The 17 by Mike Kilroy Read Free Book Online

douche.”
    Zack knew there would be a next time and that quashed any good feeling Jenai had given him.
    Harness banged around in the kitchen and swore. Cass took a drag from her e-cigarette and made sure to blow the vapor toward Zill, who sat sulking on the futon next to Brock, and Mizuki put more logs on the fire.
    Zack peered out the window and saw a rolling landscape of tall grass framed by large redwood trees.
    “Has anyone tried to go outside before?” Zack asked. The others just peered at him as if he had three heads. “I’m going outside.”
    Mizuki tried to stop him, mentioning his hand-in-the-light-saber fiasco in his cell, but Zack shrugged off her suggestion and offered a counter proposal. “You can come with.”
    Mizuki hesitated. Jenai did not. “I’ll go,” she said, hopping into the room with uncommon glee. “It will give me a chance to redeem myself.”
    Zack smiled. “Great. Let’s go.”
    He could tell Mizuki wanted to tag along, too, but she hung back, fuming instead.
    Perhaps she didn’t want to be the dreaded third wheel.
    Brock offered his own warning. “We have been able to come and go from our houses, but only when they let us. We’ve never tried this before. Be careful.”
    Zack nodded, grabbed a wool coat off a rack near the door and slipped it on over his weary shoulders. Jenai plucked another coat off the rack that was far too big for her —she looked like a turtle hiding in its shell.
    Zack reached out cautiously for the door, fearing it was made of plasma, and finally wrapped his fingers around the knob and turned it, swinging the door open with his eyes half closed, bracing for something, what he did not know.
    He smelled the fresh air blow in and took a deep breath.
    “Well, I didn’t vaporize. That’s a good sign,” Zack quipped as he passed through the arch. Jenai hooted and followed him closely, closing the door behind her.
    The crisp wind smacked Zack in the face like it always seemed to do in Maine. It was rarely warm there, just dreary and cold much of the year, sort of like his surrounding now. He kind of welcomed it here; the air smelled fresh as they marched through the knee-high grasses toward the tree line.
    “What are we looking for?” Jenai asked, smiling and nearly skipping alongside him.
    “Not sure. Maybe some answers.”
    They reached the tree line and pushed through it, dead branches crunching under their feet. Zack knew they weren’t really in the wood and everything around them was fabricated, but it certainly felt real. It smelled real, too, as Zack caught a whiff of the redwood cones as their boots cracked them.
    “You know John Steinbeck wrote about the redwoods,” Jenai said, prompting Zack to stop and smile at her.
    “Really? You read a lot?”
    “Always. I don’t have many friends. I’ve never had a serious boyfriend. I read to go to other worlds. I never thought I’d really be doing it.” She tilted her head back and stared up the long trunks to the canopy high above them “He wrote about how redwoods can never be drawn in pictures or captured perfectly in photographs. They inspire silence and awe and are not trees, but ambassadors from another time.”
    Zack realized he had seen another side of Jenai, not the sniveling insecure girl who hid from all adversity, but one who was willing to tackle it, perhaps for the first time in her life.
    She had changed a bit in those woods with him. She was no longer afraid. She was confident and brave and bold. Zack liked this side of her.
    They continued to walk and could see the end of the tree line, a bright light filtering through the brush in the distance. They reached what looked like a large hedge, but could peer through the spaces. Zack could also see a swirl of light much like the barrier in the cell and could feel it pulse with power.
    Jenai peeked through the break in the hedge that was there to obscure the plasma field, and then Zack knelt and did the same, warning Jenai not to get too