Kimberly's ChoiceYou do as you‘re told. You do not ask questions. You keep quiet if you think something should be different. Better yet, you don‘t even think it.
And why would you?
For Kim, this life is normal. Perfect even.
And then she meets Wilfred. New at school, he immediately catches the attention of all the students and the teachers, not least because of his wild hairstyle and recalcitrant words. Rebellious to the core and tauntingly sexy, he will change Kim‘s life forever.
From the author of the best-selling novel Kristine‘s Dream and its sequel Kristine‘s Nightmare comes the new fantastic YA book Kimberly‘s Choice. (New York Times)
Romantic and exciting, this new dystopian love story with a twist will keep you enthralled from beginning to end! (Rowena Voth)Chapter 34When the door closed behind the guards, Kim sighed with relief. The screams and yells still echoed through the courthouse. At least for a few steps. At least until they had dragged him down the hall.
In her mind, they stayed longer. The accusations and the sheer bitterness, all the venom in his voice made her shudder with the last remnants of suppressed fear and even dry-retch again. Part of her knew that this feeling, this sickness might return again and again to her when she just thought about him.
He is gone. He won't return, she told herself over and over again.
The Mantra, she reminded herself,
just repeat the Mantra and it will replace the lies. She felt the truth of these words now. No matter how often she had heard them before in school, now they finally started to make sense.
”He is gone. He will not return,” slowly replaced the screams in her mind, the cat-calls and the laughter. She didn't realize it then, but there were other Mantra's in her mind.
”He's going to hurt me,” had been there a long time, but now she would replace it. Consciously. Maybe it would return from time to time, but now the Thought Teacher's words, the words that would be her Mantra from now on, were there to fight them and they were stronger.
They had taken him away. They had not failed her. What they taught her was true. Wilfred would never return. He would never hurt her again.
The other voices in the courtroom had disappeared from her mind: her parents reassuring her, the court-assigned Thought Teacher who had worked for the last couple of weeks with her, the Mind Prober's accusations against Wilfred – thinking of him, of the thoughts he had dragged from Wilfred's mind still made her shudder – the Judge's verdict... They were all gone from most of her thoughts, only occasionally dragging themselves to her when her concentration failed and the Mantra slipped for a split-second.
All in all, she felt alone. And safe in this loneliness among the people, finally able to see herself and what she could become, not the figurehead and lie Wilfred wanted her to become, tried to force her to become, but the person who supported her society, a society that would keep her safe.
That had just proven that it worked.
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. All through the final speeches of the court officials, even through her own final statement, she had kept them close, kept herself shielded from the world around. It was a conscious effort to open them again, to return to the world of the living, and in a way to open them up to the future.
It was like waking from a dream, like finally walking out of the suffocating smoke of a forest fire. The air felt clean, the smothering atmosphere, the darkness of the courtroom suddenly felt light and enlightening. Had she seen the wooden panels on the wall as dark and intimidating before, now, free from Wilfred and his words, them finally revealed to all as the lies they were, the panels now seemed inviting and comforting, like the old libraries she only knew from pictures.
Her hands had played with Wilfred's trinket all through the trial. The little antlers of the stag had pressed dents into her skin and their sharp tips had even cut it.
You will always remember me through it, even if something happens to me or you and we get separated, he had said.
“I don't want to remember you,” she now whispered to the little stag, letting it slip through her fingers. The silver made a reassuring little
cling when it hit the hard marble floor.
It was louder than expected. In the now nearly empty courtroom, it drew the attention of her mother and father, who had thankfully left her mostly alone up until this point. Now, they sat down next to her again, one on each side and put their arms around her shoulders. But now she was ready.
She still couldn't stop a little sob from escaping her or her eyes from watering.
The Mantra, she reminded herself again and with pure will she pressed the emotions down.
“Are you alright, dear?” Kameron asked.
She looked up, staring at the Judge's table in front of her, studying it.
Judge is a good profession, isn't it?, she idly thought,
so is Thought Teacher.“She will be, love. It's over, now.” Miriam answered, stroking the back of her head.
Kimberly gingerly moved her fingers up to the fading bruise over her left eye. “Yes,” she said, “I will be.” The smile was forced, but it was there. “Now, I will be.”
As if to punctuate her thoughts, the first shot of the execution squad rang up from the yard deep below.
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Author's Note:I found this topic rather challenging. For the topic I had set (linked in the first post) the connections between a first chapter and the blurb are usually pretty strong. But for an interesting ending, you want twists and surprises, so the connection gets far more tenuous.
So, I'm not sure how well I conveyed my idea. Read the hidden part if you want to know what I had in mind:
You often get dystopian YA novels where the protagonist, usually a teenager, ends up in the center of the fight against an oppressive regime or fleeing from it, more often than not dragged there to some degree because of a love interest. It's often so formulaic that it hurts. Also, the love interests in YA novels tend to be not really good for the protagonist when you think about it – dominating, aggressive, manipulative... In short, abusive.
Note the word often above. I'm not saying that's all there is.
So, what if a YA protagonist actually likes the system she lives in, because it hasn't failed her, no matter how oppressive it might seem? How about she realizes that her new boyfriend is actually a really big a..hole? And what if she actually trusts in the system and gets rid of the guy?
Well, obviously, you get Kimberly's Choice.
Like the standard YA novels mentioned above, this would send a really bad message, just in a different way. This is intentional.