If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

As the sun makes its way up and over the horizon, I rise from my bed, feeling the way the mattress gives into my weight slightly and the springs underneath moan in response. I stretch my arms high above my head, slowly bringing them down, taking in the pleasure of the silence and stillness that only occurs at rightrise, before the Lefts wake up.

The sight outside my window is breathtaking, as it is every morning. I have always preferred the sunrise, the dawn, the beginning of a new day. The pinks and oranges brightening the sky by the second warm me. Not even my brother, with his watercolors or acrylics or spray paint, could ever capture the simple brilliance of the sun as it wakes the world up. I'm overcome with a calming sensation as if there was nothing but peace.

"EVELYN!"

And just like that, the peace is broken.

"Evelyn!" Mom comes into my room, frowning slightly at me. "You know what day it is, don't you? If you don't finish your chores by allup, me and Mason will leave without you."

"Mason and I," I mutter under my breath, as I throw the covers off of me and swing my legs off the bed.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing," I reply, putting on my boots right over my pajamas, not much caring if they get dirty along the way. As the inventor of the family, I have created various traps and snares to capture pests and critters that wander into our garden. One of my chores is to check and reset the traps every rightrise so that they will be ready to snag another hungry creature for the rest of the day. It's not the most glamorous of work, but the Rights grow as much of our own food as we can so that we don't have to buy from the egotistical Left marketers that sell meats and vegetables pumped full of hormones. The Rights work as a community to feed ourselves as well as any Left humble enough to realize that while it might be logical to have factories make their food, it's far more humane to grow it yourself.

I pop open the latch on one of my more elaborate traps, a pitfall disguised as an exposed patch of carrots, much easier to get to than the ones surrounded by wires. Inside, are two possums munching on the food scraps I left there yesterday. My dad could never live with himself if we killed an innocent creature that was just trying to survive. I used to complain because I was the one that had to gather up the wild animals and release them back to the forest. I haven't complained in a couple of revolutions.

I pull the fake ground floor of the pit up with a wheel I have set up for just that purpose. At the top, the possums only option of exit is into a glass box, which they easily step into. I have half a mind to think that these are the same possums that have been coming all week since they seem to know the drill. "Well," I tell them, as I lift the box off the floor, patting it, "As long as you're not getting any of our food."

I stroll past our garden, full of carrots and peppers, all the colors of the rainbow. I breathe in the earthy smells, slightly sweet because of the different kinds of leaves exhaling into it every day. The soil gives underneath my heavy boots; The possums scurry in the box I'm holding, shifting its weight ever so slightly.

I make it to the edge of the forest. Opening the box, I tip its live contents onto the floor, nudging them forward and back to their homes. "Same time tomorrow?" I call after them, as they scurry away. I chuckle to myself, as I reset the trap, throwing in the bits of yesterday's meals that we didn't eat and covering the top with the various tarps and leaves that make up the illusion. After quickly checking the rest of the traps and replenishing all of them with some spare food, I go back inside and grab a grocery list off the table.

Mason is just now coming in, some dirt streaked across his nose and clothes. "How were the pups today?" I ask, giggling at the crazed look in his eye. One of Mason's chores is to go to the house next door, the Chere's, and help them train their sheepdogs to actually herd the sheep. The dogs are still pretty new and like to try to herd Mason instead.

"You know," He says, brushing his hands on his pants before grabbing an apple off the table and biting into it, "I think they're growing on me."

"They're not the only things growing on you," I say, laughing and picking out some twigs that had lodged themselves firmly in his curly hair. "Hey! Do you wanna go grocery shopping with me?" I ask, showing him the list that I had just picked up from the table.

"What, and help you finish your chores faster?" He asks, rolling his eyes at me, "No thank you."

"The faster I finish my chores the sooner we can see dad," I reply in a singsong voice, dangling the list in front of his face.

He looks between me and the list, sighs, and then snatches it out of my hand, "Fine. But, you're holding the basket."

