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

“Oh, Mrs. Steinworth, you can’t blame yourself for this.” Mrs. Carneth leaped from her seat and placed a hand comfortingly on Mrs. Steinworth’s arm. “As teachers, we try our best to prepare our students for life, but it is up to them to make the choices they wish to make. We can only provide them the tools. They decide what they will create with them.”

Opal and Gabrielle gawked at one another. They’d never heard their mother be so insightful. Usually, the insightful speeches came from their father.

Nodding, Mrs. Steinworth replied, “You’re quite right, it’s just so hard to lose one. I had hoped…dare I say, I had assumed in my hubris that this would never happen to me. I will think of Garrett Gibbons every day. As much as I’d like to say that I wouldn’t, I’ll certainly be wondering what I could have done better to help him.”

“You’re not the only one, Mrs. Steinworth,” piped in Opal. “As his best friend, I should have pressed him harder to make a legitimate Life Plan earlier. When I saw him at City Hall yesterday, I should have asked to see his Life Plan instead of simply assuming he’d written a real one.”

“I do have to say, though. How and why did The Council accept such a Life Plan?” wondered Mr. Carneth aloud.

“I agree, Alan.” Mrs. Carneth inclined her head once, furrowing her brow. “It is such an odd Life Plan to begin with, but what makes it so weird is that they actually approved it. Surely something like that would have gone straight into the denial bin.”

“I agree as well, Mrs. Carneth. In fact, Garrett told me himself that his exact words were, I wish to become one of the Undecided.”

Opal’s blood turned to ice. “That’s what he said he wrote? He asked to become one of the Undecided?”

“Yes, Opal. It is unfortunate, but he told me those were the exact words written in his Life Plan.”

Opal’s hands began to shake. Why would Garrett have written such a thing? It made absolutely no sense. Did he think if he wrote such an outrageous thing that it would bring The Council to Galaxcion? Was he still trying to find information on them? Was that why he’d written such a blatant Plan?

“Why, I’ve never even heard of a one-sentence Life Plan before.” Mrs. Steinworth directed her statement at Mr. and Mrs. Carneth.

“Me neither,” agreed Mrs. Carneth. “It is such an odd thing to do.”

“I’m sure if someone has in the past, it was automatically rejected and so we’d never heard of it,” surmised Mr. Carneth.

“Very true. I suppose that’s why they carted Garrett away right after the ceremony.”

“They what?” Opal exclaimed, jumping to her feet.

Mrs. Steinworth set her empty teacup on the table in front of her. “You didn’t know? Not long after the ceremony was over, one of the enforcers took him away to the Undecided sector in a personal transporter.”

Opal’s eyes widened as she rushed to the front door, slipping on her shoes without tying them.

“Opal, what are you doing?” Her father asked, his mouth wide open in shock.

“I have to go somewhere.”

“But we’re supposed to take you to the dormitory in two hours,” reminded her mother.

“I know, I’ll be back by then.”

Before they could say another word, Opal raced out the door and down the street. She ran the entire way to the transport station and boarded a transporter bound for the edge of the Undecided sector.

“April, you haven’t touched your dinner.”

April ceased pushing the green mush of vegetables around on her plate. “Mama, do you know where people who are banished to our side of town go if their Life Plans are rejected?”

April’s mother’s eyebrows crinkled; her sad lips pulled down further into a worried pout. “April, why do you torment yourself by going to the Declaration Day Ceremony each year?”

Resuming her pushing of the food, April responded, “I just like to see the faces of the Submitters turned Declarers. I like to watch the excitement and hope on their faces.”

Her mother reached over and cupped her chin. “Even though that same excitement and happiness were denied to you?”

April met her mother’s sad dark brown eyes. The years had not been kind to her. Worry wrinkles creased her forehead even when she wasn’t downhearted. Frail hands with see-through skin worked for hours in a factory five days a week from dawn to dusk. Scars crisscrossed her hands and forearms from various accidents at work over the years. Her light brown skin, once lustrous and full of life now as dull as her black hair had become. Even if she’d become one of the Decided, she wouldn’t have been able to save her mother from this fate.

“Yes, even though it was denied to both you and me.” Holding her breath, April spooned some of the food into her mouth and swallowed the bad-tasting mush down. “Besides, this time I knew someone there.”

“Ah, I heard today was an unusual one. A boy actually chose to become one of the Undecided. Is that true?”

April nodded, eating some more food. “Yes, it is.” She paused before adding, “And, Mama, I know him.”

Her mother’s eyebrows rose in shock. “Really? Was he from our side of town?”

“No, he wasn’t and that’s why I was asking about what happens when someone is rejected.”

Her mother’s eyes turned dark, lost in remembrances of the past. April hated to ask, to dredge up hurtful memories of her mother’s past. She knew her mother’s own Plan had been rejected and she’d become an Undecided. Her grandparents had died in a personal transporter accident the year before her mother’s Submission Day leaving her alone in the world with nothing but grief for company. They’d left