Shymers by Jen Naumann Page A

weren’t for their determination to keep me safe, my parents would have joined the Rebel cause.
    “Are there Rebels here, at this school?” I ask Kai.
    She laughs again, this time the noise sounding like more of an inside joke she is keeping to herself. “Yeah, there are some around. I’m surprised you don’t know any. They’re kind of like you and your family—against the system and everything.”
    “They’r e troubl e ,” Bree corrects her. “ That’ s what they are.”
    Kai waves her off with a flick of her hand. “You probably have never even met one.”
    Bree frowns. “And yo u hav e ?”
    Kai shrugs and pops a grape into her mouth. “I think there are a lot of things about me that would surprise you, Bree.”
    “Tell me more about these Seers,” I say to them. “Who are they? How do they predict DODs?”
    Kai shrugs. “They’re just regular people born with an unusual chromosome. My parents said it happened because of all the synthetic hormones they used to put in our milk and food.”
    “Then we woul d al l be Seers,” Bree says to her.
    “Anyway,” Kai continues, “the government discovered these people have the ability to use the part of the brain the rest of us don’t know how to tap into, and they know someone’s DODs by just touching their skin. They see the person’s life flashing in front of their eyes and the n bam ! They know the exact date it’s going to happen. Creepy, huh?”
    Are Seers frightened by what they can do? Do they enjoy telling people when they’re going to die? I shiver. “But you said Seers can be wrong. How does the government know when they are wrong?”
    “It almost never happens,” Bree reminds me.
    “But still,” I say. Nothing would make me happier to discover the Seers were wrong about all of my new friends—that they had given them the wrong DOD and that they actually would live past eighteen. “Can you just walk up to a Seer and ask them if your DOD has changed?”
    “Maybe, if you could actually find one,” Kai answers. “There aren’t too many around anymore. The ones that still work for the government are on some kind of lockdown. Some people say a lot of them were killed because they refused to work for the government. I personally think they all went into hiding somewhere.”
    “Kai, you have the strangest ideas,” Bree grumbles.
    Kai reels around to face her. “My parents were taken into suspension because the y kne w stuff, Bree. You don’t think I learned anything from them before they left?”
    “Not so loud,” Bree says quietly, pleading with her eyes. “You’ll get us all into trouble.”
    I glance over at the other groups of Shymers, but they are too far away from us to hear anything. My eyes stumble across Harrison to find him staring at me yet again. Although his mouth and jaw are both held tight, there is a glimmer behind his eyes.
    All at once, I can truly feel it.
    Harriso n doesn’ t hate me. He is trying to pretend he does only because he has started to feel something for me, just as Bree said. It’s a feeling that a Shymer isn’t really given the luxury of having and a feeling I have never known myself until now. It would explain the strange ways my body keeps reacting to him when he is near. All this dislike and anger toward me is artificial. He doesn’t know what else to do.
    I dip my chin and give him shy smile. His eyes snap off of mine as he stands and darts away from our group.

 
     
     
    Harrison

8 – More Than Friends
     
     
    I have tried everything I can think of to get Olive out of my mind since the day Bree first brought her to us. But it’s hopeless. Even when I close my eyes at night, I can still see her bright smile and hear her gentle voice. I can’t deny that I feel something really deep for her either. It started when she almost fainted outside of the shuttle. Holding her in my arms sparked all kinds of foreign feelings that I couldn’t push away. She smelled amazing and her skin was so