The Azuli by Cassidy Shay (best beach reads of all time TXT) 📕

that you got paired with such a loving, caring, kind person.” We had all stopped walking, so we weren’t near anyone who I wouldn’t want to hear what I said next. Still, I said it in a whisper. “And I don’t need you to be my lookout anymore. I’ll escape all on my own. I don’t need some stuck-up, prissy girl to watch my back. I can take care of myself.”
I started walking again, and arrived at the room several minutes before the others. Ben and Catherine were already seated when I walked in. I let out a strange, exasperated noise before I sat down. I could feel them staring at me, but I didn’t turn to look at them. I looked straight ahead until everyone else arrived.
Chapter 6

We were meeting with Dr. Pender for a physical health test. Out of all of the scientists and doctors, my favorite was Dr. Pender. Maybe it’s because she wasn’t a balding old man with stains on his lab coat. She had good hygiene, and she didn’t treat us like we were inferior. She talked to us on a personal level and treated us like human beings, not a science experiment.
“Alright guys,” she said. “Let’s get started. First, the guys need to go into Section B for your examination. Girls, you get to stay in here with me.” The boys left, and she sat down in a chair to face us. “Before we started with all the official stuff, I want to talk to you girls. Penny, I assume by the way you came in here earlier that you’re pretty stressed about this whole thing. What about you two?” she asked, turning to Mary and Catherine.
“I’m pretty frustrated right now,” said Catherine. “But Ben’s a good guy. He’s a lot of fun, and he managed to get away with not showing too much affection. All he has to do is play like he’s shy, and he makes comments that suggest we’ll be making up for everything we aren’t doing in front of them when they aren’t there. You know?” One thing I’d noticed from our meetings with the other couples was that Catherine tended to speak in long, run-on sentences that usually left everyone in the room confused. This made it hard to have a conversation with her.
“Okay. So what’s frustrating about it? It seems like you’ve pretty much got things under control.” Dr. Pender always wanted to get both the pros and the cons about most things. I wondered if it was because she wrote everything down in her report, or if she was genuinely interested.
“Just the fact that I have to lie to my parents. And my brother’s coming to the wedding, even though he didn’t come for the tour. Lying to family is just hard. And it’s even more frustrating because I’m lying to them because the people that want to keep me prisoner told me to. So even though I know that if I told my parents the truth about the Academy, I could get this place shut down or something, but I don’t want my parents to worry, so I lie even though it’s not in my best interests.” See? Long, confusing sentences.

