The Unwanteds

And then the scene flipped to the cafeteria again. Alex snapped his head up and glanced nervously at the clock, knowing he needed to get out of there before Mr. Today showed up. But he couldn’t go. Twenty seconds later the dormitory room scene returned, and now Aaron lay stretched out on his cot, staring at the ceiling, hands folded behind his head. To anyone else Aaron’s face might appear expressionless. But to Alex, Aaron’s face looked like a troubled sea.

When the scene changed, Alex forced himself to go, leaving a little piece of himself there with his brother. He wandered down to the dining room completely preoccupied with thoughts of Aaron. Why him? Why was Mr. Today watching Aaron’s room, of all places? Could it possibly be a coincidence?

Alex didn’t realize that he walked right past Ms. Octavia, who called out a greeting. And he didn’t notice Lani stealing glances his way, her eyes growing more hurt each moment that he didn’t acknowledge her. He also didn’t see Mr. Today watching him closely, a look of grave concern on the man’s face.

Alex moved about quite unaware of anyone for the rest of that day. The only thing he was painfully aware of was the single question that pounded rhythmically in his head.

How?

How

Meghan and Lani were already in the lounge, slouching on a long couch, their feet propped up on the coffee table, when Alex arrived. He had spent the past two days lost in thought, dying to know more about Aaron. He was having trouble sleeping, but when he did sleep, his dream was different. After being reminded of the stark hopelessness of Quill, he no longer wanted to go back at all. It would be safer, he thought, and wiser, to rescue Aaron and take him back to Artimé. And after a while Alex began to think that Mr. Today, who seemed to know a lot about everyone in Artimé, was probably watching Aaron because Aaron should have been an Unwanted too.

Alex grunted a greeting to the girls and yawned, wildly tired. He plopped down on the couch across from them and closed his eyes, wondering if Mr. Today knew that Aaron had drawn pictures in the dirt too.

It was another hot, dry summer in the quadrant when Alex and Aaron were ten. And that day was the kind where the dust clouded up at every step, hovered around your feet and covered your shoes and legs with a thin layer of grime no matter where you walked. But late that afternoon, as Alex and Aaron dug a hole in the tiny backyard in which to bury the week’s worth of unusable scraps, it began to rain. The cracked earth swallowed up the water, and both Alex and Aaron were secretly glad for it, because it not only gave their household extra water for the week, but it also made the digging easier.

Alex had the shovel—he always did the hard part now, since he knew that he would be declared Unwanted. Aaron stood next to him, holding the bucket of scraps and pointing out the discrepancies in the way Alex was digging.

“That’s not uniform size,” Aaron said.

“It doesn’t matter,” grumbled Alex, and he lifted the heavy shovel out of the hole and set the blade in the mud. He leaned on the handle, taking a rest and letting the rain soften the hard ground.

“It does matter,” Aaron said evenly.

Alex watched the rivulets of rainwater roll across the not-quite-level square of dirt that was their backyard. He lifted up his shovel and noticed the dent it had left. And then, using the blade of the shovel in different directions, he made a triangle. And attached to the bottom of the triangle a rectangle. “Look,” he whispered. “It’s our house.”

“Stop or I’ll report you.”

“What’s the sense in that?” Alex said logically. “I’m already Unwanted.”

Aaron frowned, and then looked at the mud drawing, tilting his head this way and that. “What? I don’t see.…”

“Not a real house,” Alex sighed. “Don’t you see that it looks like our house?”

The rain muted the edges of the drawing as Aaron shook his head, puzzled.

Alex glanced over his shoulder. There was no one in sight. He grabbed the food scraps bucket, picked out a chicken bone, and pushed the shovel toward Aaron. “Here, hold this. Now watch.” Aaron took the shovel as Alex sank to his haunches and made a triangle with a rectangle attached to the bottom. “See?”

Aaron shifted his eyes uneasily. “It’s …,” he said, but it was like he was thinking so hard about what he was seeing in the mud, and how he shouldn’t be thinking about it at all, that he couldn’t think and speak at the same time. He dropped down to his haunches too, almost as if being smaller would protect him. The shovel’s handle rested along his damp neck and the collar of his now rain-soaked shirt.

Alex glanced sidelong at his brother. He twirled the bone between his fingers, and then held it out loosely in the palm of his hand toward Aaron. The rain splashed on his forearm, shattering the air.

Slowly Aaron peered over his shoulder this way and that, then slipped his hand over the once-innocent chicken bone, which now held the power to decide his future and his fate. And shakily he lowered it to the mud. With a light hand he tried to copy Alex’s house, which had now melted and was gone.

Alex watched him for a moment, trying to keep from breathing too hard in excitement and fear, and then dumped the bucket of scraps in the hole and began to push the mud back over it with his shoe to fill it.

Aaron, entranced, wiped the mud clean with his left hand and drew another house with his right. This one had almost begun to look like something when the boys heard the squelch of footsteps behind them.