Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
“How do you get to that conclusion?”
“Because I hear it in your voice. You hated it.”
“No. I didn’t hate it. It’s hard to hate being in the Founders.”
Clover turns to look at me, scrunching up her nose. “Why?”
“Because we’re the elites. We get all the privileges. We can even go up top on vacation—I mean, eventually. You have to earn that and it takes most of your career. But at least it’s a possibility. As a twelve-year-old kid, being conscripted was… well, fuckin’ amazing. I got to leave home, for one. There’s an academy in the Lumina Basin, right on the lake, and that’s where I lived all my teenage years. So it’s not a stretch of the imagination to say it was a stayaway camp.”
Clover turns, sitting on the edge on the window sill. “Lumina Basin. What’s that?”
“A huge underground crystal cavern attached to a massive salt lake. It’s…” I pause here, conjuring up images of Founder Academy and the surrounding area. “It’s the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen. And maybe I haven’t seen everything up top, but Lumina Basin is like something out of a storybook. The crystals are a dozen feet in length.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m not joking. That’s just the average length. There are a few that are sixty feet or more. They’re as wide as a house. It’s almost not even possible to understand that it’s a crystal, because when you’re right up close, it looks like a wall of milky luminous glass. They’re all like that, because they are lit up with lights, of course. They don’t illuminate on their own.”
“Hmm. It doesn’t sound real.”
“There are caves like that in the up-top. There’s one in Mexico, but that one doesn’t have the salt lake like Lumina does. It’s the water that keeps Lumina Basin habitable. It even rains there. So… no. I didn’t hate the academy. I loved it, actually. And I was a captain of my year the whole time I was there.”
“What did you want to do when you were a kid that caused you to be diagnosed with ‘curiosity?’”
“I found a book in my father’s study called Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
“Jules Verne.”
“You’ve read it?”
“Skimmed. It was boring.”
I actually laugh out loud. “You’re crazy. That book was the best thing I had ever read. Still is, maybe.”
“What a strange book to find though.”
My eyebrows go up. “Right? I mean, it was a book about surface people who journey underground and find a new world.”
She laughs. “That is kinda funny. It would be like me reading a book about a girl underground who comes up top to find my world. So it’s interesting, I guess. But I would not obsess over that. It’s just another story in a sea of stories, if you ask me.”
“That’s because you’re allowed to read whatever you want up there. Authors are allowed to write whatever stories they want. This book was not on any of the approved reading lists and I immediately knew that because the idea that there could be a whole other world on the surface never occurred to me until that very moment and it felt… very… forbidden.”
Her eyes are locked with mine for many long seconds. Then she lets out a small breath, and with it comes a chuckle. “You ran.”
“What?”
“When you were sent on your mission, or whatever. You never told me what you did to mess it up and get sent to prison, but this is what you did. You ran when you got up here.”
There’s no point in lying about this. Clover already knows so much more than she should, she’d probably be executed for that fact alone if we get caught. So it hardly matters what I did to get sent to the tunnels. I walk over to a chair, sit down, and kick my legs out. “Yep. I ran. I only made it one year, though.” Then I smile and tip my chin up a little. “It was the best worst decision I ever made.”
Clover studies me for a few moments, then gives me a little nod. “Curiosity is a bitch, isn’t it?”
“An ancient crone of a bitch.”
“What about me?”
I shrug. “What about you?”
“How do I rank in terms of the best worst decision you’ve ever made?”
My grin isn’t immediate. It takes a couple moments to form. But once it does, it’s big. “Clover, you are tippy-top bad for me. You’re number one on my long list of reckless, traitorous decisions.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Because…” I fully intend on lying here. I fully intend on insisting that I’m some kind of good guy in this deception that’s going on all around us. But I can’t seem to do it, even though it’s a better answer than the truth. “Because there’s a part of me that knows there’s no coming back from this one. Bringing you here is a death sentence for me if I get caught. But I’m angry at my father. I guess I just didn’t realize it until now. I’m pissed, actually. That he would send me to those tunnels. That looking for truth is a punishable offense. And there’s a part of me that wants to get caught and embarrass him a second time. Two chances, two fuck-ups.” I pause here to smile. “I would die happy to see the look on his face if he ever found you here.”