I tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a choking sob. The rank of I was only given to the people who couldn’t work or contribute to society, and once they were sent Elsewhere, no one ever saw them again. “If I were a I, we probably never would’ve met in the first place.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he murmured, running his fingers through my hair. “I would know something was missing. I would know my life was pointless, even if I never understood why. Even if we’d never met, even if you never existed, I would still love you beyond all reason for the rest of my life.”
I kissed him, pouring every ounce of my frustration and anger into it. The sewer wasn’t exactly romantic, but with Benjy there, I didn’t care. He understood. He always understood, and in that moment, I needed him more than I could ever explain. The government might not have thought I was worth anything, but I was worth something to Benjy, and that should’ve been all that mattered.
At last I pulled away and cleared my throat. The lump was gone. “You won’t have any problem with it,” I promised. “You’ll finish early and still get a VI.”
“If you couldn’t get a IV, then there’s no hope for me,” said Benjy. I snorted.
“Please. Someday we’ll all be bowing and scraping and calling you Minister.” If anyone from our group home got a VI, the highest rank a citizen could receive, it was Benjy. The test wasn’t designed for my kind of intelli-gence, but it was tailor-made for his.
He slipped his arm around my waist and led me far- ther through the sewer, but he didn’t disagree. Even he knew how smart he was. “Did you get your assignment?”
“Sewage maintenance.”
“That’s not so bad. We’re down here all the time anyway,” he said, slipping his hand under the hem of my shirt. I pushed it away.
“In Denver.”
Benjy said nothing. Denver was so far away that neither of us knew where it was. To the west, more than likely, because the only thing east of D.C. was the ocean, but I’d never seen a map of anything bigger than the city.
The only bright side was that Denver couldn’t possibly be as crowded as it was here.
“I’m going to talk to Tabs,” I said, and Benjy stopped cold in his tracks.
“Don’t. Wait until I take my test. Nina will let you stay at the group home, and then I can support you.”
“Nina won’t commit assignment fraud for me, and I won’t let you do it, either,” I said. “If they find out you’re hiding me, they’ll send me Elsewhere and kill you in front of the entire country. It’s not happening.”
“Then Nina can give me permission to get married,” he said, and my mouth dropped open.
“Are you crazy? ”
“No,” he said. “I love you, and I won’t let them separate us. If that means getting married earlier than I’d planned, then so be it.” He paused. “Do you not want to marry me?”
“Of course I want to marry you, but you haven’t even taken the test yet, and what if being married to a III affects your rank? I can’t do that to you, Benjy. You deserve better than that.”
“What do I deserve, Kitty? To lose you? I don’t care about the consequences.”
At least he hadn’t fooled himself into thinking there wouldn’t be any. “You’d never let me risk myself like that for you, so I can’t let you, either,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “I’ve already made my decision.”
“Kitty.” He held his arm up to stop me, and when I started to move past him, he wrapped it around my waist again and pulled me closer. “I’m not going to let you do this to yourself.”
I tried to push him away, but his grip tightened. “I’m the one who has to clean up shit for a living, not you.
You don’t get a say.”
“We can run away,” he said. “We can go somewhere warm. Have our own cottage, grow our own food—”
“Neither of us knows anything about farming. Besides, if a place like that exists, the Harts would have claimed it by now.”
“You don’t know that for sure. There’s hope, Kitty.
There’s always hope. Please,” he said quietly. “For me.”
The way he watched me, silently begging me to say yes, almost made me change my mind, but I couldn’t do that to him. Running away would mean he would miss his test, and no mark at all was as good as a I.
I’d failed, but he still had his chance, and I couldn’t let him throw his life away for me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. His face crumpled, and he turned away, dropping his arm. The cold seeped in where he’d touched me only moments before, and my heart sank. I would have done anything to make him happy, but because of my stupid III, I was going to hurt him no matter what I did. At least this way I would be the one risking everything, not him.
Every bone in my body screamed at me to run away with him, to get as far from D.C. as we could, but as we climbed the ladder to the manhole that opened up half a block from the group home, I knew two things for certain: Benjy would spend the entire afternoon trying to talk me into not going with Tabs, and I would do it anyway.
Nina was waiting for us in the kitchen of our group home, spatula in hand. It was still early enough that everyone was at school—everyone except me, now that I was seventeen, and Benjy, who wouldn’t have missed today for anything. Having Nina to ourselves was a rare treat, but all I wanted to do was climb into my bunk and hide.
“How’d it go?” she chirped, but her smile fell the moment she saw Benjy. She looked to me for an explanation, and I stared at the floor, feeling even worse now than I had when I’d received my results. Nina was the only mother I’d ever known, and even though her attention was split between forty of us, she always seemed to have time for me. The last thing I’d wanted was to disappoint her.
“They didn’t give me extra time,” I finally said.
Without saying a word, she handed her spatula to Benjy and embraced me. All I could do was bury my face in her hair and swallow the sob that had been threatening to escape since the needle had first touched my skin.
“It’s okay,” she murmured. “It wasn’t what you wanted, but you still have your whole life ahead of you, and good things will come your way.”
She brushed her fingers against the back of my neck to see what my rank was, and I flinched. Nina sighed and held me a little tighter, but I knew what she was thinking: at least it wasn’t a II. At least my life was worth a job that wouldn’t kill me and enough food not to starve.