The Vault Princess
***
Holly
***
"And if we can manage to cut back on our water expenditure, who knows what kinds of possibilities lie ahead of us?" Anna Freeman asked the classroom enthusiastically. Holly sighed and glanced around. Not a kid in sight shared Anna's enthusiasm; in fact, most looked bored to tears. Holly couldn't blame them, the girl had been rambling on for three pages about 'water expenditure'. Anna's face tightened, upset by the lack of response from the classroom, and she closed her papers in a fit. "That concludes my essay: 'Save Water to Make Water'." She tossed her work down on Mr. Lamenti's desk and stormed off to her seat.
Mr. Lamenti rolled his eyes and reorganized his stack of student essays. "Thank you Anna, that was... interesting." He blew out a deep breath and scanned a paper in front of him. "Let's see, who's left..." Holly tapped her fingers on her desk, trying her best to stay patient. "Ah, yes. There we are," Mr. Lamenti began and Holly started to push out her chair, "Ethan," he called, and she pulled it back in.
Ethan stood up at the opposite side of the classroom, and Holly noticed his freckle-spotted face looked particularly nervous beneath his mop of auburn hair. Oh god, Ethan. Don't tell me you didn't do the assignment, she thought and bit her lip. He shuffled down the row of desks to the front of the class, and spun around upon reaching the projector screen. His eyes caught Holly's, and she knew he had nothing.
"Mr. Drummer, I can't help but notice you are empty-handed," Mr. Lamenti casually stated, folding his arms across his chest. "Need I remind you, if you didn't manage to complete your essay by today, you won't be able to participate in the G.O.A.T. next week. That means your occupational placement will be entirely in my hands."
The color of Ethan's face began to match the color of his hair. "Well, I- It's just that... Well-"
You're going to owe me big, Ethan, Holly thought. "It's just that we did a joint essay, Mr. Lamenti," She stated as she stood up. Ethan squinted at her, confused, and Holly gave him a look as to say: 'Let me handle this.'.
"Joint essay? I don't remember that being part of the assignment, Holly. You taking over my teaching duties?"
"No, sir. It's just..." She paused, thinking of a lie. " ...it's just that our idea was so ambitious, we thought it would be best if the two of us presented it as one piece, instead of splitting it into two individual essays. We wouldn't want to bore the classroom, after all," she said, thinking of Anna Freeman's lengthy work.
"You both had the same idea for you essay?" Mr. Lamenti questioned, raising an eyebrow. Holly quickly nodded. Ethan stared at the teacher wide-eyed, then nodded as well. Mr. Lamenti shook his head doubtfully. "Ms. Miller..." He began, staring at Holly. He sighed. "I suppose the floor is yours."
Holly blew out a breath of air and gathered her paperwork together. She joined Ethan at the head of the classroom and faced the crowd of her bored, tired, and indifferent classmates. At fifteen years old, she was a year younger than any of them, but knew none of them could match her intellectually. Anna Freeman was glaring at her, still bothered by her own essay-reception, and in no mood to hear someone else's. Steven Niles was trying to balance a pencil on his nose. Susan O'Reily was blowing a bubble of gum and tapping her foot. Peterson and McMannis were in the very back: Peterson was grabbing his crotch and blowing her a kiss; McMannis was making an obscene gesture using his hand, mouth, and tongue. She pulled her look away from them, not allowing their childish acts to distract her. Time to blow them away, Holly. All your hard work is about to pay off. "Our essay on improving life in the Vault is entitled-
"Actually, I'd like to hear Mr. Drummer say the title," Mr. Lamenti cut in. Holly swallowed, realizing the teacher was trying to throw them a curveball.
"Oh," Ethan sounded stupefied. "It's... it's..."
"It's been recently changed, Ethan," Holly said, turning to face him. "I didn't like your title, so I switched it this morning. Sorry." Mr. Lamenti regarded her suspiciously, but there was almost a touch of admiration in his eyes. He motioned for her to continue. She did. "We have entitled it: 'Outside the Vault: Where Life Begins!'."
The entire class groaned in unison, and even Mr. Lamenti seemed to shift in his seat uncomfortably. "I can't say the title surprises me, Ms. Miller, but please... do continue," he said dryly.
Holly knew people were sick of hearing her essays and stories and reports about leaving the Vault, but she honestly didn't care if they were sick of them: the outside world was her passion. No one complained when Steven Niles brought up the idea of starting a stupid Vault baseball league once a month, or when Jaclyn Kroplavish went on and on about improving the Vault cooking. The only reason they gave her such a hard time was because everyone thought talks about the world outside the Vault were a moot issue: after all, no one ever got to leave the Vault. And no one ever will, if I don't keep bringing it up, Holly thought and opened up her paperwork to the first page.
