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  At my father’s office Zack stops, eyeing the door and then me with an uncertain expression. “You know I’m just trying to help, right?”

  “Then you shouldn’t have offered to escort me here,” I say, pushing him playfully in the chest. “Dee will probably set fire to my bed while I’m sleeping tonight as retribution.” Literally she’s done that a time or two. I have no idea why the most hostile Dream Traveler born to the gods was given the gift of pyrokinesis.

  Zack doesn’t respond, but instead gives me his usual commiserative expression. He doesn’t know what to say. I get that. “Yeah, I know you’re trying to help,” I finally say. “You may want to consider there’s no help for me. I’m a Dream Traveler whose only talent is I disappoint my family.”

  “Oh, Em, I’ve told you that your gift is delayed. It will come on soon and when it does you’ll blow all of them away.”

  “Thanks, Zack,” I say, reaching out and straightening his tie. It isn’t even that crooked, but I know he likes when I do it because it sharpens his appearance. “Are you off to go take over Austin Valley?”

  “Not quite yet,” he says with a wink. “I’ve got a thing or two to learn still.”

  “Don’t we all,” I say, returning the wink and then dismissing him by facing my father’s ornately carved door. I’ve stalled long enough. Now I must face that which is certain to be extremely unpleasant.

  Chapter Two

  The redwood door is carved with leaves and vines and depictions of Greek gods. It’s intricate, like everything in Austin Valley. We should be using our resources for offering better living quarters for Middlings or educating their children. Instead, we make sure our doors have detailed carving, our silver is polished, and our hair isn’t holding chemical residues because it’s washed with the finest shampoos.

  The wood hardly registers under my calloused knuckles when I knock. I want to be too calloused for my father also, but I’m not. He’ll respond exactly six seconds after my knock. I know this. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

  “Come in, Em,” he says to his empty office, loud enough so I can hear.

  I lock down my thoughts before I enter, shield them the best way I know how. My father’s office has always reminded me of one in a dollhouse, too small for the person who plays in it and too small for the things that happen within it. My eyes search the space. The statue I broke this morning still stands high on its shelf, solidly.

  “You do know you’re late?” he says, pushing back from his desk, which is half the size of a Cadillac.

  “I realize that, Father, and I do apologize,” I say, rushing forward. “It’s Dee.”

  “Dee?” he says, standing up and pinning his hands on the surface of his desk. My father is blond like me, but gray hairs are starting to streak his slicked back hair. “Why has she caused you to be late?”

  “Oh, I thought you knew about her current situation,” I say, slipping down into the seat beside his desk. It’s firm and gives me the extra support I need right now.

  “Em,” he says, his tone demanding. “I do not know so tell me at once why Dee has caused your tardiness.”

  “Well, as you know, she’s trying to make a pleasing union with Zack Conerly,” I say and pause.

  “I am aware of that. But what does this have to do with you?”

  “Well, Zack was completely insulted by her lack of decorum, so I spent a few extra minutes just now encouraging him to give her one more chance. I’m sorry if my lateness has angered you, but I risked this thinking that my sister’s long-term happiness was worth it,” I say, pretending to fidget with my hands.

  My father pauses and considers me. “Well, I’ll dismiss your punishment this once, but in the future remember that others’ well-being isn’t your concern, even if it will benefit your family. You’ve been taught that, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, Father. And thank you,” I say, forbidding a satisfied smile to grace my lips.

  “Em, I’ve called this meeting to inform you that you’ll have to schedule an extra visit to the lab each day.”

  “What? But I have—”

  “To do what you’re told,” my father completes my sentence.

  “Of course, but you know I have agriculture hours that would have to be cut.”

  “And so they will be cut,” my father says, striding around his desk. “Since your gift still hasn’t surfaced I want you to have two injections a day, as well as regular evaluations.”

  “Two?” I question, flinching with dread. “But why?”

