Chapter 1

The doorbell rang and my fiancée’s eyes were everywhere but on mine. “Our first unaccompanied outing,” Peter stated. “Bay, your ass is hot in those leggings. I’ve been thinking about biting into that for months. I’ve wanted to tell you that,” his eyes flickered to mine before settling on my thighs. “Of course I couldn’t say it before.”

I wish he hadn’t said it now.

Marriage terrified me, though I’d take that to the grave. I just celebrated the birthday that marked me as legal marrying age. By law, it was time. I tried to have faith that my parents had negotiated well, and my union, like theirs, would be a good one.  I had to trust our government’s system. Besides, it’s not like I had a choice.

We walked toward his car and he held the door open for me. “Well you only have another few months to go and I’m all yours.” I hoped he caught the undertone of my statement. This shop was closed until our wedding night.          

“Just because I have to wait a few months to make love to you doesn’t mean you’re not already mine,” Peter said. I pulled a feigned smile over the disgust I felt but it slipped as he closed the door.

The blue pulsing vein in dad’s forehead warning me of broaching dangerous territory throbbed late last night when I informed him I’d be attending the annual Eros ceremony this year with Peter. We were one of the only Rising Class families that never attended and I still didn’t know why, the same way I didn’t understand dad’s strong reaction to my decision to go. Dad was private about certain things. It was frustrating as hell.

I snuffed the pending outburst with the following case arguments: Peter expected me to go and he would keep me safe. The men and women I’d see bid on by the breeding clinics would be the future carriers of his grandchildren. (“Congrats, grandpa.” I actually said this. It may have weakened my case.) Not to mention I was nineteen now, a legal adult. The poor guy didn’t have a chance. He couldn’t tell me no.

I talked a good game but omitted one crucial fact about why I wanted to go. I was curious.

Peter slid in beside me from the other side of the car and closed the black tinted window separating us from his driver. “How are you feeling about attending your first Eros ceremony?”

        “Curious.” I was careful to omit the word “nervous”. I was curious and nervous but I wish I were excited because that’s how I was supposed to feel about this ceremony. It’s what was expected of me by him.

 “What do you want the specimen we invest in to look like?” Peter studied me as I answered.

        “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.” I had only just begun to wrap my head around the fact that this man was going to be my husband and that soon I’d be leaving my parent’s house and starting a career assigned by our government here in the East Quarter.

        “I’d like to invest in breeders with blue eyes and blonde hair,” Peter said. “I’d love a little fair haired male with light eyes like mine running around our home. Two males, that would be perfect.”

        In that case our children would look a lot like him and nothing like me. No one in EQ had skin darker than my olive complexion. Peter wanted kids who looked like him, I could understand that. He was a very handsome man. But . . . why not children that looked like me? “You don’t want a daughter? I would love a little girl one day.”

        “If we were allowed more than two, I’d say yes. Two males and a female. But Gatlin needs to remain a strong name in Loganville, Georgia, now and in generations to come. We must choose two males preferably from the same breeders.”

        The East Quarter, or EQ, was fairly small compromising Ohio down to Alabama and all the states to the east. Overcrowding wasn’t an issue because each married couple was allowed to choose no more than two babies from the breeding clinic auctions.

“We will need to start shopping for breeders soon though, before our marriage.” Peter said. “After the arrangement is made with the clinic we will have to wait for them to conceive. I heard that the women grow the specimens for nine months inside of them. Can you imagine?”

        I couldn’t and I didn’t want to.

        “We will spare no expense for our master specimen,” Peter flashed a determined smile.

Arranging breeders and “master specimens” was a complete waste of an obscene amount of money seeing as they were all master specimens in actuality. Besides, all babies sold in the auctions were healthy. Wasn’t that all that mattered?

        “How did your engagement examination go earlier this week, speaking of specimens?” A heavy, sexy smile plastered Peter’s face and a rush uncomfortable heat shot through me. There was nothing sexy about a visit to the gyno.

