CHOICES

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Written in response to Maggie Stiefvater’s seminar: What if all 24 year olds disappeared for 24 hours?

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“But I’m not ready.” My voice breaks the peaceful silence of our cottage.

My sister’s sure fingers falter in my hair. “No one ever is.”

“Will it hurt?” I ask, my voice small and reedy even to my own ears. 

“You know I can’t tell you that,” she says mournfully. “Just be prepared for anything, Maude.” 

She looks down as she says it, uncharacteristically reticent. Fiona is usually always assertive, confident, so this more than anything convinces me that it will, indeed, hurt.

It is the 24th day in the 24th cycle, and the celebration of my 24th year of life. One might find this to be a lucky coincidence, some kind of good fortune, but I know it is an ill omen. What if I don’t come back? It has happened before. No one likes to talk about the missing. No one likes to talk about anything to do with the event. We are simply told it is necessary, or else our crops will shrivel and die. Livestock will stop producing and we’ll have nothing to eat. Houses will catch fire and we’ll have nowhere to live. Our easy lives as we know them in Temperance Valley will cease to exist. Maybe that would be a good thing.

All those who return look haunted by something. Their eyes are empty and they stand with a slight slouch, as if they could be blown away with one strong breeze. Loud noises startle them, conversations are stunted or nonexistent. Their walk is more of a shuffle, as if they no longer belong here and need to tread lightly.

And yet it is supposed to be a celebration, a coming of age ritual. The Society sponsors three days of feasts and dancing, culminating in the traditional toast of that year’s finest mead. Children look at those in their 24th cycle with wonder and excitement, tinged with jealousy like they can’t wait to participate. I was like that as a child too: naive. 

And then my best friend never woke up, and everything changed.

Fiona interrupts my morbid thoughts. “Do you want to wear the lavender or the teal?” 

“What does it matter?” 

Everything I own sits before me, and I am supposed to decide which color I should wear to my own funeral.

“You should always be careful how you present yourself, but especially today, Maude.” Fiona whispers the last part, as though imparting some important life advice and not simply discussing which of my few dresses I should wear for the event.  

I scowl. “I could care less about the event, Fiona. I don’t understand why it’s treated with such reverence when it destroys the souls of all older than 24.” 

She looked as though I had slapped her with my words. “Keep your opinions to yourself, Maude. Words can be dangerous.” Her look is pained, tinged with frustration — perhaps from words still left unsaid. I feel uneasy under the glare, as though she is speaking in riddles and I am too slow to understand. “Do I look broken to you?” Fire is now back in her gaze, and she stands straight and tall, as far from broken as a person could be, nothing like the others who have returned.

“You know that isn’t fair, Fiona. Even you are not the same as you were before.”

Fiona squares her shoulders as if protecting herself from my accusation. “I grew up, Maude. And so will you.”

I curl in on myself, wanting the argument to end. It is a tired one, and Fiona always wins. “Why does the event get to decide when everyone should grow up? What is different about me today than yesterday?” I sound petulant again, and nothing like the adult I am meant to become today.

“Careful, Maude,” Fiona cautions. A bright, false smile appears on her face then, as she shakes herself free of whatever feeling had overcome her. “Just choose a color, it is almost time for sleep.” Her voice is soft again, all the fight stolen from her. She falls easily back into the caregiving role she has adopted since mother died.

“I don’t care, Fiona. You choose.” I plaster a smile on my face.

“I can’t, Maude. Every choice you make from here on out will have consequences that will affect you for the rest of your life.” 

My neck tickles again with a sense of foreboding, like I’m still not hearing what my sister is really saying. Speaking of the event to upcoming inductees is forbidden in Temperance Valley, a strict punishment that typically ends in removal of the perpetrator’s tongue and death to the inductee. All we know is that it is steeped in death. Twenty-four-year-olds disappear, and when they return it is with death in their wake.