  “Why can’t you move something with your mind? Read thoughts? Do anything that Middlings can’t?” my father asks, standing stockily in front of me. “The President and I would love answers to these questions. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Then you’ll attend as many lab visits as we request and endure all the tests, won’t you?”

  “I want to know why my gift hasn’t surfaced, I really do,” I say, straightening my blazer, knowing that the result will probably not garner much favor from my father. “It’s just that the hours I spend at the farms are so satisfying and I really need that.”

  He presses his eyelids tightly together, shaking his head. “Maybe the problem, the reason you have no gift, is you’re more Middling than you are Dream Traveler.”

  “Father, just because—”

  “All logic fails to explain why my daughter chooses to spend her extracurricular hours doing the work of Middlings.”

  “I enjoy it and that work feeds our community.”

  “That work is not your responsibility. What if eagles chose not to fly, but rather hop around from branch to branch like a toucan? That would be a waste of great talents. Species and races are divided for a divine reason. You’re obviously confused on your place in this hierarchy and I’m drawing to the end of my tolerance with it.”

  “Father, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but—”

  “This conversation is over. You will report to the lab every morning and afternoon from this point forward, is that clear?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And starting next week you’ll meet with a skills assessor the President has hired to work with all Defects.”

  Defects. That’s what they’re calling us now. The term was no doubt picked to encourage shame, which my father thinks will inspire perseverance.

  “Okay,” I say, threading my fingers together in front of me. The letter I saw this morning still sits where I spied it, but the label is hidden from my view. Still, I know what it says on the front: “Top Secret Case: Em Fuller.”

  How did I become a top secret case? That’s what I need to figure out, but the only way I’ll do that is through compliance.

  “Thank you for helping me, Father. I really want my gift.”

  “And it will come, Em,” my father says in a tired voice. “Just follow all my instructions.”

  “Yes, Father. Of course.”

  I swing open his door and go to exit.

  “Oh, and Em?”

  “Yes?” I say, stopping in the doorway.

  “Thank you for helping your sister. Zack is a smart match for her. And I fear the gods above have punished us and we’ll never be rid of you and your sister, Nona.”

  “Yes, Father, you are right, we’re insufferable,” I say with a small curtsy.

  ***

  The dirt is cool and moist under my fingertips. The perfect combination for fertile soil. Morning sun is my favorite. It has a quality of pureness to it. Although I had to go to the lab and skip agricultural hours last night, I’m here now. It feels good. Firmly I pat soil around the base of each plant. I enjoy this phase in the growing process, but harvest will come in a few months and I’ll find true satisfaction. There’s nothing like breaking a vegetable from its stem. And there’s nothing like the satisfaction of knowing it has become whole enough to make something else wholesome.

  I turn to Dean, who’s working beside me. He smiles back. He’s always smiling while he
works. His family lives in one of the small dwellings on the street where Zack and I walked yesterday. Dean deserves more.

  “The crops are looking good this year,” he says, standing and sizing up the field with a sweeping glance.

  “Maybe if we have a big harvest this year then there will be a bonus,” I say with a hopeful smile as I pile my tools into the box.

  “Never, ever been a bonus, miss,” he says, swiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his tanned arm.

  “But I’ve been putting in the suggestion. Bigger efforts lead to bigger gains and they should be rewarded.”

  He claps me on the back. Laughs. He nods at me like we both heard a joke, but he’s the only one who got the punch line. “Wish the others thought like you.”

  “They will, some day,” I say, brushing dirt off my fingers.

  “Maybe my children’s children will have that privilege, but I won’t.”

  “Why don’t you leave? Go and run your own farm?”

  He shakes his head with a deliberate force and throws me a confused look. “I can’t leave.”

  “But you’re not a prisoner here,” I say.

  “No, I’m no prisoner. But I was born here, same as my father. I don’t know anything else but Austin Valley.”

  It’s interesting that the longer we confine ourselves to a place the more it imprisons us. I wonder if long-time captives refuse to leave their cell even when they’re handed the key.

  “Have you tried to leave before?” I ask.

