When I was seven, my best friend Joely said to me, “Hey, Nathaniel, you want to hear a Story?”

You must know that in our village, Kalmazar of Kalmazar, it was against the rules to tell stories and even to listen to them. There were always rule-breakers, of course. Two such rebels were my best friend’s parents, Nehemiah and Tamra. They loved to tell Joely and me tales, and we loved to believe them.

But I wasn’t in the mood. Children in our village had to go to school until the dark with only one break for playing and for eating second-meal. Besides, I didn’t want to listen to a story in the middle of the light when anybody could catch me. “No,” I said. “I want to play. It’s play time.”

“Okay, but you’ll be sorry. It’s a great Story.” Joely’s use of the Special Emphasis on the word “Story” told me this wasn’t one of his usual tales.

The S.E. was used only on words of great importance, which meant on words associated with the King. You achieved it by shaping your mouth around the first letter of the word and dragging out its pronunciation. So, Joely said, “SSSStory,” more or less, which, of course, was much more dignified than simply saying, “story.”

Not even the S.E. convinced me. “No!”

I headed away from the north door, which the first three levels came and left from. Any student caught using the wrong door suffered ten pats on each foot. What are pats? They’re less severe than beats, which caused a child much more pain and might even leave a permanent mark. Pats were intended to make you wince and, most of all, to embarrass you.

I walked towards my and Joely’s classmates, who had already started a game of catch.

“Hey, wait! Come back here.” Joely lunged towards me, grabbed my arm, and dragged me to the nearest corner of the large, square room that sat at the center of the schoolhouse. Each of the four walls had a door that led to different sections of the building.

Joely’s outburst attracted attention from some of our classmates and from two of the four teachers who watched us. I glanced around, my eyes wide, but Joely didn’t seem to care. “It’s a good Story,” he insisted, “but it’s a secret.”

That wasn’t fair. He knew I loved secrets, that I could never turn one down. “Fine! But if it’s not a good one, I’m telling T.G. Boolie to hurt you real bad.” I don’t want you to be confused by the S.E. and a Regular Proper. The S.E. didn’t just look different on our scrolls—it sounded different too. But a Regular Proper was simply a way of saying, “This is a name or a title,” like Teacher or Nathaniel.

Joely smiled and said, “Okay.” He knew I would never get T.G. Boolie to attack him. “Yesterdark, my dad told me to go to my room. I knew he was going to talk about stuff he didn’t want me to hear. So, I had to hide and listen. He told Mother about an old scroll he found hidden in Grandfather’s desk.” Joely’s grandfather, Ezekiel, had disappeared much before, and Joely and his parents lived in his grandfather’s former home. 

“Well?”

“Stop interrupting, and let me tell you what happened! Grandfather wrote that he got lost on a hunting trip a long time ago and saw a tiger. And the tiger talked and told Grandfather a Story. A Story about people who left Kalmazar.” Since Joely said only one Kalmazar, I knew he meant the whole jungle and not just our village, which I called K of K to save time but which everyone else was much more proper about and called Kalmazar of Kalmazar. Joely’s talk about people leaving the whole jungle made his story even sillier.

Everybody knew animals couldn’t talk, and everybody really knew you couldn’t leave the jungle (well, everybody in Kalmazar—obviously, you know different things). Even if you got beyond our village and its hunting grounds and all the other villages and their hunting grounds, you were faced with overgrown trees that towered over you, insects that bit venom into your skin, animals that stalked you in the dark, and vines that coiled around your wrists, ankles, or neck.

I folded my arms over my chest and creased my forehead, imitating my father’s most doubting look.

