“I’m Adele,” I say, feeling quite gabby all of a sudden.

“I know,” he says. “Tawni told me. She said you’re a badass.”

I feel my face flush slightly. “Oh. Not really. It was just some punk who’s all talk.”

“She told me who it was. He’s not all talk. I’ve seen him bust some heads before. You were lucky; you don’t want to mess with that dude.”

“I can take care of myself,” I say. I hear a coldness creep into my tone. I grit my teeth and try to relax.

Cole shrugs. “If you say so. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Whatcha in for anyway?” he asks.

Geez, this guy cuts right to the chase. But I tell him anyway.

“Mass murder. Got burned by the shallow graves—I knew I should have dug deeper.”

Cole’s face doesn’t flinch. “Oh yeah?” he says. “Me, too. Weird coincidence, huh?”

My jaw drops open.

Cole grins. “Gotcha!” he says proudly.

I realize that, like me, he’s joking. The way he delivers the line, combined with his soft handshake, combined with the fact that I’m actually speaking to real humans for the first time in a long time, makes me completely miss his sarcasm. Me, the queen of sarcastic comments—self-declared—has been outsarcastified.

“Cole can be quite sarcastic,” Tawni explains, one of her white eyebrows rising apologetically.

“You don’t say,” I reply, grinning at Cole. That’s when I notice the strength of his eyes. When I say strength, I mean strength. Most people talk about eye color when they talk about people’s eyes—I certainly do. And yes, Cole’s eyes are a beautifully warm shade of milky chocolate brown. But what I notice is what’s behind his eyes. It’s like he’s wearing steel-plated contacts or something. There’s no trace of nervousness, or fear, or worry, or any of those other feelings that I constantly have; the feelings that lead my eyes to look away, to flutter, to close. Right away I know Cole is someone you can count on in the most dangerous situations.

“Nah, I’m not sarcastic at all,” Cole says. Again, I can’t detect even the slightest trace of sarcasm in his voice. He’s good, that’s for sure. I’ll have to listen closely whenever he speaks.

Despite having only just met these two people, barely spoken three sentences to either of them, I find myself opening up.

“I’m the daughter of a traitor,” I blurt out.

“Well, you’ve got us beat,” Tawni says. “I got caught trying to travel interdistrict without a travel card, and Cole here stole a couple of loaves of bread to feed his starving family.”

Cole says, “It was six loaves of bread, which, let me tell ya, are hard to carry when you don’t have a bag and you’re in a hurry. When we didn’t have anything to eat for three nights in a row, I came up with a plan. I was so stressed that sweat was dripping off my forehead and into my eyes. I could barely see when I smashed the bakery window. My hands were cold and clammy, but somehow I managed to grab the six loaves. Someone shouted at me, an Enforcer, I think, and I started running. Right away one of the loaves slipped out of my fingers. I grabbed for it, but that made another one slip, then another. Soon I was juggling the bread, batting it up in the air over my head. I did pretty well, too, keeping all six up in the air for like five seconds before one fell. My luck didn’t get much better at that point. I slipped on the loaf, which, for your information, was about as slippery as a banana peel, and went down hard. They brought me here.”

I almost want to laugh. Cole has a twinkle in his eyes, so I don’t think he’ll mind. But laughter is still coming hard for me, so I just smile lightly. “Truth,” I say, starting a game that has the potential to last for a long time.

Cole grins. “Correct,” he says. “As stupid a way as that was to end up in the Pen, it’s all true.” I’m starting to get a better read on him, noticing subtle things like the way his bottom lip pouts slightly when he’s being honest. His eyes are always the same, though, strong and confident, so I won’t be able to use them to read him, like you can with most people.

“How long you in for?” Tawni asks me.

I raise my eyebrows. “How long?” I parrot.

“Yeah, you know,” Tawni says, “a year, two years, what?”

“Try forever,” I say.

Cole stares at me. “Truth,” he says.

“No, that can’t be right,” Tawni says. “Lie. She’s messing with us.”

With tight lips I shake my head. “Not a lie. They told me rebelliousness is passed through blood, genetically, like eye color or being able to snap your fingers. They won’t ever let me out. I mean, when I turn eighteen I’ll move out of this place and into an adult facility—probably the Max—but I’ll never have my freedom again.”

Leave it to me to put a damper on my first meal with my two new friends. But they did ask, and I wasn’t about to lie. I expect them to shun me, to get up and leave, like just being in my presence will add years to their own sentences. They don’t.

Cole says, “That’s horse manure. I’ll never go for that.”

He says it in such a way that I know he’s dead serious, as if he’s already made up his mind to do something about it. Not that he can. If he tries anything, he will just end up with his own life sentence.

“There’s nothing you can do,” I say.

“There has to be something,” Tawni says. The way she emphasizes the word something, I know she isn’t talking about legal methods.

“No, there’s not,” I say adamantly. “You guys barely know me and you’ll just screw up your own chances. When do you get out anyway?”

Cole looks at Tawni and motions with his head. She answers for them both. “I’m out in six months and Cole’s out in a year.”

I nod. Even their sentences seem exceptionally harsh considering their crimes, but they sound a whole lot better than mine. In a year they’ll both be out of the Pen, able to make their own decisions again, even if under the increasingly intolerant oppression of the government.

I’m glad when Tawni changes the subject. It’s like she knows my heart will die again if I think too much about the rest of my wasted life.

She says, “Wasn’t it weird today how Tristan looked at you?” My breath catches in my lungs. So she did notice. Maybe it wasn’t all in my head.

I look at Cole. “Tawni told me about that, too,” he says, “but I want to hear it from you.”

“I thought it was all in my head,” I say, feeling my face go slightly warm again. One negative of having highly pale skin is that a blush stands out like a hairy wart on a nose.

“No—it wasn’t,” Tawni says. “It was like all the crowds and everything else just disappeared, and Adele and Tristan were the only people left. I could almost see his laser eyes touching you, caressing you…”

“Tawni!” I shout, ignoring a couple of strange glances from the other eaters. “It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t feel any…touching.” I say the last word like it’s something disgusting, like moldy bread, crinkling my nose and curling my lip. “But I did feel something for him.”

“You see? I told you, Cole. I almost felt like I was intruding on some private conversation they were having with their eyes. It was kind of weird, but in a cool way.”

“You felt something for him, huh? Still sounds pretty sci-fi to me,” Cole says.

“To you and me both,” I say. I look down, embarrassed again. This time it’s because I sense what feels like jealousy in Cole’s tone.

Chapter Two

Tristan

My heart is alive again. Because I see her. Right away I feel like an idiot—because of my thoughts.

I’m thinking she sees me, too, that she notices me, that she looks at me with the same interest. I feel something for her; I don’t know what. But it’s all in my head—clearly. So I feel like an idiot.

Then what is it? Something is different about the way she looks at me. I’m used to people staring at me, but they usually only do so in one of three ways. First are the obsessive girls, the stalker types, who want to marry me and have my babies and wait on me hand and foot for the rest of my life. I think I saw one of their undergarments fly past my head during the parade—that would’ve been from one of the obsessives. I tolerate them, but unlike my brother, do not enjoy their affections. Next are the admirers. They think I can do no wrong, and are generally old, gray men who look at me with a respect usually reserved for the dead. Not that I’ve earned it. I haven’t done anything; except be born. Last are the haters. Simply put: they hate me. Want me dead. Stare at me with steely eyes, like they think if they stare at me long enough I’ll spontaneously combust. They’re the ones who sit at home with voodoo dolls of me and my dad and my brother, poking and prodding and twisting with needles. Hoping we can feel what the dolls are feeling.