The sleepover would provide the perfect cover for our escape.
Ketta’s parents had always been way more lax than my own. We’d be gone for hours before they checked on us and realized we were all missing. And my own hawk-eyed parents wouldn’t be looking for me to come home until around noon.
At the moment, they stood at the door waiting to send me off to Ketta’s as I descended the stairs with my stuffed backpack.
“Whatcha got in there, kiddo?” Dad teased. “Your whole bedroom? Looks like you’ll be gone for a month instead of a night.”
I winced a little then forced a smile. “I brought along some games to play and stuff. It’s probably too much, but you know… just in case.”
In reality, I’d gone shopping in my grandma’s old clothes trunk for myself and my friends and packed whatever personal care items I thought I’d need in addition to the money and supplies Heath had left for me.
It did sort of feel like I had my entire room on my back. Knowing Mom and Dad would miss my holoconn bracelet if I wasn’t wearing it, I had it on but planned to leave the device behind at Ketta’s house when I escaped tomorrow morning.
“Well, take anything you like as long as you remember to bring it back. I think your friend Luz still has some of my old record albums,” Dad said.
As a former musician, he’d been an avid collector of antique music formats.
Mom chimed in. “And Ketta’s mom still has my automated pan-stirrer. Try to remember to bring it home with you tomorrow, okay hon?”
Ugh. This was harder than I’d thought it was going to be.
In spite of my remembering they weren’t really my parents, I felt strangely bereft at the thought of never again seeing the woman and man I’d called Mom and Dad for as long as I could remember.
Mom’s brows pulled together. “You okay? Forget something?”
“Nope. I’ve got everything I’ll need,” I said, then felt guilty again at the double meaning of my words.
Everything I’ll need to leave home for good.
“Did you remember Cuddle Cat? Not sure if you’ll be able to sleep without him,” Dad teased, referring to my childhood snuggle toy that still had a place on the pillow next to mine each night.
That, I had opted to leave behind. Packing it might have been too obvious a sign of my intention to leave home for good.
“I think I’ll be okay without him for one night.” I accepted my dad’s hug, keeping my eyes averted so he wouldn’t see the dishonesty in them.
Mom leaned over and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Have fun. And make good choices.”
“Okay I will,” I wheezed as I practically ran out the door.
I probably wasn’t all that much fun at the sleepover, and it was due the choice I was
about to make. I still felt guilty over what I was about to do to my parents.
Even if I wasn’t their natural born child, they had been assigned to watch over me. Would they get in trouble for allowing me to escape not once but twice?
And then there was the issue of what to say-or not to say-to my friends. If I followed Heath’s advice and left them behind, they could die.
If I told them what was really going on, they’d probably think I was joking—or insane. And there was a chance they’d report me to their parents.
We sat around the game table in Ketta’s basement having consumed several pizzas and an entire season of Offworld.
“No matter how many times I watch it, I still can’t believe she ended up with Luca,” Jolie complained. “He was so obviously not her true love.”
She grabbed a pillow from the couch and crushed it to her chest, frowning miserably. She’d programmed her smart-shirt to display a picture of Sienna, the show’s main female character in the arms of the un-chosen leg of the love triangle under the words Sienna and Zane Forever.
“I know how to make you feel better,” Ketta said in a mischievous tone.
She produced a scuffed black plastic ball about the size of her hand and started shaking it.
“Let’s find out who your true love is. Hmmmm… I wonder if it’s Troy Walters.”
“Gross.” Jolie pulled a yuck face, still grouchy.
“I know. It’s Forrest, isn’t it?” Ketta squealed. “The Magic Eight Ball knows all. Let’s see
what it says.”
Now Jolie was blushing, and all the other girls were laughing. She lunged for the toy,
which Ketta held up over her head out of Jolie’s reach.
“He is not. Give me that. This is stupid,” Jolie said.
