and now...shit starts to get real.
They always say the last night is the hardest. At least, that's what a girl once said to me years ago when I was only up to her stomach and I had to crane my neck to look up at her; she patted me on the head and told me, "The last night here is always the hardest. The institution may seem like an awful place, but really...once you're about to leave, you really start to take in its beauty." I never really understood at the time. She took off her cap, placed it on my head then pressed her lips to my forehead before turning and walking to the gates.
I never saw that girl again, but I keep the cap under my bed. It gives me comfort knowing it's below there. I've only worn it once, and that was a year after she left. I wore it to watch the sixteen year olds leave the next year.
So the last proper day is filled with odd sensations. I look around and notice the intricate patterns on some of the walls, the true beauty of the place. It's horrible to be trapped in here, around the large wire fences, shut off from the rest of the world, but it is a beautiful place. I realise, now, what that girl meant. It really is a beautiful building. It seems ugly because you're trapped there, but I'll be free tomorrow. Free to be the strong person I've always wanted to be. Be a role model. Be something.
"Greetings, friend."
I turn around, not surprised to see Vladimir behind me, the usual smile on his face; however, there's something in his eyes that shows he's a little sad. I guess he really does think of me as his friend. I don't know if he's joining the military or not - I doubt he is.
"What do you want?"
"Even on the last day we can spend together and you're being cold. What a bore." He stands in front of me and laughs awkwardly. "Soooo...you going to be a-"
"Finish that sentence and I will kick your ass."
"Alright, alright. Joking aside...you're going to be a servant? Never pictured you as the domestic type, to be honest. You seem more like a wild spirit. Like me and Milen. Ah, if girls could join the military, you could kick some serious ass in there..."
My heart skips a beat, but I keep a poker face. "You think? Never saw you as the soldier type."
"I'm really not, but Milen's determined. I don't want to leave him before."
"Right. Well, it's nice that you two have such a close relationship."
"What, you jealous?"
"Never in a million years." I sigh. Time to spin some lies.
"I suppose I will miss you all." You liar, you'll be seeing them tomorrow.
"I guess I'll have to be a servant and get used to the domestic life." What if I have to be a man for the rest of my life?
"I wish you luck in the military." Whatever it takes. "And Milen too. And Tino and Berwald."
I bow and head off into the girls' corridor before he can respond. I doubt he's going to come into the corridor. He may be a creep, but he's a decent person with some respect for other people's personal issues. My heart is racing, just because of all the lies I have to tell. My whole life is a lie from this point on. From now on, I am Lukas Bondevik. Cold, silent, deadly. I try to think as if I am Lukas, and slowly but surely I come to grips with his personality. I have to keep it like mine so it doesn't seem fake, but I can't make him exactly like me.
My voice is slightly feminine, but it could easily be the voice of a feminine boy. I don't sound too much like a girl, and I could definitely pass off as a boy with my personality. There's always been a standard set of things girls are supposed to be interested in - pretty dolls and dresses and shit. I've never liked any of those. The young boys are given toy soldiers and military tanks and uniform costumes to play dress-up in. Of course, this is all before we're shoved into classes to teach us all the skills we need for our stupid career options before we leave this goddamn place and sign up to work until we can no longer work.
The moment you can't work, they shove you into a slum in some poor town and you live in poverty, opening up a ton of possible death causes for you and an unhappy life. I better not lose a limb out there.
I'll be careful. Lukas Bondevik plays his cards right.
Lukas Bondevik is strong.
No, not Lukas. Screw Lukas.
I am strong.
And my name is Lukas Bondevik.
Tino hands me the clothes the night before.
They're standard male uniform, one he had a few months ago before he got a new one. I try it on in the bathroom and it fits me perfectly. Tomorrow, I will put my normal outfit on and pretend to blend in, before sneaking out, changing clothes somewhere private before blending in within the crowd of boys. Berwald took care of fake files stating Lukas Bondevik as a 16 year old boy, 169 centimetres tall, 44 kilograms in weight, and the special skills labelled as agility and deceit. The weapon of choice, which is required to know which weapon they trained with the best during lessons in the institution, is noted down as a bow and arrow. I can shoot targets. I know because I used to go out shooting with my guardians back in Canada.
Those were some of the most liberating times in my life. Going into the woods and shooting down birds. I was raised to mercilessly kill animals, but in the army, it won't just be animals like birds and chickens. It'll be humans. As long as we don't get into wars, at least. But the newspapers are apparently always predicting a war on the horizon, and the guards who read the newspaper seem pretty paranoid when I listen in on them through the air vents in the girl's dorm.
