The Wall

Spring

She was awake before the sun came on. Through the window, the sky looked like a large, black canvas with little dots of white light piercing through. Within seconds, the stars had faded, and the yellow glow of the sun replaced them in the center of the sky. Phoebe had always felt a certain dissatisfaction watching the transition from night to day. She felt like there was something missing between the stars going out and the sun coming on. Of course, she knew there wasn’t.

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“So,” Ms. Sullivan pointedly concluded, her hands pressed together. “If Icarus could have only kept his head down, and not looked up at the sun, he would have made it safely to the shore with his father.”

Ollie’s hand came up.

“Yes, Olita?”

“I read it differently,” Ollie said.

Ms. Sullivan crossed her arms. “Go on,” she said.

“Well,” Ollie started. “It doesn’t really seem to matter that Icarus looked at the sun. He fell because he flew too close to the sun.”

“Right,” Ms. Sullivan nodded. “But Icarus would have never flown too close to the sun if he had never looked at it,” she asserted.

Ollie’s brow furrowed. “That’s not necessarily true,” she said. “Knowledge of the sun’s existence didn’t cause Icarus any harm. His mistake was actively moving towards it. Maybe if he understood the sun a little better, it would have saved him!”

Ms. Sullivan shook her head, holding up her teachers’ copy of the textbook. “This says that this story is about the danger of knowledge. It’s the same principle found in the idiom, curiosity killed the cat, and it’s the same reason why people aren’t allowed beyond the wall. Pushing the boundaries of what we know has only ever led to disaster. Safety and security are the ultimate virtues if we want to survive.”

Ollie shook her head. “That just seems like a blatant misinterpretation of this story,” she said.

“Okay,” Ms. Sullivan said, shrugging. “You put your interpretation on next week’s test and see how well you do.”

Ollie scowled, crossed her arms, and said no more.

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The sky looked like blue shards of glass swimming through the branches of the tree overhead. Phoebe was on her back, looking up at it from the grass. She adored being outside. If there was any free moment during the day, she wouldn’t be caught dead indoors. She hated being inside.

“Could you believe that safety-and-security nonsense in class today?” Ollie said as she climbed out of the stream. The water glistened with white rose petals as they were gently carried away. “As if being ignorant of danger is supposed to protect you from it.”

Phoebe shrugged. “Ms. Sullivan was just sticking to the curriculum.”

“So, what – we should never ask any questions about anything? We should live our lives contained in this wall like stupid farm animals?”

Phoebe giggled. Ollie always had a brash response to everything. “Who even cares?” Phoebe said wistfully, her gaze returning to the sky. “It’s not like there’s anything for us outside the wall, so what does it matter?”

“But we don’t know that there isn’t anything for us outside the wall. That’s just what we’ve been told!”

Phoebe laughed again. “Why would our parents lie about that?”

“Our parents probably don’t know either!” Ollie exclaimed. “They were probably brought up to believe that, just like we’re being brought up to believe that.”

“What are you going to do?” Phoebe asked. “Climb the wall?”

Ollie sat down beside her. Droplets of water sparkled in her hair like little diamonds. “Obviously not,” she said, her voice cooling.

Phoebe put her hands behind her head and closed her eyes. Through her eyelids, she could see the shadows of the tree branches dancing in the wind.

Suddenly, the light faded.

“Oh no!” Phoebe sat up with a start. “I was supposed to be home before the sun went out!”

“Better get going, then” Ollie said.

Phoebe hurriedly got dressed, grabbed her school bag, and started running back through the field toward town.

Summer

“Come on, Ollie, why are we doing this?” Phoebe panted as they scaled the hill. She had never been this close to the wall before. The grey concrete stretched so high into the sky that it simply faded to blue.

“We’re almost there!” Ollie shouted from some distance ahead.

After what seemed like an eternity, Phoebe finally made her way to the base of the wall, where Ollie stood, waiting. Phoebe turned around to see the entirety of their world. Before her was an open, circular landscape, with their small town right in the center. Surrounding the town was grassland, a good portion of it occupied by farms. Beyond the grassland was a perimeter of rolling hills that fringed the wall, enclosing the entire settlement; some thirty miles in diameter. You could never see the entire length of wall at once. In all directions, it faded into blue, blending in with the cloudless sky.

“Well,” Phoebe said. “We made it! Hooray for us. Can we go swim in the stream, now? This heat is killing me.”

Ollie ignored her. She had her hand on the grey concrete, walking along side it. Her eyes were glued to the ground, as if she was looking for something. Suddenly, she knelt and started sweeping dirt away where the wall met the earth.

“What are you doing?” Phoebe asked.

Ollie’s head whipped around with a devious smile on her face. “I’ve been coming here,” she said.

Phoebe looked at her quizzically. “I don’t understand.”

“Look,” Ollie said. As she wiped the last of the dirt a way, fabric appeared underneath. She gently peeled it back to reveal a hole in the ground. “I’m digging out,” she said.

