage age is something I’ve always struggled with. I know why it’s in place. A strong marriage creates strong families. Children grow up in a stable environment. Plus, the responsibilities of a family keep weaker men from sliding into less-than-desirable behavior. But the idea of forcing people to get married when they don’t love each other has never sat well with me.

And if I’m being honest, I’d rather go through Assignment than get married. Not that I don’t want a family, but I know I could do more.

“Did you do well in school, Rebecca?” Daniel’s voice is soft now. He isn’t pushing like Elizabeth. This isn’t a test. It’s almost as if he already knows the answer to his question.

“I did well, not the best, but not the worst. What does that have to do with anything?”

“But English, that was your best subject, right?”

I don’t know how he knows it, or even why it matters, but Daniel is right. I am—was—top of the class in English. Sewing and patternmaking are enough to drive me crazy, but writing an essay is easy. There’s freedom that comes with words that don’t have to fall into perfect measurements or even stitches. A light tremor runs down my spine and I’m suddenly overexposed on this bench, surrounded by strangers who know more about me than they should.

“Everyone has doubts about the Cardinal, Rebecca. There’s nothing strange or bad about that.” Daniel’s words soothe me a bit.

“But if that doesn’t make me bad, then what am I doing here? Does this mean there’s a mistake? I need to tell someone. I need to get back home.” My voice threatens to escape the tenuous hold I have on my control. They probably think I’m crazy, but I don’t care. If there’s even a tiny chance of getting out of here I have to take it. I swing one leg over the bench, but a new voice stops me from getting up.

“There was no mistake, and you won’t be going home.” The boy next to Daniel speaks for the first time. There’s something familiar about the lightness of his voice, but I can’t place where I’ve heard it before. “Other people might share your thoughts, but they’d never do anything about it. You’re different, smart. You can articulate your thoughts, convince people that the Cardinal isn’t right and they should do something about that. And that makes you very dangerous.”

I stare into his sad blue eyes, struggling to remember how I know him.

“You don’t remember me. I assure you, you aren’t looking the same as you were yesterday at lunch either, but there is no hiding beauty, even in a truly ghastly dress.”

My mouth drops open and my hands raise to cover up my surprise. Eric. Eric, whose name is inked onto the first line of my dance card. Eric, who my mother referred to last night as a ‘perfect catch’. Eric, who should be the last person I would see here.

“But why are you here?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Becca,” his blue eyes focusing in on mine, “but I believe we just answered that question and I’m afraid my response would sound rather redundant.”

And there it is; my one last glimmer of hope. Eric is the son of a doctor, certainly a respected member of his community. If the Machine rejected him, then it must be broken. I stare at the others, waiting for one of them to come to the same conclusion, but they don’t say a word.