Sunset Rising

“The bruises on my face came from my supervisor.” I pulled back my hair to show everyone. “And last month a different supervisor ordered a guard to beat me when I was too slow at my job. I got a few cracked ribs from that one. You might wonder why I was slow at my job, knowing that I would probably be beaten for it. The answer is that I was sad. Sad because my mother had to join the Cull last spring.” Even now my tears were quick to spring up when I talked of her. “How many people here have lost someone to the Cull?” Everyone in the room raised their hand. “How many people here have been beaten?” Every hand remained in the air. “And how many of you are fed up?” At this, even the people sitting down stood up to raise their hands higher.

“I am one of you. I have the scars to prove it. I’ve suffered the beatings, I’ve lost my mother, my best friend is a plaything for the bourge, and now they have my father. I didn’t marry a bourge to escape the Pit. I married Jack Ke

I looked at the crowd as I said this and saw their shocked expressions. Although there had been uprisings in the Pit before, no one had ever suggested getting rid of the president. It was a new idea. It was a dangerous idea.

“You want us to join some bourge organization to get rid of the bourge?” someone asked. “Something doesn’t make sense here.”

“It makes sense if you stop thinking of Jack and these guards as bourge. They’re members of Liberty, and they’re here to join with us.”

“I’m not joining some bourge organization!” someone called out and was met with a round of approval.

“Then let’s make our own organization. Liberty and the Pit will join and become the Alliance,” I said. “They have skills they can teach us, and we have power in numbers.”

“I know about his skills,” a man said, looking at Jack. “I’m David Chavez, and I work with you in the mine. I saw what you did for that kid. The guards were going to beat him, and you stopped them… and I didn’t lift a damn finger to help.” His eyes were bright with tears. A few other men in the crowd hung their heads in shame. “My wife’s about to have a baby, and all I’ve been able to think about is what if it was my kid? When the guards want to beat my child, will I stand there and do nothing again? If I have a daughter, will I stand by and watch her taken upstairs to be used by the men in the Dome?” He shook his head in disgust, and the tears rolled freely down his cheeks. “I want better for my kid. I’ll join you.”

The crowd was silent while David spoke. He had touched a nerve in everyone. Several men came forward to stand beside him, nodding their approval. The only sound that could be heard in the room was the sobs of a very pregnant woman. I assumed she was his wife.

“What if it backfires? What if we can’t win?” asked a faceless voice from the crowd.

Someone else stood up and answered, “Then would we be any worse off than we already are? I don’t have much time left before I’m Culled, but I’d like to make my last months in this world count. I’m in.”

One man voiced everyone’s worst fear: “If we make the bourge mad, they could cut off our ventilation system and kill us all!”

“You would have to make them pretty mad before they went to that extreme,” Jack said. He waited to see the crowd’s reaction before he continued. “I know the bourge put you down, call you urchins, tell you you’re less than them and that you’re lucky to be in the Dome safe from the nuclear fallout. The truth is that you are important to them. Without you, the Dome wouldn’t be able to function. You mine the coal, you run the sewage treatment, you do their laundry, their cleaning, prepare their food. Don’t ever underestimate your value to them.”

“But they have all the power, and we have none. Look around this room. There’s maybe fifty or sixty people here and you think we can take on the Dome?” someone said.

“You’re right. We need more numbers. The more of us there are, the more powerful we become. But tonight is a start.”

“I know everyone is scared,” I said. “And no one is suggesting the small group of people in this room rush upstairs and try to throw the president out. We need to convince more people to join us. We need to start training. We need to come up with a strategy.”

“We can start training tonight,” Jack said. He motioned to Bron to come and stand beside him. “This is Bron. Those of you from the sixth level might recognize her. She’s taking a big risk being here tonight, but she came to show her support and to help with the training.”

“I guess it won’t hurt to learn how to defend ourselves,” someone mumbled.

More people stepped forward. Everyone seemed eager to learn how to fight.

I saw Reyes standing with Raine and Mica, staring at me as if I had gone mad. As I returned his stare, he gave me a disgusted look and stomped out of the room. I hopped down from the chair

“I need to talk to him,” I told Jack and ran after Reyes.

“Reyes,” I called out, but he kept going. “Reyes, please stop.” A Liberty guard was standing outside the door of the common room, and he respectfully turned his head in the other direction.

“Later, Su

“I don’t think I have a later, Reyes. In fact, someone could be turning me in as we speak. Thank you for exposing us.” That stopped him.

“I wanted to expose Ke

“I haven’t changed. I’m the same person I’ve always been. Why can’t you see that?”

A familiar frustration came boiling to the surface, and I wondered how many times and how many different ways we could have this same conversation. He was always trying to change me and I was always unwilling to change.

“You know, after I said those things to you the other day I wanted to take them all back,” Reyes said, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “A part of me hoped that you would come and find me and try to make things right between us, but when you didn’t, I knew I had to be the one. I don’t know where you live, so I waited to see you in the common room the next day but you never showed up. I was so happy to see you this morning, but then you walked right by me and started kissing that bourge.” A tear fell from his eye, and I knew in that instant how deeply I had hurt him.

“Please know that I didn’t do it to hurt you. One of Leisel’s guards was following Summer, so we pretended to kiss to hide our faces.” But even now, just remembering that kiss, I felt a warm sensation spread through me. None of Reyes’s kisses had ever affected me like that.

“So you’re not in love with him?”

A stab of guilt went through me when I saw the hope in his eyes. He thought I was here to make amends. He thought we could still be together.

“All those things you said to me the other day—about me constantly making excuses and always choosing other people over you—were all true.” A lump formed at the base of my throat, but I fought back the tears. “You always wanted me to be someone I wasn’t. You always wanted me to be with you, to let you protect me, to be the girl who hung on your every word. I’m not that girl, Reyes. I kept thinking that maybe I could be that girl once we were married, but whenever our wedding date crept closer, I realized I wasn’t ready to stop being myself yet.” I felt tears roll down my face. Saying goodbye was hard even though it was for the best. “The person you saw tonight in that room is me, Reyes. I haven’t changed. Why can’t you see that our relationship has been like trying to fit together two pieces of a puzzle that don’t belong; we can try as hard as we want, but we’ll never fit.”