“You are trying to tell me that choosing lavender or teal will define the entirety of my future?” I smirk. I want to laugh off her gravity, and to believe that the words said are exactly the words she means. I take the color choice at face value. Imagine: lavender would cure all disease and teal would destroy the need for the event at all. Orange might even bring my parents back. I scoff. 

“Maude, this is not a joke. I know you don’t understand yet, but I am trying to help you,” her face twists in pain with the words, her smile tight but her eyes full of warning.

“Fine, Fiona. Whatever. I want to wear the olive one. Joyce always said green brought out my eyes.” 

A closed-off look passes over Fiona’s face, so quickly that it may have just been a trick of the shadow. She pulls out the olive-colored robe, and begins to evenly split my hair so she can plait it back. She starts to hum softly as she braids, reminding me so much of Mama that for a moment I can’t breathe. We have experienced so much loss, and I am not sure that we can handle any more. 

I look at my reflection in the broken glass, the only thing we have left of Mama. I can’t see a difference in my appearance on this day, when everything is supposed to change. I still have the same straight nose, lightly freckled face, and dimpled chin. I don’t look older – or wiser. I want to remember my eyes full of curiosity, searching for truth. I want to remember my best friend Joyce, and how she shaped me into someone who questions everything. I want to remember how I feel before I come back a husk of who I am, if I come back at all.

//-//

I wake to a weird tingling sensation in my left forearm. I can’t feel my legs, and everything is cold. I have this strange sense of urgency that I need to move, that I am somehow too exposed. Mustering all my strength, I pick myself up from what appears to be an endless tiled floor that stretches in a long hallway as far as I can see, alternating black and white tiles like a game board. I can go in two directions, either forwards or backwards. Both look the same. I choose to go forward. 

I try to keep track of the number of steps —  it might be important later if I need to back track. There are no distinguishing factors in the hallway, and I soon lose track. The walls on both sides are completely smooth, no signs of false or hidden doors, nothing at all.

“I bet it is some kind of underground initiation ritual. A cult thing.” Joyce loved the idea of cults since she learned of the group that buried themselves alive in an attempt to live forever. She is convinced that everyone who thinks differently in Temperance Valley is part of a cult, and I think she secretly wishes that she could join one.

“What would be the point of that, Joyce? Why would the land waste away if those in their 24th cycle weren’t initiated? And what about the people close to them dying shortly after?” I hate to bring her back to reality, but this is often the role I must play in our friendship.

“It’s just some kind of fear tactic,” she explains. “A way The Society lets us know that we can’t be screwing up anymore like when we were kids.” Her serious tone doesn’t match her face.

“That doesn’t explain the hollow look they all have when they come back.” I suddenly shudder, thinking of Erikson’s limp body dangling from the rafters of his barn.

“Maybe that has nothing to do with the ritual at all.”

“Something changes them while they’re asleep, Joyce,” I insist. “Something bad.” I want her to agree, to be cautious. Her own event is coming up, but she won’t listen or take it seriously, so sure she is going to be a part of something greater.

“That doesn’t explain why we’d celebrate it then, Maude! I’m sure you’re just overreacting, or paranoid or something.”

“You’re only saying that ‘cause you’re scared,” I say, my voice teasing. Joyce is the bravest person I know.

“I’m not scared.” But her own voice shakes, belying the words.

I walk for what feels like hours, but there is no way to tell how much time has truly passed beyond the fact that I am now profusely sweating.

 I come to a circular room. At first it is so different from the hallway that I had just spent so much time in, I can’t quite piece together what I am seeing. The room is completely smooth, the perfect circle. The floor is white, no longer alternating with black, and no longer tile but more stone-like. It smells sterile, like the astringent that Fiona uses to clean our own floor back home. It is silent, marked by the absence of the slight humming noise I had not been fully aware of in the hallway. 

Before me are two doors: one is white and the other is black. Otherwise they look identical, made of the same stone as the floor. There are no handles or knobs, nothing really to even indicate that they are doors, except for the fact that they could be nothing else.

