The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Three

I go to my bedroom and Boots emerges from under the bed. He runs over to me and rubs against my legs and I stoop to lift him into my arms. He nuzzles around my face, softly purring, and even though I hate carrying dead mice around in my pocket, it's worth it to make sure this little ball of fluff is safe and fed.

Once he's eaten, I sit with him on the bed, running my fingers through his fur.

He's mostly black, but he has little white socks on his hind legs, which is why I named him Boots – after Puss in Boots, and I know I don't have anything to compare him to, but as far as I'm concerned, he's the most beautiful cat in the world. Taffy says that lots of people on the outside keep cats as pets, and I can see why.

Sometimes I imagine Boots to be like his namesake, standing on his hind legs and drawing a little sword, helping me to fight my way free of the CC. In reality, he just snuggles in my lap and dribbles on me a bit.

I pet his fur and think about what just happened. Up here in my room, surrounded by the white walls I've always known, it almost seems like Roan was a dream, but I'm wide awake now.

It was real.

He was real.

There's no reason to trust him. I don't know him. I don't know anything about him, but I can't shake his words from my mind. Does this group of his have any reason to be suspicious of the Trials? How can they possibly be suspicious of something when they know nothing about it?

Unless people on the outside do know something about it?

No, that can't be it, otherwise they would know if there was something wrong. Priya and Taffy would know about it.

Maybe I should have stayed and listened to what else Roan had to say, but I doubt I could have absorbed much more. We only exchanged a few words, and already my whole world feels shaken.

The room around me is the same as ever – plain white walls on all sides, metal-framed bunk beds next to the single locked window, the tiny en suite toilet, the mirror on one wall, the clock on another – but at the same time it feels . . . off somehow, like it's flawed in a way that I can't quite see yet.

But it's not just what he said that has my head spinning – it's who he is.

Roan is from the outside. He has grown up in a world away from the CC, in the world that I desperately long to know. I can only imagine the stories he could tell me, and that, perhaps more than what he said about the Trials, is pulling my mind back to the fence where I met him.

I love hearing stories about the world outside, and Taffy is usually happy to share them with me, whereas Priya finds it harder to talk about everything that she's lost. But now I'm not sure that Taffy's stories are enough. After all, she's been here seven years, and the world could have changed in that time. Even if it hasn't, she was only nine when she came here. There's so much she can't tell me because she hasn't experienced it, but maybe Roan has.

My heart isn't a bird now. It's a mouth, opening up, hungry for stories.

I want to know about people my own age, what they do with their time, how they live their lives. Maybe I shouldn't want to know – it will only exacerbate the fact that I will never be able to experience it myself.

But perhaps living vicariously through other people's stories is better than knowing nothing at all.

Contact with the outside world is strictly forbidden.

I should report the encounter to Ripley.

But I'm not going to, and not just because it would mean losing my secret spot.