  “Oh, yeah, a decade ago. ’Fore the kids,” Dean says, looking at his hands but not quite seeing them. “Now I choose to stay. Every day I choose to serve the Reverians. The same as the rest of the Middlings. Because when I left, I didn’t sleep so well. I wasn’t happy. Only gone a few weeks, but it was different on the outside. Harder. People here, the Reverians, they make it easy. Outside Austin Valley, you have to do everything on your own. Make it on your own.” He shakes his head, looking overwhelmed by the idea. “That’s harder than you think. It’s hard to survive in the world out there. Harder than I ever imagined. I realized when I came back, what I’d taken for granted. And if that ain’t enough to choose to stay, well, my children are happy here, safe. You know? It’s a pretty good place. They do good by us,” he says, not making eye contact with me. His eyes stay trained on his dirt-stained fingertips. A sliver of a smile forms on his mouth, but it’s not quite genuine. “You know they helped Patsy and me to forget about what we lost, don’t you?”

  I nod, a knot rising in my throat.

  “Think about how much harder that would have been if we’d had to endure it out there,” he says, pointing just over the ridge where the world is less organized. “If we weren’t in Austin Valley, under the care and protection of the Reverians, then things would have been harder. That ain’t worth no farm, I tell you that much.”

  A few years ago Dean and his wife lost a child. I heard they rushed the baby away before Patsy could even hold her. And after thirty-six hours of labor I’m certain that’s all she wanted. Apparently when the doctor returned his hands were empty and his face grave. Dean wasn’t the same for a month, missing work and making mistakes on the job. President Vider authorized for the modifier to be used on him and his family. All their memories of the child they lost have mostly disappeared, all but a single strand of the moment the child was taken away. I overheard my father tell my mother they kept this memory so that Dean and his family would be grateful, knowing that the President’s administration saved them from a lot more emotional anguish.

  “I bet those seedlings you planted will hatch tomorrow. Be nice to see them push through the dirt,” Dean says.

  “Well, I’d like to see them when they’re fresh and new, but I’m not sure I can spare the hours tomorrow. I’m kind of overloading my schedule by being here now,” I say, grabbing my bag full of clean, presentable clothes and slinging it over my shoulder.

  “Whew, I praise the gods above they didn’t make me a Dream Traveler. I can’t imagine having the pressing demands you all have to put up with daily.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I say with a wink. “I think they blessed you with more talents than a Dream Traveler could stand. No one knows the earth and phases of the moon quite like you, Dean.”

  “If I have a rival, then it’s you, miss,” he says, pulling his ball cap down low from the sun rising higher in the Oregon sky.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow if I can,” I say, saluting him and rushing down the fields, grazing various plants with my fingertips.

  Chapter Three

  For four years I’ve been coming to this lab. One might think I’d favor it somehow, have a certain bond with the space. I don’t. The people have grown on me, though, despite the painful associations I’ve unfortunately attached to them. It’s not their fault. They’re doing their job. And each year their job becomes more difficult as the list of Defects grows. I used to be one of only a few patients. Now I have to wait for my injections.

  “Ms. Fuller,” Tammy says, poking her head through the lab door. Her soft brown curls remind me of yarn made from alpaca’s wool. “Dr. Parker is ready for you.”

  I smile and nod. Tammy never says much to me, although we’ve habitually gotten used to seeing each other. She seems to keep an extra distance from most of the patients, and maybe I would too in her position. The room she leads me to is different from the normal one I’m used to. It’s not a patient room, but rather the open lab behind the exam rooms, where test tubes and other equipment I’m unfamiliar with are kept. My speculative glance at Tammy must give away my confusion.

  “We’re getting busier, and since you’re a veteran at getting injections Dr. Parker decided to do your treatment here. All the rooms are full at the moment.”

  “Okay,” I say, taking a seat on a swivel chair and watching Tammy’s long brown hair bounce as she retreats.

  “Dr. Parker will be right in,” she says, dropping my chart into the holder on the wall.

