Taken (Erin Bowman)

be almost midnight; and with midnight a new day will break: a day that is Blaine’s birthday and also his end. Maude hugs Blaine delicately and she whispers her good-bye into his ear. She steps away. We wait.
    And then it happens, the same way it always does. The ground begins to shake. It is soft at first, tiny pieces of dirt and rubble bouncing about our feet, and then, suddenly, more violent. Some people drop to their knees, unable to stay balanced. The wind howls. The world spins. And then, light. It breaks from the sky like a spear shooting through parchment, effortless and fluid. It expands, stretches, becomes so bright that it hurts my eyes.
    I’m usually on the ground at this point, shielding myself from the light and trying not to throw up. I feel sick even now—the Heist always seems to have that effect—but I force myself to stay upright. I focus on Blaine. I keep him in my sight. His eyes are open wide despite the blinding glare, but he does not look afraid. The light encircles him, as if drawn to his body. He is a gleaming spectacle, a burning flame. And then there is one final jolt of the ground, an explosion of brilliance, and he’s gone.
    As quickly as it began, the disturbance is over. People stumble to their feet, brushing dust from their bodies and rubbing their eyes in relief. We moan and cough, our senses steadying, and then Maude calls out through the crowd.
    “Let us have a moment of silence,” she croaks in her dry, brittle voice, “for Blaine Weathersby, who on the morn of his eighteenth birthday, was lost to the Heist.”

FOUR
    BLAINE BEING GONE IS KIND of like when Ma died, only this time I’m alone for good. I spend the first few days forgetting his absence is permanent. I catch myself looking up from dinner, expecting to find him walking through the door. I feel him moving through the house behind me, but when I twist around, the room is desolate and cold.
    About two weeks in, when it begins to feel real and I know he’s not returning, I break down for the first and only time. I spend an entire evening in bed, muffling cries into my pillow. I don’t let anyone see it, but I’m terrified. I feel empty, as if half of me is gone, and I have no family left; Ma had a brother, who had a son, and both are long gone. I have Kale, I suppose, but I can’t be the father she needs. I’m not good with her the way Blaine was. I think the most sickening thought is that I only have a year left myself. I have one year until I’m eighteen and no one to even share it with.
    In Claysoot I am a spectacle. People give me sympathetic looks and halfhearted smiles, as if they mean to say, “Oh, Gray, it’s all right.” I find peace in the woods. Amid the tree limbs and pinecones, I am free; no eyes follow me, no thoughts flood my mind. There, I feel like myself.
    On the bright side, at least I was able to say good-bye to Blaine. I read a scroll in the library when I was younger that documented the phenomenon of the Heist. The people of Claysoot didn’t always know what it was. In fact, when the very first Heist took place, no one even realized until the following morning. It was Maude’s older brother, Bo Chilton, who mysteriously went missing. After a thorough search of the town and woods, he was declared dead even though a body was never found. It was odd, Bo disappearing like that, completely out of character. He was the eldest of the original children, their main leader. Calm. Smart. Responsible.
    The day the originals opened their eyes to find their town in ruins, they panicked. They suspected a strong storm had been the culprit, knocking them unconscious in the process, but they couldn’t remember the bad weather rolling in. They couldn’t remember anything from before the disaster, and with the exception of siblings, they couldn’t even remember each other. In the blink of an eye, neighbors had become strangers.
    Before the group could fall into chaos, it was Bo who rounded up tools and started rebuilding the community. He shook sense into the others, assigning each person a specific task. In a matter of months, the town was well on its way to recovering. The crops were nursed back to life. The fences around the livestock fields were refortified and the animals, which had wandered off into the woods, were corralled and brought back to town. Bo set up the Council, comprised of five heads elected by the community, and since no one could recall the name of their home, he even