Scorched by Michael Soll Page B

of me?
    They call us savages because we were raised in a place that does not adhere to their customs, but in the hive, we did not practice inflicting pain on others. In the hive, we did not need the largest house to show we were better than everyone else. In the hive, there was no better, but in Newbury, there was which meant there needed to be a worse. For every mayor, there was a janitor…yet, we are the savages.
    After class, I took Cotta aside to gauge where his head was at. “Would you leave this place with me?”
    The question seemed to confuse him. “Why would we leave? This place is perfect. Have you tried chicken yet? It’s what all food should taste like.”
    “Cotta, I’m going to leave Newbury.”
    “Where else is there to go?”
    “The surface.”
    “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
    “I want to go to the top. I want to go beyond.”
    “But, we’ll die.”
    “Says who?”
    “Everybody.”
    “Yeah, everybody who’s never been up there. It doesn’t make it true just because others say it so. If we started our own hive and told all the kids the surface was melted and nobody could survive, they would believe that to be true.”
    “But it is true.”
    “Cotta, we only know what is true and what isn’t if we witness it for ourselves. Newbury is the same as the Hive, it’s just bigger, but it has the same walls. It has the same ceiling. Up there, there aren’t any walls. There aren’t any barriers.”
    “Are there chickens?”
    “There might be. There might be anything. That’s the beauty of it, don’t you see? We know what’s here. We know there are chickens and carrots and dirt. But up there, Cotta…up there is a mystery.”
    “What if we breach the top and we die?”
    “That’s a possibility. But I know if we stay here, we’ll die eventually. And I’ll always wonder if we had tried, if we had gone up there. I’ll never stop wondering. And that seems a lot worse than dying.”
    He stared at me for awhile, contemplating all that I said. I could see him weighing everything as methodically as he could, and then he said:
    “Okay, Spec. I’m with you. Until the end.”
    ***
    We had been training for a few weeks, and already we learned the basics of sword and knife play. We were also taught several maneuvers with our hands. The Mayor thought it was time to send out search parties along the borders to find the NaNa breach into our city. My search party happened to include Cotta and Kaolin, along with a few other students and a couple of adults more adept at self-defense (including Alex) in case we were to run into a NaNa. There were 8 of us in total.
    We started along the East Sector and wound up by the water mill. Alex studied the stream. “The current’s too strong for us to go up. Keep a lookout along the walls for any holes.”
    We walked along the border of the city for awhile when I noticed some loose dirt, pounded in to look like the dirt around. I had seen it done several times before by Cotta and myself as we filled in gaps while hiding our secret path.
    I dropped to my knees and started to dig and after a few seconds, I easily breached a tiny path. A portly man looked down at the narrow hole. “Too small for any normal-sized human to fit through.”
    “We should get back and let the mayor know,” said a girl from my class. 
    Alex examined the path with his flashlight. “We can go through and find where the NaNas came from. We can locate their village. We’d be heroes.” He stared at the hole and seemed lost in thought, trying to hold back a grin. “We gotta go through.”
    “It’s too dangerous!” the girl shouted. “They could get us.”
    “They’re not gonna get us,” Alex said dismissively.
    “I’m staying,” she announced.
    “Fine. I’m going.” He looked out at the rest of us. “Come if you aren’t afraid.”
    Alex got on his hands and knees and crawled through the path, clutching his sword tightly. The rest of us followed behind, minus