The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (2 page)

I saw the smile in her profile as I continued to brush my contraband doll’s hair. It was blazing red, like mine. Like the run used to be. I didn’t understand Mommy’s smile at the time, but I liked it. Mommy didn’t smile much anymore.

“You love your questions, don’t you? Because the people who decide things now? The Militia and Congress? They get to choose and pick whether people like us get to eat foods like that now. Just like they get to decide where Mommy works and where we live.”

My brush stopped mid-stroke and I looked at her, feeling the weight of those words, but not understanding them for what they were. Not yet anyway. “People like us?”

“People who live in the stacks. People who—” She smiled, but even I could tell it was sad. “People who work honestly for a living and try to pay their taxes the good old-fashioned way.”

“I thought honesty was a good thing.”

She chuckled a little and sliced through the bread on the counter carefully. She did everything with care. She put my plate on the table and ticked her head. “Leave Lolly and come sit.” I sighed and did as she asked, setting my doll Lolly on the one chair we had before moving across the floor quietly so as not to disturb the tenants below us.

Where we lived in the stacks was pretty annoying for an eight-year-old, but it was home. We lived in a shipping crate, stacked on top of another shipping crate, on top of another. I think you get my drift when I say the ‘stacks’. And our neighbors who shared our walls were the same—stacked as far as I could see.

“Let’s give thanks,” she said softly and I bowed my head to pray, thanking someone she called ‘Father’, who I had never met for the food we were given that she had provided by working in the mines. I never really understood why she did it or who this guy was. She said a long time ago, when the exodus that brought us to this planet from Earth happened, that our father God had protected us and gotten us here safely, but as far as I had seen, my life had been misery, broken contraband dolls, and a barely-there slice of bread with three freeze-dried green beans on my plate next to it for every meal.

Count them. Three.

“Amen,” she said as she finished and I hadn’t even heard what she’d muttered to him in between.

I sighed as I picked up my bread and tore off a piece. “Will we ever have anything but bread and vegetables?”

“Soph,” she said gently, “this life is hard on you, I know, and I’m so very sorry about that. I wish your father was here.” She smiled like she always did, but her tears came all the same. “But he’s not. It’s only us. It’s always us; it’ll always be us. And…sometimes life will give you obstacles, things to make you strong. And you know what?”

My eight-year-old mind didn’t know at the time what was coming, just that it was something I should pay attention to, grab onto. I shook my head.

“You are going to be so strong. And brave, valiant, mighty. But you’ll also be a loving, gentle, amazing woman, who loves with her whole self and heart.”

I stared, blushing, not knowing why this mattered over bread and green beans. She laughed. “Eat, Sophelia. And I haven’t forgotten.”

I knew what she meant, but said, “Forgotten what?”

She smirked, her brow lifting, her strawberry golden hair falling to one side over her eye. “Someone’s day of birth is tomorrow.”

I tried to stop my smile, but failed. “How do you remember so well when every day is the same, repeated over and over?” My smile faded. “When you have so much else to worry about and hardly ever sleep?”

“How could I forget the best day of my life?”

I didn’t smile back. “But you got more taxes that day—”

“I got you that day and that’s all that matters. Eat so we can read more about Peter Pan and Wendy. And find out if the Lost Boys have taken to her or not.”

My back straightened. She was always so tired and fell asleep quickly. We hardly ever got to read anymore. “Really?”

“Really,” she said, nudged her chin in my direction.

I scarfed my bread and the chewy beans. I wiped off our plates with the dish towel and set them in the cabinet. Mom went to the water distillery on the wall next to the door and attached the lidded spout over the top to seal it. She held our jug with shaky hands.

She seemed to be praying again. I paused to watch her, but before I could get worried she opened the spout and let the canister fill with our daily ration of water for our pod and family of two. It was half of what it usually was. Water for…one. She sighed before turning to me.

