Under Ground (12 page)

“No, it is. No one knows it except
for the Underground though. But I told you my real name. I guess I
just wanted to be true with you. I figured you wouldn’t go brag
about meeting me in secret, you know, so I’d be safe. I took a
pretty big risk now that I think about it. Don't know what I was
thinking.” He winks and sends me a lopsided smile. I
chuckle.

“How did you manage to get the
identity of the Wilcoxes’ son? What about his ID?” I
ask.

“Well, he’d gone to a school
outside the city. So, when I enrolled in my new school, no one knew
him, or me. His records were changed so they looked like mine for
the ID.”

“Why are you telling me all this?"
I ask. "I could just talk to the authorities, you know.”

"Well, yeah you could, but you’d
have to explain how you know my story to begin with. It’d be just
as risky for you. And I assumed you knew what it was like to have a
life forced upon you and never be free. I thought you might
understand.” His eyes pin me on the spot, daring me to contradict
his hopes.

“Yes, I do understand. Your life
makes mine look like a party though.”

“I doubt that.” He sends me a lazy
smile.
How can he smile after telling me such a horrible
story?
I guess Chi isn't the type of person to cry easily.
Maybe he did too much of it as a child. Maybe he decided to just
take the pain in and live with it.

“I won’t tell anyone, I promise,”
I reassure him.

“Yeah, I kinda counted on that,”
he replies and laughs lightly.

Chapter 13

My
life has turned into a long,
deceitful
tale that I craft carefully to fool my mother and Melissa. My
friend believes I'm too busy with my wedding to come and study with
her anymore, and my grades are good enough to fool my mother as
well.

Two weeks have passed since Chi
told me about his family. And each time I meet him, he reveals new
truths about our society—horrible things that have altered my
vision of the world forever. I understand his poem now. I know what
the word "darkness" is referring to. It’s the obscurity looming
over us all, controlling us and suffocating us. The light is the
truth that shall set us free.

The time I spend with Chi always
goes by too fast. I try to hold on to it, as much as I can, but
it’s like air between my fingers. I can’t grasp it as it flies me
by, gone too soon.

Even though I know him better now,
Chi still hasn't told me what happened to his brother; it's a
subject he seems to avoid. He hasn't brought it up once, and when I
can't contain my curiosity any longer and just ask him one day, his
face turns to stone in an instant.

“They took him too, that day,” he
says and pauses. His face is so hard it scares me. “I was frantic
when I couldn’t find him. I thought they would execute him or use
him for war.” He stops again and remains a few minutes without
talking, his fingers meddling with a thread sticking out of his
uniform. “But what they did with him is almost worse. They took him
and turned him into one of them.” His gaze meets mine, his eyes
darkening as his brows narrow close together.

“What do you mean?”

“They took him and brainwashed him
into believing our family was an aberration. He’d always hated us
anyway, me especially, so I doubt it took much
convincing.”

Chi is shaking now, and I wonder
what has been upsetting him the most, that his family is in a camp,
or that his brother is now an enemy.

“Stephen always blamed me. For the
life we had, hiding, you know. He could have been born second, but
he wasn’t. So, in his mind, I was responsible for it all. And then,
when we moved, it got worse. He always held a grudge against my
parents for so many stupid things. He used to throw tantrums and be
such a jerk. He broke my mother’s heart, really.

"I did all I could to try and fix
it, but there was nothing I could do to make up for his behavior.
He was mad he had to share resources with me, too. When the
officers came, they took him and made him one of them. He’s
betraying his own parents and everything they stand for. He’s
become everything they’ve always been against. And it makes me
sick!”

Chi's fingers wrap around the
loose thread he's been messing with, and he tears it off in
anger.

“How do you know for sure?” I
ask.

“I have my own sources. I’ve heard
what they’ve made of him. He got a job as an officer. I'm sure he’s
been on the look-out for me.”

“How come he hasn’t found you
yet?”

“My mother never told him about
the Wilcoxes. Because of the way he was acting, she didn’t trust
him with all the information. I think that, deep inside, she knew
what he was. She wanted to protect me, so she didn’t tell him
everything. If my parents were to be taken, Stephen was to go to
another family. A few months after my parents were captured, I
heard that something had happened to those people. I’m sure my
brother betrayed them. I guess he thought I was with
them.”

His shoulders slump forward, but
Chi seems a bit calmer now, as if he has turned the story over and
over in his head before and is now relieved he finally let it out.
He places his hand over mine and runs his thumb over my skin,
sending electricity through every spot he comes in contact with. I
feel strangely alive. Being with him feels like I finally am where
I belong—a peculiar sensation to have next to someone I'm still
getting to know.

Chapter 14

Chi told me that
he still lives
with the Wilcoxes
and they are part of the Underground. He explained that the
Underground isn't a place; it’s a group of people working in secret
against what they call “the oppression.” They're working on a
project of importance right now, but Chi hasn't told me what it is
yet. The Underground has managed to infiltrate the authorities with
spies, but each mission is a risk for the entire group. And though
rebelling could cost Chi his life, he doesn't seem to care about
death.

“Are you not afraid to die?” I
ask.

“I've got nothing to lose, Thia.
When you've got nothing to lose, you can do anything you want.
Death is something you fear when you care, when you might leave
people behind. There are horrible things going on out there, and
that’s more important than my life.”

Somehow, this bothers me. My heart
always races when I meet Chi, as if I were growing wings somehow.
They spread on my back as the whole world spins under my feet and I
finally take flight. Something’s been trying to pull free inside of
me, and Chi has become the breeze of air blowing right through the
bars of my claustrophobic prison. He keeps sparking these fireworks
inside me, triggering emotions and sensations I never even knew
existed. These past two months, he has slowly annihilated the
torment inside me—replacing it with peace, his light shining my
darkness away—something I only feel in his presence. The thought of
losing him makes me feel empty, and the possibility of him being
gone scares me.