  Curious objects all around me suck in my attention. At my back is another door, one with a small wired window. I half want to get up and spy through it, but I don’t want to be caught being inquisitive so I stay seated. Still, this is a forbidden place. The back of the labs. For as long as I’ve been coming here I’ve never been allowed to step into this room. I always imagined this was where the chemicals they formulated and tweaked to try to fix us were being mixed. I figured this was a place that should be kept without disturbances, so great is the mission of the lab in trying to fix an epidemic of Defects.

  “There’s my favorite patient,” Parker says, not looking at me as he plucks my chart from the wall. A couple of years ago he asked me to drop the Doctor part, said it would make our relationship more relaxed. “How are you feeling after this morning’s injection?”

  “Sore,” I admit.

  “I’m afraid that you’ll notice this injection hurts far worse,” he says.

  “So you’re not sugar coating it for me anymore, are you?”

  He sighs and gives a defeated nod. “Afraid not. There’s not much I can do to lessen the pain and the extra injection is usually not as easily tolerated by patients,” he says, flipping through my chart and then laying it down. His brown eyes pause on me, a sympathetic smile on his mouth.

  “But the results? Have they been good? For the patients who are now getting two injections? Have those patients gotten their gifts?” I ask, hopeful.

  He shakes his head, his dark brown hair moving with it, breaking out of the shiny gel. “Unfortunately, we’ve just started doing the two-injection method so it’s hard to tell. No results yet,” he says with perfect diction. Parker grew up outside Austin Valley, in a Korean family, but I’ve never spied a hint of an accent.

  “Well, maybe you can tell me a funny story while you give me this, huh?” I say, allowing him to run the thermometer across my forehead. He eyes the reading and smiles.

  “As healthy as ever,” he says, tearing open the package con
taining the alcohol swab.

  I sit up tall, since I know that’s the best position for receiving the injection, as Parker takes the position behind me.

  “Hmmm,” he says, readying the syringe. “I think, at this stage in the day, I’m all out of stories, but I’ll have one ready for you tomorrow, all right?”

  The tip of the needle is twenty-two gauge, not big unless you consider being stuck with it daily. Parker told me that was the right thickness for a needle that has to enter the brain stem. “One. Two. Three,” he says. The needle punctures into the base of my skull, a sharp paralyzing sensation. And then the pain. Three seconds of mind-numbing fire. I’ve learned to count backwards during this part, until the fire turns to a slow burn. That’s precisely the moment that Parker injects the meds, a cold, pink fluid. It makes my head feel on fire and also like I have the worst case of brain freeze in the world. This time the sensations are so overwhelming I hardly register when he slips the needle out the back of my neck, bandages the injection site, and releases my hair.

  “Em, you know not to move for fifteen minutes,” Parker says, already turning to the exit. “Usually I’d stay and watch your vitals, but I think you’ll be fine. I’ve got a long list of patients to get to so I’m going to expect you as a veteran to keep yourself here until a quarter after and then show yourself out. Can I trust you to do that?” he says, his long skinny fingers on the doorknob. A nervous rush in his voice.

  “Of course,” I say; the smile I brandish actually hurts my head.

  “Good girl,” he says with a relieved smile and exits.

  Parker is right—as one of the first kids to start receiving the injections, I’m familiar with the protocol. Patients are supposed to remain still, head up, no neck movement for five minutes. Parker tells everyone fifteen, but he once slipped and told me that five minutes was fine and the extra bit was just precautionary.

  The pain is more manageable when I close my eyes, but it’s hard not to slump like that so I search the room and take in all the strange equipment, all used to try to create a solution for Defects. Mother thinks the Defects are a part of a cursed lineage who’ve finally been chosen for redemption by the gods. So according to her logic we’re paying the price for her ancestors’ misdeeds. It doesn’t make sense to me why random kids within a generation would be chosen for punishment for things that happened centuries before our birth. Still, all I want is for this to be over with. I want my gift. I’m tired of being punished.