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CHAPTER 1
Grace
What I did just wasn’t that bad. I absolutely knew I shouldn’t steal, sure. And I knew that shoplifting earrings wouldn’t get the same kind of sympathy that, say, stealing a loaf of bread to feed my family might have. But when the judge delivered my sentence I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly.
“Defendant remanded to Selecta Non-Violent Offender Correction Services,” he said, and then he actually knocked his hammer thing on the little wooden block on top of his desk, or his bench, or whatever.
Correction. Like, prison? Standing there in the courtroom, next to the lady who had called herself my court-appointed advocate (or something) I turned around wildly. Somehow I knew what I would see: two officers of some kind, big men in white shirts with badges, coming toward me.
I turned to the lady—the advocate—with wild eyes. “What? What does it…?”
She had a smile on her face. I couldn’t believe it.
“I told you, Grace,” she said, her voice telling me that her patience with me had started to wear thin. “This is the best you can hope for, and you’re lucky to get it.”
I shook my head. She had told me a shitload of things. How was I supposed to remember all of them? I couldn’t even remember her name.
Ms.… Rogers?
Ms. Rogers, if I had actually recalled the name correctly, sighed. I could see in her face that she actually did want to help me, which of course made me feel worse, which of course made me mad, because I was the one who had just been remanded, or whatever.
“They’ll explain it to you when you get to the New Modesty bureau,” she said.
“The what?” She absolutely hadn’t said anything about the New Modesty. I would have remembered that, because everyone at school had heard of Selecta’s fascist little New Modesty towns, where men were men and women were women and everything happened in a traditional, old-fashioned way.
Ms. Rogers nodded, her eyes showing her obvious effort to remain patient and helpful.
“Yes, Grace. That’s the deal I got you, because your profile matches with their correctional program. The alternative was prison.”
I felt my forehead crease hard, and my heart rate sped up like a hundred beats. I had told Ms. Rogers that I would do anything that kept me out of prison. I did remember that. Her face turned sympathetic, obviously in response to the fear in my eyes.
“I do wish you all the best, Grace,” she said, reaching out to touch my shoulder gently. “From what I’ve read, this program should help you figure some things out about what you want in life.”
I felt my face go scarlet. No, the woman hadn’t said that I had no idea what the hell I was doing, as a nineteen-year-old living in one of Selecta’s basic-income dorms without a plan to find a job or even a hobby. She might as well have said that flat out, though; why would I have any need to figure some things out about anything, let alone what I want in life, if I did have the slightest clue about the world—or even about myself.
“Grace Franklin?” one of the white-shirted officers said.
I turned to him. My lips parted, but I couldn’t seem to get a word out of my mouth.
“This is Grace,” said Ms. Rogers, and then she turned back to me. “Don’t make things any more difficult than they have to be, okay?” she said, in a tone that struck me as almost pleading. “The program is probably going to be difficult for you at first, and it will seem strange, but they know what they’re doing.”
The officers had a lot less patience than my advocate.
“Let’s go, Grace,” said the one who had spoken before. “You’ve got a pretty long ride ahead of you.”
The long ride happened in a white minibus with SELECTA in red letters on the side. A bored-looking guard sat up front with the driver, barely paying the passengers—me and four other girls of about my age—any attention, except when we tried to talk to each other. Whenever he noticed that, he got up and yelled the same thing, every time: “What the fuck did I say, girls? No fucking talking. I can beat your butts black and blue if I want, so don’t tempt me.”
When we stopped for a bathroom break, he made us line up outside the gas station restroom door and he sent us in one by one. When I took ten seconds too long, staring at my face in the mirror in hope of figuring something, anything, out about what the fuck I was doing here, he pounded on the door and yelled, “Grace, get your ass out here or you’re gonna get it whupped.”
As I exited the bathroom I shot a furtive glance at the other girls. I wanted to ask them if they thought the guard actually could do what he threatened. Wouldn’t it be like a Get Out of Jail Free card for us, if he tried to follow through on that kind of thing? Maybe we could provoke him, and then, like, blackmail him or something when he actually did try it?
None of the others would meet my eyes. With an inward shudder I wondered if that meant that they somehow knew that the guard could do what he was promising.
I got the unwelcome answer only a few moments later. The girl behind me, whose name according to the guard’s clipboard was Frannie, took too long in the bathroom—much longer than I had taken. The guard pounded on the door, telling her to get her ass out here, but unlike me, Frannie didn’t. She called out that she had diarrhea, but even I could tell she was probably lying. The guard opened the door, which made the rest of us gasp, and hauled Frannie out. She didn’t even have her jeans down, but she did have a phone in her hand. They had taken away my phone the moment I’d gotten arrested, so I blinked in surprise.
“Give it to me,” the guard said, turning the blonde girl to face him.
Frannie looked at him with terrified eyes.
