The Experiment, Cassidy Shay [amazing books to read .TXT] 📗

my mouth. “Mathew, can you sleep on the bed with me tonight? I’m cold, and the extra blanket plus our combined body heat will help keep me warm.” I’m not sure why I asked him to sleep on the bed, and then lied about it. In reality, I’m not cold at all. In fact, I probably won’t be able to keep the blanket on tonight. But for some reason, I need to feel Mathew’s closeness tonight. I need to know that he’s there.
Collin, who briefly disappeared, is now back at my side. He sighs and says, “You’re falling in love, Penny. You may not like it, but you’re falling in love, and you’re falling fast and hard.”
I shake my head. “No, you’re wrong, Collin. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the only one who I can love.” He shakes his head sadly, and begins to disappear.
“I can see it, even if you can’t. You made me promise to fall in love and have a happy life. So why is it that you won’t allow yourself to do the same?” By the time he finishes his question, I’ve lost sight of him and I can only hear his voice.
I turn my attention back to Mathew, who’s getting things ready on the bed. I climb under the covers and he follows me.
I fall asleep faster than I usually do. Usually, I stay awake for at least an hour doing nothing but tossing, turning, and thinking about the future. Tonight, though, I feel safe under Mathew’s arm. Safe enough to stop worrying.
For the next four months, I go to see Julie twice a week. We about our pregnancies, and just about life in general. Who we’d be if we weren’t Azuli, what we’d be doing with our lives. We talk about our lives before the Academy, and our friends since we’ve been here.
One day, as I’m getting ready to go see her, Dr. Pender comes into my room. “Hey, Meagan. I have some pretty bad news for you right now.” She takes a deep breath and then continues. “As you know, we’re moving Azuli over to the new facility. We’ve been doing it one floor at a time, and now we’re at Floor One. Now, you probably don’t want to know this next part.” She stops for a second, and I study her face. She looks frustrated, and I’m curious about why.
“All the Azuli that were chosen to move were chosen at random. And anyone that was chosen who’s over the age of 65 is being terminated now.”
“Macy,” I whisper, knowing what’s coming next. When I arrived at the Academy, she was 60 years old. Now, ten years later, she’s seventy.
Dr. Pender nods. “Macy’s name was on the list of Azuli to be moved. Today, she is being exterminated. The other doctors wanted to leave you out of this who/le situation, but I disagreed. If you would like, you may say good-bye to her today.”
Of course I want to say good-bye,

I think. Macy practically raised me, and I love her more than my real mother.
Dr. Pender and I walk through the hallways to get to the Extermination Room. All it is is an examination room; identical to one of the rooms that one would go to if they were sick. The only difference is the types of chemicals that were in the various vials and bottles.
Macy sits on a table, tears streaking her face. “Macy,” I say, grabbing her hand. “It’s me, Penny.” She uses her free hand, wrinkles from years of stress and torture, to stroke my cheek.
“Penny. Oh, Penny, I’ve missed you so much.” It’s silent for a minute. “You must promise me that you’ll take good care of that baby, okay?”
I nod. “I’ll care for her as well as you cared for me, if that’s even possible. I’ve missed you so much, Macy.” I burry my head in her chest and cry, just like I did when I was little. My shoulders tremble with the force of my sobs. She just holds me like always has. For the billionth time, I feel like Macy is the only thing holding me together, and that without her, I’ll fall into so many pieces that no one will be able to put me back together again.
We stay like that for a long time, until the doctors tell me I have to leave. I look at Dr. Pender, pleading with my eyes. She nods and turns to the other doctors. “Can she stay here and hold Macy’s hand? It won’t hurt anything.” They have a brief argument about it, but eventually, the doctor agrees that it won’t do any harm. They get the needle ready, and then inject a small amount of blue poison into her veins.
Her skin becomes pale, and she starts to face away. “I love you, Penny,” are her last words as she leaves this life and moves on to her next one, if that type of thing exists.
I stay in the room for a long time after that, with my head in her lap. The tears run down my face until they are absorbed by the rough blue fabric of her jumpsuit. I don’t know how much time passes, but I’m still there long after the heat and color drain from her body, long after the corpse of my best friend becomes stiff.
Eventually, Mathew comes in and puts his arms around my shoulders. He leads me out of the room and through the hallways. Finally, we reach our bedroom. Collin and Jack are standing in the middle of the room when we arrive.
