Marigold by Heather Manheim (best books for 8th graders .TXT) 📕

But she let him finish before picking up her pad and writing, “The Courtship Event where we held hands?” Davis could not hide the smile that beamed across her face. Brookshire mocked a celebration dance to show she got it. He then held up his entertainment console showing the name of the song on his. Brookshire pointed to the song title and then to Davis to indicate she should put the same song on. Once she got it, he put down the console and then put his arms in a mimed dance position. Davis got the idea and mimed her dance position, and then they gently swayed and moved to the music, not really dancing but feeling almost like they were. Davis would generally feel a bit silly doing something like this, but Brookshire made it feel fun and like it was exactly what they should be doing.

And so, the days passed slowly for Davis. There were bright moments that flashed into an otherwise dreary world, but they mostly drew out long and tired, hampered further by her inability to sleep well. She imagined they were slow for Brookshire, Duffy, and Hernandez too. Everyone was just trying to pass the days until they could get to the next part. The big step. The only real step that mattered.

October 1, 2056 – Proposal

Davis woke up to the sound of an orderly rapping on the window. After she acknowledged him, he pointed at a speaker in her room. She realized it must be 7 a.m. because the sound of church bells ringing and people chanting was being piped into her room. She had almost forgotten; it had been a long time since she had been in the vicinity of the Prayer Call. Regardless of denomination, churches rang their bells, mostly electronic but sounding as if they were coming from bell towers. Even churches without a bell tower had an electronic bell on the roof of their buildings. It was a call to the people to pray for the health and welfare of the President. The priests that belonged to the Everettisim Church filed down the streets, their hypnotic chanting echoing to the people. The people in the Pods would have gotten a wake-up bell at 6 a.m. A loud bell that nobody could sleep through. Davis imagined that they must not play the alarm in the infirmary because the ill patients might be startled awake. But the bells and chanting coming from the speaker were loud enough to wake her up, so she really didn’t know why they skipped the call to arms. Davis thought about the priests that wore blood-red cloaks that had a hood for their heads and covered them head to toe. It was probably to bestow a sense of reverence in the people. But now, Davis thought it was odd and felt creepy, haunting. It felt bizarrely spellbinding. Davis started wondering if the chants held any subconscious thoughts; she had heard something once—she thought it was a vicious rumor at the time—reported by attendees of the reprogramming center. They had claimed the government played subconscious pro-Everett messages in the media center, the cafeterias, and even in the showers. Now it didn’t seem like it could be a rumor but very plausible.

Davis drifted off to sleep, thinking about the Everettisim Priests after they had passed by, and a still Sunday morning quiet hung in the air once again. She didn’t even know if females were allowed to be Priests. She didn’t think so, but she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t illegal not to follow Everettisim, and to be honest; it hadn’t really caught on. It was a bizarre religion by conventional standards. All at once, it claimed that President Everett was the only one who truly had God’s ear. Simultaneously, other faiths were acceptable to follow because it was not to be a religion in the conventional sense of the word but more of a way of life. Everettisim celebrated Christmas and President Everett’s birthday on June 17th, which was immediately followed by a three-day summer solstice celebration, regardless of whether the solstice actually fell on any of those three days. Halloween, a celebration Davis had read about in many books, was long ago eliminated in favor of a large fall festival ending in a two-day Dia de Los Muertos festival. There were so many festivals; it seemed Bacchus was the God who had President Everett’s ear.

Even with alcohol and festive foods outlawed, Davis now knew those things were readily available to a select few. So, in all truth, a real party and feast were probably planned after the public festival for those deemed important enough. She wondered if she would see one of these festivals while she would be in the Palace. She had seen the regular ones; anyone could come into the town center and get a festival biscuit—a traditional nutrition biscuit but flavored with cardamom, cinnamon, and clove—given the nickname “Triple C Biscuit.” And the water flowed freely. There were decorations, homages to President Everett; he stopped short of calling them shrines. There was live music and always a group of children who put on a play, usually about how the President saved them all from certain doom. Another group of children would come out after and demonstrate the yoga they had learned from their daily school rituals or recite a poem, short story, or another worded token of affection for Everett. One of the most significant tenets of Everettisim was that polygamy was not only allowed but encouraged. Almost everybody practiced it, even the non-believers, because there was the sticky task of repopulating the United State. And, the simple fact was there were far more women than men. For a chance for those women to have a husband and babies, President Everett had informed them all that God advised him to start a polygamous country. Most men jumped on board with that proclamation, even if they had no interest at all in Everettisim. Davis now imagined