Grocery shopping in the Right sector rarely involves going to a store. Instead, the kids of each of the households come out with grocery lists their parents made and go door to door buying the different goods from each of the families on the block. Of course, the lists aren't words but pictures of all the different ingredients and items that need to be picked up. It can be tedious because you have to time everything just right: If you come too early, the few childless families on the street will ask you to shop for them, something you can't easily say no to. But if you come too late, all the best items are gone. Luckily for us, everyone on our street loves our father, and on days like today, very rarely do we not get the best each house has to offer.

"Thank you, Mr. Mori." My brother and I call out in unison as the door closes to the last house on the street. I look down at the basket Mason is holding (ever the gentlemen, I only had to complain once for him to grab it from my hands), now stockpiled with fresh bread, ham, cheese, corn, lettuce, peaches, and plums. After checking the list mom left to make sure we had gotten everything, we head home.

As we cross the threshold into our own yard, Mom walks out. "Oh finally," she says, holding the door open for Mason, "Let's hurry, Mase, see how fast we can pack everything into the fridge. And Evy, sweetheart," She turns to me, and, realizing I'm still wearing my pajamas, says, "Please go change."

I run upstairs and pull out the outfit I've had picked out for today. It's simple, the colors aren't too bright, but the skirt is still patterned. It'll mark me as a Right without offending the Lefts. Though it can be fun to see them look so troubled at our "unsensible" clothing choices, when we go to visit Dad, we try not to remind those we meet that we are Rights. Before I leave, I grab the small folded sheet of notebook paper and tuck it deep into my pocket.

Since he was kind enough to hold the basket, I decide to let Mason sit in the passenger's seat up front with mom, to which he is pleasantly surprised. He smiles at me and says a word of thanks as he buckles in, and it occurs to me how nice we become when we're about to go see dad. Like our petty sibling rivalries suddenly don't matter because we get to prove to ourselves that he is still alive.

We drive over the bridge that separates the Right and Left sectors of Carris. Though I know it's not technically possible, it feels as if we've crossed a border into an alternate dimension. The sky is shielded by tall buildings that stretch taller than I can strain to see. It seems to already be allup: Cars pass up and down the streets, the people in their driver's seats on their phones or laptops, already busy at work because a Left finally perfected the driverless cars. Most Lefts learn to drive, knowing they'll never actually do it. They do it just to flaunt that bit of knowledge, a reminder of all that is lost by being illiterate. They frequently forget that Rights choose not to learn to read, but they could if they wanted to. After all, I'm living proof.

My mom is always nervous when we have to drive. She has never really been able to trust technology, hence the reason that neither Mason nor I have a phone, and the idea that she has no control over what the car does bothers her. But today, she is a bit more antsy than usual. She is squirming in her seat, unable to keep her eyes off the road as was always advised Before. I suspect it has something to do with the small package she has in her lap, though I know better than to ask.

To distract myself from her strange behavior, I look out the window of the car and a small movement catches my attention as we stop at a red light. Three people in black who can't be older than Mason duck into an alley between two of the buildings and pull something out of bags that they had brought with them. Spray cans. I avert my eyes as they begin to draw an elaborate arrow on the side of the building. I don't have to look at it to know that it will point off to the right; it's a very classic tag that Right extremists use.

This is the kind of behavior that makes the Lefts think so badly of us, proof of their stereotype. That we are all just ruffians who feel the need to spread our art where it doesn't belong. I know Mason and some of his friends like to tag buildings, but from what I've gathered, they're always ones in the Right sector, where nearly all the painters do it. It still isn't right and he usually has to scrub the paint the next morning, but it is nothing compared to actually crossing into the Left sector and vandalizing.