I approach the black one first, drawn to the stark opposition it provides with the floor. I lay my hand against it, and it feels slightly warm to the touch. I can hear no sound beyond it, nothing to indicate what might lie behind it. There is no give when I push, no signal that it has any intention of budging or opening in any discernible way. 

So I approach the white one, hopeful that this one will prove more tractable. No such luck. It is identical to the black one, color aside, except that it is cool to the touch. There are no hinges, no marks on the floor that indicate it has opened in the past, no sign of wear on any of the edges. I back away, hopeful for some detail I may have missed. I continue backwards until I finally hit the stone behind me. There is no longer any escape to the hallway, or any indication that the hallway had even existed. I am trapped in the room with these two doors that are not doors.

I like to think of myself as a pretty rational girl. I enjoy finding answers to complex questions, I enjoy when things fall into place. I like a mystery for the same reason I like a math problem: there is either a right or wrong answer, always one culprit and one solution. These door-like structures provide me with no answer — and furthermore, no way to come up with one.

 I am also stubborn, but I know when I’ve been defeated — as my newly-bruised body can attest. I sit down against the smooth stone wall opposite the doors that are not doors, and try to think of it as a riddle. I sit there for a long time, but unfortunately it would seem that I’m more logical than creative — I come up blank. Left to my own devices I spiral, thinking about what it would be like to die in this freezing room of thirst or starvation, maybe hypothermia.

More than anything I want the black door to open, just to see what might be producing the warmth that I felt through the door. That’s my only clue. And as soon as I think it, it happens. The door retracts into the floor, providing a continuation of the white and black alternating tile hallway. None of it makes any sense, but after the door to the last hallway disappeared, I am not taking any chances with this one and gather myself up, hurrying through. As soon as I cross the threshold, the door slams back into place behind me. 

With nowhere else to go, I continue down the endless hallway. 

Joyce could be even more stubborn than I am. “You have to choose, Maude: him or me.” 

“Why are you being like this, Joyce? He’s cute, and he’s nice to me.” I know I sound pathetic, but it is true. A boy had never asked me out before, and now Joyce is being impossible.

“Him or me.” The set of her brow told me I wouldn’t get off easily.

“Joyce, I don’t want to choose. You know how I hate choices.”

Her eyebrows furrow and she looks down, her foot tapping uncertainly behind her. “I thought I meant more than that to you.” I knew she was just trying to make me feel guilty, that she wasn’t as sad as she was trying to appear, but it worked.

“Joyce, of course you do. I would always choose you.”

I come to a room that is square-shaped. As you might guess, it is smooth on all edges, white stone all around. This one has no doors, but in its center sit two chairs: one white, the other black, and they are otherwise identical. They seem to be made of wood, though from my distance at the threshold of the hallway, it is difficult to tell. I am hesitant to move, knowing that as soon as I step through, I will be locked in this room with nothing but the two chairs. 

But I have no other options, so I reluctantly take a step forward. I feel the brush of air from the sealing of the door without turning around. This room is warmer than the other, a comfortable temperature. With nothing else to do, I approach the two chairs. Again, I approach the black one first. It seems sturdy. I am overcome by this irrational desire to smash the chair against the smooth walls, and would have followed through if the chair would budge from where it was rooted to the ground. There is no temperature difference on touch, and overall absolutely nothing remarkable about the chair other than its existence in this strange room.

I decide to look over the white chair. This, too, has no discernible temperature difference or any remarkable features. After careful consideration, I find the tiniest crack along the upper back rest of the white chair. I tend to cherish broken things, and so this chair speaks to me despite the infinitesimal nature of the crack. As soon as I sit in the chair, a hidden door opens into another endless black and white tiled hallway. 

