So I've been working on this new story for a while. I haven't been on YWS or talked to you guys in what seems like forever, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get back onto the site a little. Sorry if it's long.
Anyway, tell me what you really think - there are some loose ends and errors, I know. I've been plowing through this without looking back. So any kind of critisism would be helpful.
Chapter One
Turning, turning, the wheel is always turning. It groans, it creaks, it laughs and mourns as its rotations change the course of lives everywhere.
The first time I heard about the experiments, the only thing I felt was curiosity. Everyone at school talked about them, feared them. My mom wouldn’t even listen to me when I brought it up—apparently her friends had been talking, too. The experiments were horrible. They were hard to watch. They were exhilarating.
The experiments were paid for and born from some government officials who hoped that the inspired fear and adrenaline might bring us out of the depression. That the money from the ratings would boost the economy and would bring us all together as a people. The experiments themselves were invented by a organization of physiatrists and scientists, intelligent people who were testing the extent of how far a human can go, how much a human mind can bend, what the body and sanity can endure.
Of course, I didn’t know any of this until later. Much, much later, when it was too late to do anything about it.... if I even could have.
The participants of the experiments had, oddly enough, entered willingly into it. Every month there was a big sign-up in the center of each capital, and names were written and dropped into the boxes with slots in them. I never saw the boxes, but Mattie told me about them. And each person who put their name in was given a sum of money, a small sum that might pay the bill for that month of buy some food for his or her family. Though the experiments reeked of death, suspense, and horror, they did bring some a little hope. Which I suppose was the government’s intention.
I was never supposed to be involved. I was as wary as the rest of them, and was content to watch from the safety of our cold living room. But a wheel was turning, spinning out of control, about to steal me away to a place I never wanted to go. Maybe if I had known, it could have been stopped. But I didn’t know—only one person did, and he wouldn’t stop the wheel for the world—and with that, my fate was sealed.
Sometimes I imagine my name falling through the darkness of that box in the capital, falling towards the bottom slowly, reluctant to touch the ground and blend in among all the other names that meant nothing to the government. But it did land, it did blend… just not well enough. Sometimes I imagine a hand reaching down, down, my name shining out from all the others, and being picked up. My life in that hand, and that person uncaring.
“Turn that off, Wren,” Mom would say, shuddering when she walked in the house and saw what was on the TV. I harbored a horrid fascination for the experiments, one that I tried to hide from all my friends. I didn’t want to be like the rest of them, talking about who was the hottest guy or who was the weakest and was going to fail the experiment.
Each experiment was different. Most of them involved death—which was the danger in signing up. You just never knew. Each one required a particular set of skills, whether it be archery, living in the wild, or reading quickly. A couple times the circumstances of the experiment allowed only those who were small in stature to survive—the taller ones, the larger men and women, didn’t. Privately, I called the experiments a game of chance. You just never knew.
One month for the experiment ten people—they were unsuspecting, having written their names on that paper for the experiments months ago and having forgotten all about it, boarded on a flight to Miami—found themselves given parachutes and were dropped into a remote jungle in southern Africa, each person having nothing but a duffel bag full of an empty water container, a tarp, and some nails. Only two died that time; one was attacked by a tiger, and the other was bitten by some kind of snake. The other eight went home safe, perhaps changed by the horrors of those two weeks in the jungle. But they had money to compensate for that missing piece of themselves.
Another month the experiment only involved two people, brothers actually. They were locked into a room and told that only one could leave that room alive. They would be given no food, no water, nothing. Eventually, they both died in each others arms from lack of food and water, the two of them refusing to harm the other. The public was never told whether or not they’d failed the experiment.
Mattie wouldn’t watch them with me. He was like Mom; he hated hearing about them, seeing them, knowing about them. I once told him about calling it the game of chance, and he snorted. “Game of blood, more like,” he growled. “Stop watching it, Wren. I don’t want you seeing any more.”
My brother had been protective of me my entire life. I was used to his smothering, but my own respect and love for him stopped me from ignoring his wishes.
Our country had been in the depression for four years already, only one of them consumed by the experiments. Slowly, one by one, all my friends either dropped out of school or moved away. The school had made some major cut-backs already, and the students dwindling didn’t help matters much. There were no more school lunches—everyone had to bring their own—and the internet access had long been severed. The library hadn’t seen new books in forever, something I missed greatly, and many teachers I’d liked had been released.