After about half a sun slip, we arrive at the biggest hospital in Carris, one of the few who don't mind much that their patient is Right. As we walk in, we're recognized by a Left nurse and are taken to one of the farther wings for "Extended Stay". My mother fiddles with the box she brought, my brother pulls out the sheet music with the birds' melody as well as another sheet for a song he hasn't shown me, and I gingerly take out the folded sheet of paper. Neither of them asks about the paper, and I bite my tongue to stop myself from asking about the items they brought with them. It is an unspoken rule that whatever we talk about with Dad stays with him.

Dad has been in a coma for these past couple revolutions. For his own safety, only one of us can go in at a time to talk to him and we're only allowed once every other week. Mom always lets one of us go first as long as she always gets to go second. It gives her time to prepare to see him like that, hooked up to machines, but not too long that she loses her nerve. As promised yesterday, Mason gets to go first.

Mom and I sit down. The chairs we occupy are cold and hard, plastic and uncomfortable, as stiff as the Left doctors that walk in and out of the hall. There are other people in these rooms, other comatose patients, but their family members are never here when we are. I suppose it's planned that way, for a long, complicated reason that I do not much care for. But, I have to admit: It is nice not having to worry about looking strong for other people. As I stare at the door, I let my vision blur and the fragments of the story we've been told piece together into a living memory in my head, trying to go over the "facts" we were given, trying to make any sense of them at all.

Rights and Lefts make a point to never work with each other if they can help it, something that has probably kept Carris from ruin because of the constant bickering we would all surely get into. Lefts do not believe in indulging anything that would not further their knowledge of the world and Rights have turned away from all written language so the plays, novels, movies, lyrical songs, comics, cartoons, and tv shows from Before have all gone extinct. No one writes them anymore and no self-respecting Left reads them either. It's what makes them so easy to steal, er, borrow from the library.

However, sometimes, there is a group of people who decide to be civil and want to find a way to bridge the gap between Rights and Lefts. My father had been called in by the directors of a documentary about the life cycle of a Ginkgo plant. Being one of the more renowned composers yet always advocating for the necessity of both the Rights and Lefts, my father piqued the Left directors' interests. They wanted him to draft up some possible songs that they might consider adding as a soundtrack to the documentary. It would have been quite revolutionary, the first motion picture that included music since Before, and my father leaped at the chance to make history.

We got a call later that night, a landline, the only phone allowed in our house. It only rings for important things, a fiddling gig for mom, a customer looking to buy one of dad's songs, a photo opportunity for Mason, a problem that needs an inventor's crafty mind to solve. The ringing was loud and annoying, persistent and shrill. Dad hadn't come home yet, but we weren't concerned; Details and prices usually took a while to negotiate. Mason and I were in the living room playing with some berries we had bought earlier that day, trying to mix them in with white paint to see what colors we could add to our palette. Mom was in her parlor tuning a violin I had built her out of scrap metal. Mason and I called for her, trying to be even more annoying than the phone until finally she came out laughing, telling us to hush, and picked up the receiver.

Her laughter stopped as suddenly as if someone had choked her. Perhaps someone had.

"Hey, Mom?" Mason said, walking out of Dad's room and closing the door gently behind him. "It's your turn." He and Mom switch places; Mason comes to sit next to me and Mom goes up to the door. The hand with the package is shaking a little, the tremors running deep from her veins into the contents of the box so that they ramble inside. She rolls her shoulders back, her hair shifting, a lock falling in front of her face. She doesn't push it back, pushing the door open instead, allowing me a glimpse of my father, but I look away. It's not my turn yet.

I distinctly remember the feeling of falling. Those seconds felt like they happened in slow motion, like I was underwater with weights tied to all my limbs, the drag too difficult to fight through. I don't recall standing up but I must have because, in the next moment, we were headed to the hospital. The Left doctors tried to brief us as we walked in but we couldn't understand what they were saying, overcome with grief and illiterate anyway, so we hurried past them and went into the room he was being kept in. I felt like I was drowning in my own sorrow, seeing Dad there, tubes coming out of every open orifice, bandages and casts and immobilizers making him seem more machine than human. There were computers with things I wasn't supposed to be able to understand but I had already started teaching myself to read. That first couple of shadow changes, one of the screens flashed in red: Unstable.

