A mouthful of dirt. That is what I taste as my face collides with the damp woodland floor.

Between coughs and a grimace, I curse the ground for being uneven and covered in vines and underbrush. Meanwhile, a short, ruby-haired girl howls with laughter, her bellows echoing through the trees.

"Oh shut it, Markee," I sputter. "If you laugh any harder, your freckles will fall off." Rolling over, I wipe the dirt from my mouth with the clean hem of my shirt. Satisfaction sweeps through me when her amusement abruptly ends, but I try and hide my snicker as I stand and catch her emerald-green eyes glaring at me. Markee hates the splotchy blemishes with a passion.

"Funny, paste-face," she retorts, hands fisted on her hips. The reference to my comparably pale skin impels me to mirror her frown.

I dust off my clothing, and look around. The woods we've been trekking through for half an hour seem unbelievably dense; sunlight hardly finds the ground through the thick canopies. The threat of getting lost with whatever could be out here is enough to give me goosebumps.

"We shouldn't even be here," I mumble, continuing to tramp through the foliage alongside Markee. Venturing past the levee isn't a crime, but it is highly dangerous. The soldiers don't patrol this far into the woods.

"Oh, please," Markee sneers. "Placement isn't getting here any faster, and at this rate I'll die of boredom before October. Besides, what could possibly happen? We're the only ones out here and an Outlander hasn't been seen in months."

She just had to mention the Outlanders. The hostile savages. Wild, untamed people who circulate our walls, striving for a Breach to destroy us. To end us. Every once in a while, one will make its way past the wall, through the woods, and over the levee into town. They are considered dangerous, rugged barbarians to be arrested on the spot. The most recent invader made it all the way to Market Circle before the military caught him, skinny and snarling and half-starved. The Council says that they are barely human, and from my experience with them, I couldn't agree more. Just imagining coming across one all the way out here sends an involuntary shiver up my spine—as if the woods couldn't get creepier.

Through a break in the trees ahead, I see it: the wall. Soaring over our heads, the tall stone structure is at least sixty feet high, tapering to spikes at the top. The stones themselves are weathered, pockmarks speckling the rough rock and moss tunneling along the mortar. Glossy, broad-leafed ivy grows toward the sky in places, and as we approach, I can make out fissured cracks every few meters.

Grandma Elise used to lull me to sleep with stories about how her mother and grandmother lived back then, about how the world was before the wall was erected. Tucking my eight-year-old self into bed, she would paint a picture for my mind's eye, reminding me how lucky we are by detailing how her parents struggled. She recalled her own grandfather's stories of the war on technology, and how they adapted in the aftermath of the war without all the advanced ways of life at their fingertips. I remember how her blue-violet eyes, so much like mine, shone in the late lamplight, lost in the past. The city of Herald has come so far since then.

"The wall is a necessary evil, cutting us off from the rest of this savage world," she told me, smoothing wisps of my light hair from my forehead. "But it allowed our ancestors to rebuild a civilized community, rich in newfound technology." I feel her lips on my temple as I recall her words. We have survived when the rest of the world fell apart, only because our authorities have punished those who have breached the wall before any political damage could be done. Seeing the barrier between us and the world with my own two eyes makes my legs weak. History as we know it started with this fortress, and to this day it prevents Outlanders from crossing into our territory and overthrowing our city.

"It's so old," Markee exclaims, all but skipping to the base of the wall. She moves her hands over the rough stones, admiring the ancient strongholds. "Imagine how long it took to build this thing!" As I take a moment to ponder this, a nagging feeling tickles the back of my mind.

I didn't think Markee had any love for history, and I know almost everything about Markee that her sudden interest surprises me. From the snores coming from her during Herald History classes, it's not hard to guess what Markee's least favorite subject in school is. She has been my best friend since we were young. We went to the same school, grew up in the same neighborhood, and now we are two teenagers spending the summer before Job Placement at the beginning of October sneaking around unpopulated, historic land that has every cell in my body on edge.

There is only one reason I agreed to step foot past the levee: there is no stopping Markee from going, and heaven knows what trouble she would get in if she went alone. Once an idea appeals to her, there's no way to change her mind.

"Sophie, come look at this," Markee says, waving me over. She's crouched next to the wall, inspecting the base. My feet drag as I draw near. To think that only a few feet of stone separates Herald from the vicious Outlands ties my stomach in knots. I never want to find out what is beyond this wall.

My blood freezes in my veins when I realize what Markee is inspecting. A few feet below the base of the wall, there is a hole big enough for a human to squeeze through. I'm not sure if it's the fact that we just stumbled upon an Outlander crossing or the excitement in Markee's eyes that makes me more nauseous. It is uncanny to me how she could possibly find joy in this.

It's like finding out Old Man Wyatt's ferocious dogs escaped their pen and knowing they were going straight for the chicken coops. It happened once in the middle of the night and the next morning, all that was left was the bloodstained ground, a few stray feathers, and the dogs angrily barking at the one rooster who outsmarted them by hopping on the roof of the coop. No matter how many times Old Man Wyatt filled in the holes the dogs made, the callous canines always dug another tunnel under the fence.

Markee lies flat on her stomach and peers through the hole in the wall, trying to glimpse the Outlands. She gasps. "I don't believe it."