“Just listen, okay?” Joely swiped away my disbelief with a wave of his hand. “The tiger told my grandfather there’s a land outside Kalmazar, one where there is no King but a Leader. Once, the lands were not separate. People used to come and go from the jungle all the time, but then, there was a battle, and the Harmony was broken. Now, the lands are separate, but the Leader doesn’t want it like this. He and his people, the ones who are still outside, want to help the people of the jungle learn the truth and remember the Harmony. They come in to tell us about the land outside. The problem is, almost nobody was believing the Story. To help more people, the Heir came because he could fight the soldiers and patrols. But then, he disappeared.”

Most of what Joely said made no sense, even for a story. First of all, he was using all these fake words. I had no clue what a battle was, and I’d never heard the words “Heir” or “Harmony.” What made the whole thing even sillier was that these “people” from “outside,” this “Heir,” this “Leader,” were obviously jungle rebels who had tried to escape. When they failed, they spread the story around to make themselves look smooth and mysterious then disappeared to protect themselves. It was either that, or Joely had made the entire thing up. It wasn’t real, that much I knew. Stories were meant to be fake, of course, but Joely was telling this story as if it were the truth, as if he actually believed it.

“This doesn’t sound like a secret to me, Joely. This sounds like a rebel story that’ll get us both in trouble,” I said between clenched teeth.

Joely stamped his foot. “Stop it, okay? You didn’t listen. 

This isn’t about rebels. This is about people from outside the jungle!”

“Shhhhh,” I warned, pressing my finger against my closed lips and looking over my shoulder. I wasn’t overreacting at all. We could have gotten into serious trouble. Talking about people from “outside” was the same as talking about rebels. Wanting to be outside meant wanting to escape the jungle, which was the same as wanting to escape the King, and trying to escape the King was what rebels did. How could Joely not realize that?

Joely lowered his voice. “The secret is there’s a land outside Kalmazar. The secret is the Leader sends people in to get us out. They tell one person the Story, so they’ll believe and tell someone else. My grandfather believed it and got out, and he left the scroll for us to find, so we could get out. And I’m telling you because I want you to get out too.”

This story was becoming sillier and sillier. “Joely, everyone knows nobody gets out. It’s impossible that people used to go in and out all the time. When people like your grandfather disappear, it just means they moved to another village, not outside the jungle,” I scoffed. Joely and I were in the third. We were way too old and well-educated to believe in escape or a world beyond the jungle. Every child in the first knew about the King, how important his rules were, what we were allowed to believe, and what we couldn’t even think about, let alone talk about.

“No! The Leader wants to help us, and he sends his people to bring us out.”

Joely was getting loud again. He was risking us getting into trouble to tell me something that came from his own imagination. That was mean and beyond stupid. Can you imagine if we got caught because of his games? “If this Leader has servants, he’s just like the King. This outside world sounds a lot like the inside one,” I remarked, rolling my eyes.

The King (yes, that’s an appropriate use of the S.E.) had power over everything and made all our decisions for us. Nobody knew where he lived or where he came from. Some people claimed to see him in the trees while others thought he traveled through the jungle on the backs of darktime predators. None of the possibilities made sense, but there was no way to prove them right or wrong, so the whole thing remained a mystery.

“You’re wrong,” Joely said. “I didn’t call them servants. I called them people. Pee-pull. You don’t know anything!”

A teacher strode towards us.

I smacked my left palm against my forehead. “Oh, you’ve done it now.”

“And just what is going on here?” the teacher demanded as she stared at Joely for an explanation.

He looked up at her with his eyes wide.

“We were just telling jokes,” I blurted out.

Jokes weren’t against the rules because jokes were short and told quickly. There was a ready supply of them for us to recite to each other, almost like a question and response. They weren’t complicated, mostly dealing with word play or twists on the information we learned in school, and they had to be told the same way every time. Unlike stories. Stories could be added to and changed, used for rebel purposes way too easily. But even jokes could be outlawed if they started to change, if a patrol or teacher heard one word replace another, heard the responder answer differently than required. We still had to be careful, but stories? You could never be careful enough with those.

