Vitals

• Rachel Sutton, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2013

My parents told me no one could know I existed. I wasn’t allowed to ask question and definitely not allowed to go outside the room. I was 11 when I was discovered, curled in a tight ball under our old rickety table. I can still hear my mum screaming and begging for them to let me stay in the room downstairs but it was no use, I never saw them again.
My name is Lethe my parents named me after the Greek god of forgetfulness and oblivion maybe there hope was that it would keep me concealed from the world but they were wrong.
I was sent to the institute where children were sent from childbirth. I was different I knew the secret. It was here at the institute that the “parents” looked after and raised the children until they were 13 and their fate was decided.
It goes back to the virus over 500 hundred years ago. It was discovered that when you reached the age of 13 you either lived or died. That is why the institute was made, so that children wouldn’t find out about their predestined fate. Very few survive but the ones that do are called Vitals and are sent to a medical for further tests.
It is a week until I turn 13, I have been at the institute for 2 years now and I know that I am destined to die at 13. The other children look at me with strange faces as I cry into my pillow each night as I count down the days. I was told that I must not tell anyone otherwise I would be taken away. I didn’t know what those words entitled but I assumed it mustn’t be good so I kept my mouth shut but that didn’t stop the tears from escaping.
I was told as I entered that “Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.” but it was too late my parents had made the decision to keep me hidden so I could get as much life as possible. I was happy with the choice my parents made, I played with my imagination days on end, not a care in the word but it was not to last.
My parents told me a quote when I was 10 that said “We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.” I now understand what she meant I mustn’t give up hope because there is always a chance that there will be a light at the end of the tunnel I just have to reach it.