I am supposed to be the perfect one. Out of all the children in New New York City, Dr. Willard chose me. While I was preparing to leave for the underwater lab, people used to tease me about being “the chosen one” but here, I am at home. Here, everyone is the chosen one. All the kids in the lab are from different countries, chosen to participate in the new testing. The funny part about it is, they would not tell us what they are testing us for. I asked when we first got there, but Dr. Willard only said that it would evolve the human race more than I could imagine. That night I could not sleep because I was thinking of all the things that could have meant. Eleven years later, and I still do not know. Robin- she is the Chosen from Canada- worries that they’re doing something bad to us, but I know Dr. Willard would never. He loves us like we would his own children. He knows every one of our names, which food we are allergic to, what we are afraid of, and even silly little things like our favorite colors. Recently, he has become more distant, though. He does not chat with us as much as he used to, and he does not say goodnight to each of us every night like he used to. But today, he has called us all in to the cafeteria to make an announcement.
“You are all growing up. Most of you are eighteen, some seventeen,” he said looking directly at me, “so you need to know the truth. I hope you know that I love each of you apart from my job, but I have been watching you. As you have grown up under my care, I have taken note of your strengths and weaknesses. And for the last year, I have stopped coddling you to see how you can adapt to new circumstances. I am very sorry, but all except seven of you will be going home.” He pauses to let it sink in, and when I look around I see most of my friends with their mouths hanging open.
“We chose you all so young to come here so that we could really watch you and decide who would be best to test the new product that we have been working on for the past twelve years. Some of you just are not ready for it, which is why you will be returning to your families. Seven of you, however, will be staying. If you are not going home, there will be a note in your dormitory, so everyone please return to your-“ he was cut off my the sounds of feet stomping and people yelling. I saw Evan calming walking over to me, not in a rush at all.
“Well hey there. How’s it going?” he winks at me.
“Why aren’t you worried? Come on, I need to see if I’m staying!” His hand shoot out and he grabs my arm.
“Hannah, you’re not going home,” his smile vanishes and his face hardens. It is rare when Evan acts serious.
“Evan, stop. What are you talking about?”
“You really haven’t noticed how the Doctors treat you? They favor you. Everyone but you knows that you won’t be leaving anytime soon. I, on the other hand…” he trails off and I frown.
“Come on, don’t be like that. Let’s go see,” I drag him along to my dorm first.
We walk down the row of little brown houses until we reach the only one that had been painted bright green. Marigold and I thought that the dorms were too bleak so we decided to go to the opposite extreme and paint ours neon. Most of the other girls’ dorms in our row have vegetable gardens outside of their houses, but ours has colorful, thriving flowers. Jamie even created a new flower for us to plant! Jamie is the genius among us. He spends most of his time in the labs with Dr. Willard and the rest of his team. I am sure that Jamie is not going to leave because he is so brilliant. I wonder if he is even going to check his letter.
The inside of my house is almost as colorful as the outside, although not quite as neon. There are pictures of us hanging on the walls all around the house. Evan sighs and reaches for my favorite picture of the two of us.
“Hannah I told you to take this down,” he grumbles.
“Aww, come on Evan! You know you like it,” I giggled and wiggled my eyebrows. I saw a smile peek out from behind his scowl. The picture was taken at my eleventh birthday party. We had just met a few months ago, and when the picture was taken, we had decided that we were going to be friends forever. In the photo, I am smiling at the camera through a mouthful of cake while Evan is completely oblivious to the camera, only looking at me, grinning. I remember that after that, we had smeared chocolate frosting on each other, giggling madly.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 31.12.2012

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