“Here. You first.” She flipped the lid on the drinking jug, but left her thumb covering the hole so the liquid couldn’t escape. There was gravity in the pod and buildings, but it didn’t apply to liquids. The entire planet’s gravity didn’t. No one could explain why. But inside was the only place we could take our boots off. Everyone wore magnetized boots of some sort. With the granite and metal mixture that made up our planet, it made it extremely susceptible to magnets. But our gravity tabs were what kept us safe and technically, able to walk around outside.

Mom used to tell me stories about all the misconceptions from when our people first got here over seven hundred years ago. People believed their skin would desiccate or burst wide open without something protecting them from the outside air, that their tears would float off their faces, they thought that the sun was yellow.

There were some problems when they arrived here, too. When people first got here, their eyes didn’t adjust to being so close to the sun and everyone had to wear protective contacts. Now they give us these vitamins in the water that protect and restore our eyes, give us some kind of minerals to make them strong enough to take it.

Landu is a planet behind the sun, on the warmest side, thousands of miles away from it, opposite of Earth, and far from easy detection. When they knew they the Exodus was going to happen, they started to explore farther than they’d ever gone before to see if there was somewhere out there we could go. Landu was our saving grace. Or our prison, I’ve heard Mommy say.

“Why did they give us so little?”

Even my child heart knew something wasn’t right.

“Oh,” she brushed it off, “I had some at the mines today. They must have counted that as my ration.”

“Mom,” I hedged.

“Here, take it.” She pushed it toward me, keeping her thumb over it tightly. “Just leave me a couple sips. I’ll be fine.”

We only got one ration of water a day to drink. We didn’t bathe with it or wash our dishes or clothes with it like I heard the Elitists were prone to do, though that seemed like an epic waste of water to me. I took it from her and immediately sucked it to my lips, letting the warm water suck down my throat and quench me for a moment before I closed the lid, taking that deep breath that dried my throat out once more, taking with it all the calm those few short sips had provided me.

She smiled as she downed the last little bit and then closed it tight, replacing our canister on the hook next to the water distillery spout.

“Ready for Hook?”

“Go brush your teeth and then we will.”

I wanted to grumble, but knew better. “Yes, ma’am.”

I went to the sink where I had cleaned our dishes and lifted the small flap that held my toothbrush and paste. I squirted it onto the brush, letting it touch the bristles as I went, and did a quick, thorough run over all my teeth and tongue. If you did it for more than a minute, it began to burn your gums. There were no dentists here. Well—not for people in the stacks, so our paste was full of all the things needed to keep our teeth from rotting in our heads, but it didn’t feel good to do so. Especially with no water to wash it away when you were done.

I took the sleeve of my shirt and rubbed as much of it off my gums and tongue as I could and then turned. I saw it on her face. “Please. No bath.”

Lye powder soap was less fun than straight-up baking soda toothpaste when there was no way to remove it from your skin.

She smiled. “All right. But you scrub extra hard tomorrow night.”

“Deal,” I said enthusiastically and landed hard on my knees, apologizing silently to the tenants below us as I tugged out my hideaway bed. I sat and waited for her to pull the book from its hiding place. Books were rare. There hadn’t been that many brought over from Earth and to have one in the stacks was unheard of. The Elitists apparently paid a pretty silver for books or anything else they could find from the Old World.

But Mom couldn’t get rid of this. And neither could I. This was Dad’s book. He’d won it in some weird card game for my mother’s day of birth, and it was the only thing we had that was left of him, and that was of value. He died six months later in an accident in the mines, but it was like he had been trying to take care of us with this book or something. He knew we’d need it.

But he had to know Mom would never sell it.

I watched as she went to our secret hiding place, grabbing the book, and we sat down to read until I fell asleep.

**

The next night when Mom came home from work, I knew something was different. She was smiling deviously. And Mom never smiled deviously.

“What is going on?” I couldn’t help but say.

“You’ll see. Sit.”

I moved to grab Lolly, but she stopped me.

“No. No more Lolly.”

I stilled. “What?”

Lolly was my one and only friend. I saw no one, ever. I had no friends. I only left this pod once a week to go to school. And during that time we weren’t really allowed to speak or play games. The rest of the time, I sat there and waited for Mother to come home, playing with Lolly, biding my time, finding mindless, quiet things to do. So what did she mean
No more Lolly
?