“Okay. Well, I’m sure Mary and Penny will help you through this next week until your parents are gone. And if you don’t want to talk to them, you can always talk to me.” She looked between Mary and me, and settled on Mary. “Mary, how are you holding up so far?”
“I’m doing pretty well. I wish I was paired with Ben, though. It seems like he makes things pretty easy. Jack… well, there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s polite, he’s a gentleman, and he gets along with my parents. I just… I can’t see myself ever falling in love with someone like him. So lying to my parents about it, and having to lie to my sister when she comes… it just seems unbearable to think about. And…” she got a bit quieter, as if someone might overhear, “… he’s either a really good actor, or he really does want to marry me.” That’s normally a time when I would have snorted in disagreement. I didn’t that time, though. I was too busy laughing.
“You think… he’s in love… with you? What… a funny… thing to say! He’d… rather… jump off a cliff… than marry you!” I said in between gasps for air. “That’s… the funniest thing… I’ve heard in a long time!” I clutched my stomach, and a couple seconds later, fell on the floor in silent laughter.
“Penny, you need to calm down. Even if you know that your brother really is or isn’t in love with Mary, you need to control yourself.” Dr. Pender tried to help Mary out, but I could tell that she was trying not to laugh along with me.
“Okay,” I said once I controlled my laughing enough to stand up. I sat back down in my chair and then faced Mary. “Mary, I’m sorry that I laughed at you. But Jack is my brother, and we talk quite a bit. And yes, he has very strong feelings about you. They just aren’t anything like what you think they are.”
I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Jack. “Why did I get stuck with her?” he’d asked me, pacing around my room.
“It could be worse,” I said. “You could be marrying someone who’s like your brother. At least you guys won’t be completely awkward around each other. You could think of it as a stupid fling, or friends with benefits, or something. Carl is my brother. Except that he loves me. I can’t just pretend. This’ll be tons of fun.”
He shook his head. “But you guys get along. I can’t stand Mary. She’s horrible. How am I supposed to sit here and pretend to love someone I hate?”
Dr. Pender’s voice reminds me of my present surroundings.
“Alright. That’s enough, Penny, you seem awfully chatty today. Tell us how you’re holding up?”
“I’m doing relatively well. I’m certainly not going to complain about how hard all of this is, especially because it’s only been a day and a half. And I’m not going to complain and say that Carl is someone that I can’t ever imagine falling in love with. And I’m certainly not going to mention-”
“Okay, Penny,” said Dr. Pender. “That’s enough. If you won’t tell us how you’re doing, then we will move on to the physical examination.”
“Please tell us,” said Catherine. “I want to know how you deal with everything. Every time I see you, you seem so under control. If I knew how you did it, it might help me.” That day, I was feeling pretty dramatic, so I decided to open up and tell them the whole story.
“Well, Catherine, it isn’t easy,” I said. “First, you have to have people who you can talk to and explain your problems to. I have three. They’re reliable, and I can always count on them.”
“Your roommate, your brother, and Carl, right?” asked Dr. Pender.
“No, actually,” I said, “I don’t talk to Carl much. Things get awkward too fast. The third person is Collin. He’s a sanitation worker who cleans my cell.” All three of them gasped. A month and a half before that, if someone had told me that they were friends with a sanitation worker, my response would have been similar. Sanitation workers were rarely seen when the Azuli were around, and multiple visits were even rarer. I glanced at Dr. Pender, wondering if I should be telling her about Collin. I decided that I could trust that she wouldn’t do anything to stop our visits, and I went on.
“One day, I didn’t go to lunch, and that’s when he came by. We started talking, and I’ve stayed back from lunch pretty often since then. He always has great advice and he’s so helpful and honest and I…” I trailed off, not wanting to admit the next part. They pressed me for an answer, so I finally came up with something else. “I have so much fun with him. He’s my best friend, and when I move to the cell with Carl, I know that I’ll miss Collin a lot.”
“Wow,” said Catherine, while Mary said nothing. Dr. Pender looked like she felt as if she shouldn’t be listening to our gossip, but she was going to anyway. “That sounds so awesome! I wish I had someone like that to talk to. But don’t worry. I won’t steal him from you.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what she meant. I didn’t want to make myself vulnerable by telling my feelings for Collin, so I tried playing stupid. Apparently, it didn’t work.
“Oh, please!” said Catherine. “Obviously, he likes you, or he wouldn’t keep visiting you and giving you advice and helping you out. He’d come to your cell to clean it, of course, but if he didn’t have feelings for you, he’d come and go quickly. This whole thing could cause some trouble at the wedding.” She had a sparkle in her eye, like she hoped something exciting would happen.
“Oh, c’mon. The wedding will be a disaster anyway. I don’t know how I’m going to look at Carl and say those vows without breaking down. I know that he’ll have that hurt look in his eyes, and I won’t be able to go on with the words. It’ll be too much for me to handle. I can’t do something like that to him. He’s-” Suddenly, I realized that I had been speaking those words instead of thinking them.
“Why would he have a hurt look in his eyes?” asked Catherine, the excitement thick in her voice.
“Maybe because he has to marry her?” suggested Mary. “I mean, it would probably be pretty painful to have to spend the rest of your life married to someone like her.”
“Oh, shut up, Mary. If you would just let me talk, you’d know just how right you are. But at the same time, you couldn’t be any more wrong. He will be hurt when he marries me because he’s marrying me, but not because he doesn’t want to. It’ll be hurting him because he loves me, but he knows that I hate this whole idea, and it hurts him that I don’t love him back.” No one said anything, but Dr. Pender raised an eyebrow.
After recovering from the shock of my statement, Mary said, “Okay. I want to know who gave you permission to be so hypocritical. You tell me that I can’t say Jack loves me, and you go and say the same thing about Carl. What gives you that right to do that, but not me?” Her look told me that she had never despised a human being as much as she despised me.
“Because, unlike your little fantasy world, the world I live in is called reality. Carl