Free The Sun Dwellers by David Estes Page B

nightmare, to return to a place where I’m warm and safe in Tristan’s arms, a place where my friends are alive.
    Wake up, wake up, wake up!
    WAKE UP!
    My eyes flash open to murky darkness, broken only by the flickering glow of soft candlelight—our night light. I’m breathing heavily, almost panting, my heart racing unnaturally in my chest. As I deepen my breaths, Tristan’s long, slow exhalations whisper next to me. We’re no longer tangled together, but I’m still warmed by the waves of heat radiating off his body.
    Warm and safe.
    For now.
    Although I’m pretty sure I’ve only slept for a couple of hours—if I’m lucky—I’m wide awake now. My eyes feel like they’re being held open by matchsticks, unable to close even if I want them to.
    I sit up and Tristan stirs, his eyes fluttering for a moment as he rolls onto his side, away from me, but he remains sleeping. The others are asleep, too, Tawni the closest, on her stomach, her arms along her side. My heart rate’s back to normal, but with my normalized breathing comes an empty feeling inside my gut. It’s not hunger, I realize, but loneliness, a loneliness I haven’t felt since before I met Tawni and Cole in the Pen. I know it doesn’t make sense because I’m surrounded by my friends, but it’s there, like a creature of evil inside me, eating away at my soul.
    My father’s face flashes into my mind and tears well up before I can even consider holding them back. The loneliness is because I know I’ll never see him again, never hear his words of wisdom, his heavy laugh.
    Grief’s a funny thing. You think you’ve got it under control, and then it’s right there again, creeping up on you when you least expect it. It seems like no one really knows how to grieve, or even if there is a good way to do it. Me, I stayed in bed for a long time, but when I got up, I wrongly assumed I’d left the grief in the bed. Really it followed me like a shadow, waiting for a moment of weakness to pounce.
    I wipe away the tears, thinking of how to best distract myself. I consider waking Tawni so I have someone to talk to, but she needs her sleep. My hand absently fumbles through my pack, extracting items and returning them. Then my fingers close on an unfamiliar item: a book. The diary my father gave Tristan, which he gave to me. I’d read maybe twenty pages of it since, and was shocked by the truth of Year One, of what the girl, Anna, had to go through. It’s just the distraction I need now.
    I flip to the earmarked page and begin from the top of the entry. It reads:
     
    Today the President assigns me to my new family. I don’t see the President, but that’s what the big soldiers say when they come for me. They say my last name is Nickerbocker now—except I like my old last name just fine. I don’t say that though, because no one argues with the soldiers.
    The Nickerbockers are all right, I guess. They don’t say much, just stare at me and at each other. They explain everything when I move into our new “house , ” which is made of stone and barely big enough for us all to sleep in. Mr. Nickerbocker—“Call me Dad”—isn’t exactly married to Mrs. Nickerbocker. He was assigned to her after we moved underground. His real wife and three kids were left aboveground, so they’re probably dead, just like my family. Mrs. Nickerbocker—“Call me Miss Fiona”—wasn’t married when she got selected in the Lottery. Neither of them smile much, but then again, neither do I.
    I cry today when I think about my real family and how they were left above. My last memory: their faces, cold, harsh, and devoid of emotion. I know they did it to help me be strong, but it only makes it hurt more. Their smiling, happy faces are lost to me. When the tears start falling, my new dad tries to calm me, by telling me stories and singing to me. Miss Fiona tells us both to shut up, which makes me glad I don’t have to call her Mom.
    Later the Nickerbockers let me go out to play.