The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds, #1)

by Alexandra Bracken

I wasn’t supposed to be afraid, because I was her granddaughter, and I would be fine.

The government was never scared of the kids who might die, or the empty spaces they would leave behind. They were afraid of us—the ones who lived.

She’ll come, I thought. She’ll come. She’ll fix Mom and Dad and she will come to get me. She’ll come, she’ll come, she’ll come .

“Don’t be scared,” she whispered. “Don’t let them see.”

“So he created the Children’s League to . . . help us?” Cate’s face lit up in a smile. “Yes, that’s exactly right.” Then why did you help only me?

I think that all they wanted was to find a way out, and to do it themselves. They had burned so bright, and fought so hard to get free. But none of them had made it to sixteen.

“He granted himself a term extension until the Psi situation is, and I quote, resolved so as to make sure the United States is safe from telekinetic acts of terror and violence. He even suspended Congress.”

What was I supposed to say to him? I’m so glad I found you? We’re the last of us? One was the truth, and one couldn’t be further from it.

Was that what having control over your Orange abilities turned you into? Some kind of monster—someone who could do whatever you wanted, because no one was capable of stopping you?

We didn’t keep track of time at Thurmond in the usual way; I recognized seasons passing, but somewhere along the line I had stopped trying to mark it. I grew bigger, I knew every winter that I must be another year older, but none of it . . . it just hadn’t seemed to matter until now. “What year is it?”

They’d taken in a monster, thinking it was a mouse.

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”

“Seriously. Please. Just take them. Chubs says your extremities or whatever are the first things to get cold, so you need them, and—”

“Who do we like, then?” I pressed. “We like us,” Liam said after a while. “And that’s about it.”

“You have two seconds to tell me you’re kidding,” I said, “or I’m punching you in the face.” “Do it,” Chubs hissed beside me.

“Yeah, but also . . . you were kind of distracting them.” “What? I’m sorry I threatened them or whatever, but—” “No—distracting them,” Liam repeated. “With your . . . face.”

“While I was with the League I realized that the only people that were ever going to help us were ourselves.

I could see what I would have done if our situation had been different. If I had been in control of myself. I could see what he wanted. What I wanted.

“And there I was, trying to be all valiant and stuff by catching you?” He chuckled, using the closest tree to help him stand. “Lesson learned! You’re falling next time, darlin’, because, man, you have a hard head. . . .”

Because they hadn’t known—none of them had known, and now that they did, it was over. It was all over

I wished that Cate could come and take me away from them, back to the only people who would ever embrace me for the monster I was.

“Mom.” I started to cry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! Please, I promise I’ll be good—I’ll go to school today and won’t be sick, and I’ll pick up my room. I’m sorry. Please remember. Please!”

“I am your kid!” I screamed. “I’m Ruby!” “You’ve got to calm down, Ruby,” he told me, catching my wrists. “It’ll be okay. I’ll call ahead to the station, and then we’ll go.” “No!” I shrieked. “No!”

“—that’s not my child!” I could hear my mom yelling through the walls. She was talking to Grams, she had to be. Grams would set her straight. “I have no child! She’s not mine—I already called them, don’t—stop it! I’m not crazy!”

“Ruby,” Chubs said. Then again, louder. “Ruby! Oh, for the love of . . . we were talking about Black Betty, not your Orange ass.”

When a girl cries, few things are more worthless than a boy. Having two of them just meant that they stared at each other helplessly instead of at me. Chubs and Liam stood, up to their ears in awkward, until Chubs finally reached out and patted my head like he would have patted a dog.

Rabbits need dignity and, above all, the will to accept their fate. In the book, the rabbits had come across this warren—this community—that accepted food handouts from humans in exchange for accepting that some of them would be killed by the same humans in return. Those rabbits stopped fighting the system, because it was easier to take the loss of freedom, to forget what it was like before the fence kept them in, than to be out there in the world struggling to find shelter and food. They had decided that the loss of some was worth the temporary comfort of many.

“Maybe nothing will ever change for us,” he said. “But don’t you want to be around just in case it does?”

“Try to imagine where we’d be without you, darlin’,” he said, quietly, “and then maybe you’ll see just how lucky we got.”

“Where did she come from, and where can I find one?” “Picked this one up at a gas station in West Virginia, bargain price,” Lee said. “Last one on the shelf, sorry.”

How did you survive that life? I wanted to ask. How are you you, and not the monster they would have turned you into?

Clancy had hundreds of friends. I wanted to be more than that—I wanted him to trust me and confide in me. Sometimes, I just wanted him to lean closer, to tuck my hair behind my ear. It was a repulsively girly thought, though, and I wasn’t sure what dark corner of my mind it had come crawling out of. I think my head was playing tricks on me, because I knew what I really wanted was for Liam to do that—do more than that.

But Liam . . . he was something precious, something I could break with a single misstep. Someone I couldn’t be with, not right then, not the way I was.

“Ruby, it’s horrible!” he burst out. “Horrible! We’re told when to eat, when to sleep, what to wear, and we’re forced to work. How is this any different from camp?”

“Just because your parents didn’t want you, it doesn’t mean that the rest of ours don’t. Maybe you’re not in a hurry to get back, but I am!”

“That was the Liam Stewart way of saying, Hi, darlin’, missed you something fierce. Oh, wow, bad enough to make you cry?”

“I don’t want to lose you.” He made a noise of frustration, his eyes clear and bright as he spoke. “Then why are you the one that keeps letting go?”

“I just . . .” Chubs stalked past us, only to stop and turn back again. “I never believed you, you know,” he said, his voice shaking, “when you talked about us getting out of camp and getting home safely. That’s why I agreed to write my letter. I knew most of us wouldn’t make it, with you in charge.”

But here was Clancy. Clancy, who helped me, my friend, beautiful in a way that made me lose trains of thought. Clancy, who more than liked me. . . . Who was also an Orange.

“All right, are you ready for the last lesson? Ruby Elizabeth Daly, you are alone and you always will be. If you weren’t so stupid, you would have figured it out by now, but since it’s beyond you, let me spell it out: You will never be able to control your abilities. You will never be able to avoid being pulled into someone’s head, because there’s some part of you that doesn’t want to know how to control them. No, not when it would mean having to embrace them. You’re too immature and weak-hearted to use them the way they’re meant to be used. You’re scared of what that would make you.”

“What did he do?” “Nothing—” “Don’t lie,” he begged. “Please don’t lie to me. I felt it . . . my whole body. God, it was like being turned to stone. You were scared—I felt it, you were scared!”

“You can have your stupid Slip Kid, but don’t expect us to let you keep Lee.”

“God.” He shook his head, mouth twisting into a shadow of a smile. “Did you know . . . you make me so happy that sometimes I actually forget to breathe? I’ll be looking at you, and my chest will get so tight . . . and it’s like, the only thought in my head is how much I want to reach over and kiss you.” He blew out a shaky breath. “So don’t talk about getting me out of here, because I’m not leaving, not unless you’re part of the package, too.”

We are going to die. We are going to die. We are going to die. Rabbits need to accept their fate, rabbits need dignity and above all the will to accept their fate, their fate, their fate, their fate—