14-21 - Leslie Claussen (good book recommendations txt) 📗

My cure is unknown. My illness is unknown. My status is stable. For now.
My name... That’s a harder one to answer. I’ll tell you what they call me around here, the name they use to my face, anyway. I’m Zane. But that’s not really important. Most of the time the doctors, the Dox, call me Patient 14-21.
The Dox instructed me to write things down from now on. I don’t know if it’s for my health or if it’s just another record they want for future cases. Or maybe this is a test and my response will get me closer to cured. I can’t tell yet.
Down the hall from my bunk is a doorway to the garden, the only place we can go to freely. I like to sit out there with some of the others; mostly Sol and Ginn, and watch the foot traffic go by. We count how many looks we each get and the one with the most is the winner. We’re not allowed to talk to outsiders; we could hurt them or something. The Dox don’t tell us why not to. Maybe the outsiders are dangerous to us, like snakes.
They make us wear all the same things: dark blue pants, pale blue shirts, white socks and underwear, and black shoes that don’t wear. Not that we have anywhere to go and anyone to impress with our look, we just aren’t allowed to be naked when with others. It’s another rule. Like not talking to outsiders, or always taking our meds when we’re suppose to. The Dox have a lot of rules that we have to follow if we want to be cured some day.
Ginn once told me that where she came from, there were rules for Normals too. I didn’t believe her. Normals get to walk anywhere, go anywhere, talk to anyone they want to, even like how the Dox talk to us, and they all live their lives the way they want. We Ills, on the other hand, we can’t handle life as Normal, so we are brought to places, Clinics, to help make us better.
I don’t remember what it was like being a Normal; I’ve been an Ill for so long. I used to have a mother and a father and a big family and a house but that was a long time ago. I’ve been an Ill since I was ten and my memory’s fussy about any time before then. I know I used to live in a big house with a lot of land around it. Sol says he lived in a place like that too. He says they call it a farm. My family’s farm was in Dutton, near Chelsea, where they make the gas masks. That’s all the clips and books say about it.
Sometimes Sol tells me stories about his family’s farm and we all listen. I don’t know if they’re real but they are nice to listen to between duties and sleeping and eating. Sometimes I think Sol gets his stories from books because he’s well enough to visit the Clinic library when few of us can. The Dox tell us that too many stories for an Ill is bad, it could make us worse, get our minds wild and racing and out of control. And the point of being well is having control over your mind. That’s what separates the Ills and the Normals.
That’s all I can think of for now to write down. I have to help Panik clean the common room.


“I bet he does make that fut up,” Panik told me as we were cleaning the windows of the common room. I told him a few of Sol’s stories and what I thought about them and he got all peaked and red-faced.
Panik does that sometimes. You tell him something he doesn’t believe and he gets angry at you for talking about it. Like it’s your fault that the thing exists and by talking about it, you make it real.
I don’t like Panik much. But I can’t help being paired with him. He is Patient 14-22 so we are paired a lot by the Dox. That’s how I met Sol and Ginn, they are both 14s and we all have to meet up weekly to talk about ourselves to the Dox in a group. It’s part of getting cured.
A 14 is someone born during year ‘14 who can’t control their mind. They are sent by their families to a Clinic and start the process to get cured. Sol, Ginn, and I call our clinic Neverland, after a story Sol once read before he was an Ill. In the story, a magic boy takes a bunch of kids to a place where they will never grow up and can play everyday and there are no grownups except for the evil pirates. Sol says the story was written a long time ago, before computers even, when people were allowed to think up such things and not be an Ill for it. The Neverland guy would definitely be an Ill nowadays.
Sol has read a load of stories from those times, before he says there were no Normals, just different people. He tells Ginn and I about things he reads, something, I think, called a newspaper, that tells about different times in the past and things that happened daily back then. I guess they didn’t have the web yet or why would they be wasting so much paper daily. Maybe they were all Ills and no one knew it.


14-21. Midville Clinic

For rec-time, we were given blank paper and inks. I inked a picture of the ocean from memory. I remember seeing it when I was tiny but it could have just been a digital for all I know.
Panik inked a self-portrait with all the anatomical details and a Mont classed him with five points and sent him to a darkroom for the rest of the day. He just laughed and spilled the rest of his ink on the Mont’s crisp white uniform.
The rest of us didn’t miss him. It is always quieter when Panik isn’t around to dig us. No one would mind if they finally sent him to the Pens (prison) like they keep threatening to do.


News travels fast in a Clinic, especially a smaller one like Midville. Well, I don’t know if Midville is smaller than other Clinics, that’s just what the Dox said. But the point is that any news is rare and always causes excitement among all us Ills. So when Ginn overheard one of the Monts talking about a new 14, everyone on my block started talking about it. They all wondered if it would be a male or fem, whether they’d be really sick or just mild. When Panik heard about it, he didn’t even believe it. “They pull this all the time. A new Ill is coming! A new Ill is coming! But then no one really shows. Who would just turn ill at our age?”
I hated to believe anything Panik said, but he was right about the last part. I’ve never heard of a Normal becoming ill after passing junior school. Becoming an Ill at age 17 was new to everyone on the block. All the 14’s have been Ills for at least three years, most of us even longer.
This made the idea of a newbie even more exciting. The Monts had their hands full of cracking Ills for days after Ginn told everyone what she had heard. We all couldn’t wait to see who was coming.


She was beautiful, dressed in bright, colorful Norm clothes, her hair a light color that you never really see anymore what with the sun bursts. She didn’t look ill at all, but more like some fairy or princess from one of Sol’s books. Even her name was classic: Beth.


Once Beth—what a strange name—changed from Norm clothes into an Ill uniform, it was clear how she became an Ill. But no the reason behind it.
Every Ill has seen or known some Ill with the Scars, always in the same spot. The short sleeves of our plain pale blue Midville Clinic shirts don’t cover the forearms. Beth’s scars were still pinkish red, meaning they were fresh. In group, all the 14’s were prepped by a Mont who said Beth had been a lifer Norm but something happened and she tried to “quit it” early.
Most Jumpers don’t survive nowadays, with the web providing successful methods. There are still the Cutter groups, with tons of Scars, but they don’t cut to die, just to feel. That’s what the Dox say. No, Beth was very classic, all the way; from her name to her Jump attempt, she did things the old way.


Turns out Beth – no new name, yet – is from Cherrytown, in the same district as Ginn’s old house. If Ginn were a Norm, she and Beth would be at the same post-school.
The newest number—25—now belongs to Beth. She is 14-25. ’14 was a big year for parents to have Ill kids, I guess. We are the biggest year group at Midville.

Text: Any slang is explained in context or made clear with a note after a word. Ex. mont (monitor/aide) or Pen (prison).
Publication Date: 10-09-2010

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