**Updated**Excerpt - YA Dystopian -- Untouchable
Posted: August 29th, 2012, 9:53 am
UNTOUCHABLE (working title)
CHAPTER ONE
7:00pm - 36 Hours
Sitting at our small folding table we use to eat our rations, my fingers run over the crisp white letter I received earlier today. I’ve read it a hundred times and still don’t understand. “I’m wanted for reconditioning, and I have thirty-six hours to report to the Capital.” What’s reconditioning? My mom busies herself in front of the rusted kitchen sink, her red apron faded and frayed at the seams. She tucks a loose strand of her auburn hair behind her ear and chews on her upper lip, something she does subconsciously when she’s nervous. I ask her about the letter but she pretends not to hear me as she picks at a fleck of dried food on the white plate she’s been holding for the last five minutes.
“Mom?” I press her for more. I need to understand.
She drops the plate in the sink and it shatters into a hundred small pieces of uncertainty. Her hands slam on the counter, her cheeks redden. “Lilly! God, just leave it alone.” Her voice shakes and she can’t look at me as she sulks out of the kitchen and slips into her bedroom, locking the door behind her.
I glance at the clock resting on windowsill; it’s just after seven. The white face, dotted with lines echoes the face of my mother. She has been shutting me out a lot these past few months and I wonder now, if it has something to do with the ‘reconditioning’.
I finish our dinner dishes, washing them by hand and then lay them on the counter to dry. Seven-thirty. It’s strange now; my eyes focus on that clock as if my life depended on it. Does it? I glance once more at the letter siting on the small table before I grab my ID necklace, slip it over my head and race out the door.
We are told that we are lucky to be living like we do. All the houses where my mother and I live are the same, given to us by the Capital. Tiny dusty-white houses with four walls and a roof that’s nearly flat with the red earth to separate each home. They are little blips on an unpaved street, like the teeth that break through the gums of an infant.
I turn back to our house with the faded white lily painted on the door and suddenly I’m six years old again. I had been playing in the streets with another girl my age. She and I were jumping rope and playing tag. Her mother called her in for dinner and so I went home. Except, I couldn’t go home. With the houses all looking the same, I had no clue where to go. I spun around in circles trying to find the house that was mine. When I couldn’t find it, I sat in the center of the dirt road, legs crossed and cried into my dirty hands.
I don’t know how long I had been crying on the road, but finally, my mother came to me. “Lilly,” she said, “what is the matter with you?” I looked up through muddy eyelashes to my mother who was standing impatiently tapping her foot with her hands on her hips.
I tried to tell her I was lost but she only scoffed at me and told me to march inside the house and wash up for dinner. I looked at her, mouth agape and walked in the direction her finger pointed. The next morning, she painted a small white lily on our door. I never feared getting lost again.
Jogging down the road, I count the houses until I reach the eighth one from mine: Nanette’s. I knock on the door, her mother answers; her face is swollen from crying.
“Is Nanette here?” I ask, hoping I haven’t interrupted anything. She nods then holds a finger up as if to say hold on. She turns away and calls for Nanette. Nanette walks to the door, her head hanging low. She’s holding a letter. “Do you have to go too?” I ask. Nanette nods just once and turns around. Do I follow her inside? Her mother forces a smile and tells me now is not a good time. She shuts the door silently and I feel like my world is crashing to the ground.
I walk towards the edge of our colony, where a twenty-foot cement wall keeps us safe from what lies beyond. As children, sometimes Nanette and I would play by the wall hoping to hear something on the other side. Anything. We’d make up stories about what was beyond the wall: monsters, giants…nothing. Other than the wind that blows through our colony, we never heard a thing.
Tonight, as the sun goes down, I press my ear against the heat-baked wall and close my eyes. I still hear nothing. Until, I do hear something. My heart stops, then takes off at a sprint. Something is scraping up the wall, rhythmic thumps and the occasional slip. At the top of the wall I see the tips of eight fingers. Then I see a head with a mop of shaggy brown hair. I squint my eyes trying to make out the figure, and then I take a step back. It’s a…boy. At least I think so. I’ve never seen one.
