The Light Between Us

In the morning Neola decided to break the rules, nothing unusual happened.

The sun rose at 6:12.

The irrigation gates opened at 6:20.

At 6:30, the bells rang from the eastern tower, and every household in the Agriculture District began its morning routine.

By 6:45, the roads were full.

By 7:00, the fields were already green beneath the pale morning sky. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. That was what made Neola suspicious.

She stood barefoot on the narrow wooden ledge outside her bedroom window, holding a cup of tea in one hand and balancing herself with the other. Below her, the street was beginning to wake.

Mrs.Vey from the house across the road was carrying a basket of eggs towards the communal kitchen. Two boys from the eastern farms were racing each other to the school gate until a supervisor shouted at them to slow down. A delivery cart moved quietly along the main road, its wheels following the grooves built into the stone.

No one looked up.

Neola looked down at her feet.

Then on the ground.

Then back at the street.

She had been standing on the ledge for nearly three minutes. Three minutes was long enough for someone to notice.

She stepped back through the window.

The room was small, clean, and almost aggressively ordinary.

A bed.

A wooden desk.

A wardonbe.

A wash basin.

A shelf containing six schoolbooks, two notebooks, and a small ceramic bird she had made when she was eleven.

There was nothing hidden. Nothing forbidden. Nothing that would make anyone think there was anything unusual about her.

Neola liked it that way. She put on her uniform.

Gray shirt.

Green jacket.

Dark Trousers.

The same clothes worn by every students in the Agricultural District.

She tied her hair back, picked up her schoolbag, and paused before leaving.

On the wall above her desk hung the sentence every child in the district learned before they learned to read.

"EVERYONE HAS A PURPOSE."

The letters were painted in dark green.

Neola had hated that sentence since she was seven. She couldn't remember when she had first learned to hate it. She only remember asking a question.

"what if I don't like mine?"

Her teacher had stared at her.

No angrily. That would have been easier.

She had looked at Neola with the kind of expression adults used when they were tying to decide whether a child had understood something important.

Then she said:" Your Purpose is not something you need to like."

Neola had waited.

The teacher had smiled.

" It is something you need to fulfill."

Neola had never forgotten that. She still didn't understand why.

The Agriculture District was beautiful.

That was another thing Neola found annoying.

It would have been easier to distrust a place that was ugly. Instead, the district looked like something from a picture book.

Fields rolled across the valley in long green waves. Orchards covered the lower hills. Water channels glittered in the morning light, carrying fresh water from the reservoirs toward the farms.

beyond the filed were mountains.

They surrounded the district on every side. They were tall enough to disappear into clouds during winter, and in summer their upper slopes turned silver beneath the moon.

Children were taught that the mountains marked the edge of the Agricultural District. Neola had asked what was on the other side. Her teacher had said:

"Nothing you need to know about."

That answer had become a familiar one. She heard it whenever she asked questions.

What is beyond the mountains?

Nothing you need to know about.

Why don't we travel outside the valley?

Nothing you need to know about.

Who decides our Purposes?

Nothing you need to know about.

Neola had begun to suspect that NOTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT was simply another way of saing:

We don't want you to ask.

She walked toward school. the streets smelled of wet soil and bread. People greeted each other.

"Good Morning."

"Good Morning."

The words repeated so often that sometimes Neola wondered if people were actually speaking or simply performing a routine.

At the corner, she passed a group of younger children.

They were sitting in a circle while their instructor held up a small wooden card.

“What does every person have?” the instructor asked.

“A Purpose!” the children shouted.

“And what happens when we fulfill it?”

“We help everyone!”

“And what happens when everyone fulfills their Purpose?”

The children shouted even louder.

“Everyone is safe!”

Neola kept walking.

She didn't look back.

At school, history was first period.

Mr. Halden wrote a date on the board.

Year 184 of the Continuance.

Neola opened her notebook.

"Who can tell me what happened during the First Stabilization" he asked.

Several hands went up. Neola didn't raise hers.

Mr. Halden pointed to someone else.

“The First Stabilization ended the famine cycles.”

“Correct.”

Another hand.

“It created the modern agricultural system.”

“Correct.”

Another.

“It established the Purpose System.”

“Correct.”

Neola stared at the date. Sha raised her hand. Mr. Halden saw it. He hesitated. Then he nodded.

"Yes, Neola?"

"What was there before the Continuance?"

The room went quiet.

Neola felt twenty-four pairs of eyes turn toward her.

Mr. Halden put down his marker.

“What do you mean?”

“Before Year One.”

“There was no Continuance before Year One.”

“I know.”

A few students laughed. Neola ignored them.

“I mean before it started. What was the world like?”

Mr. Halden looked at her for a moment.

“The world was unstable.”

“Why?”

“War. Famine. Disease. Resource shortages.”

“Between who?”

He frowned.

“Between people.”

“Which people?”

"Neola."

His voice had changed. Not louder. Just firmer. She knew that voice, she had heard it before.

“That’s enough.”

She lowered her hand.

Mr. Halden turned back to the board.

“The important thing,” he said, “is that the Continuance ended the instability of the old world.”

He wrote another sentence.

ORDER CREATED PEACE.

Neola copied it into her notebook, then, underline it, in handwriting so small no one could see:

HOW?