Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1)

by Neal Shusterman

But Rowan cared. If he was going to put pen to paper—if he was going to do what a scythe does—he would do it right or not at all. And so far, as he looked at his painfully blank page, he was leaning toward “not at all.” He watched Citra as she wrote, completely absorbed in her journal. From where he sat, he couldn’t read what she had written, but he could tell it was in fine penmanship. It figures she would take penmanship in school. It was one of those classes people took just to be superior. Like Latin. He supposed he’d have to learn to write in cursive if he became a scythe, but right now he’d be stuck with inelegant, sloppy printing. He wondered, had Citra and he been in the same school, would they have gotten along? They probably wouldn’t have even known each other. She was the type of girl who participates, and Rowan was the kind of kid who avoids. Their circles were about as far from intersecting as Jupiter and Mars in the night sky. Now, however, they had been pulled into convergence. They were not exactly friends—they were never given the opportunity to develop a friendship before being thrust into apprenticeship together. They were partners; they were adversaries—and Rowan found it increasingly hard to parse his feelings about her. All he knew was that he liked watching her write.