Oh yeah. I'll tell you about the air vents later. There are a lot of things I've discovered in this place over the last few years that I'll probably miss. Like the tiny storage room which seemed so big as a child, but now I'm almost fully grown, I can barely move around inside it. There are secret corridors and so many mysteries. Locked boxes, locked doors, doors which are sealed shut, things which have clearly been tampered with so they cannot be opened at all... these are the things about the institution which I want to know, but I doubt I'll ever know them. Because I'm leaving. I'm finally leaving this God forsaken place, yet I feel no excitement, or sadness or anything of the sorts. Just numbness. As if my brain hasn't fully comprehended the fact that this is the final night, these steps I take through the corridors are limited and I won't be able to return once I leave tomorrow. This is my final night being Elsie. Now it's onto being Lukas Bondevik, the boy who will join the military alongside his friends Tino and Berwald.
I change back into my other outfit and store the uniform under my bed before climbing in and trying to act natural as other girls came back from showers, from changing or using the bathroom or using their final moments in the peaceful nights of the institution to walk around a little bit. The guards are always more lenient towards people leaving if they're walking around in the later hours of the evening. I mean, anyone out after midnight will be in a hell of a lot of trouble, but they allow a few extra moments for us as long as we're quiet and we don't pose a threat at all.
People seem to be more silent today. They speak in hushed voices, the usual excited buzz of the room completely gone. They talk about what they're going to do, where they're going, and they say goodbye to each other. After all, we follow a strict schedule tomorrow, with only a few free minutes in which I'm supposed to carry out my plan. And then there's the other thing that Berwald did with the files. When he created Lukas's file, he also marked Elsie down as deceased. That way, if people were suspicious about me disappearing, they'd have me down as dead. It's not uncommon for people to fall ill and die in the institution, especially when they hardly care about our well-being, and they execute people so easily. I could easily have been shot or come down with a fatal illness. But they wouldn't have me in their medical files; I expect Berwald's taken care of that as well. I'm surprised a boy as tall as him could have slipped by the guards unnoticed. But he is smart. He probably figured out when the guards change shifts and carried everything out in between.
The same woman that's woken us up every day comes in to turn off the light, and she looks over all of us. I don't quite know what the expression on her face means, but she just shakes her head, switches off the light and leaves the room. Maybe she's slightly saddened to watch the girls she's woken up for the past years leave, or maybe she's relieved. I don't know why she'd be sad. The majority of us don't even know her name, or have ever had a conversation with her which wasn't negative. I've never really heard her say anything other than "Be quiet", "Wake up" or "Come on, you lazy girls!". I shake my head and look around in the dark. Thanks to the moon illuminating the room through the window in the roof (which is permanently locked and impossible to break through, but still allows the light to come in at the crack of dawn) I can see the other girls as they go under their covers and place their heads on their pillows. I wonder if they'll sleep good. I wonder if I'll sleep good. Probably not. There's a lot going through my mind right now, as calm as I sound. I keep noticing the little things about this room, about the people I've spent a lot of time with who I've never really noticed. That one shy girl in the corner who does nothing but sit with her knees up and her back against the cold wall, as if she's permanently upset. She never speaks, just sits there and thinks. I've always wanted to start a conversation with her, but I'm never quite sure how. Now we'll never speak with each other.
Then there's Felicity. The odd Italian girl who is always happy and smiling. Even today. Perhaps I didn't notice something about her, maybe if her eyes were a little less bright and sparkly as usual; maybe I should have noticed the little details. But I'll see her tomorrow morning and no more after that. No more feeling surprisingly calm after she walks into the room, or runs, or hops in and squeals and says 'Ciao' to everybody in the room, everybody, even the shy girl who nobody notices, even though she never responds or even looks up from her fixated stare on her knees. I don't know why her knees. Maybe because that's what's right in front of her and she doesn't want to look anywhere else. I wonder if her eyes get tired from staring at the same thing. I wonder if she even notices.
Ainsley. She's not here, she's gone somewhere nobody knows, she's missing, she was a bitch when she was here, but she sparked some curiosity in me. She made me ask the proper questions to myself, like if I could get away with stabbing someone and throwing their body in a ditch, or if it's bad to feel a murderous rage swell up within your mind every time you lay eyes on someone. Vital questions in my life, which I haven't answered yet. I'm working on it, but Ainsley's gone, so I don't know if I'll be able to find the answers. Even if she returns to the institution one day, I'll be far away in the barracks, fighting. Training. Working, while she gets executed for her crimes. If she ever returns. Maybe she's already dead in a ditch and I don't have to kill her myself. Or maybe she's actually found a hiding place and she's free. I highly doubt that; there is nowhere to be free. Canada was the last place that was truly safe, and now it's gone. Well, the Canadians have gone. Canada remains, but it's deserted, empty. Everything that could be useful for survival there has probably been taken by the authorities, and now it's a completely uninhabitable place.