I am getting quite tired of this seemingly pointless endeavor, but there is no one and nothing to whom I may express my complaint. Crossing the threshold, I am barred from the square room, and have no choice but to continue walking the length of the hall.

“Fiona, take care of her.” The words are whispered, fighting Death’s grip.

“Of course, Mama. Always.” Fiona grabs her hand, tears running down her face.

Mama died looking as if she’d just drifted asleep. She had tried her best to take care of us after Father died, but the pressure  put a lot of strain on her and it showed in the lines of her face.

Fiona helped her take on most of the responsibilities — running the farm, selling milk and eggs at the market —  she never complained, just picked up the slack as if it were the most natural thing to do. We were never hungry — The Society always made sure everyone had enough to survive — and by the time Mama got sick, Fiona had already been doing everything. She arranged the burial rites, organized the town goodbyes, and even made sure Mama looked her best before she was interred.

Fiona is the strongest person I know, always so decisive, never hesitating. I envy her all the time.

At this point I have come to expect the same from the next room. The same white stone and a choice presented in white and black.

What I do not expect is to see Joyce and Fiona. And a knife with a black and white hilt sitting on an unassuming stool between the two of them. Fear and understanding fill both sets of eyes. I don’t know what to say.

“You’re missing,” I say aloud. “This isn’t real.” 

Not my most eloquent.

“I miss you too, Maude.” The same dimples, the same voice. I can’t believe it’s her. After all this time missing her, she’s now within spitting distance. But it still doesn’t make sense. Why is she here with Fiona?

“I told you choices were important. They are what led us all here,” said Fiona, always assertive, always calm.

“Oh, you know that’s not true, Fiona. Whatever she had chosen, she still would have ended up right here.” 

Black and white were Joyce and Fiona.

“You can’t possibly know that,” Fiona argues. “What would have been the point?” Fiona turns toward Joyce, but her voice is tired, as if they have already been going back and forth for a while.

“It’s all a game. The choices make you feel like you have control, but in the end, someone still has to die.” Joyce speaks of death so matter-of-factly, that I think for a moment that I must have misheard her.

“Excuse me, but would one of you like to explain what you’re talking about?” Joyce seems to be her usual smug self, perfectly healthy. Nothing has inhibited her from coming back, she isn’t dead. I suppose this should be a relief, but the alternative is that she left me behind.

“Oh, Modpod,” Joyce coos. I can’t help but flinch at the nickname, a name I haven’t heard in two very long years. And her tone is all wrong, mocking almost instead of tender. “Don’t be angry,” she continues. “I really did miss you terribly.” Even after all the time that has passed, she can still read me like a book, and my face flushes in shame.

“You left! You left me behind without a goodbye. You were just gone!” I should be relieved, I should be hugging her, but I realize now that I’m angry because I can’t forgive her.

“It wasn’t a choice, Maude. I would never have willingly left you behind. But there was no going back, not after what I had done. I guess it caught up to me in the end anyway.” She looked down, her foot tapping behind her. This new meekness is so incongruous with the Joyce I knew that I don’t quite know how to respond.

Thankfully, Fiona speaks for me. “You could have made up for it, like I did. You know that, Joyce. I went back, and I atoned.” Fiona looks at her, trying her best to soothe her the way she always cares for me.

Joyce whips her head around so that her black hair fans in front of her face, cringing away from Fiona, wild like a tornado. “You went back because you had something to go back for!” she snaps. “Someone who still needed you. I chose my mother, knowing my father was more important for our survival,” she admits, the energy behind her eyes now dimming suddenly with the confession. “And her death just killed him anyway.”

Joyce lifts a trembling hand to her eyes. Her voice softens as she wipes at unshed tears. “I had no one to go back to, and I couldn’t go back to an empty house filled with the ghosts of my family.” Joyce’s voice breaks on the word “family,” and her shoulders droop slightly with the weight of all she has said.

“You could have gone back for Maude, just like I did.” Fiona turns back to me.

