Erased by My Family at Seventeen, I Heard Every Lie at Eighteen novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Eighteen

On her 18th birthday she wakes hearing every mind in the barracks, and in the yard she hears Valerius think: Beauvoir. Friday.

A year later, on the ninth of Harvest, Linnea woke before the bell and heard the whole barracks talking.

Nobody had spoken.

Forty women lay in their bunks in the grey light, and every one of them was thinking out loud inside her own head.

My feet are killing me.

If I get the night trial wrong, I've got nowhere to go.

Is that bread still warm?

Linnea sat up and pressed both hands to her ears.

The voices went on exactly as loud.

She was eighteen today. She had not told anyone, because there was nobody to tell.

"You've gone pale," said Edda, from the next bunk. She was lacing her boots. "Did you get the bad porridge?"

Don't say anything. She's been odd all week.

Edda's mouth had not moved.

"Say that again," Linnea whispered.

"Say what? The porridge?"

I said nothing. Why does she look at me like that?

Linnea slid off her bunk and took Edda by the wrist.

"Think of something," she said. "Anything. Don't say it."

"You've gone strange."

"Please."

Edda rolled her eyes and gave her a long, flat look.

Red boat. Red boat. Dad's red boat on the north pier with the patched sail.

"A red boat," Linnea said. "With a patched sail. On the north pier."

Edda dropped her boot.

"How did you know that?"

"I heard you."

"I never said it." Edda's face went from red to white in the space of a breath. "Nobody knows about that boat. I never told anyone."

"I know. I heard it."

Edda stared at her, and then past her at the bunks, and then back.

"You hear what people think?"

"Since this morning."

"Can you hear me now?"

Linnea listened.

Oh, this is terrible. Oh, I hope she can't hear that I'm thinking this is terrible.

Linnea bit her lip to keep from laughing.

"You think it's terrible. And you hope I can't hear you think so."

Edda sat down hard on the edge of her bunk.

"That's the worst thing I've ever heard," she said.

"It's not a trick."

"Obviously it's not a trick. I couldn't think of this."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Do you hear everyone?"

"Everyone who's near. A few paces. The closer, the louder."

"Even the cooks?"

"I don't know yet."

Edda grabbed her hand.

"Don't tell anyone else. Not until you know what it is. There are stories about people who know things they shouldn't. Nobody tells them kindly."

The bell rang. The whole room rose at once, and the voices rose with it, a hundred thoughts stacking on top of each other until Linnea's head rang.

She walked out into the yard with her hands pressed over her ears.

It was a mistake.

The yard held three hundred recruits, forty instructors and a kitchen crew, and every one of them was thinking at once.

She pushed through them to the wall by the stable and leaned against the stones with her eyes shut.

A cook carrying a bucket went by and thought about his wife's sister, and Linnea turned her face to the stone so she would not hear the rest.

A boy with a splinted wrist thought, Don't let them see it's broken, if they see it's broken I'm out.

She wanted to tell him she wouldn't, and could not think how to say so without saying why.

She slowed her breathing until the noise thinned.

It did not stop, but it settled into something she could stand inside.

When she opened her eyes, Major Valerius was crossing the yard.

He looked as he always did, tired and kind, with a warm word for a corporal and a hand on a recruit's shoulder.

She was about to wave to him.

Then she heard him.

Not the major's voice. The voice under it.

Beauvoir. Friday.

He smiled at a passing boy and handed him a loaf from under his arm.

Beauvoir. Friday. Same as the rest.

Linnea stood very still against the wall.

Valerius walked past her and nodded, and the thought followed him across the yard.

Friday.

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