The good thing was that Joely’s story sounded like a joke (a new one but still), so I didn’t feel guilty about lying. I hated to lie, really, but I often had to. Almost everything was against the law in Kalmazar, especially because jokes weren’t the only thing that could become outlawed if they got out of hand. The King could change any law whenever he wanted. If we broke a law, even by accident, and the King found out, we could end up in isolation. Or worse.

The teacher said, “Do it quietly next time, or I’ll tell the King.” Adults always got us with that one even though nobody could find the King if they wanted to (trust me, nobody wanted to). The teacher gave Joely a pat on the mouth for yelling, lightly touching the tips of her fingers to his lips, then turned to me and patted me much harder on the mouth with a sharp, stinging slap.

Once the teacher walked away, Joely paused then used his own hand to give himself a much more forceful pat than the one the teacher had given him. He always did that if he and I faced the same retaliation without the same impact. Then, he said, “The Leader is not like the King, Nathaniel. He’s a kind Leader, and this Story is true. My grandfather knows it, my parents know it, and I know it. If you don’t want to know it yet, fine, but you can’t tell anybody, okay? If you do, we won’t be best friends anymore.”

“I do not want to know this story you made up with the fake words, and I will not tell it to anyone. And stop trying to make it like the King with the S.E.! It’s just a story, Joely.”

Joely’s bottom lip shook.

I sighed. Joely was my best friend, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He wanted the story to be true, so he wanted me to think it was true. We’ve all felt that way before, usually about the most important things. “I promise,” I said grudgingly and put out my left hand.

Joely and I shook upon my promise then rejoined the rest of the children in play block.

*

Joely and I didn’t mention the story again. In fact, I forgot all about it, dismissing it for what it was—a tale Joely made up for his own pleasure. Then, one light in the sixth (when we were ten), Joely didn’t show up at school, which was a really big deal.

Every child had to go to school. There were no sick lights, and school was never cancelled (except, of course, in the case of quarantine). The village was a large square, and the school building, not meeting rooms, not patrols’ quarters, sat in the center of our compound. The school’s location showed everybody the importance of learning about the King and how wonderful he was.

Sometimes, children stopped attending school, and we all knew what that meant. Their families had been relocated, or they’d moved, or they’d tried to escape and had been caught and put in isolation. But children were never late for school. When I was five, a girl didn’t get to class at the right block because her father was killed by a jaguar the dark before. When she finally showed up, Teacher gave her beats, not pats, in front of the entire class. The girl’s eyes, jaws, and shoulders were bruised and swollen for at least seven lights. Seeing that made me never want to be late myself, which was, of course, the point.

That light in the sixth, I sat in my usual spot. Joely and I had sat next to each other at the second table in the back since the first level. I kept glancing at the door, waiting for Joely to pop up. T.G. Boolie, who sat on the other side of Joely, looked across the empty space between us and right into my eyes. He snarled, and I turned away. I tapped my foot and glanced at the door again. I didn’t want to see Teacher give Joely beats, even if they were lighter ones than usual.

When Teacher stood at the front of the room and opened her mouth, I raised my hand, so I could ask my question before she began the dictum chant. This way, I wouldn’t be cutting into class time and could avoid pats.  

Teacher fixed her harsh eyes on me. “Yes, Nathaniel?” she said, as if I should flatten myself and slip through one of the cracks in the floor to disappear from her room for good.

I ignored Teacher’s look and tone. I couldn’t flatten my body at will (still can’t), and I was used to being far from the perfect student. “Teacher, where is Joely?”

A funny look passed across her face. Everybody liked Joely—he was quiet, well-behaved, and nice-looking. “He and his parents now live elsewhere.”

As the other children began to whisper, I sat there, feeling as if nothing existed in the room but my bench, Joely’s empty bench, and me.

We of the jungle knew there were other villages, but nobody ever saw them. Supposedly, thousands and thousands of people lived in hundreds of compounds controlled by the King. But these other villages were too far beyond ours, connecting to the farthest reaches of our hunting grounds. The patrols that watched the men outdoors made sure they stayed close.