“You went back because you could care for her. You could find forgiveness in saving her. I couldn’t save anyone, and so I stayed. In the end, they got three deaths for the price of one with me,” she laughed in a dead way, without amusement. 

“At least you chose correctly,” Fiona snaps. Her eyes fill with tears and I start to reach out to her, hesitant. I cannot offer comfort the way she always has for me. “I chose Father, and look how that turned out.” She closed her eyes and turned away.

I swallow and let my hand fall back to my side. “Um, hello? Still standing here,” I cough, to try and clear the lump in my throat. “What do you mean you ‘chose’ Father?” Nothing they are saying is making any sense.

“Oh, sweetie. Isn’t it obvious at this point? You have to kill one of us.” Joyce is awfully glib for someone who had just delivered a death sentence. 

My mouth falls open, and I almost laugh. She can’t possibly be serious. “Kill one of you? Why would I do that?”

“You have to, Maude. Like I told you again and again: choices are everything. You have to choose, or we all die.” As Fiona says it, the wall behind Joyce and her moves a fraction closer, a hushed scraping across the ground.

“The walls will close in and squish us, Modpod. There’s no way out but for you to pick up that knife and choose.” Joyce picks up the knife with the black handle from the small stool, and stretches it  out in offering.

“This makes no sense. Why would we all be killed off? This is supposed to be a coming of age ritual?” The walls closing in are starting to make it difficult to breathe.

Joyce remains where she is, not stepping closer with the knife, but also refusing to lower her arm. “What ages someone faster than them taking the life of another? Besides, how else would the size of Temperance Valley be controlled?”

“What?” I ask, watching Fiona’s face darken.

“Sure. Haven’t you guys figured it out? Each cycle, all those in their 24th cycle disappear for 24 hours. When they come back, someone close to them is dead or dies shortly after. Mother, father, sister, brother, grandparent, babysitter, neighbor. Everyone knows it is the aftermath of the event. What no one talks about is that it is a choice.” 

Is she trying to say that Fiona chose to kill Father? I try and laugh, but I’m struggling to even breathe.

“Your Mama fell and hit her head,” I point out the obvious, looking to Fiona for confirmation. She remains silent. “Your Father died from the grief of losing you both,” I continue, the words spilling quickly from my lips. “My Father died of the Cold Cough, Joyce. You were there at his deathbed when he finished coughing up the blood. Same as Mama. Of course Fiona didn’t kill him. Right, Fiona?” 

But Fiona isn’t listening. She is looking at Joyce as if she had just been stabbed. The walls move another fraction closer on all sides.

“Why?” Fiona chokes out. “Why do they make us choose?”

“It’s the best form of population control. It’s all about balance. Everyone in their 24th cycle kills the same number of people that are born. In some cases, even more. Temperance Valley never gets overpopulated: there is always a balance.”

“How could you possibly know this?” I’m not sure if I ask this or if Fiona does. 

“I found a room full of names written on a wall. One side is the list of every person ever born in Temperance Valley for the last 24 cycles. On the other side is a list of choices. There is a balance between the two. The number 394 is circled half a dozen times.  It’s probably the maximum population size of the village.” Everyone goes silent at the same time.

The walls move again.

“How did you stay? How are you still here?” Fiona doesn’t seem to see the walls, or the room at all. She gazes off into the distance, a million miles away.

Joyce shrugs, equally unconcerned. “I just never woke up.” 

The walls are about an arm’s length away on each side now, and we have all moved closer together without noticing.

“You don’t get the choice to not wake up,” Fiona says, her voice full of accusatory scorn. She suddenly seems to snap back to reality, taking another step closer to us. The walls brush against us now.

“Of course you do. Everything’s a choice,” Joyce mocks. “So, Maude, what’s it going to be? Who do you choose?”

“I can’t. I won’t.” I reach out to them and grab their hands. We press as tightly together as we can, and the walls press ever closer.

“Not choosing is a choice.”