My small family was touched by it, too, of course. But we were slightly better-off than many of our friends. Mom had been putting away money for a long time, unbeknownst to Mattie and me. She’d kept it under the floorboards, rather than in the bank. There was enough to last us a while, and even after the school closed and businesses floundered, we were able to pay the electric bills and buy groceries. The prices had skyrocketed, though, so Mom was that much more careful.
“Don’t waste what electricity we have on that horror,” she said to me about the experiments. “Watch something that will make your forget a while, honey. Something… happy.”
What she didn’t know was that I couldn’t be happy. Not while she walked around the house like a ghost, so pale and silently longing after Dad, who’d left us a couple years back. Not while Mattie left early each morning looking for a job, any job, and always came back with slumped shoulders and a brave smile for me, defeated but trying not to act like it. Not while all my friends were gone, unable to keep in touch, unable to make me laugh as they’d used to.
Mattie’s girlfriend—her dad still had his job and her family was able to stay barely afloat, like us—didn’t try to hide her anger with the government, didn’t try to fake her own happiness. At least I attempted at pretending, for Mom and Mattie. No, Beth voiced every complaint, made known every irritation she had.
“We were once the most powerful country in the world,” she’d rant at dinner. Every time she came over I picked at my food, wishing she would melt into the floor. “What happened to that? How did it happen? You want to know who I blame?” She never gave us a chance to say anything. “I blame the Chinese. We did grow too dependent on them, yes, but they were clever about it. They ripped the rug right out from underneath us when we weren’t looking.”
At this point Mattie would notice I wasn’t eating and he would nudge me with his shoulder gently, winking at me. I would smile back, unable to resist when my brother looked at me like that, like I was the only one that kept him sane.
“Why do you date her, anyway?” I asked him once while I was brushing my teeth. He leaned against the doorframe, watching me. “I mean,” I grabbed my hair, bent down, and spit out the toothpaste, “you two don’t have anything in common. She’s not right for you, Mattie. You love dirt bikes and the American classics. She’s into Mary Kay and the latest Gossip Girl. I don’t get it.”
Mattie laughed, still watching me as I began to floss. Sometimes it was disconcerting, the way he looked at me. But always I would tell myself I was being stupid and ignore the feeling. My brother was the only one I could say what I was actually thinking around; he was the only one I felt like myself when I was with.
“I guess it’s just familiar,” he answered, eyes still twinkling. That’s what I loved about him—no matter how bad things got, no matter what happened, he found a way to look like he’d just won the lottery. He just looks that way when he’s around you, an inner voice told me once in a while. Every time, I shoved it away.
“What do you mean?” I asked him, scowling.
Mattie raked a hand through his hair, sighing. “I’ve been with her for a long time, you know? I know what to expect from her. She knows what to expect from me. It may sound stupid, but that’s the way it is. It’s… comfortable.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have those silly butterflies than be comfortable?” Mattie frowned at me. I flapped my hand, smiling. “You know whenever you’re around someone you really, really like, and they brush your hand, or touch your hair? You get the butterflies in your stomach. It’s the best feeling in the world.”
Mattie grinned. “Mom used to talk about that.”
I nodded, tossing the floss into the garbage. “Yeah, she did.”
We both grew silent after that, thinking about our mother. Dad had left us without saying anything, without an excuse or an apology. She’d never been the same after that. Sure, she had us, but Mattie and I knew it wasn’t enough for her. While Mattie and I had each other to lean on, to talk to, to support, she had no one. There was a fine line between children and parents, and she refused to cross it. She wouldn’t confide in us the way I wished she would. Mom kept it in, protecting us in the only way she knew how.
Time passed. I celebrated my seventeenth birthday quietly—more quietly than I was used to. In past years Mom had thrown me amazing parties, inviting everyone we knew. There was balloons, a huge ice cream cake, music booming throughout the neighborhood.
This time, though, there was only Mattie and Mom. They stood on either side of me and cheered when I blew out the seventeen candles. It was kind of corny, but it was tradition, and I put up with it because I knew it might give Mom a little joy.
