The Institute Read Online Free Page A

heart is pounding and I want so badly to
just lean forward half an inch and kiss him but neither of us move
and he pulls away when the train jerks on the tracks; the moment is
gone.
     
    ***
     
    I’m still
smiling when I get to Ebbodine’s door. While I’m disappointed Drew
didn’t kiss me, I’m on a high from just being with him. We barely
make it to Ebb’s room before I spill everything – well, not
everything. I’m very vague about the details of Drew’s accident but
Ebb reacts as I knew she would and focusses on the almost kiss with
Drew. Sometimes her short attention span and obsession with boys
comes in handy.
    “Oh thank god!
I was beginning to think your lady parts don’t work,” she
teases.
    I should be
offended but it is kind of true. Not my lady parts being broken,
but that I am completely inexperienced in this department. I’m
seventeen and I’ve been more focused on the survival of my family
rather than boys. Ebb experiments with guys enough for the both of
us anyway. She seems to have a different boyfriend every month. Ebb
is gorgeous, with her long auburn hair and dark blue eyes. We are
so different, I often wonder if we would be friends had we not been
thrown together by one of our teachers for a group assignment. Her
life is always one big drama after the next, but that actually
works well for me because I am easily camouflaged in the background
of her very often public, antics. No one remembers the friend, just
the flamboyant front person demanding everyone’s attention.
    “My lady parts
work just fine, thank you very much.” I playfully punch her and we
giggle like children, I’m still feeling giddy from the train
ride.
    “Oh, let’s go
outside! I need to tan,” she says excitedly. Yup, her short
attention span really does work in my favour.
    Ebbodine leads
me out the back to her pool. I sit on the edge and slip my feet
into the cool water while Ebb works on her tan. After all, school
goes back next week and she must look her best.
    I find it
amusing now, that when I first met Ebbodine, I thought she was the
shallowest person I had ever met. Our history teacher put us
together for an assignment, it was my first day at school and I
kind of resented the fact I was paired with the ‘pretty girl’. But
Ebbodine ended up surprising me. She welcomed me without hesitation
and took me under her wing, showed me around school and was
surprisingly uptight about our assignment having to be perfect. I
can still remember that assignment word for word. She made me go
over it and double check it numerous times. ‘The history of the
Institute and the vital role it plays in today’s society’. We not
only had to go into the history of how the Institute was founded
but why it is so important that such a facility exists and the
dangers of those with a defect living amongst us. It was perfect –
on my first day of yet another new school, I not only had to try
and make new friends but I had to write an essay on why my brother
should have his basic rights as a human being stripped away for
being different, but, of course, without giving away the fact that
a member of my family is Defective. I often wondered if these
little essays and the yearly tours to the Institute are just more
ways for the government to flush out those who are Defective.
    “ To
understand the founding of the Institute, we have to first learn
about the history of the country. There were approximately 25
million people living in this country around the time the epidemic
broke out. A new strain of illness that moved in the body like
metastatic cancer, and killed as quickly as Ebola. It was years
before scientists came up with a vaccine against the disease. By
this time the population numbers were believed to be less than 5
million but more likely closer to the 2.5 million mark; more than
three quarters of the population gone within two years. Our numbers
were dwindling and the government was concerned about our nation’s
survival.