Chosen Ones by Tiffany Truitt Page A

without me seeing him. It left me antsy.
    Finally, I found him pacing out behind the compound—one of our favorite activities.
    “You’re okay?” I asked.
    He shrugged.
    “Were you even sick?”
    He shoved his hands into his pockets.
    “What? Why are you acting so weird?”
    He was staring at me again. I took a step away from him. I didn’t know why I had the need to distance myself, but I felt it in my core.
    “It was harder than I thought it would be,” he replied quietly.
    “What was?”
    “Staying away from you.”
    “Why would you purposely do that?” Was it because of what I was becoming? I had no control over that. He had to know I would still be different than the other girls. I wouldn’t be controlled by my emotions.
    Henry took a step away from me. That one step, that one moment, and everything we had was gone.
    “I can’t…”
    “Henry.”
    “I can’t, Tess.”
    I knew what he was waiting for. He was waiting for me to tell him to stay.
    But I didn’t know how to ask that of anyone.
    The words of Jane Eyre skipped through my mind. How deceiving they were. No wonder the council had outlawed books. Stories enabled you to forget your life and your limits. They urged you to reach for a world that was never meant to be yours. There was nothing more dangerous than an imagination.
    As I walked to the mess hall, I knew I looked like hell. I didn’t bother to tame my hair, which was no doubt matted with blood. I didn’t give a damn. Life couldn’t be one extreme or the other—feeling nothing or being a slave to my emotions. There had to be some sort of middle ground. I wasn’t able to live on one side of the spectrum.
    There were ways to relieve some of the pressure of everything that weighed down on me. I would give in to what my heart demanded, but only a little. I would control it still. I had learned sitting in the room with James, listening to the words of Jane, that everything was about moderation. Reading the book, however wrong it was, allowed me to escape. But I would have to watch myself. I could not become seduced by the ideas belonging to the story. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad to feel a little, but I would have to be careful. I had to remember how weak my species was.
    I wanted to see Henry.
    The mess hall was loud, much too loud. It was so bright that it was as if my senses were on overload. I needed sleep. After searching for a while, I spotted him and stopped dead in my tracks. There he was, as if he had always been there. And I realized he had seen me, too. He stopped and stared straight back at me. We must have only been ten feet apart, but neither of us took one step in the other’s direction. I felt the fingers of my hands reach for him on their own. He seemed to sense this and took a step back.
    Our gazes still never broke. I held my ground, refusing to free him from my stare, and he didn’t try to escape. He looked so different from the boy I remembered. Our meetings were moments trapped in short glances—this was something different. While he was still rather lanky, his arms were toned. His sandy blond hair was longer than most of the boys. It was painfully obvious that any trimming he did by himself. His bright green eyes still entrapped me as they always had. He was nowhere near as beautiful as James, but genetics certainly hadn’t been unkind to him. I actually smiled.
    After a long pause, Henry smiled back. I noticed the pain in it, the pain I wished I could take away. A smile full of the sacrifice he had made for me. I nodded and he returned it. Then he walked away.
    I can’t say how long the interaction had lasted, but it had been enough. I needed to know he still existed; I needed him to know I still existed. He represented a part of me I was beginning to wish back.
    The pain that threatened to crush me ever since Emma died didn’t seem all-powerful. I knew the feeling wouldn’t last, but I would hold onto it for as long as I could. I noticed a bounce in my step. I