The Glimpse Read Free

boy – seventeen or eighteen. The other perhaps fourteen.
    They looked alike – blond, wavy hair, hazel eyes, strong, slim faces. She quickly wiped away the traces of her tears and tried not to stare at the handsome younger brother.
    ‘Who are you?’ the older one said.
    ‘Ariana Barber.’ Her voice sounded smal and tight from crying.
    The older one’s eyes narrowed. ‘The geneticist’s daughter?’
    She nodded.
    ‘Why aren’t you with everyone else?’ he asked.
    ‘There are too many of them.’
    The younger one laughed. His face radiated warmth.
    ‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘There are far too many of them.’
    They escorted her back to the party, the older one teasing the younger about a girl. ‘She’l be joined long before you’re old enough to express an interest,’ he said.
    ‘Anyway, what’s the rush? Just because you can be joined at fifteen, 11
    doesn’t mean you have to be. You could be eighteen, nineteen, twenty or twenty-five. A ten-year gap is nothing.’
    The younger boy glanced at Ana, embarrassed and sheepish, and she stared back at him, hoping he’d take his brother’s advice and wait until her fifteenth birthday when she became eligible.
    The folowing two years, Ana anticipated the Taurel’s Christmas party with love-sick longing, but she only caught glimpses of Jasper through the crowds. The third year, several months before she came of binding age, she decided she wouldn’t leave the party until she’d talked to him.
    She found Jasper sitting on the servant stairs at the back of the house with Juliet Mango, a pretty girl from the year of the house with Juliet Mango, a pretty girl from the year above her at school. They were laughing and flirting and their hands were fastened together with a scarf. Devast-ated, she’d bolted out a back door, crossed several gardens, scrambled over two fences, and sprinted home in the bitter cold without her coat.
    So on April 21st, Ana’s fifteenth birthday, when Jasper personaly delivered his binding invitation, she was beside herself with shock and joy. Like everyone else, she’d known the Taurel–Mango joining hadn’t gone ahead because Juliet had returned to school after the Christmas holidays.
    But she hadn’t imagined Jasper might ask someone else, least of al her, so soon after. Obviously last year, when Jasper had praised her piano playing at the school variety show, she hadn’t made such an idiot of herself, nodding and blushing and being too stunned to speak, as she’d feared.
    For three blissful weeks after the invitation, Ana dreamed she would have the future she’d fantasised about.
    12
    But then the Board came to school with her redone Pure test. And a fortnight after that, Jasper’s brother Tom died.
    By the summer, Ana’s father was vindicated of al charges, the Board admitted a possible mistake on their part and Ana was given a reprieve: She could stay in the Community until her eighteenth birthday as long as her ilness had not begun to manifest. If she and Jasper were joined during that time, her reprieve would be extended indefinitely until the day she became sick. But Jasper put indefinitely until the day she became sick. But Jasper put off setting a binding date again and again. As the weeks turned into months and then years, Ana’s hope shrank and her heart hardened, expecting disappointment.
    And now it was realy happening. She felt like the time when she was eight and her mum stopped getting out of bed. For days she’d prayed her mother would do something, anything . But the morning her mum shook her awake, threw clothes and books into the old car her father had left them in case of an emergency, and driven them away from the farm at high speed across bumpy lanes until the petrol ran out, Ana’s happiness was crushed with no-tions of getting lost, becoming stranded in the middle of nowhere, crashing. She’d got what she’d wished for. And al she could think about was disaster.
    The saloon slowed as they