Read Online Solstice by Jane Redd - Free Book Online Page A

deliberate. “She talks about the Before.”
    I thought of everything I’d learned from Rose. “A little bit. But mostly she talked about the rains and how her life was changed when the Legislature formed.”
    There was only silence on the other side of the wall, and then the shadow shifted. I waited, holding my breath. I wondered if Sol was angry now, realizing what he got himself Detention for. What I cost him. This should have stayed between me and my caretakers.
    “What was her name?” he asked.
    His question surprised me, and it also worried me. I didn’t want him punished anymore because of me. I regretted having told him anything in the first place.
    “Jez.” His fingers appeared in the opening at the bottom of the wall. “Tell me her name.”
    “What does it matter?”
    He wriggled his fingers, and instinctively I closed my hand around them. There was no danger in it, I told myself. A thick wall separated us. Besides, who knew if I’d ever see him again? Don’t go there, I thought, or I’ll stop breathing altogether.
    “Please,” he said.
    “Her name was Rose,” I whispered.
    “Like a flower.” His fingers moved against mine, and his grasp tightened. I was glad he couldn’t see me or the color spreading across my cheeks. The description of Rose kissing her boyfriend came to my mind. If Sol could make me feel this way just holding my hand, what would kissing him be like? I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the thought away.
    “She wouldn’t turn in the name of the man whose child she carried,” he was saying. “Even worse, she tried to cut out her Harmony implant. A serious crime of rebellion.”
    “How do you know all of that?” I asked.
    His next words sent a chill through me. “She was executed December 3, 2061, a few weeks after her child was born. Her last request was to choose her method of death. Remember the case study?”
    It sounded familiar now. I let the connection settle—my grandmother was the woman we’d learned about in class. In the case study, nothing more had been said of the child, only that it was relocated a few weeks after birth. The case study had been an impartial recollection of the events. But Rose’s written words rushed through my mind—her worries, her fears, her love for the father of her child. She had been real. Not just a history lesson or a case study. She was my grandmother.
    Then I remembered the conclusion of the case study. “Death by fire,” I whispered, horror sweeping over me as I thought about the barbaric methods of execution in the Before, and how some condemned criminals were allowed to choose the way they’d die. In Rose’s case, her name hadn’t been blotted out like the usual criminals. They had kept her name in the history lessons to be held up as an example.
    Sol’s fingers tightened around mine. “It was her, wasn’t it?” he said.
    I nodded, although he couldn’t see me. I pictured his solemn gaze, his searching eyes, which seemed to understand me even when I didn’t understand myself. I was grateful he couldn’t see the tears that had started.
    “Reading about her reminded me of you,” Sol said. “Now I know why.”
    My heart thumped. He couldn’t know, couldn’t realize, that my caretaker had said the same thing in her letter. Did Sol know how I struggled to control my emotions? That I wasn’t like the others? He had seen my tears. He must have guessed.
    I waited a few heartbeats before asking, “How do I remind you of Rose?” I wanted to hear it from him.
    “The case study had a description of her in it,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”
    “Not really.” I thought hard, but all I remembered was the sentencing and her listed crimes. I didn’t recall any descriptive details.
    “The study said she was uncommonly beautiful, and she was a danger to society because of it.”
    I froze. And that description reminded Sol of me? I was glad for the thick wall between us. I wanted to ask him more, but I was afraid the