Taken (Erin Bowman)

me, drills itself deep beneath my skin and penetrates marrow. I am a twin, still here—the only boy over eighteen to ever beat the Heist. But why? Because it was kept secret?
    “We have to ask your mother,” I say finally. “She wrote that note in the journal, and I want to know why she changed it when she copied things into the scrolls.”
    Emma shakes her head frantically. “No, we can’t do that. She’ll know we were snooping around in her personal records.”
    “Emma, this is so much bigger than that. I might actually be eighteen, and if I am, I think everyone here deserves to know that I wasn’t Heisted.” I can feel my pulse gaining velocity in my chest.
    “But that’s just it, Gray,” Emma says sadly. “If you are really eighteen, you would have been Heisted. The journal is wrong.”
    “If we ask your mother, we’ll know for sure.”
    “Ask me what?” Carter is standing in the doorway of the Clinic, her gear bag in hand.
    “Nothing,” Emma says quickly. “Gray and I were just stopping by to get out of the sun.” And then she grabs my arm and pulls me toward the exit, dropping the book on Carter’s desk while her back is turned.

NINE
    I SPEND THE MAJORITY OF the next two days in the woods, alone with my thoughts. I hike to the northernmost points simply to stare at the Wall. I imagine the answers sitting on the other side, waiting. They tug at something in my core, urging me to climb, telling me that everything I want to know lies just beyond that towering structure. The idea of the truth, the fact that there could be more to this place than any of us know, begins to drive me mad. What if the Heist really isn’t as straightforward as we believe, as consistent and unavoidable as death from old age? Aren’t I proof that there is something greater at work?
    When not in the woods, I pore over parchment. I reread my mother’s letter time and time again. I visit the library and study every historical scroll in the place. I replay my conversation with Emma that day in the fields and I keep thinking of Blaine, how he had winked at me when we’d said our good-byes. Was he trying to tell me something?
    The longer I sit with my thoughts, the more I am convinced that something is not right. It’s Claysoot. Everything about it now feels wrong: the Wall, the Heist, the original children. How did people living in an enclosed space have no memory of how they got there? How did they arrive when the thing enclosing them cannot be crossed? And why does the Heist, which steals every boy at eighteen, steal every boy but me? I spend hours wondering why no one else is questioning these things, and then realize I only just started questioning them myself.
    On a still, windless morning, without Emma’s knowledge, I visit Carter in search of answers. I sit at her desk in the Clinic and ask her, outright, if I am Blaine’s twin. She looks at me with calm eyes and simply asks, “Where on earth would you get an idea like that?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “I miss him so much. And we looked so much alike. Maybe I’m just going crazy with loneliness.”
    “Well, if you ever need to talk, our doors are always open,” she says reassuringly. She then explains that I am a year to the day younger than Blaine but certainly not his twin. It is infuriating, because I’m positive she knows otherwise. She’s aware of the truth, had scrawled it in that small journal. Why is she not racing through town and proclaiming that a boy over eighteen has beaten the Heist? Why has she chosen to keep such a miracle secret? Fearful that the reason lies upon the second page of the letter I will likely never find, I leave the Clinic not with answers but more questions.
    That afternoon, as Emma and I sit at my place playing checkers in the dreary lighting of a summer storm, I reach a breaking point.
    “I have to do something, Emma,” I say. “I can’t sit around here anymore, hoping the answers will fall into my lap.”
    “What’s there to do?”
    “I don’t know. Find Blaine. Discover the truth.”
    “What do you mean, find Blaine?”
    “The last couple of times I’ve been in the woods, I’ve been this close to climbing over the Wall and searching for him.” I hold my hands up an inch apart.
    “Searching for him? What’s to search? It’s not like he took off to enjoy a stroll beyond the Wall. He was Heisted.”
    “But that’s just it, Emma. When you climb over the Wall, something kills you, so there must