The Locked and The Lost by Julia Finch (reading in the dark TXT) 📕

 I wake up half an hour late. My mom is shaking me. "Ava, come on. Get up, Honey." I mumble something, my brain not working well enough to use language yet. "You're going to be late," she says. The fog begins to clear from my mind, but the only thing I can think of is

"1:00, Matt's," I accidentally say out loud. 

"What?" My mom asks, confused at my sudden outburst.

"Nothing, nothing," I say quickly. I start to remember what I found last night. I don't want my mom getting suspicious. "I just forgot to tell you, I'm meeting Leyla at lunch today. We're gonna talk about Choosing Day. We're meeting at Matt's."

"Oh. Ok," she says. She turns on the light, blinding me, and says "you've got ten minutes before you need to leave for school." That gets me moving. I've never been late to class. Ever. I hurry to my dresser and put on a brown t-shirt and some loose fitting pants. I grab a box of strawberries and some crackers on my way out the door. While I walk to school, I look down at the food I've brought. I eat a couple of strawberries and save the crackers for lunch, as I am not actually going to lunch at Matt's.

At lunch, I do however meet Leyla. Leyla is my only friend, and has been since we were very young. I know that 'only friend' sounds lonely, but it's not. I know other people, and I tolerate them, but Leyla is my only real friend. 

When I walk in to the cafeteria, I find her almost immediately. She is sitting at the table we always sit at, but she also kind of stands out. She is imensly beautiful, but plays it down as best she can. She has darker skin than most people in our township, a chocolate black. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, but each strand, instead of one hair is a tiny braid. She does her best to down play her beauty by wearing ratty clothing, much to her parent's dismay. Today, she wears a pair of jeans and a leather jacket.

"What's up?" I say as I sit down next to her.

"Well, I would say the ceiling, but since I have a feeling that's not what you mean, my response is not much." She replies.

"Good choice," I say. She often speaks like that. Overthinkng the simpleist sentences.

"So, I've been thinking up ways to escape the Choosing Ceremony, but so far, only one option has presented itself."

"Oh yes, and what would that be?" I ask. "Go outside, be contaminated by toxins and have to be quarentined over the next 21 days?" She laughs, a deep, melodious laugh. 

"No, of course not." She says, and her face turns comically serious. "Infect myself with some sort of awful virus that lasts only long enough to keep me in bed for the next week. I don't want to miss my first day at work."

"What's wrong with the Choosing Ceremony anyway?" I ask, last night's reading pricking my mind like a sewing needle. I push it away, reminding myself that the book is ridiculous, and I have no real evidence against The Council.

"Ugh, how can you even ask that? All of the formalities and foofy dresses." She shudders. "I can't bare to even imagine it." Leyla's mom is big on parties. I'm sure Leyla will arrive at the ceremony completely covered in ruffles and bows– not exactly her normal style.

"Oh, you'll survive." I say.

The rest of the school day slowly drags on. All I can think about is 1:00, Matt's. It's like a song that's stuck in my head. As soon as the day ends I walk home to find the book. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to bring the supplies to the meeting place or not. I decide I will bring the small things that I can carry with me, and if it is necessary, I will come again the next day and the day after that, until I have everything I need. I find myself planning out how everything will go. Calculating how I will buy a bicycle and how to get the winter clothes (also listed) out without the rest of my family noticing.

I reach home, and I have an entire plan of how I'm going to escape, but now I'm walking into my house, and I see my dad sitting on the couch waiting for me. Colin comes up the tunnel and walks in behind me. I look around, and realize I didn't even consider the fact that I'll be leaving them. I'm willing to give up everything for the chance to go outside. Even when I do see my family sitting in front of me, my mind doesn't change. I'm still planning on leaving. There is no conflict like there should be. No part of me that says it's crazy to even think about leaving like all the hero's and heroines in books have before taking off on a dangerous quest.