No matter what, I'll always remember this place. It's pretty unforgettable, really. Years of feeling a permanent anxiety in the back of your mind that the guards could lift their guns and, with a single click of a trigger, end your life whenever they felt you'd done something wrong. Having to face bullies, jerks and tall intimidating people, being separated from boys who could have been your friends and being forced to do domestic chores like cooking, sewing and studying childcare. Staying up all night because you're dreading the next day, praying that the sun won't come round and it'll stay night forever, yet the sun comes round anyway and you lie, defeated and exhausted in your bed before there's the familiar tap, tap, tap of shoes against wooden floorboards and the creak of the door as it opens and then the loud, booming voice of the woman commanding you to wake up, get up, you lazy girls and the sound of scuffling as people get out of bed and race to get into the showers first. I won't ever forget it.
I don't mean that in a soppy, I'm leaving and I don't want to go because I'm going to miss being here way. Either way this happens, it's bad. Staying in the institution will probably break me inside. Going to the military will place so much stress on me, and make me worry every second that I'll make one wrong move and they'll find out I'm a girl and I'll be executed. Tino and Berwald will be executed for assisting me. I don't want to be the cause of their deaths. I don't want to make any wrong moves.
Somewhere in the midst of these thoughts, my eyes close. The thoughts become more calm and soon they're completely gone as my memory of the day drains. My memories drain and all that matters is sleeping. Never opening my eyes again. And with that, I fall asleep properly for the first time in forever.
"Wake up, you lazy girls! Come on, get up! Quit slacking, ya useless warts, you're leavin' today! Aye, don't give me that look, young missy, or I'll put a fryin' pan to yer head before ya know what hit ya! Get up. Up. UP, I SAID, YA SLACKERS!"
And I wake up to the oh-so familiar voice, yet it's speaking a lot more today. Usually she just repeats the same words over and over, but today she actually says something different. "You there, Miss, what'cha lookin' at? Don't just gape at me like a bloody fish, get up and go take your shower! Come on, girls, we don't have all day!" It takes a while to realise that she was referring to me, and I quickly get out of bed, making sure to casually slip my foot under the bed to check that the uniform's still there. It is, and I rush down to the shower, where the room's already clogging up. A guard comes and forces us to get into an orderly queue, and it takes a good twenty minutes before I can get a shower. We rarely get proper showers unless we miss mealtimes to have one, which nobody does because we cherish all the food we can get. We basically live off two-minute showers, once in the morning and once in the evening to keep us clean. But this is the last time I'll shower here. Next time, I have to be in the barracks and I have to try and avoid people seeing me from the front. I hope they have private showers there, but if they don't, I'll have to just rely on Tino and Berwald to cover me.
I jump into one of the showers, washing as quickly as possible before getting out. As long as you're fast, nobody complains. For the slower girls, people end up tutting and complaining and some even yank the curtain of the shower open to yell at whoever's inside, which must be pretty humiliating. I've never had that issue because I time my showers pretty accurately, so I get everything done then get out as fast as I can. We usually take longer in the evenings if we wash our hair, but there isn't as much of a rush in the evenings.
I head back to the dorm wearing my nightclothes, because it's easier to just change back into them then get changed properly in the dorm than to get changed in the shower room when it's so crowded. I change into the female uniform, and subtly stuff the male uniform up so it's wrapped around my stomach. I check myself out in the bathroom mirror to make sure the uniform I'm hiding underneath doesn't make the other look bulky, and once I'm satisfied, I push my hair under a cap as well as I can and head out. I can see a few guards holding files, and I realise that my plan's supposed to go into action before they ask your name so they can find your file and give it to you so you present it to your escort later.
I rush into a nearby boys' bathroom and shut the cubicle door. I'm glad there aren't boys in here, or else that would be kinda awkward. A few come in, but I'm okay now. Once I leave the bathroom, I'll be Lukas Bondevik, not Elsie. I change into the uniform and I hear someone tapping their foot outside. Wondering what to do with the other uniform, I shove it in the bin and pile the disgusting pile of tissue papers on top of it to conceal it, then flush and open the cubicle again. The boy waiting stares at me, probably wondering why I seem so unfamiliar. I give him a cold stare and move on. I sort my hair out in the mirror, and realise I actually convincingly look like a boy. There's a boy next to me, and he passes me some scissors. "They won't let you in with a fringe that long. Might wanna trim it a bit, lad." He slaps me gently on the back, and I nod.