Jack is crying. “I have no one now,” he says. “Everyone I love has been taken away from me. I… I don’t know if I can do this.” I run to hug him, but he evaporates in my arms. I turn to Collin, tears running down my face.
“I can’t help you now, Penny. I want to, you know that, don’t you? But I can’t help you this time. I’m sorry.” He disappears, and I start to fall.
Mathew catches me and takes me over to the bed. “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “Mathew, can I ask you a question?” He pulls the blankets over me.
“Why don’t you ask me in the morning?” he says. “You’ve had a long, exhausting day. Plus, it’s getting late. You were in that room for hours.” I nod my agreement, even though I know that I won’t have the guts to ask him at any other time, and he brushes some hair out of my face. “Just get some rest, and you’ll be all better in the morning.” He does an excellent job of hiding the doubt in his voice. I smile and wonder if his false confidence will make his statement come true. As I’m drifting off to sleep, I feel him lean over me and gently kiss my forehead.
I wake up the next morning, and the spot where his lips had been is still warm. I smile a sad smile as I realize that Collin was right. I’m falling in love with Mathew.
I look around the room, and discover that he’s already left. I get dressed in a clean jumpsuit and wander to the cafeteria. I find Sarah, sitting by herself, absorbed in a book. When I set my tray on the table, she looks up.
“Hey,” she says quietly. Her eyes look sad today, but I know that mine must look the same. “I’m sorry about Macy. Mathew told me.” Although I know that she’s sincere, it doesn’t make me feel any better, and it doesn’t change what happened.
I don’t tell her this, though. Instead, I nod. “Thanks. She was really special.” I leave it at that and start pushing my food around my plate. For the sake of the baby, I know that I must eat something. But the idea of eating on a day like this just seems so difficult.
I manage to choke down a few bites, but not as much as I should be eating. Sarah gets called over the intercom to go clean something or other, so I am all alone. I walk back to my room, and there’s a doctor standing outside.
“Meagan, since you didn’t go to see Julie yesterday, you’re going to go see her today. Follow me, please.” I obey without saying anything, and it doesn’t take long to get to the DarkRoom where we always meet.
She has her head down on the table when I walk in. She lifts her face up to me and I see tears running down, making dark trails on her pale skin.
“Oh, my,” I say, and hug her tight. “What’s wrong? What happened?” She starts to sob, her back buckling with the force of it. I lay my chin on the top of her head and just hold her, saying nothing.
After several minutes, she calms down enough to speak. “I was just talking to him. We weren’t holding hands, we weren’t doing any of that. We were just talking. But then…” Another wave of sobs moves in, but she quickly composes herself. “They grabbed him and said that he was going to be exterminated because he was the father.” She shudders and then takes a deep breath. “I don’t know how they knew.” She dissolves into tears again, and I ache for her. In the past couple months, we’ve grown close to each other, and I think of her as a little sister. Just like Jack hated to see me hurt, I hate to see Julie hurt.
For several more minutes, I hold her in my arms as she cries. Finally, she straightens her back and sniffles one last time. “You probably think that I’m ridiculous,” she says. When I ask why, I would think that, she replies, “You had your love ripped away from you, and I’m sure that you didn’t cry like this.” I think back to that day when Collin had been torn from my arms. Had I cried? I knew that I had cried for a little bit, but I had been forced to move on with my plans.
“Listen to me,” I say, cupping her chin in my palm. I turn her face so that she has to look in my eyes. “Crying doesn’t make you a baby, and it doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human. I didn’t sit around crying all day because I didn’t have a chance. I tried to get out, and failed. Then they made me focus on getting pregnant again. Missing Collin, feeling that painful void in my heart, became an everyday thing. I still love him, but I’ve moved on. I promise that no one will think any less of you because of this.”
She shudders, and I give her shoulders a squeeze. “Thank you, Meagan,” she says. “You have no idea how horrible these last few months have been. No one talks to me anymore, because they’re afraid of what will happen to them. Not even my roommate will talk to me anymore. And before today, none of the guys would talk to me, and I liked hanging out with them way better than the girls. But they were afraid of the Academy thinking they were the father.
I don’t say anything. There is nothing that I can say that will make this better. While I was torn apart from my friends and my life, it wasn’t willingly. Also, I’ve made new friends. I may not have a ton, but I like it better that way. Her friends have willingly turned their backs on her when she needs them the most.
There is a knock on the door, and then