Imaginations Read online

  "Have fun at school," he said as I gripped the pole next to the door. I glanced back at him and ignored the way his green eyes tried to suck me in. He smiled and I wondered if that was what dreaming felt like. I knew his smile. I knew every curve of his lips. It was impossible.

  I turned away from him as the tram stopped and climbed off quickly. I shuffled in amongst the other kids, trying to blend into the platform of students leaving the other cars on the tram.

  "Who was that?" Amber asked.

  I looked at her and shrugged. "How should I know?"

  “You jumped up like he had bit you. Then you stared at him. It was weird.”

  I glanced back, allowing myself one last look at him, but he wasn’t there. I couldn’t see where he'd gone. “I don’t know. He was weird.”

  I wished I had just one more moment, just to stare and attempt to force my brain to remember him. I was convinced I’d met him at the club, and inside of me somewhere, there was a night with his face filling the memory I couldn’t see. I wished I could though. It would be like looking through a glass brick: indistinguishable features, but still able to tell there was a face pressed against it. I might remember how it felt to be in his arms. I blushed, knowing I would have never let it go that far.

  Amber nudged me back to reality with a nearly silent whisper, "Pity we won't remember him tomorrow." Her eyes turned wild. “Maybe he’s from a notch at the club.” Amber licked her lips and battled with the grin attempting to cross them.

  I looked back at her and whispered, “Maybe. But we shouldn’t discuss it here.” I wasn’t convinced that’s all he ever was to me. I had the strangest feeling I had just remembered him, but I didn’t say anything to her because it was an impossibility. I only remembered what I was forced to, or what I was desperate to retain.

  The walk to school felt like I was walking against a vacuum. The pull of the curiosity, the curve of his lips, and the way his green eyes settled on my mouth when I spoke was too much. I shook my head and forced my thoughts back around.

  Amber, apparently, wasn’t past it either. She looked around and whispered, "Was it just me or did it seem like you knew him? ‘Cause I felt like I knew him maybe."

  I shrugged. "No. He just seemed flirty. You know, like one of the guys who wants to take advantage of the no memories."

  She snorted. "Well, I might be interested in playing ‘pretend we know each other’ for one night. Maybe the club will send an invite, and we’ll see him there.”

  I laughed. “No. I don’t want to discuss this here.” I eyed her up. “We both know neither of us would let it go that far.”

  She shrugged. “I’m eighteen in a couple months—I might.” She nudged me. “You know you want to, too.”

  I snorted as we arrived at school, “I don’t want to discuss it here. And we both know we shouldn’t discuss remembering things. We could make others feel frightened and end the peace we enjoy here within the walls. The Last City of Men depends on us and a new day every day.”

  We walked to class in silence. I got into my seat and looked at all the things I remembered. My chair, my table, my classmates. I was the first to remember where my seat was. It took me only a few months, or so I had been told over and over. I was a fast rememberer. I knew things before the other kids.

  I knew I'd sat there since I was six. I looked around the classroom and realized it was the last week I would sit here. It was the end of the line—the line on the wall that we called a timeline had four days left on it. We had started with twelve years on the timeline.

  It made me sad. The faces in the room were one of the few things in my life that were always the same. We saw each other five days a week and some of us were friends outside of class. We had learned to make memories together.

  We had also learned about the Great Wars, famine, and the Great Plagues. We had learned of the ways they had saved the last few cities and the last of the humans. We had been brought here, to The Last City of Men and kept safe. We were walled in to be protected from it all. The things on the other side had almost killed us all off in the beginning. Now there were only monsters and other horrors on the other side of the wall. Freaks and mutants from the bombs and pollution. The wall was the end of the remembering. We didn’t need yesterday; it was decided by the last of us. There was nothing back there but sorrow and misery. When we built the wall, we created a safe place for what was left to thrive. We’d made it almost one hundred years without yesterday, and we had never had such peace as we enjoyed now. My great grandfather had been one of the founding members of the group of families who helped build the city. My grandfather had been one of the first children born within the city with no memory of yesterday.

  My memories were filled with a select group of people, mostly the people in the room with me. Memories I made by choice.

  "Gwyn!"

  I looked up at Mrs. Barker. She gave me an expectant smile. I looked around at the smiling faces of my peers and pursed my lips. "Here?" Lyle smiled at me and shook his head subtly.

  Mrs. Barker giggled softly. "We did establish you were present. We’re discussing our feelings. Are you feeling something this week you want to share?"

  I was puzzled from having missed some of the discussion. Clearing my throat, I looked at the confused faces around me. "Uhm . . . yes, I feel a bit scared, I think. My stomach has been hurting all morning and I feel distant from my thoughts. Like I am shouting at my brain from the outside of the window. I can see my lips moving, but I can't hear the words perfectly."

  Her smile grew. "Excellent. Is anyone else feeling this way?"

  Heads nodded. We were comfortable sharing with each other. Openness was taught within the group. All that was left in the world of humans had survived within our walls, and trust was everything. We learned at home what level of openness and trust was acceptable and safe. We learned from our parents what we should never discuss and what we could, and what degree of trust should be placed in other people. Mostly, we learned about the dangers of sharing things that could be frowned upon by our leaders, as it might scare our fellow citizens into believing the reset wasn’t working. The reset was the only thing that kept us safe from the petty things that destroyed the Old World.

