Pawn

After the workday ended, adults and children spilled into the overcrowded streets, begging for food. I usually had to elbow my way down the sidewalks and weave between men and women who couldn’t be more than twenty years older than me, but already their hair had grayed and their skin turned to leather—the results of decades of hard labor and struggling to make ends meet. My life wouldn’t be much better. As a IV, I could have counted on reaching sixty. Now, as a III, I would be lucky to hit forty. If I wasn’t careful, I would also be out on the streets begging for more than the government had decided I was worth.

As we dashed around a corner, I spotted a sewer entrance a few feet away and sighed with relief. We were safe.

I shimmied through the opening on the edge of the sidewalk, and a minute later, Benjy climbed down from a manhole nearby. The sewer was dark and smelled like rust and rot, but it was the only place our conversation would be private. Even the empty streets didn’t offer that guarantee. Shields were everywhere, waiting for their chance to pounce the moment they heard a word against the Harts or the Ministers of the Union. According to Nina, the matron of our group home, they got bonuses for each arrest they made, and they had families to feed, too. Didn’t mean I hated them any less, though.

That morning, before I’d left, she’d said we all had our roles to play. It just so happened that some were better than others. We couldn’t all be VIs and VIIs, and all any of us could hope for was food in our bellies and a place to call our own. I would have a roof over my head; the government made sure of that. But now, with my III, I would be outrageously lucky if it didn’t leak.

In the speeches we watched from first grade on, Prime Minister Daxton Hart promised us that as privileged American citizens, we would be taken care of all our lives, so long as we gave back to the society that needed us. If we worked hard and gave it our all, we would get what we deserved. We were masters of our own fate.

Up until today, I’d believed him.

“What were you doing back there?” said Benjy. “You could’ve been killed.”

“That was kind of the point,” I muttered. “Better than being a III for the rest of my life.”

Benjy sighed and reached for me, but I sidestepped him. I couldn’t take his disappointment, too.

He slouched. “I don’t understand—sixty-eight percent of all people tested are IVs.”

“Yeah, well, guess I’m dumber than sixty-eight percent of the population.” I kicked a puddle of rancid rainwater, splashing a few rats that squeaked in protest.

“Eighty-four percent, actually, including the Vs and above,” said Benjy, and he added quickly, “but you’re not. I mean, you’re smart. You know you are. You outwitted that Shield back there.”

“That wasn’t smart. That was reckless. I told him my real name.”

“You had no choice. If he’d found out you were lying, he would have killed you for sure,” said Benjy. He stopped and faced me, cupping my chin in his hand. “I don’t care what the test said. You’re one of the smartest people I know, all right?”

“Not the kind of smart that matters.” Not like Benjy was. He read everything he could get his hands on, and he forced me to watch the news with him every night. By the time we were nine, he’d read the entire group home library twice. I could recite whole articles seconds after he read them to me, but I couldn’t read them to myself.

“Nina was wrong,” I added. “You don’t get extra time if they read the questions to you. The parts I reached were easy, but the reader was slow, and I didn’t finish. And they docked points because I can’t read.”

Benjy opened and shut his mouth. “You should have told me before we left the testing center,” he said, and I shook my head.

“There’s nothing you could have done.” A lump formed in my throat, and I swallowed hard. All of the studying, the preparation, the hope—it was all for nothing. “I’m a III. I’m a stupid, worthless—”

“You are not worthless.” Benjy stepped closer, so close I could feel the heat radiating from his body. He wrapped his arms around me, and I buried my face in his chest, refusing to cry. “You’re strong. You’re brilliant. You’re perfect exactly the way you are, and no matter what, you’ll always have me, okay?”

“You’d be better off without me and you know it,” I muttered into his sweater.

He pulled away enough to look at me, his blue eyes searching mine. After a long moment, he leaned down and kissed me again, this time lingering. “I’m never better off without you,” he said. “We’re in this together. I love you, and that’s never going to change, all right? I’m yours no matter what your rank is. You could be a I, and I would go Elsewhere just to find you.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a choking sob. The rank of I was only given to the people who couldn’t work or contribute to society, and once they were sent Elsewhere, no one ever saw them again. “If I were a I, we probably never would’ve met in the first place.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he murmured, running his fingers through my hair. “I would know something was missing. I would know my life was pointless, even if I never understood why. Even if we’d never met, even if you never existed, I would still love you beyond all reason for the rest of my life.”

