"Greer!" Cady shouted, slamming open the door of the dormitory. By now we were fifteen years old, and her sixteenth birthday was only a month away. It was a sunny day in October, where the sky played tricks on your mind, so that you thought it was far warmer than it truly was. There were only nine girls now in our dorm because Virginia and Susan had left two years before, and another girl named Emmeline replaced them both. Emmeline was a quiet girl of Hispanic descent who rarely made an effort to talk to the rest of us. Athena was still my dearest friend in the Westfield Youth Hall, and I doubted that would ever change.

"Yes?" Greer said, looking up to her best friend. She sounded tired as she removed her eyes from her history book. That girl was always reading non-fiction as though those words were her lifeline to reality. She was drawn into literature, although I never once saw her take out a pen and paper and write something down. No, she was only ever a reader— a consumer, but never a creator.

Cady sat down next to her friend, and began to speak in a whisper loud enough that the rest of the dormitory could hear,"There's a bus going to Maverick next week. They have openings in one of their youth halls too. We're almost sixteen, I say we go." Maverick was the biggest city in Northern Eden, at least a day trip from Westfield if you were to travel by train. Should you take a bus, it would be even longer. Of course, railroads never reached our city, so it was at least an hour trip to even find a train. The longer jaunt was just more practical.

I generally left Westfield once a year on a student excursion. Someone with a beat-down truck would let us all climb into its open back, and we'd take a day trip to Heatherburg, which was only two hours away. The city was only slightly bigger than ours, but it's buildings were taller, and there were far more people. The streets of Heatherburg were always crowded, and it was so easy for me to lose track of Athena. I'd heard Maverick was five times as large as our neighboring city. I was never a fan of the slow and steady silence that hung heavy over Westfield, but as I grew older, the sounds of Heatherburg scared me more and more, and the more I appreciated the town where I had grown up.

"Why?" Greer let out a small laugh. It was obvious that she didn't take Cady's proposal seriously, although that was most definitely misinterpreted.

Cady's eyes widened, "What do you mean? We're almost sixteen, we need to go there now, while we're still in school to make connections before we're let out into society." I had to admit, Cady's plan made sense. To go from Westfield, a tiny town in the smallest corner of the universe, to Maverick, they would need a place to stay. Neither her nor Greer could just arrive in that city and expect to find success. No, she was right that if they planned to leave our town when they turned eighteen, they had to leave now. Sixteen was young enough to stay in a youth hall.

"You want to spend your life in Maverick?" Greer shook her head in disbelief. Everyone knew Cady wanted to leave this town— everyone else wanted to leave it too. To think her closest friend had never discussed this with her was unbelievable. Especially with Cady's aspirations, this conversation had to come up often.

"You don't?" Cady just laughed, although a ripple of fear flew across her face. She'd already made up her mind about this journey, but now she realized that just like she'd lost Simona to a city five years before, she was about to lose Greer as well.

"I don't," Greer said confidently, "I grew up there, though. If you end up in the North-East Quadrant Youth Hall, tell Miss Josephine I wish her the best."

Everyone's eyes widened as Greer spoke. Although we'd lived with her for years, we'd never realized she was from Maverick. I knew she was from a city, but I figured it was someplace like Heatherburg, just farther away. I remember when she arrived off the bus that morning; she was only ten years old. I could not understand how a girl her age would leave the gigantic city she called home for a place where the air hung heavy and the people dragged their feet. Cady was right that she had to leave Westfield, but yet Greer, a girl who's aura did not belong in this community, wished to stay.

With Greer's declaration, Cady huffed up her nose and stomped out of the dorm. I noticed the other girls turning to each other in hushed whispers, but the few words I could hear made their discussion very clear: they would be taking the same bus out.