She cleared her throat. "Let me ask you all a question: What does fresh air taste like? What does the warmth of the Sun on your skin feel like? What does the wind sound like? I can answer for all of you: We don't know. Everything we do know, everything we think we do know of the outside world, comes from books and reports literally dozens of years old!" Peterson started a loud and comical fake snore in the back of the room. A few people chuckled. Holly pushed past it. "When the first scientists spoke of Vault life after the bombs, they didn't know how long humanity would have to remain within them. They couldn't have possibly predicted the stupendous amount of time we've spent within these walls. They couldn't have predicted the dangerous effects on our mental and physical condition, that--regardless of what many say--is a real threat to our well being!"
"And how could they have known how bad the smell would be in the cafeteria on 'Mystery Meat Tuesdays'?" Ethan added, and the classroom became a mix of snorts and laughter. Holly looked at him tight-lipped and shook her head. The smile faded from his face, and he took a step back. She knew he was only trying to help by lightening the mood, but she couldn't have her point lost beneath the laughter.
"We deserve a life outside the Vault," she continued. "If we stay here our entire lives, that means the next generation will likely do the same. It's a never-ending cycle! Does anyone here truly believe in the ghost-stories of Mrs. Kossler? There are no such thing as 'ghouls' and 'mutants'. If there were, don't any of you think they would have come to our pathetic little vault by now? Don't you think we would have made some sort of contact? If we can overcome our fears, believe in ourselves, and work together, I believe we can improve life in--and outside--the vault, ten-fold!" Holly finished, enthusiastically lifting her arms for dramatic effect. Most of the classroom looked more ready to fall asleep than when Anna Freeman was talking about water expenditure! Holly couldn't believe it. Don't any of them aspire for more!?
"What my partner is trying to say," Ethan interjected, "Is this: Someday the Vault will EXPLODE with balls of fire and the walls will leak ACID, and the radroachs will grow to a HUNDRED feet tall... do you really want to be stuck in the Vault with nowhere to run to?" His words were met with more chuckles from the class.
"That's not exactly what I was trying to say, but thanks Ethan," Holly said, giving him an annoyed glance. "What I really want to point out is-" Her words were drowned out by the buzzing of the school bell. Class was over. Holly tried to ask people to wait, but they were already on the move: her essay already a forgotten bore in their minds.
When the classroom had emptied--and the speed at which it did so never ceased to impress--only Holly and Ethan were left at the front of the room. Mr. Lamenti took Holly's essay and tossed it down with the rest. "Ethan, as inspiring a display of teamwork as that was," he began, eyes darting between the two of them, "I can't accept it as your essay."
Ethan sighed and ran his hand through his mop of hair. "Yeah, alright. I sort of figured."
"Just give me fifteen-hundred words by morning and I'll grade it."
Ethan's face lit up. "Oh, thanks so much Mr. Lamenti!" He grabbed Holly's shoulder and gave her a big, dopey smile. "And thanks for trying Holly."
Mr. Lamenti dismissed Ethan, and then turned his gaze on her. "Ms. Miller, I was really hoping you would have aimed that focused brain of yours on something that would actually help the Vault today."
Here we go, she thought. "But, Mr. Lamenti-"
"I'm not going to dock you any grade points, not like it would dent your grade anyway, but I want you to stop wasting all your time going on and on about leaving the Vault." Holly looked down at her shoes. She knew there was no way for that to happen. When she looked back up, Mr. Lamenti was giving her thoughtful eyes. "You have too much of your fathers curiosity. That's what it is. Always trying to figure out how the world works." She nodded her head at a loss for words. He was right about her father's aspirations, that was for sure. The man had spent his whole life studying what little they knew about the outside world. "Well, regardless, I'm sure after the G.O.A.T. next week, you'll make a fine scientist, just like him. I hope we get to see that brain put to use on better things than a teenage girl's fantasies though. You're dismissed." She turned to leave, and he called over her shoulder, "And try to make Ethan remember his essay tonight."
Teenage girl's FANTASIES!?, she thought to herself as she stormed down the hall outside the classroom. Where does Mr. Lamenti get off calling my ideas fantasies!? One more week of this stupid class, and then I don't have to bother with people like him anymore. I'll get to go study with the scientists and my father. Teenage girl's fantasies... ha! He'll see. She turned the corner of the hall still feeling slightly annoyed, and found herself even more annoyed when she saw Peterson and McMannis waiting there. They were leaning up against either wall, building an impossible-to-breach gate between them. Holly stopped, gave them both a glance, and tightened her grip on her books.