  I glanced at their faces and we all looked the same. Our comfort was about to be disturbed for a while. The end of the line had seemed so very far away once, and now it was in our faces. Every day we had come to class, barely able to recall the fact that we existed, and now we were being forced out into the world with our limited memories. We had studied language arts, technologies, science, history, art, music, math, human interaction, and trades such as milling, sewing, housekeeping, and cooking. It was done cyclically in six-month intervals. It forced the memorization process and helped us learn to be self-sufficient.

  I looked up from my thoughts as Mrs. Barker walked to her desk and lifted the plant up that she kept there. The other students were still sharing their feelings. She put a hand in the air, silencing them. She lifted the fancy pot, smiling and showing it off for us all to see.

  Many kids gasped at it. Fancy things like it had no place in our lives, except for the people like Lyle and his family, and all the others from the outer areas. They had fancy things and large homes on something called an estate.

  She held the fancy-looking pot that was like nothing most of us had in our homes, and tapped it, bringing our attentions back to her. "This plant starts as a seed. It requires water, light, nutrient-rich soil, and constant company to thrive. The world we live in is the same. We live in a place that requires us to work together to keep the world we thrive in. We created this world and our system is entirely based upon the designation and the reset. People earn their place in society. It is not given to them by birth or rank. It gives us something to strive toward, like the light this plant needs. The stems reach for the light. It also ensures we do jobs that will make us the happiest. No one wants to do a job that will make them miserable.

  She cleared her th
roat and smiled softly. “The reset is what makes everything else work. There is no war, no famine, virtually no divorce, almost no child mortality, no teen pregnancies, and no depression or conflict in the workplace. We are living the dream here, but each section of this life requires maintenance. You are all about to embark on the part of the journey that contributes to our success. Eventually, you'll all remember the details you need at your new jobs. And, like everything else, you'll forget the stuff you don't need. This is the gift our leaders have given us. The memory makers and engineers remember, so we don’t have to."

  We nodded with her. The speech was impassioned and something we remembered. That meant we’d heard it at least every day for five months. I knew it was more like every day for the twelve years of behavioral schooling I was about to complete. I couldn’t remember things that way: in time. I remembered them or I didn’t, but I couldn’t place a time value on any of it.

  I wished I had a fancy pot like that one. My area wasn’t plain, but like all of the areas, we were restricted by what was within the walls, what could be made, and what could not. The potters and artists were not allowed to do it as a full-time job. Clay had to be collected from the banks of the lake and paint was always leftover from construction. It was easily gotten, but time to do it couldn’t cut into your productivity. Art was something one was allowed to do as a free-time hobby. We didn’t sell objects either. Everything belonged to the city and could be gifted only. Sometimes it was done as a way to make trade, but no one ever talked about it.

  My father worked in technologies. Our area was two tram stops from Lyle’s. His area was made up of the leaders and decision makers. They were part of what my parents called blue blood. My father referred to himself as a white collar, and the orchards, trades, and factories were blue collar. When I’d asked him what it meant, he stated he didn’t know, but that it was the common term. I always imagined I would live in the outer areas. I didn’t want to work in factories, orchards, or processing. It was petty and judgmental, but I had no desire to drop in society beneath the technologies. I would only be happy if I was either living in the city as a planner, living in my area as technologist, or living in the outer areas. But it was all done fairly. I had to agree with that. It didn’t matter what area you were originally from. What mattered were the results of your designation testing. Anyone could go lower or higher in their status; it was based entirely upon their own hard work and merit. I believed I had worked hard enough.

  The only place I didn’t want to go was to the memory makers. I didn’t want to leave my parents alone.

  Mrs. Barker had been rambling on. I stared out the window and half listened. "Tomorrow is the big day for most of you. You have worked very hard to get to this point." She looked toward a girl named Brooke and tilted her head. "Are you alright?"

  Brooke started to cry, "No." Her sobs muffled the sound of the word.

  Mrs. Barker wrapped her long thin arms around her, like she had done when we were little. I remembered that. It happened every day for a long time. I don’t know how long, just long. As far as we could remember, Mrs. Barker had been our teacher for every minute of the twelve years. It was what teachers did. They started their career with a class and stayed with them to the end. They would do it three times before leaving for the retirement home.

  "I’ve had such a bad day, and I'm scared about tomorrow," Brooke cried into her embrace. “I think I’m remembering people I shouldn’t be able to. There was a guy on the tram, and I swear I knew him, but he didn’t get off at the school stop. It’s impossible. Only we ride that tram.” Her confession made the rest of us uncomfortable. The shift in the seats and the stone faces surrounding me told me that. I was a bit grateful I wasn’t alone. I too remembered the guy from the tram. ‘Course he had actually spoken to me. I wondered if she had seen that. I didn’t want to be associated with her memory or the fear it created.