Ketta jumped up from her chair and looked down at the small window on one side of the ball in her hands, cackling now as she read aloud.
“Ooooh. “It is decidedly so.’ I knew it.”
Luz grabbed for the ball, managing to take it from Ketta. “I want to do it.”
She shook the ball, asking it, “Who is my true love?”
Ketta shook her head. “That’s not how it works. You have to ask it yes or no questions.”
“Oh.” Luz shook the Magic Eight Ball again. “Is Ben ever going to notice me?”
Her smile faded as she read the answer.
“What does it say?” Jolie asked.
She turned the ball around so we all could see it.
“Not likely.”
“Do it again,” Ketta encouraged. “Sometimes it changes its mind.”
Luz shook the ball again but looked even more crestfallen at its second response. “Don’t bet on it.”
“I don’t like this game,” she said, plunking the toy down on the tabletop. “Let’s do some- thing else.”
“Maybe it just doesn’t know about love. Let’s try asking it some other stuff,” Jolie said. She dropped it into my lap. “Mireya, you haven’t asked it anything yet. What do you want to know?”
The answer to that question wasn’t something I could say out loud. Instead, I picked up the ball and shook it, asking silently in my mind.
Should I tell them the truth tonight?
The little white triangle inside the ball rolled a few times in the liquid then settled against the display window. Its answer stole my breath.
Affirmative. Do not fear the consequences.
“Hey, not fair,” Ketta protested. “No secret questions. Do another one-out loud.”
“Fine.” I shook the ball again, maybe a little too vigorously thanks to my racing adrena- line. “Should we leave the base tomorrow?”
There were scandalized gasps around the room, and the other girls leaned in eagerly to see the ball’s response to my bold question.
I stared, too, trying not to pass out while I waited for an ancient plastic toy to prescribe my future.
Most definitely.
I showed them, and their faces sobered.
“We can’t,” Luz whispered, her eyes even rounder than usual, but then she added, “Do it again.”
So I did.
Go for it. You won’t be sorry.
I wasn’t sure if the hokey little toy actually had some magical powers or if its advice only backed up what I already knew I had to do, but I decided to tell my friends what I was planning.
It was my last chance.
“I’m going to do it,” I said around shallow breaths before I chickened out. “I’m going to leave. Tomorrow morning. This place isn’t what you think it is. We’re not safe here.”
“What? Of course we’re safe. This base is one of the safest places on the planet. That’s why they have us here. We’re important, the last kids on Earth. They want us to stay on base so we’ll be safe,” Jolie said.
She looked at me like I was crazy and actually seemed angry. “You’ve been acting weird lately, you know that?”
“You have,” Luz agreed. “I mean, we all still love you, but everyone says it.”
So the return of my memories hadn’t slipped under the radar after all. Heath said Dr. Rex had noticed. My friends had noticed, too.
That meant my parents had probably noticed as well. I really was running out of time to escape and to save my friends.
But how?
Our holoconnectors all sounded simultaneously, signaling med time. I watched my friends pull their pill containers from their bags and reached for mine as well then stopped as an idea struck me.
“I could really go for a milkshake,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’ll even make one for the rest of you― just to show you I’m a good friend-even if I am a weirdo.”
Ketta stood to join me. “I’ll help you. And no one said you were a weirdo. They said you’d been acting weird-everyone does that sometimes, right? Remember last year when I used to say all that crazy stuff?”
The other girls looked at her with obviously confused expressions, but I was so excited I nearly jumped up and down.
“You remember that?”
Ketta gave me a gentle smile. “Not really. But my mom likes to remind me of it anytime I accuse her of being annoying. I’m sure she didn’t make it up. I mean, if you can’t count on your mom to tell you the truth, who can you trust?”
Well that was that. There was no way my friends were going to throw off their lifelong programming and suddenly believe the shocking things I knew to be true.
I simply wasn’t going to be able to convince them to escape with me in the morning.
Unless I took drastic action.
