Life Designed (Life Plan Series Book 1), Eliza Taye [great novels .TXT] 📗

door and found it unlocked. Instead of calling out to April, he crept inside and tried to shut the door without a sound, but the slower he moved it, the more it creaked. With a wince, it finally shut with a muted thud as he had to add force to make it close.

Luckily, whoever was in the library must not have heard the noise because no one called out. Garrett walked through the first floor, perusing through the children’s books and books for the elderly. He found the sciorbs April had mentioned that didn’t work in one of the back corners. They appeared old. Some had rusted edges and tops.

Garrett reached out to touch one when a voice startled him. “Garrett, what are you doing here?”

Jerking to his full height and spinning around, Garrett saw April in the doorway, her head cocked to the side, and her eyes watching him with a quizzical gaze. “I uh, um…well.” Garrett winced and tried his best not to scratch the side of his nose.

April glanced to the side in thought, then set the books she was carrying on a nearby end table already filled with books. “It’s Third Moon, so it’s an academy day. Tomorrow is Submission Day, so…so you should be at your academy, right?”

Not trusting his voice, Garrett simply nodded.

“So why aren’t you?”

Shrugging and looking down at the floor, Garrett responded, “I don’t know.”

April walked gingerly over to him, saying as she walked, “Garrett, is there something wrong?”

At her soft, kind words Garrett raised his gaze to meet her warm brown eyes filled with such curiosity and concern that it surprised him. April hardly knew him, but she seemed so concerned about his well-being. How could someone as nice and caring as she was wind up as an Undecided? It just wasn’t fair.

Averting his eyes again, Garrett confessed, “I just don’t know, April. So much of this doesn’t make sense. I don’t know what to do about it anymore.”

April frowned. “What do you mean it doesn’t make sense?”

Part of his frustration overriding his apprehension, Garrett blurted. “The whole Life Plan thing! I mean, why should you be part of the Undecided when you had a Life Plan written and all figured out? You’re so nice and smart, you shouldn’t be here.”

Once the words were out of his mouth, Garrett regretted them. Once again, he’d insulted April without meaning too.

April pressed her lips into a thin line, then pulled one of the rickety chairs from in front of the sciorb in front of her and sat down, gesturing for Garrett to do the same. “Garrett, I don’t know why my life ended up the way it did. Yes, it definitely sucks that I have to live a different life than I’d planned for, but it’s too late for that now. But it’s not too late for you. You still have a chance.”

Garrett sat down in the chair April had pointed to. “I just wish I knew how it all worked.”

“Is that why you’ve been trying to research The Council and how the Life Plans work?”

“Yes, I figured if I could find out about them and learn how they work then maybe…” Garrett paused.

April leaned in, trying to catch his downturned gaze. “Then what?”

Garrett raised his head and met her gaze but didn’t speak.

“It’s okay, you can tell me. It’s just the two of us here.” April smiled warmly and gave him a curt nod.

“Then maybe I could figure out how to change it or fix it. I don’t know. Maybe I was just looking for a misdirection.”

April frowned, then her eyes widened and she gasped at him in horror. “Garrett, have you not completed your Life Plan?”

At first, Garrett simply stared at her, then he slowly shook his head. He’d never felt ashamed to say he hadn’t been working on his Life Plan or that he hadn’t finished it, but in front of April, he was ashamed. She was someone who’d lost their chance at the life they’d always dreamed of and here he was risking his chance on a conspiracy. To have to admit to her that he hadn’t even been trying to write one would be pure cruelty.

“Garrett, please tell me it isn’t true.”

Turning to the side, then facing her again, Garrett replied, “I wish I could, April, but then I’d be lying to you and I don’t want to lie to you.”

For several long seconds, April didn’t say anything. Her eyes just kept searching his like they would betray the truth to her of why he hadn’t finished his Plan. Eventually, she responded, “I appreciate you not lying to me, Garrett. But I have to ask…why?”

Sighing, Garrett didn’t know how to answer that question. If he was honest with himself, subconsciously, he’d been trying to figure that out too. “I don’t know, April. I guess I’ve just never known what I wanted. I’ve lived my life more for the moment than anything else. The future seems so daunting. I mean, even if I get to plan my life, the things I do want to plan are against the rules. I want to plan when and how I die, who I’m forced to spend the rest of my life with, and the option to change things up if I want to.”

“Do you feel like you’re paralyzed by the fear of what can go wrong inside the plans you make?”

Garrett opened his mouth to retort, then closed it. Was that what he was afraid of? The unknown? Was he so afraid of it that he didn’t want to even try to make a plan?

“Maybe…I don’t know.” A thought coming to him, Garrett blurted it out before he could reconsider, “What was your Plan like?”

April leaned back in her chair sighing. “Well, I already told you I wanted to be a