I kissed him, pouring every ounce of my frustration and anger into it. The sewer wasn’t exactly romantic, but with Benjy there, I didn’t care. He understood. He always understood, and in that moment, I needed him more than I could ever explain. The government might not have thought I was worth anything, but I was worth something to Benjy, and that should’ve been all that mattered.

At last I pulled away and cleared my throat. The lump was gone. “You won’t have any problem with it,” I promised. “You’ll finish early and still get a VI.”

“If you couldn’t get a IV, then there’s no hope for me,” said Benjy. I snorted.

“Please. Someday we’ll all be bowing and scraping and calling you Minister.” If anyone from our group home got a VI, the highest rank a citizen could receive, it was Benjy. The test wasn’t designed for my kind of intelligence, but it was tailor-made for his.

He slipped his arm around my waist and led me farther through the sewer, but he didn’t disagree. Even he knew how smart he was. “Did you get your assignment?”

“Sewage maintenance.”

“That’s not so bad. We’re down here all the time anyway,” he said, slipping his hand under the hem of my shirt. I pushed it away.

“In Denver.”

Benjy said nothing. Denver was so far away that neither of us knew where it was. To the west, more than likely, because the only thing east of D.C. was the ocean, but I’d never seen a map of anything bigger than the city. The only bright side was that Denver couldn’t possibly be as crowded as it was here.

“I’m going to talk to Tabs,” I said, and Benjy stopped cold in his tracks.

“Don’t. Wait until I take my test. Nina will let you stay at the group home, and then I can support you.”

“Nina won’t commit assignment fraud for me, and I won’t let you do it, either,” I said. “If they find out you’re hiding me, they’ll send me Elsewhere and kill you in front of the entire country. It’s not happening.”

“Then Nina can give me permission to get married,” he said, and my mouth dropped open.

“Are you crazy?”

“No,” he said. “I love you, and I won’t let them separate us. If that means getting married earlier than I’d planned, then so be it.” He paused. “Do you not want to marry me?”

“Of course I want to marry you, but you haven’t even taken the test yet, and what if being married to a III affects your rank? I can’t do that to you, Benjy. You deserve better than that.”

“What do I deserve, Kitty? To lose you? I don’t care about the consequences.”

At least he hadn’t fooled himself into thinking there wouldn’t be any. “You’d never let me risk myself like that for you, so I can’t let you, either,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “I’ve already made my decision.”

“Kitty.” He held his arm up to stop me, and when I started to move past him, he wrapped it around my waist again and pulled me closer. “I’m not going to let you do this to yourself.”

I tried to push him away, but his grip tightened. “I’m the one who has to clean up shit for a living, not you. You don’t get a say.”

“We can run away,” he said. “We can go somewhere warm. Have our own cottage, grow our own food—”

“Neither of us knows anything about farming. Besides, if a place like that exists, the Harts would have claimed it by now.”

“You don’t know that for sure. There’s hope, Kitty. There’s always hope. Please,” he said quietly. “For me.”

The way he watched me, silently begging me to say yes, almost made me change my mind, but I couldn’t do that to him. Running away would mean he would miss his test, and no mark at all was as good as a I.

I’d failed, but he still had his chance, and I couldn’t let him throw his life away for me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. His face crumpled, and he turned away, dropping his arm. The cold seeped in where he’d touched me only moments before, and my heart sank. I would have done anything to make him happy, but because of my stupid III, I was going to hurt him no matter what I did. At least this way I would be the one risking everything, not him.

Every bone in my body screamed at me to run away with him, to get as far from D.C. as we could, but as we climbed the ladder to the manhole that opened up half a block from the group home, I knew two things for certain: Benjy would spend the entire afternoon trying to talk me into not going with Tabs, and I would do it anyway.