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AMITY

As Zephand I sit together on the bus, like we have so many times over the years, he stares out the window and I glance around. This route goes downtown and it’s a mix of people heading to jobs and a few kids our age heading to the courthouse, same as we are. The CSOs, Community Security Officers, are in the back.

Each Officer is a different height, her face unique, but all with the same strong build, dressed head to toe in identical white uniforms with their hair pulled into long braids down their backs. Each carries a Taser at her waist and stun baton on her back.

I know the uniform well. My whole life, I’ve watched my mother put on that same uniform day in and day out. I fully intend to follow her into the Force. There’s no greater legacy, no greater service you can give back, than keeping the peace. “Peace is a Privilege” my mom always reminds me, and I believe her.

“Zeph,” I say carefully. There are cameras and microphones scattered over the ceiling of the bus.

“You know my grandmother died at Tel Nof.” I add the wordplease, forming it silently. Whatever he is planning, I don’t want to see him under arrest, a thick monitor on his ankle, all doped up to become a person I don’t recognize anymore. I imagine him slumped on the couch next to his father, watching government videos, and I shudder.

“My grandfather also died in the Integration,” he says, his brows drawing together.

I didn’t know that. Did his grandfather fight for or against the Peaceful Society?

“They sacrificed for us, Zeph,” I murmur. Not only the millions of lives lost. The destruction of weapons factories, the haze when the drug fields burned, the new restrictions and rules. The cost was so steep.

Even now, the world population has been shrinking steadily since the invention of the fertility chip. Reproduction was one of the Freedoms we gave up for peace. In our territory it’s a Privilege now, only available to Citizens, and must be earned along with the Privileges of Speech, Movement, Work, Assembly, Privacy, and Participation in Public Affairs.

“You make your choices, I make mine,” Zeph says. He likes to argue about free will with me, likes to tell me all about how men should have more control over their own lives.

My dad has plenty of control over his life. He works for the WPA, like most men who are Citizens. He took the Oath and as long as he wears his SafeGuard and checks in forCitizen Training once a year, he’s given equal Privileges with women. In theory, he could undergo training to try for Clearance. Then he could hold a better-paying job, a Position of Power, even if only a fraction of men make it through.

Clearance training is more rigorous than training for Citizens, and HighClear, the training to become a Security Officer, is the toughest of all. It requires absolute self-control and nonaggression, total nonreactivity of speech, thought, and movement. Few men even volunteer to try it.

The buildings outside the bus window grow larger and look scrubbed, the marble shining. Even the concrete appears immaculately clean in this area of the city that houses the central CSO station, the courthouse, and nearby government buildings.

At the bus stop I stand, tugging Zeph behind me until we’re out on the street. We watch the heavier traffic in this area for a minute, e-cars backing up at the stoplight in front of the bus stop.

I turn to him, fearful. Tension spreads throughout my body, my chest rising and falling rapidly despite my efforts to slow my breathing down.

“What will happen?” I ask quietly as we stand together. I clutch his hand in my own sweaty palm, not ready to move toward the courthouse yet. The building behind us is the Central Security Station. Women in white walk briskly on the sidewalk and hurry up the steps to work. Zeph glances around nervously.

“I’ll leave,” he says simply, and I know what he’s talking about. It’s his crazy plan to get to Anchorage, to a rebel militia there. “Or go underground.”

I glance down at the pale concrete beneath our feet.Kids whisper in school about men’s rights groups meeting underground, in the old subway tunnels. Fighting with each other more than getting organized from the sound of it, their capacity diminished but not entirely extinguished.

“You could refuse the Oath also, Amity, you don’t have to stay here,” he says in a mournful voice. I heave a deep sigh. He knows I’ve made up my mind, the same as him.

I’ve known I was going to train for HighClear since I was a little girl, dressing up in all my white clothes and borrowing my mother’s weapons belt. Her empty weapons belt, that is. There’s no way she’d let me touch her Taser.

He sees the answer in my eyes.

“Yeah,” he mutters. Pain flashes over his face. The hug he draws me into is sad, defeated. In other words, it’s goodbye.

“You’re my best friend, Amity,” he says into my hair.

A tear slips down my cheek. If that’s true, why is he going to refuse the Oath? Or whatever he’s planning?

“Go in Peace,” I tell him as goodbye. We’ll walk together down the block to the courthouse, but I don’t want to say goodbye there, in a long line with the other kids ready to take their Oaths. I’ll say it now, because once I’m there I’ll be Amity Bloome, my mother’s daughter, granddaughter of Selene Bloome, martyr of the Integration.

As I expected, the line into the courthouse is long, snaking down and around the block. Zeph and I walk along the row of teenagers, laughing and joking, many of them sleepy after a night of post-graduation partying.

I greet a couple of friends from the swim team, mostlyserious girls like me who are going up for Clearance. You need high grades to be considered, and those don’t come without a lot of work. I never had time to date or socialize much in high school.

If the Peaceful Society accepts me into HighClear, I’ll only have tonight with my family to say goodbye and get ready and then I’ll be sent off to the Institute with the other girls.