Expiration Date – Chapter Three

 

Investigate.

I fell into a restless sleep after the nurse left. The rustling of the brittle sheets punctuated my dreams; I could hear them as I ran through a grove of trees in my sleep. They were the grass under my feet–they were the distant shouts of the men chasing after me.

   The whisper broke through my dream. “Hey! Shatterproof girl!”

    I tossed and fought the dream from my eyes.

    Hands shook my shoulder and I jolted awake. Heart racing, pulse pounding, and eyes opening into black irises, glimmering with flecks of gold in the light of the setting sun.

    Before I could open my mouth to scream, the boy crouched over me clapped his hand over it. “Don’t panic,” he whispered. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

    Sharp, shrill gasps escape my lungs and pierce the air. Because how can I trust someone who covers my mouth so I can’t speak, but has “UNTRUSTWORTHY” tattooed across his mouth?

    “I’m from a Shatterproof, too. Your Shatterproof.”

    His skin is practically black with tattoos. Rude–too curious–disobedient–rebellious–the list goes on and on. My head is spinning and my heart is pounding and his eyes are black and narrowed but all my mind can see is Hec’s blue. And I was too curious, I was disobedient, and I didn’t trust Hec.

    And that shattered me.

    Maybe it’s my fault that I shattered. Maybe I was disloyal to Shatterproof, and it wasn’t Hec’s doing at all. Maybe I deserved it–just like Ari did, because perfection was all we had to hold onto, and I was a danger to society when I destroyed that perfection.

    As his lips move, UNTRUSTWORTHY splits in half and contorts. “I recognize you. I used to see your face in the magazines. You were a model, right? My sister wanted to be just like you,” he babbles. “Why are you here? I mean, I wasn’t surprised when I saw Ari Braeden here–of course he’s here, he was a shattering waiting to happen–but you? You’re…you’re…” He trailed off and his eyes dropped to my elbow. “You’re too perfect.”

    Confused, I strained my eyes to follow his gaze, but his hand obstructed me. Slowly, he withdrew it and rubbed my spit off on his t-shirt, chewing his lip in apprehension. “You haven’t figured it out yet, have you?” he said.

    Still too terrified to speak, I wrinkled my nose, and I could see the freckles bunch up on my face. He sighed and clucked his tongue, spinning away from my bedside and grabbing a mirror off my bedside table and holding it up to my face. On my collarbone, where I could still feel the burn from the night when I was capture, was a tattoo like the boy’s. DISLOYAL.

   What Hec called me when he shattered me–when the officer from the park flashed the light at me–when my skinned burned–when he called me an “expirational”–that was my tattoo. The boy tilted the mirror lower and it captured the inky black on my elbow: TOO PERFECT. My first crack.

   “My name’s Jackson Chang,” he says, lowering the mirror and catching my eyes again. “My father was an official in your Shatterproof. I shattered a week or so before Ari did.”

   And finally that name I knew so well registers. Scrambling up in bed, I push off my covers and drop my feet to the floor. The linoleum is icy under my feet and my toes curl against it.

   Jackson puts a hand on my arm to steady me, but I shrug him off. “Ari?” I say. It’s the first time I’ve said his name since I lost him, and it draws up a lump in my throat. “Is he okay? Where is he?”

   But there’s that deflated balloon face again, as though every word I said brings him unbearable disappointment. “I don’t know. The same night you got here, he broke out before his tattoos expired. That’s why I’m here. I wanted to if you planned it that way. And if you’re going to break out. And if you do, if you’ll take me with you.”

    I can’t trust him. His mouth tells me so. I couldn’t even trust the people whose words told me I could. Like Hector.

    I push past him and ignore the biting cold in my feet. I have to get out of here. “I don’t know anything about what Ari’s doing. All I know is that something’s going on in this hospital that isn’t right, and I’m going to figure out what it is.” I round the corner and start down the hallway, the hem of my hospital gown fluttering at my knees.

   Jackson jogs to catch up with me. “Let me come with you. I know things…people… places.”

   I can’t trust him.

   I can’t.

   “Fine,” I say.