        “The doctor deemed me in very good physical health.” I squirmed in my seat. “Did you ever doubt that I wouldn’t be in honorable condition?” I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that he even had to ask. I didn’t know Peter very well but my honor, my virginity, meant a lot to me. Besides, as Rising Class, losing our virginity before marriage, and conceiving, were both punishable by death. It wasn’t our job to breed.

        “No,” he kissed my cheek softly and took my hand in his. “I didn’t doubt you. Did they schedule surgery to sterilize you for our wedding night?”

        This conversation had begun uncomfortable and turned painfully awkward, however, this man was my fiancée. I suppose talking about things like purchasing future children was uniform, and everything mortifyingly private would henceforth be flipped inside-out. Apparently, mystery was over-rated. “Yes. I’m going the week after next.”

        I watched curiously as Rising Class ended. It was against the law for classes to mix except during Eros. The fields we passed now, the ones that separated Rising Class from Stagnant Class, were thick with tall brown grass and dotted with large oak trees. The land was flat with very little vegetation. I had never seen anything like it and the solitude of the setting was captivating. I memorized every line and curve in the grass and pictured myself running the expanse of it, dipping into the shadows. I wasn’t sure exactly what I felt I had to run from or why I suddenly wanted to run away but the closer we drew to Stagnant Class the more desperate I grew to claw my way out.  

At times I had been curious about Eros and asked my parents questions but their answers always skimmed the surface of the deeper meaning of the ceremony. “Eros is a display of how our government operates and how they keep order. Crime is minimal and lines between the two classes are clearly drawn. Everyone who lives is the oil greasing the well run machine that is EQ,” they would recite.

Despite my curiosity I was never inclined enough to ask to attend Eros. Even now for a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on I was sick with the idea of attending.

Stagnant Class crept slowly into view as we crossed the border, leaving Loganville behind. Faded brick buildings crammed the outskirts of the narrow road. A rock thrown between any two would easily hit the neighboring one. Bars had been added to the windows and doors. There was no landscaping to make anything feel remotely like a home and though I searched for sprigs of life attempting to break from between the sidewalk cracks, I found none.

I read words out loud that had been painted on one building in angry red. “They will do it to you too.”

        “It’s called graffiti,” Peter said. “All the paintings you see on the buildings and in the streets is graffiti.”

        Some of it was large, colorful, raw and abstract. I was moved by these pieces in ways I didn’t realize I could be. It was profoundly painful, the way it opened my heart and simultaneously cut it.

Other pieces of graffiti, however, were vulgar and venomous. It was a public display of the hard line drawn between Stagnant and Rising Classes and the hate that they had provoked in one another. “Why?” I asked, not seeming to be able to punch all of my sadness and pain into that word. “Why does this art seem so sad and angry?”

        “Because,” Peter sighed, raking his fingers through my hair, “they’re hungry.”

My gaze drew to his eyes hunting for a hint of emotion. His remained pillowed in my cleavage. His mind wasn’t at all in the slums of Stagnant Class. I wondered how this could be.

The car slowed to a stop. “We’ve arrived, Mr. Gatlin,” the driver called back to us. I didn’t want to get out but I didn’t want to go home either. I had grown up slow and good, I knew who I was and liked that person. Now I felt as if I knew nothing about anything despite my Rising Class education. My world had been tipped and all the contents I once thought real disappeared over the edge.

        Shopping carts filled with randomness and metal trash cans engulfed in fire awaited me as I stepped out onto the curb. The early spring weather didn’t call for the multiple layers of winter clothes these people wore. The buildings were smaller here than the others, with crooked walls and broken roofs. They stood erect on stilts displaying molded, water damaged bottoms. The stink of rot engulfed me and the eerie buzzing of flies rattled my eardrums.

        “This way,” Peter instructed. He led me through a rusted gate and down a narrow, flickering hallway. Bright, eccentric paintings lined the walls. Beautiful escape hatches from this reality. “This is how some of them make a living,” Peter followed my eyes. I wondered which galleries this could be purchased from. If nothing else I could support Stagnant Class financially by filling my home with this lush, gut wrenching art.