“Happy birthday, Wrenny,” Mattie whispered in my ear, squeezing me tight. Mom smoothed my hair back, the simple gesture saying more than words ever could.
We cut the tiny cake, homemade from one of those easy-bake boxes. Mattie wolfed it down, making mmm noises for Mom’s benefit, and I ate a few bites. My appetite had gone when I’d looked up and seen the empty space where Dad should have been. Two birthdays, I thought. Now he’s missed two birthdays.
It was as if Mom was thinking the same thing. She didn’t eat, either. She just pushed the cake around the plate with her fork, looking sad.
Mattie noticed, too, and I saw an odd expression cross his face, a mix of regret and desperate determination. But the expression passed quickly, so quickly I wondered if I’d imagined it, and Mattie grinned at me, himself again.
That night, Mom sang to me before bed, the way she’d done every year since I was born. It was a song that she said her mother used to sing to her. Mom sat on my bed, hugging me closer than she ever had before, and I felt her chest vibrate as her voice traveled through her and burst forth into my tiny room.
“When you look up and see the stars, just know that I’m not very far. It’s a short journey from this land of above… just know that it’s you I love.” She repeated it a few times, until my eyes began to flutter.
“Night, Wren,” she whispered, lying me back down against my pillows. She backed away, shutting the door gently. I watched that sliver of light from the hallway shrink, and then disappear entirely.
“Night,” I whispered back, too late.
It was the next day that my life began to crumble. I didn’t know it, but when Mattie found both me and Mom in the kitchen doing the dishes together and announced that he had to tell us something, it was the beginning of the end.
“What is it, Matthew?” Mom inquired, soapy dishwater dripping off the plate she held. It dripped onto the floor, and she didn’t notice in her sudden anxiety. I watched the tiny raindrops fall and splatter against the wooden floor. Drip. Drip.
Mattie hesitated, which was strange in itself; he never hesitated. Then he plunged, “I entered my name for the experiments.”
The plate fell to the floor with a shatter. Shards of white glass went everywhere, sliding towards the doorway where my brother stood.
I moved quickly, gripping Mom around the shoulders to keep her from moving and cutting her feet. Mattie stood frozen, unsure of what to do. Torn between wanting to glare at him and scream, or just stay calm and ask him why, I only hugged Mom tighter. She was silent, staring at her son as if she didn’t know him.
Mattie was talking again, desperate to make it okay again. “You know we needed the money, Mom. Your savings are running out. And what are the chances of my name being drawn, anyway? They say only one out of every hundred thousand, if that.”
“Who’s they?” I snapped, finally finding my tongue again. Mattie turned to me, hurt shadowing those bright blue eyes.
“I had to get the money, Wrenny. You know that.”
I did. We’d heard Mom sobbing in the night, whispering to her friends on the phone, wondering what she should do. I didn’t save enough, she would cry, anguish clear and painful in her voice. Of course my brother would go to such desperate measures to help her—it was who he was. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, stand by and watch one of us worry when he could do something about it.
“There are other ways, Mattie,” I said to him. Mom pulled away from me. She’d recovered, and now walked out of the kitchen, stepping carefully, giving Mattie a wide berth as if he carried some infectious disease.
He let her go, his own pain and anguish obvious on his face. He was trying to hide it, but I could feel it, drifting from his heart to mine. When we were little, we had a gesture, something that used to say what we couldn’t in words. Slowly, my smile trembling, I touched my heart, then reached out and pretended to touch his. He laughed a little, rubbing his face.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” he whispered into his hands. “It’s not that I even signed up for the experiments. I just never thought we would be here.”
I was already moving toward him, and I gently put my arms around his middle, like I used to when we were kids. “No one did,” I said. He was holding me back, his arms the only things holding me to the surface of the earth. He buried his face in my hair.
“We’re going to make it out of this, Wren. We are.”
I believed him.
Also as I read this it reminded me a lot of The Forest of Hands and Teeth & The Hunger Games. A combination of both. So I will be back sometime to read more.
Why was it the Chinese's fault though? What did they do? What is wrong with America? Why is it's people so poor? The setting; maybe you could explain it a bit more... It seemed like the future, but a very shattered and recession future... So, it is placed in America and the future? Perhaps you could clear that up a bit...
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