Read Online Taken by Erin Bowman - Free Book Online

Heist, which steals every boy at eighteen, steal every boy but me? I spend hours wondering why no one else is questioning these things, and then realize I only just started questioning them myself.
    On a still, windless morning, without Emma’s knowledge, I visit Carter in search of answers. I sit at her desk in the Clinic and ask her, outright, if I am Blaine’s twin. She looks at me with calm eyes and simply asks, “Where on earth would you get an idea like that?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “I miss him so much. And we looked so much alike. Maybe I’m just going crazy with loneliness.”
    “Well, if you ever need to talk, our doors are always open,” she says reassuringly. She then explains that I am a year to the day younger than Blaine but certainly not his twin. It is infuriating, because I’m positive she knows otherwise. She’s aware of the truth, had scrawled it in that small journal. Why is she not racing through town and proclaiming that a boy over eighteen has beaten the Heist? Why has she chosen to keep such a miracle secret? Fearful that the reason lies upon the second page of the letter I will likely never find, I leave the Clinic not with answers but more questions.
    That afternoon, as Emma and I sit at my place playing checkers in the dreary lighting of a summer storm, I reach a breaking point.
    “I have to do something, Emma,” I say. “I can’t sit around here anymore, hoping the answers will fall into my lap.”
    “What’s there to do?”
    “I don’t know. Find Blaine. Discover the truth.”
    “What do you mean, find Blaine?”
    “The last couple of times I’ve been in the woods, I’ve been this close to climbing over the Wall and searching for him.” I hold my hands up an inch apart.
    “Searching for him? What’s to search? It’s not like he took off to enjoy a stroll beyond the Wall. He was Heisted.”
    “But that’s just it, Emma. When you climb over the Wall, something kills you, so there must be more on the other side. There has to be more than just Claysoot.”
    “You’ll die, Gray, like they all do,” she says.
    “Maybe not. I survived the Heist. Maybe I can survive the Wall, too.”
    “Gray, promise me you won’t. Please. I understand what you mean, that feeling that there has to be more, some explanation. I get it every time I think about those original children. But it’s crazy, what you’re talking about. It’s suicide.”
    “But what if there really is more, Emma? What if we just have to climb over that Wall to see it, and instead, we spend our whole lives in here because we are too afraid to try?”
    She stands up and walks around the table. Before I realize what she’s doing, she’s wiggled her way onto my lap so that her back is to the game board and her face right before mine. She looks me over, brushing my hair away from my eyes. She doesn’t say anything, but I’m too focused on her hands to care. She is tracing the contours of my face, dragging her fingertips along my chin. And then she leans in ever so slowly and she kisses me. She knows exactly what to do to win me over, to bend me to her will. I lean into her and every inch of me livens.
    Her lips are soft but dry, and her hair smells like soap from the market. I return her kiss, my hands finding the curve of her back. I’m about to pick her up and carry her into the bedroom when her palms push against my chest. I open my eyes to find her, inquisitive, before me.
    “Promise me,” she demands. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
    “Emma, you know I can’t make a promise like that. I do stupid things all the time. Blaine’s the one that thinks things through.”
    “I’m not interested in Blaine. I’m interested in you.”
    “Fine, I can promise you this much: If I am about to do anything stupid, you’ll be the first to know, before I actually do it.”
    “Assuming you can even identify it as stupidity.”
    “Yes, that.”
    I kiss her again. My hands go to her back for