        The hallway opened up into a large square courtyard. Empty glass bottles, colorful broken plates, tile, and a handful of other random things sculpted the walls. None of the things were especially beautiful on their own but when grouted together, created unique designs. The colors and the glass glinted off the sunlight filtering into the courtyard. Who would have thought that the most beautiful little place I had ever seen was tucked into the poorest? I smiled to myself not surprised in the least that these people could create a place so alive and happy for an annual ceremony that was so dehumanizing. That is why EQ held the event in Stagnant Class, after all, to further dehumanize them. It was almost as if Stagnant Class were trying to show the rest of us that nothing would own them.

        I would have pictured little mosaic tables with mis-matched chairs, lots of wild flowers, and plants here. Instead, a red carpet led to a grand stage with a polished wood floor. More than a hundred red plush chairs waited vacantly around the stage, and above us a black balcony held more chairs. The natural beauty had been gutted to make room for beauty of a different variety; Artificial and staged.

Peter led me through the growing crowd and to the second row. The first row was already occupied by official looking men and women with digital clipboards in their laps. Peter explained that these were the Directors of the Atlanta and Holly Springs breeding clinics and they would bid on the highest ranking Stagnant Class to breed in their clinics.

        A little boy with stretched, sun-bleached skin and moth eaten clothes handed me a program. He flashed a toothless, dimpled smile and nodded excitedly. It was hard to read through the water swimming beneath my lashes.

According to the program the men would be bid on first. Listed along with their names were statistics such as height, weight, eye color and special skills. Their test results were listed as well. I was silent as the chairs filled. I was afraid of what might come out if I opened my mouth. Peter’s parents and brother took a seat beside us. “Don’t be nervous,” Peter said with a squeeze of my hand. “You’re going to enjoy this. Afterwards we’ll head back to Loganville and catch a bite to eat at that new restaurant down the road from your house.”

        I couldn’t think of anything right now, least of all food, except for the fact that I thoroughly hated myself for being so ignorant all these years.

        The men were marched onto the stage ten at a time. The same would occur with the women next. They were more attractive than most of the men in Rising Class, and according to my program these men were very well bred and talented. However, this held little stock to me seeing as everyone in EQ was bred for beauty, strength, and talent.

        “Stagnant Class is given specimens that don’t quite meet the high standards of the breeding clinics,” Peter explained. “They are given the bottom of the pot. Somehow though, the ones we see on the stage grew out of their preconceived labels. It really is amazing.”

        Something about all this was amazing, alright.

The auction process moved along quickly. Each man was called by last name. An account of their attributes were read aloud for the bidders and audience and in some cases they were asked to perform a task like lift a few cinder blocks over their head. Because that makes for an amazing breeder. The men who were purchased by the clinics were led off the back of the stage and through a door. The ones who weren’t were sent out another door to the side.

        “It’s intermission,” Peter’s dad exclaimed. He stood and stretched. “I’m going to get a drink.” I followed his gaze and sure enough, blended into one of the sparkly walls, was a bar. EQ mixed up a special drink for Rising Class that was served at all types of ceremonies. It was a blend of medicines that calmed nerves and eased anxiety. My parents had never indulged in these types of cocktails and never allowed me to either, even though children were also encouraged to drink them. I hoped that was why so many people here seemed happy and calm; I hoped these weren’t their genuine reactions to this madness.

        “I’m going to powder my nose.” Peter’s mom beamed as if she were having the time of her damn life. She huffed, obviously annoyed, when she caught the expression on my face that I no longer attempted to mask. This auction would be enough to fuel her gossip sessions with Rising Class women for months. I was thankful my own mother wasn’t that type.

        “Come on,” Peter said standing and holding out his hand. “I want to show you something.” I stood, shaky on my legs. Peter gestured toward his brother to get up and follow us.

        “Where are we going?” I asked.

        “We’re going backstage to see some of the females.” Peter was so excited that he glowed. “Take note, Bay, if you see one you like. These are the future carriers of our sons.”

        Before I could protest I was pulled toward the door at the back of the courtyard, silenced by the crowd of bodies and growing voices.

        I couldn’t bear to see the women. I didn’t want to be taken from the crowd.

I was afraid.

I soon realized I had right to be.