  Mrs. Barker stroked the girl's head and soothingly whispered, "But tomorrow is a new day. You’re stressed with the end of the timeline being here and the stress of moving on. That is why we must be grateful." She looked up at us all. "Tomorrow is a new day. Everyone say it and be grateful that we don’t have to remember these fears or sadness."

  Unified, like our great nation that had survived every obstacle, I whispered the words along with my fellow classmates, "Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow is a new day."

  It warmed my heart. I forgot about the guy on the tram and the memories I had feared. I let it be about the new beginning that tomorrow held.

  At break I left the classroom and walked to the bathroom. As I passed by someone in the hall, the smell of something triggered the funny feeling in my belly. I lifted my face and turned around. I jumped back when I saw him stopped, smiling at me. He leaned against the wall in the hallway as if he belonged there, but I knew he didn’t. He nodded toward me. "Hey."

  I backed up against the wall, touching the cold plaster and taking deep breaths. "Who are you?" I asked.

  He grinned and looked down. "Just a guy at a school. Who are you?"

  My fingers twitched as I lifted my hand and pointed. "I know you." My whispered words made his green eyes sparkle. He stepped closer. "You do? I knew I saw it. I saw the recognition."

  I nodded. The terror inside of me was crippling. “Oh my . . . I’ve lost my mind.” I looked up and down the hall, thankful no one was there with us to witness my reaction.

  He stepped even closer. "Calm down. Trust me, you don’t want to know. Just promise me you won’t tell anyone and that you will meet me. I'll explain, I swear. Meet me after class, I'll walk you to the tram."

  I pressed my back against the wall and shook my head. "You want to hurt me? You’re making this happen. You’re making me think it’s a memory.”

  He shook his head. "I would never hurt you, Gwyn. I honestly just want my chance to explain. Promise you'll ditch your friends and meet me behind the school? I know a trail to the tram." There was desperation in his eyes.

  I shook my head. "I'm sorry but I can't. If you hurt me, I won’t remember to tell anyone. And if I do remember you, I don’t want anyone to know." I slid along the wall, away from him, still touching the plaster. My legs started to pick up the pace. I burst through the door to the girls’ washroom, taking gasped breaths.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. My wavy blonde hair was frizzy and unkempt. I smoothed it with my shaking hands and took slow inhales until the worried look in my eyes was gone. Unfortunately, it was replaced with a look I was disappointed to see on my face. It was curiosity and something I didn’t know. A look I couldn’t place. I wanted to meet him after and see what he wanted to say to me. I wanted to know why I knew him.

  I could see my chest rising and falling in my tee shirt. If I looked hard enough, I could probably see my heart beating. I felt intensely frightened, but it was all wrapped up in intrigue. I liked the way he scared me. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d felt it before.

  But how had he remembered me?

  The bathroom door opened. I jumped as a younger girl from one of the other classes walked in. She looked confused at the panicked look on my face.

  "Spider," I whispered.

  She wrinkled her nose. "Is it dead?"

  I shook my head. She backed away and left.

  I followed her out.

  He wasn’t there. He was gone. I wasn’t completely happy he was gone. The intrigued part of me was taking over. I walked back to class with something brewing in my stomach. I didn’t know what it was, but I wasn’t entirely sure it was bad. It was too much of a gamble for me.

  I left the school at the end of the day with my friends. They laughed and talked about how they couldn’t wait for tomorrow. They couldn’t wait to discover what they would be. What their contribution to society would be. They all hoped they would get a secret message from a club they weren’t sure existed.

  I said nothing, and instead thought about the fact that I should be behind the sc
hool with a boy I didn’t know.

  When I got home, a message flashed across my phone. My eyes widened when I saw it.

  Club of the Unknown invites you to Seventh Street in the Gas District, Building Number 23

  It flashed across my phone once. Instantly, the memory was there. The fear and expectation of what would happen at the club made me feel alive. I ran out of the house and down the road, pushing away memories of clubs and feeling free.

  I was breathing heavily when I banged on Amber’s door. She answered with a bright smile. “Number 23?”

  I smiled back. “What time?”

  She shrugged as she closed the door. “I don’t know. The rumors are always 11:00. How will we get away?”

  I shrugged. “I guess we sneak out.”

  I nodded and backed away from her door. “The tram at 10:30 then?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Is there one then?”

  I laughed and turned and ran back to my house. When I closed the door, I leaned against the frame and wondered if the boy with the green eyes would be there.

  The Club of the Unknown

  Dinner felt forced and awkward. My mother smiled and gave me extras of things I knew I hated. I wrinkled my nose, making my father laugh.

  “You need these things. Growing bones and all.”

  I shook my head. “You say that all the time, but according to Mrs. Barker, I’ve finished growing.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Ugh. I remember when we went through this with your brother. Mr. Smarty Pants was the same. He remembered things far too easily.”

  I frowned. “Has he been home recently?” I knew I wouldn’t know that as his visits would be sporadic. He had become a memory maker. He lived in the city with the people who were made to remember yesterday.

  My mother’s face paled. “You know we wouldn’t know either.” She gripped my hand. “His sacrifice is for the good of us all.”