"Good golly, Miss Holly," McMannis was the first to taunt; his beady eyes and rat-nose pointed in her direction. "Say, we found something you might be able to help us with. You wanna check it out?"
She looked back down the way she came, then back at them. The only other way to her room was taking the stairs next to the cafeteria to the first floor and circling around to the stairwell near the lobby. She didn't want to do all that. "Get out of my way idiots," She told them, trying to sound her toughest. It didn't do much good; she was a scientist's daughter, after all.
"Excuse me, Smarty Pants, but I don't actually think we're in your way!" Peterson snorted and motioned to the open gap between himself and McMannis. "We were just asking for your help."
"With what?" Holly humored them. She knew they were up to no good; they'd picked on her since the day she was bumped up to their grade level two years ago. They were stupid, cruel boys who were destined for waste management duties, but, at the moment, they were bigger and stronger, and there was more of them than her.
Peterson snorted again and McMannis echoed him. "We caught this... thing inside Ms. Donnely's cooking class that we think you could... give us your expertise on."
"Yeah, expertise." McMannis added.
"It's only right through this window. Go ahead, you can see it for yourself," Peterson urged and beckoned her to the long, rectangular sheet of glass that ran between the hall and the cooking room inside. Holly sighed. She knew they were trying to pull some stupid prank of her, but it was either play along or waste twenty minutes heading the other way. Maybe it's just some gross picture taped to the glass, or maybe they'll just knock my books out of my hands and be done with me. She cautiously moved beside Peterson and peered through the window. The cooking room was empty and dark: save for the light that was coming in through the hallway. "Come on, Peterson. What are you trying to show me?"
"Take a closer look!" He suddenly barked, and then they were hooking Holly under the arms and lifting her. She shouted at them and kicked her feet, but they were already dangling off the ground. McMannis opened the door as Peterson shoved her inside. Her books spilt out in front of her as she slid to her knees in the room. She got up and spun around, but they had already closed the door behind her.
"Let me out!" Holly yelled and pounded on the door with her fists. It had been locked from the outside.
"Take a look at what we found," McMannis' voice came muffled from the other side, and then he and Peterson's faces were in the window beside the door, watching her with big, ugly grins on their faces.
Holly held her breath as she turned around and looked into the darkness of the classroom. She looked... looked... nothing was there. "No!" She gasped when she finally saw. Out of the blackness of the back of the room, moving slowly and quietly amongst the shadows and across the smoothness of the linoleum floor, was a radroach. Holly spun and began pounding on the door again. "Please! No! Let me out!" She hated radroaches. She hated all bugs and insects really, but radroaches were particularly terrifying to her: their thin, hairy legs and slimy bodies; their long, probing antennas; the hissing noise they made when they felt threatened. Her throat felt tight, and her heart was skipping beats as it pounded in her chest. She couldn't look at it, but at the same time, she needed to. She had to see if it was getting... closer.
"Watch out Holly, it looks hungry!" Peterson teased and pointed over her shoulder.
She glanced back and saw the thing was nearing her. She screamed and pounded on the door as hard as she could. It was behind her, closing the gap, looking for her--searching for her--with its antennas; slimy, prickly legs ready to wrap around her throat and sink its rotted mandibles into her skin and feast on her blood. It hissed. She heard the monster hiss! "Please guys! Please let me out!" Her bladder felt weak and ready to give up on her, and her eyes had began to tear. The radroach was coming, it was COMING! It bumped the heel of her shoe, and she screamed again; this time stomping her foot down, hoping to crush the monsters skull in and be done with it.
The door opened and she spilt out into the hallway and into Ethan's arms. The two of them tumbled to the far wall and crashed to the floor. "Woah, Holly! Are you alright!?"
She shot her head back--fingers tightly sunk into Ethan's vault jumpsuit--and looked around wide-eyed for the monster. She spotted it coming through the doorway, only... it wasn't a radroach at all. It was just a hunk of meat on top of a brown paper bag that had a few thick ropes sticking out of it for legs. A thin wire was stretching away from it, around the corner, and down the hall to where Peterson and McMannis were walking away, holding the end. "Hisssss!" They teased her and laughed, as they tugged their cruel trick along behind them.
Holly rubbed tears out of her eyes as Ethan fetched her books from the ground. "Are you alright?" He asked her, but the fear had taken all her strength, so she only nodded, took her books, and headed to her room.