I shake the guilty feeling off and go up to my room. When my dad asks me where I'm going, I tell him I have homework. I don't, but I do have some reading tp do. I grab The Lost Country and flip to the last couple of pages, after the journal and letters. First there is the 1:00, Matt's note and then the list of supplies. I read them and count how many I can carry to the meeting site. There are 15 items, and I own 10 of them. I can only carry 5 of the items, so I stuff them in a bag and hide it in my closet. I look over the list one more time to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Sleeping bag

Flashlight

Titanium mountain bike

Dry Food for three weeks

Letter of recomendation (From Chakide)

Backpack

Three or more pairs of walking shoes

Lightweight water filter

Guide to plants from Michigan west

Guide to animals from Michigan west

Biking/hiking map

Strong tape

Rope

First aid kit

Strong, loose material

I own a sleeping bag for sleepovers at other peoples houses, a flashlight, duct tape, a first aid kit, and a backpack. I can get to guides of plants and animals at the library. If I snooped around the house, I could probably find some strong material and some good walking shoes. I'm not sure what a mountain bike is, but I hope to find out tonight. Everything seems to be in order for the meeting.

*                    *                    *

When my family says good night, I grab my flashlight and open the Cascadia book. I still haven't finished the last pages, and I want to read them before I leave. It starts off with some statistics that I've read before. The toxin levels, the number of years before we can go outside again, etc. I scan over them, hoping there is something new. A paper falls out of the book when I turn the page. It's not dated, but from the kind of paper that it's written on, it has to be more than eighty years old. And yet, it can't be, because the fume levels are way less than the ones from the newspaper just last week. The fume levels couldn't have risen, could they? And besides, these levels are below the toxic amount. If this was where it was at now, I could walk outside whenever I wanted to. I look at the place in the book that it fell from. Another paper pasted into the book is dated only two years ago, but has similar results. I look at the page before it with the higher fume results. The same date is on both the low account from two years ago and the high account. 

The clock reads 12:30, and I jump out of bed. I glance at the book again, and throw it into the bag with the other supplies. I manage to get across the living room fairly easily, without making much noise. The front door is squeaky, but no one comes running out of their room screaming "intruder!" so I figure I'm okay.

Once I'm in the tunnels, a strange calmness washes over me.The dark seems almost comforting, but eerie as well. I walk quickly, occasionally glansing behind myself as though someone is following me. There is no one out at this hour. No workers, students or pedestrians. It is strange to see the township this quiet. It is as though everyone was wiped out. Nothing left but the buildings and the quiet and the calm. My breathing matches my footsteps, coming out in little short bursts of air. It is warmer than I expected it to be. I always figured it would get cold at night, but it is the same temperature it always is, just around 65º. The Council keeps it that way all the time. There are no seasons indoors. All foods grow all year. All weather doesn't exist.

I turn the corner onto the orange path, and wander down the lonely tunnel. My flahlight shines before me in a little ball of light. Matt's is fairly close to the beginning of the street, and I see its sign hanging above a ramp leading into the restaurant. The sign reads Mathew's Cafe, but everyone just calls it Matt's. This is mainly because the owner (Matt) is well known by everyone, and no one has ever called him Mathew in his life. I walk up the ramp and find the door to the restaurant locked. There is no sign of a person anywhere. It is still just the quiet comforting darkness and me.

I turn my flashlight around in a circle, looking for any clues that might lead me to, well, I don't know. I sit down heavily on the ramp. Nothing is here, no one is waiting. I can't believe I didn't prepare myself for this possible outcome. I feel so upset, I have a hard time getting in control of my anger that I was fooled. Then, the anger fades and is replaced by someething else. Rather than anger, a sadness comes rumbling through me. It is not a calm sad. It is a loud, crazy sad, that screams to be heard, to be known. It makes me even more motivated to find something. It is not a sit down and cry sadness, but more of a dissapointed sadness. One that is frustrated that something so important couldn't work. One that is sad that I could not find my goal.

I glance up one more time to make sure that I didn't miss anything. A small black circle on the door catches my attention. I look at it more closely. It is just the peek hole.  I fill up with the angry sadness, and turn and run. I run down the tunnels, down the orange path and go home. I catch my breath at my doorstep, so that no one hears my loud breathing when I go in. I slip into the house and into my room. I check the clock, and it says that it is 3:00 in the morning. Instead of going to my room, I go up the elevator. I walk out to the corn field, and feel the corn leaves brush my face as I walk through the field. The stalks whip back as my body's pressure against them moves on to the next stalk. I go to the corner with the old log, and climb inside. The images of the outside flood my mind, creating perfect scenes of nature.

A large river flows past me on my right. on all sides of