UNLABELED.
I stared at the word beneath my pen.
It looked better than anything else I'd written tonight.
Unfortunately, a title wasn't a song.
On a fresh page, I tried three openings.
I was born beneath a different sky.
Too dramatic. I sounded like the narrator of a historical drama.
Nobody knows the real me.
Too revealing.
They call me something I'm not.
Practically a confession.
I crossed out all three and leaned back against the piano bench. Trainer Song had told me to write what I actually wanted to say. That was difficult when the truth was precisely what I couldn't say.
When had I first learned to keep parts of myself hidden?
Twelve years old. A clinic waiting room. A prescription bottle of suppressants and instructions I had memorized before leaving.
Afterward came the routines: checking my collar, replacing scent patches, counting doses, watching other trainees move through their days without calculating what might give them away.