***
The hot shower helped, and after Holly had dried and gotten into her pajamas, she found herself going to her art book for further comfort. The old, leather cover was a welcome face as she tossed it down on her bed and laid down in front of it. Childish morons, she thought as she opened to her first page, Peterson, McMannis... even Mr. Lamenti... I think I hate them. She mulled over the idea for a moment. No, Mr. Lamenti is a good teacher, and I know he's just trying to help me, but Peterson and McMannis... what is wrong with those boys? The two of them weren't always cruel. It wasn't until a few years back when the lumps had began to form on her chest, and the voices of the boys had began to crack that they got wicked. Her father called it puberty, and told her that was the way some boys dealt with their new feelings towards girls. Holly just thought it was because while she got smarter, their brains stopped at the age of twelve. And they resented her for it.
The first page in her book had a drawing she'd done when she was only five years old. It was on a piece of old construction paper that wasn't even part of the book, but her father had called the picture 'too precious' and stapled it in. It was a crayon drawing of her father in his lab coat; his head and glasses comically oversized above his tiny body. He was standing under a big yellow ball with squiggly lines coming out of it that five year old Holly had labeled "The Son". She smiled nostalgically at the typo and glanced down at the bottom of the paper, where a little girl with dark hair and a poorly-drawn smiley face was holding her daddy's hand.
Skimming through a few pages, she came upon a drawing she'd done only a few months earlier. The picture had come to her in a dream, and she had set about putting the dream to paper first thing the next morning. The artwork was a hundred times better and more detailed than the silly crayon drawing, but the scenery wasn't that much different. It was of a man--handsome, tall, and strong looking--leaning against a rock, and in the background was the horizon, the sky, and the sun. And the man in the foreground ruled it all with a crown of gold on his head. Holly had labeled it in fine, black pen: The Wasteland King.
She didn't believe the lands were wastes, but everyone else around her seemed to. In her mind, the world outside was a thing of beauty: blue skies; green grass; rolling mountains; sloping hills; lush forests of dark greens and muddy browns; wide lakes and oceans that shone in the sunlight and glimmered in the moonlight; flying birds and swimming fish: everything the old books had reported. It sounded so... magical.
It's still like that, she thought. Maybe the bombs changed things around a bit, but it still had to retain some of its old beauty.
A knock came at her door. Holly frowned; her father wouldn't be getting out of the lab until much later. "Yeah?" She answered the knock cautiously. Would Peterson go so far as to bother me at my own home?
"Can I come in?" Ethan's voice brought relief to her ears. She called him in. "Holly, are you alright?" He began when he'd reached the foot of her bed. "Did Peterson and McMannis hurt you or anything? You know if they did... I could kick their asses or something."
Holly smiled. Ethan was sweet, but he was no kicker of asses. He was as scrawny as her, and one of the few people in her class with a brain. The two of them had been friends--her only friend, honestly--for as long as she could remember, and Ethan had always stayed loyal and true to it. "That's OK, Ethan," she told him as she closed her art book. The pictures inside were just for her.
Ethan gave her a lopsided smile and put his hands up. "Alright, but the offer stands. Anytime you need it! ...anyway, I just came to drop off your book. Must have missed it in the scuffle." He tossed the book down on the bed and then regarded her curiously. "Holl, are you sure you're OK?"
She sighed. "It's not Peterson and McMannis, Ethan. It's... complicated."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not really," she answered truthfully and laid back on her bed. "I just kind of want to go to sleep and forget about it."
Ethan thought for a moment. "Is it about leaving the Vault again?"
Holly closed her eyes and she could see it: the sky; the earth; the trees; the lakes... herself. When she opened them again, Ethan was waiting for an answer. "Yes."
It was his turn to sigh. "You know, Holly..." He began, but stopped abruptly and looked down at the ground. When he looked up again, his face had changed. "Maybe you should just try to fall asleep and forget about it."
Holly gave a wan smile and nodded. Ethan turned and made for the doorway. When he got there, Holly remembered to say, "Don't forget your essay tonight."
He turned back to her, and his face had changed again. This time he looked determined and solemn, and his eyes were narrowed onto her own. "Holly... you know, there are ways other than the vault doors to get outside," he said, held his look for a moment, and left.
Long after he'd gone, Holly laid in her bed: arms behind head; eyes trained on the ceiling. She thought of his words over and over, and when she finally did manage to fall asleep, the last word in her head as she drifted into unconsciousness was Outside.
***