CHAPTER ONE
7:00pm - 36 Hours
Sitting at our small folding table we use to eat our rations, my fingers run over the crisp white letter I received earlier today. I’ve read it a hundred times and still don’t understand. “I’m wanted for reconditioning, and I have thirty-six hours to report to the Capital.” What’s reconditioning? My mom busies herself in front of the rusted kitchen sink, her red apron faded and frayed at the seams. She tucks a loose strand of her auburn hair behind her ear and chews on her upper lip, something she does subconsciously when she’s nervous. I ask her about the letter but she pretends not to hear me as she picks at a fleck of dried food on the white plate she’s been holding for the last five minutes.
“Mom?” I press her for more. I need to understand.
She drops the plate in the sink and it shatters into a hundred small pieces of uncertainty. Her hands slam on the counter, her cheeks redden. “Lilly! God, just leave it alone.” Her voice shakes and she can’t look at me as she sulks out of the kitchen and slips into her bedroom, locking the door behind her.
I glance at the clock resting on windowsill; it’s just after seven. The white face, dotted with lines echoes the face of my mother. She has been shutting me out a lot these past few months and I wonder now, if it has something to do with the ‘reconditioning’.
I finish our dinner dishes, washing them by hand and then lay them on the counter to dry. Seven-thirty. It’s strange now; my eyes focus on that clock as if my life depended on it. Does it? I glance once more at the letter siting on the small table before I grab my ID necklace, slip it over my head and race out the door.
We are told that we are lucky to be living like we do. All the houses where my mother and I live are the same, given to us by the Capital. Tiny dusty-white houses with four walls and a roof that’s nearly flat with the red earth to separate each home. They are little blips on an unpaved street, like the teeth that break through the gums of an infant.
I turn back to our house with the faded white lily painted on the door and suddenly I’m six years old again. I had been playing in the streets with another girl my age. She and I were jumping rope and playing tag. Her mother called her in for dinner and so I went home. Except, I couldn’t go home. With the houses all looking the same, I had no clue where to go. I spun around in circles trying to find the house that was mine. When I couldn’t find it, I sat in the center of the dirt road, legs crossed and cried into my dirty hands.
I don’t know how long I had been crying on the road, but finally, my mother came to me. “Lilly,” she said, “what is the matter with you?” I looked up through muddy eyelashes to my mother who was standing impatiently tapping her foot with her hands on her hips.
I tried to tell her I was lost but she only scoffed at me and told me to march inside the house and wash up for dinner. I looked at her, mouth agape and walked in the direction her finger pointed. The next morning, she painted a small white lily on our door. I never feared getting lost again.
Jogging down the road, I count the houses until I reach the eighth one from mine: Nanette’s. I knock on the door, her mother answers; her face is swollen from crying.
“Is Nanette here?” I ask, hoping I haven’t interrupted anything. She nods then holds a finger up as if to say hold on. She turns away and calls for Nanette. Nanette walks to the door, her head hanging low. She’s holding a letter. “Do you have to go too?” I ask. Nanette nods just once and turns around. Do I follow her inside? Her mother forces a smile and tells me now is not a good time. She shuts the door silently and I feel like my world is crashing to the ground.
I walk towards the edge of our colony, where a twenty-foot cement wall keeps us safe from what lies beyond. As children, sometimes Nanette and I would play by the wall hoping to hear something on the other side. Anything. We’d make up stories about what was beyond the wall: monsters, giants…nothing. Other than the wind that blows through our colony, we never heard a thing.
Tonight, as the sun goes down, I press my ear against the heat-baked wall and close my eyes. I still hear nothing. Until, I do hear something. My heart stops, then takes off at a sprint. Something is scraping up the wall, rhythmic thumps and the occasional slip. At the top of the wall I see the tips of eight fingers. Then I see a head with a mop of shaggy brown hair. I squint my eyes trying to make out the figure, and then I take a step back. It’s a…boy. At least I think so. I’ve never seen one.