Reyes bolted through the door and almost threw Summer out of his way to get to me. “Is it true?!”

“Is what true?” I hoped to downplay the importance of my serving that night. I could see by the wild look in his eyes that he was ready to explode.

“Are you serving at that bachelor party tonight?” He grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Yeah, but it’s no big deal.” I couldn’t even look him in the eyes.

“You can’t. You have to back out.”

Now I did look him in the eyes. “We both know I can’t do that.” I would be beaten, quite possibly to death, if I didn’t report to work for such an important event.

“How did this happen? How did you get picked?”

“We were late, Reyes. Bailey was going to fire me if I didn’t agree. Dad has already lost his job. I can’t lose mine too.”

“You should have let her fire you and come to me. We could have gotten married and been assigned our own apartment. You know that!” He was losing his composure. I had never seen him this upset before.

“Reyes, I can’t just leave him,” I said softly. I laid my head against his chest.

He shifted his arms to encircle my waist and pulled me tightly against him. “Sunset. Do you know why your mother named you that?”

“Because of the color of my hair.”

“Did you ever wonder how she knew what a sunset looked like?” he asked as he pulled away from me and tilted my chin up to look at him. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but your mother was sent upstairs when she was young, too. If the stories are true, she was requested for dinner parties a lot.”

The empathy I’d had for Reyes suddenly turned to anger. I pushed against him, trying to break out of the circle of his arms. “Who told you these lies?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have! Why do you always have to find some way to hurt me when you’re mad?” I pounded my fist on his chest. Finally, he released me. “I can’t be late,” I said with disdain and headed toward the door.

“Wait!” Reyes stepped in front of me to block my exit. “I’m sorry.”

He reached out to take me back into his arms. I pulled away from him for a moment but relented even though I was still angry. I didn’t want to face what was waiting for me upstairs knowing we were in a fight. It would be better to put things right between us before I went.

“If anything happens…” He paused, a grimace of pain crossing his features. “I want to protect you. I’ll always be here for you. I’m not going anywhere.”

I understood what he was trying to say. Regardless of how the bourge used me tonight, he still wanted to marry me. Requests for young girls to entertain the bourge weren’t unusual in the Pit, but marriage prospects were frequently poor for those girls who went.

He studied me for a moment, and I smiled, hoping to convince him that everything would be okay. I brushed a dark curl away from his brow, and he pulled me toward him roughly. He lowered his head to mine and captured my lips with his own. His arms wrapped tighter around me. I had never felt this kind of desperation in his kiss before. Slowly, he pulled away from me and cupped my face in his hands.

“You can’t be late,” he said sadly.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I spoke it like a promise.

I couldn’t stand to see the pain in his eyes, and my own tears threatened again. I left him and caught up with Summer by the stairs.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I didn’t respond. I needed a moment to compose myself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This really is all my fault for making us late this morning.”

“We have to stop blaming ourselves, Summer. We didn’t ask to be playthings for the bourge. It was forced on us. We had no choice.”

“Don’t talk like that, they’ll hear you,” she whispered. We all knew the stone walls had ears, and my ranting was only going to get us into more trouble.

My limbs felt like dead weights as I made my way up the stairs. I shouldn’t complain about the climb. The people who lived the furthest down the Pit had a two-mile climb up. Then there were the miners who had to descend three miles down into the mine every day and then back up again. One mile wasn’t much, but I hadn’t eaten all day, and it felt like a lot.

Finally, we reached the main level and stepped into the lobby. Usually we would make a right turn toward the kitchen to go to work, but tonight we walked straight to the reception area in front of the big steel doors that led inside the Dome. My mother took this same walk when she was Culled. I tried not to think about how she must have felt, but it was impossible not to. I was petrified to go through those doors myself.

But before we could pass through those imposing doors, we had to get through reception. There were a lot of guards, most of them wearing the white uniform of the Pit and some the khaki uniform of the Dome. While the guards in the Pit stood out in white, the bourge preferred their guards to look less conspicuous. We called them Domers.

“Scan in,” a guard dressed in white directed me as we approached reception.

I turned the back of my hand above the scanner, and it beeped. Summer had been sent to a different scanner, and I waited for her.

“Move on,” the guard instructed me. I started to tell that him I was waiting for Summer, but he cut me off. “Move on.”

Since I had no choice, I joined the queue and walked through one of the large steel doors. Of the two doors, only one had been opened, so we had to file through in pairs. No one was really talking, and I kept to myself as well. I was unprepared for the sight of the Dome when I passed through those doors, and I gasped.

“Let me guess. It’s your first time here,” the girl beside me said. She looked younger than me.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Well if they really like you, you’ll get to see it all the time.”

“You’ve been here before.”

“Too many times,” she said glumly. “But I guess it’s not so bad. The food is good. If he decides to share it.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to her. Suddenly I had the urge to turn and run.

Summer came to stand beside me. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Another newbie,” the girl said with feigned surprise and walked away.

“What’s her problem?” Summer asked.

I thought about telling her but decided it was best if I didn’t. “Nothing. Just promise me that you won’t be your usual happy self tonight. Try not to smile too much. Okay?” I didn’t want anyone upstairs to really like Summer, but she was so pretty that I didn’t know how she would avoid it.

“I promise. I’ll be miserable.”

As we stood waiting with the others, we took in all the colors of the Dome. It was almost impossible to believe that this beauty existed right above our dark world of rock, concrete, and steel. All the walls were smooth and painted in shades of yellow. Colorful framed pictures hung on the walls, so much richer in detail than the charcoal sketches and carvings we made in the Pit. Even the floor came alive with richly patterned rugs resting under overstuffed sofas and chairs.

“Line up!” a matronly looking woman shouted.

Summer and I took our place in line, but this time I clasped Summer’s hand firmly in mine so we wouldn’t get separated again.

“Is that a real plant?” she whispered.

I looked in the direction she was staring and saw a large green thing sitting in some kind of pot.

“I think it is!” I could hear the excitement in my own voice. I’d never seen a live plant before, just fruits and vegetables in the kitchen.

“There will be no talking!” the woman said, glaring at Summer and me. We quickly fell silent. “I’m your supervisor for the evening. Do everything I say, go everywhere I tell you, and we’ll get along just fine. Follow me.”

She led us across the big reception room to another set of doors that were much smaller than the main doors behind us. We filed through in a single line and walked down a short narrow hall that ended in another doorway. The doors were made of frosted glass and “Gym” was written across them. The room was smaller than the last one and full of weird equipment.