Free The Unwanteds by Lisa McMann

sleep and he fell face-first into his soup.
    He awoke immediately with a sputter. “What—what is your problem?” he shouted when he had his wits about him again. He grabbed his napkin and began to wipe his face, but there were noodles in his hair, and a small slice of carrot stuck to his cheek.
    Lani giggled. Even Meghan had to hide a smile, and Sam-heed just smirked.
    Alex looked down at his soiled shirt, and then he set his napkin on the table. He stood, pushed his chair in, and left without a word, without looking back.
    Meghan’s eyes widened, and she almost stood to go after him, but Lani waved him off. “He’s just a sorehead,” she said.
    “You should tell him you’re sorry,” Meghan said.
    “It was just a joke. He’ll get over it.”

    Lani didn’t apologize to Alex, and he’d had all he could stand. From that point on, Alex withdrew from the others and took his meals in his room. And since they used the blackboards to call on him, he shut them out by putting Clive, his blackboard, on permanent “shush.”
    He spent his free time in his room, drawing and painting like mad, desperate to improve enough to make it to the warrior level of instruction. Late in the evenings, when his arms ached and loneliness clawed at his insides, he lay on his bed and thought about home, and about Aaron, and about what Samheed had said. Alex still had a hard time believing that his brother, Aaron, would have reported a fellow classmate. Why would Aaron do something like that? Many nights Alex chose to stand by his brother in favor of Samheed. After all, Alex knew his brother best of anyone, didn’t he? And he knew from experience that Aaron was creative too—he’d just never been caught. If only Alex had known before the Purge what being Unwanted really meant, he would have reported his brother in an instant so they could be together.
    “Oh, Aaron,” he’d groan, feeling helpless to save him. Alexbegan to miss Aaron terribly now that he felt so distanced from his friends.
    And even though there was nothing that could bring Alex back together with his twin, he sometimes got a
feeling
, or a
notion
, almost like he could sense Aaron’s presence and understand his thoughts. This made Alex feel even more alone. He wondered what Aaron was doing, how his studies at Wanted University were going, and what he was especially good at. And he wondered if Aaron was sad, as sad as Alex was sometimes.
    “No, probably not,” Alex said. He grew so lonely that recently he had begun chatting aloud, even arguing with himself. “It’s impossible for Quillens to feel anywhere near as sad as we can feel here in Artimé.
    “But he believes that I’m dead. That’s got to make him sad,” Alex argued.
    “Don’t forget where you came from, Alex. He’s forgotten you, like he was taught to do.”
    And yet Alex couldn’t help feeling like Aaron was somehow different because of their birth link. That maybe, just maybe, Aaron was mourning for him. Over time Alex grew convinced that Aaron belonged here in Artimé too.



Parallel Lessons
    A aron Stowe sat rigidly in the hot classroom at Wanted University as he had done every day for more months than he could recall, willing the sweat not to drip and sting his eyes. But it was no use. Droplets landed on the ancient pages of the musty-smelling book on his desk. But Aaron studied it despite that, for he knew he must let nothing distract him from the most important class in the university: Governmental History of Quill, taught by the governors themselves.
    “Quill is the land of the strong,” Governor Strang droned. “The strongest society that exists. We are feared, yet we arealways on the ready for attack from those who want what we have.”
    The class of more than twenty nodded sharply, as their instructor required of them during lectures.
    The governor continued. “As your parents and instructors taught you, the land of Quill is nearly surrounded by enemies, except for the Great Lake