“I wish we could meet somewhere
else, somewhere normal, without hiding,” I say.

“Yeah, me too. I wonder what it’d
be like to just hang out with you casually. But I try not to think
about things I can’t have. Well...that was until I saw you. Then I
couldn’t stop thinking about you. I knew I couldn’t have you, and
it was driving me crazy." He breathes deeply and looks straight at
me. "It's still driving me crazy.”

I swallow hard. This is the first
time that Chi truly acknowledges that he might have feelings for
me. At least, that’s what I believe he’s saying. It makes me want
to fly right down into the valley and scream for joy.

“Thia..." The look in his eyes
intensifies. "This means that I like you—a lot.”

He studies my reaction, and I
simply smile, though my entire being has caught on fire. He leans
toward me slowly, as if he were expecting me to push him back. When
his lips touch mine, they are so soft that it could just be air
between us. His hand slides toward the nape of my neck, and Chi
pulls me closer to him as he kisses me more deeply. His mouth
tastes like spearmint. My heart thunders inside my chest like a
storm while his touch electrifies my nerves back to life. When he
pulls away, my head feels dizzy with sensations. Chi pushes his
forehead to mine and his mouth spreads into a playful
grin.

“Now, we truly are in trouble,” he
says, and his smile widens, reaching his eyes.

This is the beginning of the end.
Enlightenment swallows me as my entire life suddenly shifts under
my feet. And just then, I realize I no longer care if I'm in
trouble. I don’t care what might happen. I just want him. I know
that every second I spend away from Chi is going to hurt and that
the longing inside my heart will leave me restless all night and
day.

Chi takes my hand in his and
interlaces his fingers with mine. My lips rise into a smile. I
don’t think I’ve ever beamed and glowed like this in my whole
entire life. I’ve never felt this light and carefree before. I’ve
never been this happy before. Chi lies down on the grass and I
settle next to him. His arms reach for me, pulling me to him as I
rest my head on his chest.

He buries his face in my hair and
asks, "May I kiss you again?"

My cheeks turn red. I look up at
him. "Yes, you may kiss me whenever you want," I reply.

He smiles, pulls my chin toward
him, and presses his lips to mine, sweetly. He tastes incredibly
good. Our kiss lasts, deepening, and when he pulls away, his eyes
shine at me as if he can't quite believe that I let him kiss me
again. I close the distance between us and confirm his hopes with
one closed-lip peck on his mouth. A mischievous grin shows up on
his face as he pulls me tightly against his chest. We remain in
each other’s arms and simply revel in the presence of one another,
without uttering a single word.

Chapter 15

All day
long,
I've been thinking about Chi's lips against mine. How
soft they felt. How his spearmint scent has grown on me. How
different Chi's kiss was from William's. While William is
possessive, cold, and calculating, Chi is kind and respectful. His
emotions are always clear and transparent. He doesn't feel the need
to hide behind a wall. He can be funny and sarcastic. He likes to
test my boundaries, constantly teasing me, so much so that it's
become a game between us. There's always this fire inside him, a
volcanic time-bomb on the verge of explosion. He feels real anger
at the way we treat others in our society, and yet his rage is
hidden deep inside him, surfacing only sometimes. I've never met
anyone so incensed before, so tormented by the injustices of this
world.

Most days, the thought of meeting
Chi is the only thing preventing me from crashing down and breaking
into a million pieces. The time when I'm away from him is long, and
the wait is excruciating. I spend every second thinking about him.
I have this craving, this need to be with him all the time. Chi
makes me want to fly, William makes me want to die, and my heart is
caught in between, both elated and in agony.

Spending time with Chi is
refreshing; spending time with William is suffocating. Sometimes I
wonder how wicked fate can truly be that I have to be with someone
I'm growing to hate, someone for whom I am barely human at all,
when all I want is to be with somebody who actually sees me,
someone courteous and civil, someone who treats me like an actual
person.

Chi said he'd have a surprise for
me today. I've been waiting with so much anticipation that I can
hardly sit still in class anymore. Melissa sends me sideways
glances that I ignore while my fingers play over my table as if it
were a piano, my restless foot tapping the tempo. Chi refused to
tell me what the surprise was. He simply said that it was something
I would probably enjoy.

When school is finally out and I
arrive at our usual meeting place, Chi isn't there yet. I lean
against the monument, take in the view, and enjoy this peaceful
environment—the trees blowing in the wind, the sounds of different
birds chirping from the branches before taking flight, finding
freedom in a world where there is none.

The leaves crunching under his
feet reveal his presence before I see him. I lift my head just as
he turns around the corner of the Arch. He smiles at me and my
heart pounds against my ribcage, hard. I don't know if I'm supposed
to approach him, kiss him, stay away, wave my hand, or relax maybe.
I can't think.

Chi drops his backpack. He strides
over quickly and joins me within seconds. He doesn't touch me
though. He's holding something behind his back. I try to catch a
glimpse of what it is without making it obvious, though of course
he knows what I'm up to. His mouth tilts up on one side at my
behavior and I clear my throat, pretending that nothing's going on
and that I'm not dying to know what he's hiding right
now.

"Hi Chi," I greet him, flatly, my
vocal cords cooperating with me for once. I manage to say it
without my voice shaking or betraying my curiosity. I might be
duping him, but I can't fool myself. My chest is breaking apart,
smashed open by this quickening heartbeat that won't stop crushing
me from the inside out.