Chapter 3

By the time the sun came up, Mom hadn't slept at all. She'd spent the entire night sitting outside my bedroom door with dark circles under her eyes, keeping watch. Inside, I'd finished six practice exams.

At breakfast, Mom dug out an old tin box from somewhere. She sat down across from me and opened it carefully.

Inside was my sketchbook, the thing I used to treasure more than anything. On the cover was a big blue whale I'd drawn when I was 12, with a crooked line of handwriting next to it that read "Danny Hartman's Secret Ocean".

Mom slid the sketchbook across the table toward me. "Danny, look. You were so good at this when you were little."

Her voice was shaking. "I kept it for you this whole time."

I glanced down at the sketchbook. Nothing in my expression changed.

Charlie got up from the couch and crossed the room in two quick strides. He snatched the sketchbook out of my hands, flipped through a couple of pages, and ripped one out.

"What is this garbage? What good is drawing? Is it going to boost your scores? Get you into a top university?"

He crumpled the torn page into a ball and tossed it on the floor. "You spent all your time on this useless crap, and that's exactly why Mom and Dad could never show their faces at school."

Mom didn't say a word.

Charlie looked at Mom, then looked at me. He was waiting for a reaction. If I cried, if I fought back, if I grabbed the sketchbook away from him, that would mean the old Danny was still in there somewhere.

I stood up and walked to the kitchen. I turned on the gas stove, picked up the sketchbook, and opened it to the first page.

I fed the whale I'd drawn at 12 into the fire, then the sunflowers I'd drawn at 13. I didn't even blink.

"Art is a substandard waste product. It must be destroyed."

Dad rushed over from behind me and reached for the last few pages. The back of his hand pressed against the iron grate on the stove, and a layer of skin burned right off. The sketchbook still burned to nothing.

Charlie backed up two steps and jabbed his finger at my face. "Are you insane? You're completely out of your mind!"

The moment the word insane hit my ears, I pulled off my shirt and turned around so my back was facing them. The kitchen light fell across my spine and lit up row after row of dark red welts. Some had already scabbed over, while others still carried a faint purple tinge.

I picked up the belt from the table, held it out in both hands, and offered it to Dad. "Contact with prohibited materials detected. Requesting execution of 10-lash penalty."

Dad stared at my back, his lips trembling, and the belt slipped from his hands onto the floor. Mom covered her mouth, unable to make even a sound.

The whole time, Alpha stood in the living room with its camera pointed toward the kitchen. It had recorded everything.

…

Two weeks passed, and Mom and Dad started getting used to it. They got used to me not talking, not smiling, sitting at my desk and grinding through problems like a printer spitting out pages. They even started thinking it wasn't so bad, because my scores were climbing.

The district organized a full-scale mock college entrance exam with city-wide rankings. In the testing room, a proctor stood next to me and watched for 20 minutes straight because of how fast I was working.

Other students were still reading the questions while I was already finishing the third section. After an hour and a half, I put down my pen and turned in my test, finishing in half the allotted time.

The night the scores came out, Dad got a call from my homeroom teacher. I'd scored a 1590 and was first in the entire city, 10 points short of a perfect score.

Dad hung up and paced five laps around the living room. Mom's hands were shaking from the excitement, and she said she wanted to throw a celebration dinner.

Charlie had scored a 1280, which should have been something to be proud of too.