Enlightenment; 15
Three days after your 15th birthday, it’s orientation night at the high school. You tell Indra there’s no need to go, Lincoln and Anya already attend Polis High School and will tell you anything you need to know, but she insists so you go sit in the packed gym bleachers with your brothers and sister. You’re 98% certain Nomon just wanted you all out of the house since she didn’t complain about you taking Aden with you. You’re playing patty cake with him when you catch sight of a ghost across the auditorium and your hands drop, your breath catching in your chest in a way it hasn’t in years. You stand up, mechanically handing the baby to Lincoln, and push your way down the bleachers and out to the parking lot. You hear Anya calling your name and duck behind a car. She stands at the door for a minute, then goes back in. You knew it wouldn’t be worth it to her to chase you down.
You walk around to the other gym doors and slip back in, scanning the crowd where you thought you saw her, and sure enough, Abby Griffin is sitting in the bleachers of this backwards high school in small town, North Carolina, and right beside her, unmistakably, is Clarke. Jake is nowhere to be seen.
You hardly leave your room for 2 weeks. You were in the car when Lincoln and Anya brought Aden out to go home, but the look on your face was sufficient to keep them from asking what the hell was wrong with you. You spend your days sleeping or staring at the ceiling. At night, you slip out to go running; it’s cooler at night, and also you have a feeling that if anyone saw you they’d know that you were trying to run away from something, and maybe even that the something is yourself.
Nomon drags you out to go school shopping in the week before school starts; you don’t realize at first that it’s just the two of you, not even Aden along as a buffer. You start fiddling with radio but she puts a hand over yours and you know that you’ve finally exhausted your grace period.
“What is going on with you, yongon?”
You shrug. “I dunno. Isn’t the point of being a teenager to be a moody pain in the ass that no one wants to be around for several years?”
She doesn’t look impressed. “I spoke to Principal Kane last week at Lincoln’s practice. He and Dr. Griffin have known each other for years; she graduated Polis the same year he did. The accident at the Cape last year? Jake died, Leksa. Your friend needs a friend, someone who can understand what she’s dealing with. And instead of walking the half mile across the road and up her driveway, you’ve been hiding in your bedroom all day and running the other direction at night. Why?”
“I…Clarke…cross the road? What are you talking about, Nomon? You don’t even like Clarke. Or Abby. Or Jake. Or Principal Kane, actually. You moved us 500 miles up the coast and never looked back because of Clarke. And you’re telling me that somehow she’s moved in across the road from us and you’re mad because I haven’t snuck out to go over there in the middle of the night? Talk about a ‘what the hell’ kind of conversation here.”
She doesn't snap the way you expected her to, but instead very gently replies, “Leksa. We didn’t leave River Lakes because of an 11 year old child’s crush.” She’s quiet until you get to the shopping center, and so are you. Something is different now, and you’re afraid if you talk too much, or even at all, then you won’t get the answers that she seems willing to give. When you pull into the parking lot, Indra finds a space and turns the car off before turning to look at you.
“Yongon, we left River Lakes because there was a new Heda who was out for blood. Yours, specifically, but she would have been happy with Nyko, Anya, and Lincoln as well. Ontari was killing all the naitblidas who were anywhere close to an age for ascension, and anyone close enough to them to put up a fuss. She'd have been all too pleased to kill all of my children and keep me around to suffer through it. You’re right: I didn’t like Clarke. Or Abby, or Jake. Because you had a place in your kru and you needed to be prepared to lead, and the Griffins would do nothing but make you think you could have more than that. Clarke made you think you could have a life outside your kru, and that isn't possible. To be heda is to be alone.”
She pauses, hands clasped in her lap. “Your Nomon was a lesson in that, Leksa. My sister was a good commander, but she let her heart get in the way of her duty. And she paid for that, and so did you. Our whole kru has paid for those mistakes. There was hope that you would ascend when you were older, but the Flame disappeared with Costia and then Ontari…Well. It wasn’t safe to wait on the fleimkipa anymore. So here we are.”
She gets out of the car then, and motions for you to follow. You’re quiet for the rest of the day, digesting what you’ve learned and deciding on where to go from here.