Men wandered off or got lost, but nobody ever went after them. They made it back on their own, or they didn’t. Nobody left our compound, got past the patrols, and crossed the tall, wooden fences that surrounded our grounds to come back and tell us what other villages were like. The patrols never talked about the fences they guarded, even. People just disappeared.

Why didn’t we want to know about these other villages or try to find the rebels and hear their stories? Simple. Our village was the happiest, the safest, and the most prosperous in the jungle. We lived in Kalmazar of Kalmazar. We had no reason to leave, so we had no reason to know about other places.

It was different now that my very own best friend was gone, and it got me thinking even more than usual. At any time, there were between five hundred and one thousand people in our village. Yes, such a broad gap partially accounted for the lack of balance between new-beings and un-beings, but the natural way to stop being in Kalmazar was to be exchanged for a ninth-level graduate at the end of productivity (there were unnatural ways of un-being such as illness, but as you can imagine, in such tight living quarters, measures were taken to avoid the onset and spread of disease). The even exchange meant the population number should remain the same (so did population control efforts such as two-child maximums for couples that married right after graduation and one-child maximums for couples that waited).

Why, then, was the population estimate so broad? It didn’t make any sense, did it? After all, the difference between five hundred and one thousand is another whole five hundred. Those weren’t just numbers—those were people that numbers happened to represent. Where did all those extra people go? They couldn’t all stop being, not with such methods as inoculations against common and contagious diseases and retaliation against violence, so why did they leave? Why didn’t they come back to visit their families and friends?

When play block came, several of the bigger boys surrounded me in the playroom, even Kalal, who was in the fifth but was already taller than I was ever going to be. “Who’s going to talk to you now, Nathaniel? Nobody! You hairy little weirdo,” T.G. Boolie taunted.

“Yeah, strange-haired boy!” several of the others said. “What’ll you do now without your pretty best friend?”

I backed up against the wall and crossed my arms over my chest. I hoped the other boys would leave me alone, disappear, something.

Kalal, who was almost as nice-looking as Joely, pushed my arms until my shoulder blades ground against the rough wood, and a splinter dug into my upper arm. “Aren’t you going to say something, weirdo?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Marielo broke in. “No, he isn’t. What can he say? That he’s bad-looking and different?”

“Children! What do you think you’re doing?” Our teacher hurried over to us. “Break this up right now!” She pushed T.G. Boolie, Marielo, and Kalal out of the way. “Well, Nathaniel, what do you have to say for yourself?”

I didn’t say anything. Whenever I tried to tell the teachers what the other kids said to me, the teachers laughed too. You might not think looking different is a bad thing, but in my village, most people looked and acted the same. Standing out in any way only made you prey.

Teacher shook her head and grabbed my arm. She dragged me to the side of the large playroom. She forced me into a corner and pushed on my shoulders until my knees buckled, and I fell to the floor. “Stay there until play block is over,” Teacher said in a voice as sharp as the splinters that pierced my skin. She stomped on my left foot, grinding her heel into my toes. A pat to remind me that if I used my feet to get up, beats would come next.

That wasn’t the last time I was made prey by the children and isolated by the teachers. I often sat out during play block, avoiding jagged pieces of wood and scrunching my nose against the smell of mold, hoping the odor wouldn’t catch on me. I didn’t need a single other reason for my classmates to hunt me.

One dark, after I moved on to the eighth with a new Teacher who didn’t seem to hate me so much, I asked my parents what they thought had happened to Joely all that time ago.

Mother was sitting on a bench of wood and woven vines in our sitting room. She said, “Please forget all about him, Nathaniel. He’s not here anymore, is he?”

“Son, when you’re older, you’ll understand all of this,” Father said, “and when you do, please explain it to me.”

By the time I was thirteen and almost ready to graduate, I still didn’t understand any of it.