PART I
COME AS YOU WERE
THE EPIDEMIC
Over the last four years, suicide has reached epidemic proportions, killing one in three teens.
But new studies have shown the incidence of suicide in adults has suddenly risen, debunking the myth that childhood vaccinations or overuse of antidepressants is the cause.
While The Program has been the only method of prevention, its scope is limited. But in reaction to the spread of the epidemic, officials have enacted a new law to take effect later this year.
All teens under the age of eighteen will undergo behavior modification with The Program. Like any inoculation, the hope is to eradicate the disease from future generations. Through a combination of mood stabilization and memory therapy, The Program claims a 100 percent success rate among its patients.
Information about the mandatory treatment is soon to follow, but for now one thing is certain: The Program is coming.
—Reported by Kellan Thomas
Chapter One
JAMES STARES STRAIGHT AHEAD, WITH NO IMMEDIATE
reaction to what I’ve just told him. I think he’s in shock. I follow his gaze out the windshield to the empty parking lot of the convenience store off the highway. The building is abandoned, plywood covering the windows, black graffiti tagged on the white siding. In a way, James and I have been abandoned too, our former selves boarded up and locked away while the world moves on around us. We were supposed to accept that change, follow the rules. Instead we broke all of them.
The streetlight above us flickers out as the sun, still below the mountains, begins to illuminate the cloudy horizon. It’s nearly five in the morning, and I know we’ll have to move soon if we want to stay ahead of the roadblocks. We’d barely beat the one at the Idaho border, and now there’s an Amber Alert issued for our safe return.
Right. Because The Program is just concerned with our safety.
“It’s a pill,” James repeats quietly, finally coming around.
“Michael Realm left you a pill that could bring back our memories”—he turns to me—“but he gave you only one.” I nod, watching as James’s normally handsome face sags, almost like he’s losing himself all over again. Since leaving The Program, James has been searching for a way to understand his past, our shared past. In my back pocket is a folded plastic Baggie with a little orange pill inside, a pill that can unlock everything. But I’ve made my choice: The risks are too high, the chance of relapsing too great to ignore. There will be grief and heartache and pain. Realm’s sister’s final words to me resonate: Sometimes the only real thing is now. And here, with James, I know exactly who I am.
“You’re not going to take it, are you?” James asks, reading my expression. His bright blue eyes are weary, and it’s hard to believe that just yesterday we were at the river, kissing and ignoring the world around us. For a moment we knew what it felt like to be free.
“The pill will change everything,” I say. “I’ll remember who I was, but I can never be her again, not really. All the pill can do is hurt me—bring back the sorrow I felt when I lost my brother.
And I’m sure there are others. I like who I am with you, James.
I like us together and I’m scared of messing that up.”
James runs his fingers through his golden hair, blowing out a hard breath. “I’m never going to leave you, Sloane.” He looks out the driver’s side window. The clouds have gathered above us, and I think it’ll be only a matter of time before we’re caught in a downpour. “We’re together,” he says definitively, glancing back at me. “But there’s only one pill, and I’d never take it without you. I’d never take that choice away from you.” My heart swells. James is choosing this life with me, a life I want except for the part where The Program is hunting us down. I lean over, my hands on his chest, and he pulls me closer.
James licks his lips, pausing before he kisses me. “We’re going to keep the pill in case we change our minds later, right?”
“My thought exactly.”
“You’re so smart,” he whispers, and kisses me. My hands slide up to his cheeks, and I begin to get lost in the feeling of him, the heat of his mouth on mine. I murmur that I love him, but his response is drowned out by the sound of squealing tires.
James spins to look outside. He begins to fumble with the keys in the ignition just as a white van screeches to a stop, bar-ricading our SUV against the concrete wall of the highway behind us.
Panic, thick and choking, sweeps over me. I scream for James to go, even though the only way out is to ram them.
But we can’t go back to The Program to be erased again. James yanks down the gear lever, ready to floor it, when the driver’s side door of the van opens and a person jumps out. I pause, my eyebrows pulled together in confusion, because there’s no white jacket, no comb-smoothed hair of a handler.
It’s a girl. She’s wearing a Nirvana T-shirt and has long bleached-blond dreads flowing over her shoulders. She’s tall, incredibly thin, and when she smiles, her bright-red lips pull apart to reveal a large gap between her two front teeth. I reach to put my hand on James’s forearm, but he still looks like he’s about to run her down. “Wait,” I say.
James glances over at me as if I’m crazy, but then the other side of the van opens and a guy stands on the running board to peer over the door at us. He has two half-moon bruises under his eyes and a swollen nose. The vulnerability of his battered appearance is enough to make James stop, though, and he restrains himself from stomping on the gas.
The girl holds up her hands. “You can relax,” she calls.
“We’re not with The Program.”
James rolls down his window, the car still in drive and ready to launch forward—crushing her—at any second. “Then who the hell are you?” he demands.
The girl’s smile widens and she tosses a look back at her companion before turning to James. “I’m Dallas,” she says.
“Realm sent us a message to find you.” At the mention of Realm, I tell James to turn off the car, relieved that my friend is okay.
Dallas walks in front of the car, her boots echoing off the pavement, before she comes to pause at James’s window. She lifts one of her dark eyebrows and looks him over. “Realm must have forgotten to mention how pretty you are,” she says wryly.
“Shame on him.”
“How’d you find us?” James asks, ignoring her comment.
“We went to the border for Lacey and Kevin, but there were patrols everywhere. We barely got through.” Dallas nods toward the car. “The phone Realm’s sister gave you has a tracking device. Pretty handy, but you should probably ditch it now.” Both James and I look in the center console at the black phone that was already in the car when we got in. There’s also a duffel bag on the backseat, along with a couple hundred dollars Anna left us for provisions. But is this it? Are we part of the rebels now? If so . . . they don’t look all that pulled together.