The Pledge

When his hand was at my hip and he was pulling me toward the dancers, I followed, our shoulders bumping against each other as he led the way. He pulled me closer than I was comfortable with, and I was shocked by my reaction, considering that not so long ago I had wondered what it might be like to press myself up against Max. With Paris, it was just the opposite; I was repelled by his touch, my body resistant to his.

Still, his arms were strong, his hands insistent, and he leaned in close.

I glanced around, trying not to feel nervous as his alcohol-laced breath mingled with mine. His body was moving with the music, and rather than cause a scene I decided to go along with it, only half dancing, and only half following the beat. I wondered how far into the song we already were, and how soon I could make an unnoticeable escape.

“You have pretty eyes,” he complimented me in Parshon. His words were hot and sticky against my face. I almost laughed, trying to remember at what point he’d stopped staring at Brooklynn long enough to notice my eyes.

Instead I smiled weakly, leaning my head away from him. “Thanks,” I answered loudly above the music, wishing the song would hurry up and end already.

But it wasn’t a pause in the music that interrupted the awkward dance; it was something I wasn’t prepared for. Something I could never be prepared for.

The roar of the sirens exploded as if the sound was echoing from inside my own head, its shrill din shattering the night. These weren’t the bleats of the curfew.

I felt frozen in place, my mind numbed by the sudden chaos breaking out around me.

Screams erupted, although I could scarcely hear them above the noise. I felt myself being shoved from every direction as people tried to flee, crushing against one another in an effort to escape the park, to seek cover. To find refuge.

I searched for Brooklynn. I had just seen her! But now I couldn’t locate her amid the confusion and the press of bodies.

“Brooklynn!” I yelled out, but my voice was lost in the commotion around me.

I watched as a girl, about my own age, fell to the ground in the crush to get away. A man ran over the top of her, his heavy boot kicking her square in the head. She tried to get out of the way of the others, crawling across the ground toward the edge of the path, her fingers clawing at the dirt beneath her, but she couldn’t move fast enough.

She glanced up, looking dazed as blood trickled down the side of her face.

The moment her head lifted I realized that I recognized her.

It was Sydney, the Counsel girl from the Academy who taunted us when we passed on our way to school each day. The one who had come into my family’s restaurant that night and mocked me, thinking I couldn’t understand what she’d said.

Before I could tell myself otherwise, I was running, racing toward her. I was jostled B Ajostled and bumped, shoved and pushed, in my effort to get to her, each individual on a mission to save only themselves.

By the time I reached her, I almost stepped on her myself. Body was pressed against body, and I was nearly swept past her.

I thrust myself as hard as I could through an opening in the crowd, forcing my way through. A hand reached into my hair and yanked. My scalp felt like it was on fire, yet I leaned forward, jerking my head away and crying out in pain.

No one heard me. Or even cared.

I could see Sydney, still struggling to drag herself out of their way. She looked broken. I staggered a little, but I was determined, and I reached down to grab her, gripping her beneath her arms and hauling her backward, farther off the pathway. Farther from the punishing feet that battered her.

The wailing sirens were constant, but I didn’t have time to worry about what they meant.

I leaned down and yelled right next to her ear, hoping she could hear me. “Can you stand? Can you walk?”

She looked confused as she blinked up at me, and I wondered if she’d even understood what I’d just asked. Then slowly, almost too slowly, she nodded, reaching out her hand for me, allowing me to help her to her feet.

She was wobbly at first, swaying, and I held on to her, waiting for her to steady herself. She opened her mouth and said something, but I couldn’t hear her. The words were swallowed by the roar around us.

I shook my head and shrugged.

She stepped closer, her mouth nearly at my ear, and tried again. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice was pinched.

I wasn’t sure what to say, how to answer her question, so I didn’t try. “We have to get out of here! Where do you live?”

She just pointed east. It was where I’d suspected she would need to go, where a Counsel family would live, in the upper-class neighborhoods of the east side of the city.

But I needed to head west, toward my end of town. Toward my family. Toward Angelina.

My heart squeezed. I needed to find my sister.

“I can’t go with you!” I screamed as loud as I could. “Can you get there on your own? Do you know where to meet your family?”

Her hand shot out, grasping mine, and I realized that she was giving me her answer. She didn’t want me to leave her. She didn’t want to be left alone to find her way.

She was coming with me.

The crowds had thinned; most of the people had already escaped into the night, in search of shelters where they could hide. We were no longer in danger of being trampled, but there was something else to fear as strange new sounds popped in the distance, one after the other, rising above the ever-present shriek of the sirens.

Holding my hand, Sydney recoiled beside me, her body shuddering after each new explosion.