I lift the scissors to my fringe and start trimming it. Once it's shorter, I really do look like a boy.
"There! You looked kinda girly before, anyway. If you're joining the military, you'll wanna look manly." He takes back the scissors and leaves the bathroom, before I can thank him for the help.
I leave as well, and head over to the desk where they're handing out the files for boys. I stand and the man at the desk looks up at me, raising an eyebrow, expecting my name. "Lukas Bondevik," I say, and he looks through the files of boys with last names beginning with 'B'. He finds my file, and hands it over. I thank him quickly and take it, hurrying along. My heart beats underneath my uniform, and I place a hand to my chest. I can feel the thumping, and I hope nobody else notices that I'm trembling. It's causing me a lot of anxiety, even if I remain calm on the exterior.
I go outside, where most of the boys are waiting. I can see Tino and Berwald, who wave me over. I join them, relieved that Vladimir and Milen aren't there. They might ask questions, and that's the last thing I need.
"Lukas!" Tino says. I'm glad he's used to that name now. "Do you feel okay? You look slightly pale."
"Yeah, I'm fine." I switch my voice to a more masculine tone, and Tino seems surprised at it, so I guess it's good enough to pass as a male voice. "Everyone gets a little nervous on their last day, I guess."
Tino laughs lightly. "Yeah. I'm pretty nervous. Berwald always seems calm, but I think he's a bit nervous too. We're all in this together, right?" He smiles.
I wish I could smile as much as him. "I suppose we are." I look out, where a carriage arrives. "What's that for?"
"I don't know. Usually the driver comes out and states who sent them, and then they call a group of people to go into that carriage. People from the same career path, but they usually take them in a few batches because there's so many of us.
A group of girls are called out, ones who want to become... well, one of the career paths I would never consider. I kind of admire their courage. It must be hard to make that decision and walk out, knowing everyone is judging you for choosing that career. More carriages arrive, more batches of girls taken, a few batches of boys, then they call my name out. Then Berwald's. Tino isn't in the same batch as us, and we leave him, promising to meet him as soon as we arrive. I don't know what to expect. Maybe we won't be able to see each other for a while. Berwald and I make a moment of eye contact, which somehow seems like a promise to stay by each other's side throughout this journey. They take in our files and beckon towards the carriage doors, and we enter. The carriage, on the inside, is pretty luxurious. It's red, and has a window on the right side which Berwald and I sit by.
We don't talk to each other throughout the whole journey. Just sit as the other boys around us talk, and I stare out the window, wondering... just what the hell have I done? I'm dressed like a boy, hair cut like a boy's, heading out to pretend to be like a boy until I'm at least thirty. That's how long you serve the military for, if you don't drop out and become a homeless person who begs on the streets and usually ends up dying of starvation or exposure.
Somewhere along the line, puberty's gonna do something to me. Some day I'm gonna lose the twelve-year-old body and start getting some curves. And how am I supposed to disguise it when that happens? Whenever 'that time of the month' comes around, what am I gonna do? They used to keep those specific products in the girls' bathroom in the institution, but it won't be in a boys' bathroom. I resist the urge to scream in the carriage and instead keep all the screaming internal. I've made a mistake. I'm worrying, I'm stressing, and I don't know if I can make it outside the carriage without losing the strength in my legs and falling. I'm usually stronger than this. Vladimir even said I could kick some serious ass in the military, yet how am I supposed to kick ass when I can't even save my own ass? When I can't ever make the right decisions? Sure, being a servant isn't the ideal life, but I could die in the military. I could be executed, I could die in battle if an actual war breaks out, or I could just die from stress right now. There's a very little chance of me surviving till I'm thirty now.
Last time there was a war, humanity was torn to shreds. Now that there's another war possibly on the horizon, what will happen now?
I guess I'll find out, seeing as, if there is another war, I'll be caught right in the middle of it.
whoooo a long chapter.
I wrote this over the course of about three days if you don't count the days in between where I didn't write. so sorryyy. but it's here now, and I'm kinda excited for the rest of this story. There are a lot of scenes I want to write but I can't because they're right in the middle of the story and this is the beginning of the . anyway, pleasee leave a review! it means a lot to me :D I hope you enjoyed!