The doctors finally caught up with us and tried to explain it as simply as possible. He had suffered some brain damage and sustained major injuries to his arms and legs. His spine seemed relatively intact though he was too fragile for them to inject the x-ray camera mites into his bloodstream to be certain. They were mostly concerned about stabilizing his condition. And for all their supposed knowledge and advancements in medicine, they were unable to tell us how long he would be in a coma.

No one else was in the room when it happened. The Lefts he was working with told the judge that they had offered him some notes on small fixes in the music so that it would fit music theory better. But my father, being an unruly and stubborn Right, grew angry at these suggestions and charged the director. They were on a relatively high floor of the building and had opened the balcony door to let some cool, summer air in. This door happened to be what the director was standing in front of when my Dad charged him, he claimed, and after the director luckily stepped aside, my Dad kept running at full speed, unable to stop because of his momentum. He ran straight into the railing, flipped over it, and landed some stories below.

"Evelyn, darling," My mother says, snapping me back into the present. My hands are clenched in fists, my list of words with it and I release it and attempt to smooth it back down before standing. As we trade spots, I notice that she still holds the box in her hands, though it seems to have been opened and emptied. Her eyes are a little red and puffy as well. She is still shaking. I don't need to look back to know that Mason has offered her a hug and that she has accepted it.

As I push open the door, the atmosphere around me changes. I smell something that smells faintly of home, a scent I can't quite place but have always associated with trumpets and laughter and inky fingers. Dad looks frailer now. The bandages and casts have been long since removed, though some gauze remains. His body recovered as well as it could with the help of the treatments the Left doctors have been giving him. Most of the tubes have been taken out and there aren't as many computers beeping around him. All of this should prove he is getting better, stronger. And yet, he still looks so weak.

My fist clenches again, the paper crinkling in response, calling out to me to stop, but I ignore it. The judge let those directors walk free that day. My father hasn't walked since. He hasn't opened his eyes, breathed on his own. They lumped my father in with the reckless Rights that torment the streets of the Left sector, the only Rights the Lefts ever care to see. But the idea that my dad, the calmest man I'd ever met, the one who would always chastise Mason and I for any sly remarks we made at the expense of the Lefts, who ordered me to build traps that would spare the rodents in our garden, attacked another person... it just doesn't make sense. But it did to the Left judge.

I unclench my fists, sigh, and sit down at the stool next to his hospital bed, lacing our fingers together. His are cold, but they were always cold; He always used to comment on his poor circulation, whatever that means. The doctors tell us that it isn't logical to assume that he can hear us, but they've never stopped us from trying.

"Hey Dad," I say. "Mason almost caught me at the tree yesterday." I pause, waiting for him to speak, which of course he doesn't. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I still haven't told him or mom. I'm worried mom will make me put everything back and Mason sure can't keep a secret like you can." I chuckle a little and then reach up with my other hand to brush the tear as it falls out of my eye. "I keep reading Romeo and Juliet. I know I already know the story, but the other day, I actually tried to act it out. This Shakespeare guy must've been quite the visionary for his stories to have outlasted the Before and still somehow make sense." I pause and look around, making sure no one has heard me, though I know we're alone. "Rights and Lefts are like the Capulets and the Montagues, right? Some days, I wonder if we will find peace or be torn apart."

Silence fills the room as I stop talking, the various sounds of the machines cutting through like a hot knife through butter. I take a deep shuttering breath, using both my hands to dry my eyes and then opening up the list I brought with me, grabbing his hand again. "I, um... I have some more words I want to share with you. My penmanship is truly terrible though, so you'll have to bear with me as I try to read it." I clear my throat. "A pregnant pause. The roll of thunder. Sincerely. Voices carry. Mistlike. Evermore. Asunder. Winter twilight. Sweet sorrow. Twisting sounds."