Phoebe burst into laughter. “You have to be joking!” she said.

“Not at all,” Ollie replied, her grin only widening.

“You don’t actually think that you’ll be able to get out, do you?”

“I don’t know! But we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“Ollie,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “Even if you could get out… you don’t know what’s out there!”

Ollie stopped digging. “You’re right,” she conceded. “I don’t know what’s out there. But I don’t care. I won’t be held prisoner here anymore. I won’t die never knowing if there was something more; something better.”

“Or worse,” Phoebe countered.

“Or worse,” Ollie said, nodding. She went back to digging.

As Phoebe watched her friend, she knew there would be no stopping her. Ollie was going to do what Ollie was going to do. “I wouldn’t go with you,” she said. “If you did make it out.”

“I know,” Ollie replied. “But will you do one thing for me?”

“What?”

“Don’t tell anyone about this. Even after I’m gone.”

“Why not?”

Ollie stopped digging. “Because if I don’t come back, I don’t want to be used as a cautionary tale to keep others in.”

Phoebe she pondered for a moment. “But what if you should be?”

Ollie’s face hardened. “Just promise me. Please. You’re the only one I can trust.”

Phoebe looked over the small township she called home. “Okay.” A silent moment passed, and then she asked, “How will I know when you’ve really gone?”

Ollie hesitated, thinking. Then her eyes lit up. “I’ll leave my necklace here,” she said, pulling out a small, heart-shaped locket. The gold glinted in the yellow sunlight. “Remember when you gave this to me?”

Phoebe nodded, the small trace of a smile appearing on her face.

Fall

It was in the dark hours of the morning when her door opened. It was her father. He peered in at her, trying to discern whether she was asleep or not.

“I’m awake,” Phoebe whispered.

He entered the bedroom and pulled up a chair next to the bed. She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. She had been staring at it for hours, watching the darkness take various shapes and forms.

“We haven’t found her,” her father said, softly. “But we’re going to keep looking.”

Phoebe nodded.

“Try to get some rest. The sun will be on soon.” With that, he quietly stood up and left the room.

Phoebe knew they would never find her. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about Ollie. It was difficult with the heart-shaped locket clutched in her hand.

Winter

She was gone before the sun came on. She stumbled up the hill, the ground illuminated by the small, cold stars in the sky. At last, she reached her destination. Phoebe had come here many times since Ollie had left, and the tunnel looked more inviting every time she came. It was almost ritualistic the way she would kneel, brush the dirt away, peel back the fabric, and then just stare into the darkness. Today, however, she would descend.

Ollie’s tunnel was a little more than three feet wide. Big enough for a girl her size to get through, but that was about it.

Phoebe crawled. Confined spaces never bothered her. Not physical ones, at least. Over the last few months, she began to suffer from a different type of claustrophobia. The wall started to press in around her, squeezing the life out of her. With Ollie gone, there was no one to spend her time with. No one to tell her secrets to. No one to be alive with. She came to understand how Ollie felt. It wasn’t curiosity that drove her beyond the wall. It was an incontrovertible need. It didn’t matter what lay beyond, what mattered was that she would go.

A soft, blue light appeared in the distance. The end of the tunnel was near. She realized as she drew closer to the light that she could see her breath. The further she crawled, the colder it became. The tunnel sloped upwards. She could see out the other side; it was still dark out. Phoebe emerged from the tunnel.

Wires and cables covered the ground, sprouting in all directions. Phoebe turned around, expecting to see the grey, concrete wall that had enclosed her entire life. The wall was clear.

She could see small points of light emanating from the town she had come from. She could see the stream in the distance, small shimmers of starlight reflected in the water. Looking through the wall was like looking through a blue-tinted window. The wires from the ground slithered upwards all over the wall like black veins. She realized the wall didn’t go straight up, but it curved into a giant dome.

Suddenly, Phoebe heard a thick humming sound as the rubber-coated wires started to vibrate under her feet. At the top of the dome, there was a giant orb that started to glow a bright yellow. The light grew brighter, and soon replaced the small white pinpoints that she recognized as the stars. The sun had come on.

Phoebe saw her world illuminate for the last time; only it wasn’t her world anymore. After a moment, she turned to see what lay behind her. Cable-covered earth stretched on for miles in every direction. In the distance she saw other blue domes, just like the one she had come from, all illuminated by their own synthetic suns. A sudden sense of loneliness crept up within her, and she was about to go back when she saw it.

A budding red glow appeared on the horizon beyond the blue domes. It was a light unlike any other she had seen before; raw, warm, and inviting. Tears welled up in Phoebe’s eyes as the sky turned a shade of violet she had never seen before. A smile spread on her face as she moved toward the dawn. She didn’t know what she would find if she ever reached the horizon, but that didn’t matter. With the heart-shaped locket clutched tightly in her hand, Phoebe walked toward her first sunrise.