“Happy day of birth, Soph,” she told me, her face lighting before she even revealed what was behind her back. She had a new doll in her hands, the one I saw in the sky in the 3D advertisements on the way to school every week. As soon as I touched her hand, a small prick in my finger jolted me. I snatched my hand back, but the doll giggled and apologized before saying my name.

“
Sophelia. Mommy.”

“She knows my name,” I whispered up at Mom conspiratorially.

Mom laughed. “She knows lots of things now that she has your DNA. She’s the Around Landu edition. She’s practically a tutor. I want you to be able to know everything you want to know.” She squatted down on her haunches and looked into my face closely, cupping my cheek. “The key to surviving on this planet is to learn, and not just learning what they want you to know.” She touched my temple. “Our minds are human and God made our minds so big we can hold so much information, but the Landu Militia want us to curb ourselves, want us to think we’re dumb and only worth the weight of the silver in our pockets. Don’t ever think that, Sophelia. Do you hear me?” She didn’t give me a chance to answer. “You are worth more than what is in your pockets. You’re worth what’s in your mind and what’s in your heart.”

I was breathing heavily, understanding smacking into me. “Mom, how did you afford this?”

“Don’t you worry about that. You are more important to me than anything,” she said fiercely, a tear grabbing onto her lashes and not letting go. My heart started to pound heavily. “It’s your day of birth and I wanted to make sure that you knew, that you didn’t just listen to my words, that you saw my actions and understood what I would do for your freedom, for your future, for everyone’s. You’re so young, I know you don’t know, but I need you to understand, baby. This isn’t the end; this is just the beginning.”

My heart hurt it pounded so hard…and then I realized it wasn’t my heart I heard pounding; it was footsteps.

She looked back at the door and then at me. “I thought I had at least a day. I didn’t think they’d find out so soon,” she said and looked infinitely sad. “I hope you’ll understand one day, Sophelia. I did this for you. For us. I love you more than I love gravity, oxygen, bread, water. I love you more than I love anything this world could offer me.”

The footsteps on the ladder rungs up to our pod got louder. “Mom,” my voice quivered. I was old for my age, Mom would say sometimes. Most kids my age were. We grew up fast and hard, and learned what heartache was way too soon. But Mom always said I was especially more grown up than the rest, that I had something special that other kids didn’t have—gumption. She said that kept me out of trouble and in the know of things that went over other kids’ heads. Right then, I wished I could be a kid again, a kid who had no idea what was going on or what was going to happen.

“We have to hide your doll. They know we have contraband. It won’t matter. Leave Lolly there, but we’ll put this one with Daddy’s book. She’ll be safe with Daddy’s book, okay?”

So she hadn’t sold Daddy’s book to get my doll. Then how?

“Here, Soph.” She held the doll out to me. “You’re the only one who can turn the doll on and off now. Tell her to turn off.”

I leaned close to the doll’s ear. “Um, doll, turn off until I get back?” The doll powered down, closing her eyes and everything. It was dramatic, but I was sure that was part of the doll’s show.

She turned and stuffed the doll gently next to Daddy’s book and then stood next to me. She held my hand so tightly and murmured things to me.

“Remember that life gives us things to make us stronger, baby. You be so strong. Mommy will be, too. You remember all the things I told you. You remember what Mommy told you about the Militia—how they aren’t here to help us when they say they are. Do as you’re told until they take you away from here. And then when you see Militia…you run. Don’t let them break you, baby. Mommy will be with you always. I love you so much.”

I said things back to her because I knew she wanted me to, but I was so scared I could hardly do anything else. When they finally knocked on our door, I squeaked.

“Don’t cry, baby,” she whispered, and I looked up at her. “This is the way it has to be. To save you and me and everyone else. It’ll be okay. One day, you’ll understand. I promise you. Be strong—”

The door opened with a loud squealing clang of metal on metal before five Militia sentries came in. One grabbed my mother by her hair and one took me by my arms, pulling them behind my back. I didn’t scream, I didn’t cry; I just watched in awe-filled horror as they asked her where “it” was.