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head down when I noticed several of the other girls slyly looking us over. One of them snickered. I avoided the eyes of Jacobson, my father’s old friend, who stood on a ladder changing a light fixture. Somehow I felt closer to danger as I moved past him than I had ever felt before, like I was doing something terribly wrong by walking with this chosen one. I had to remind myself that I had no choice. Perhaps it was only guilt I felt, because it was Jacobson’s involvement with my father that had led him to being placed at Templeton. The only natural men here were serving out punishments, prison sentences. Funny that we should both be left here while the true culprits were dead and gone.
    Everywhere we walked there seemed to be people, both naturals and chosen ones. Surely, wherever we were going there was a less populated route available. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought this boy wanted us to be seen together.
    He stopped abruptly when we reached a room on the third floor that appeared unmarked. The chosen one stood facing the door, his back toward me, not saying a word. I took a moment to try and catch my breath. It was only when another chosen one walked by that his hand reached for the door and pushed it open.
    Nothing could have prepared me for what was within. Obviously, it was his living area, but what was surprising was how different it looked to what I’d expected. The chosen ones were the makers of the rules, the enforcers of decorum and order. Yet, in this room, order didn’t exist.
    The space was cluttered and so oddly personal. It contained sheets of paper with various writing samples crossed out here and there, a record player on the desk. It felt warm, and the natural light that slithered in through the window was almost blinding in its purity. I wondered if he liked the light, desired something so natural when he was so…artificial. But what surprised me most were the rows of books stacked haphazardly around his room.
    After my father had been taken by the council, my mother held my mouth open and forced burning vodka down my throat until I told her where he kept his books. She called my father a traitor, said she wouldn’t be one like him. I remembered Louisa clutching onto my leg the whole time. Emma couldn’t bear to watch, or to stop my mother. She was helpless.
    I told my mother.
    And then the books were gone.
    “How?” I whispered. I had no right to, but I couldn’t help myself. He seemed perplexed by my question.
    “All of this…it’s outlawed. I haven’t seen books in so long.”
    How I craved to reach out and cradle one in my hands.
    “It’s easy enough to get them. The council doesn’t mind so much. It’s a small bribe for the work we are to do. The minute we step out of this place, poof, there go our lives.”
    I stared longingly at the books. I could feel something working its way through me that I couldn’t identify. Whatever I was feeling, it was seductive, willing me to surrender.
    I licked my dry lips and glanced away from the books to see the chosen one was staring at me. His eyes roamed everywhere. I could feel them pause over certain places, spaces of imperfection: my slightly too long neck; my much too thin arms; my general lack of torso; my long, disproportioned legs; my thick reddish hair.
    Yet somehow I could tell he wasn’t judging me or reeling in distaste over the physicality that exists as a result of random genetics. Instead he looked at me in what felt like approval.
    Was this the first time he had been alone with a girl?
    Emma used to joke that the chosen ones had to sit through a seminar on female anatomy—countless hours on reproduction and menstruation. The council did such a good job expounding on the female’s natural wantonness, weakness, and our general pits of disgustingness, they actually thanked the council for not creating any female chosen ones.
    But this chosen one didn’t seem disgusted.
    With a heavy sigh, he walked to his closet