"What do you see?" A drop of curiosity seeps through my fear. Scrambling to join Markee, I lie on the ground next to her and peer in the shoulder-wide space. All I see is blackness, for the hole is sealed shut with concrete. The knot in my belly unfurls and my relief comes out in short, airy breaths. It takes me a second to realize I'm laughing.

Markee's reaction is the exact opposite. She hops up from the ground and exhales sharply, kicking up a layer of fallen leaves in her typical over-dramatic way.

It's not until I'm up and dusting myself off that I realize the extent of her displeasure. Her face is red and pinched into an expression balanced on the edge of anger and the verge of tears. Her arms are folded across her chest, not even bothering to wipe the dirt from her clothes.

That nagging itch at the back of my mind returns as my mind connects her sudden indifference toward our impending Job Placement to her newfound interest in these ancient artifacts.

For as long as I can remember, Markee has wanted to be Placed as an emergency medical responder, just like her father. While she slept through history classes, her attention never wavered during biology and chemistry lessons. During breaks, she would volunteer at the hospital with her father. Her confidence, knowledge, and family experience makes her a shoo-in for the position.

She has real talent. Talent translates to purpose in Herald. Never before has she been interested in any other future. But so far this summer, she hasn't taken a single shift at the hospital. For the past few weeks, she's begged me to accompany her to the library, the town's sole museum, and now to the wall itself. I hadn't thought anything of it, until now.

Her disappointment is a chasm of mystery between us.

"What's wrong?" I ask, confused by her behavior. "Why are you so upset?"

"I'm not." Markee schools her features into a mask of annoyance. "It's nothing," she says without meeting my eye. Disappointment slam-dunks itself into my heart.

My best friend has a secret. One that I'm not in on.

The silence between us is thicker than Grandma Elise's bread pudding as we weave through the trees on our journey home. Usually, Markee is the talker and I am the listener. That's how it's always been; she has a mouth that makes up for my taciturn nature. For the first time in a long time, awkwardness wedges between us. I chew the inside of my cheek, the stretching hush eating at me every second I am unable to fill the space with words. Silence does not fit her, and I just can't drop it..

My feet slow to a stop. I have to say something.

"Why did you want to visit the wall?" I blurt, peering at her from the corner of my eye.

At first, she gives no sign of having heard me. Then she halts, turning to show her face wiped clean of her earlier frustration. "I just wanted to see it in person. The pictures in the textbooks don't do it justice," she says with a shrug. Yet, her eyes tell me a different story.

For a moment, I remember Markee as an elementary school student, doodling on the school desk during class. She wore her hair in fiery twin braids when she sat next to me in the cafeteria, offering to trade her loaf of bread for my carton of milk. I hear her mouthing off to the teacher for giving me detention when the boy behind me was the one throwing paper balls. The young, naïve girl that used to be Markee stands before me now as a vibrant, headstrong pillar of flame, eager to be set loose. A shiver of something dark and ugly winks to life in my gut.

I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of something crashing through the woods. Whipping around, I scan the woods for what it might be, but the underbrush is too thick to see more than a few feet in any direction. It makes too much noise to be a rabbit. Maybe it's one of the wild boars the Rangers have been tracking. A trickle of sweat drips down the back of my neck at the thought of their cloven hooves trampling toward us, tusks ripping through anything in their path, including us.

Markee and I exchange glances as the crunch of vegetation grows louder, nearing us at a terrifying speed. It motivates me to take a step back, muscles tense in preparation to bolt. As if we were repelling poles of a magnet, Markee steps forward and plants her feet.

"Ready yourself," she whispers, putting her fists up in a defensive stance. She looks like a boxer in the underground fighting pits, even in her determined brow. Fear is absent from her face. I can't help but feel shadowed by her in this moment, her bravery and her fierceness overwhelming my cowardice. I am not strong. I have no raging fire. I am not like her, so confident and unfaltering. I am a single drop of blue water, easily overlooked and never able to quench one's thirst. I am hidden behind the great wall of fire called Markee.

I realize that I am wholly, vehemently envious. The shameful feeling slithers into my belly, coiling like a serpent looking to strike.

Inside my chest is a dam threatening to break. Then the great noise is upon us. Through the foliage bursts a scraggly, mud-covered man. His eyes are round, with dirt-crusted eyebrows lifted in surprise. He halts, chest heaving and eyes darting for an escape route. I am close enough to see the sweat trailing dark brown lines through the dried mud on his forehead, and the bright red splash of blood on his ear.

"Are you okay?" I gasp at the stranger. "You're bleeding." I shuffle toward him and lift my hands before dropping them uselessly. I glance between him and Markee, who hasn't moved an inch. She's the one with medical experience, why does she have to freeze up now? I grimace at the blood coating the side of his head and seeping down his neck before soaking into his collar.

"Sophie, his clothes," Markee whispers. I have to squint to make out the state of them beneath the caked filth. His shirt is hand-sewn, the cloth simple with crude seams. His pants are the same, with a worn-out drawstring belt to hold them on his bone-thin hips. The garments were not made for style, but necessity—no one inside of Herald would wear such unrefined cloth. The tingling at the base of my neck signals that something is very, very wrong.

My eyes meet his in vivid clarity. His mouth opens to say something, the look on his face one of bewilderment before he takes a quick half-step toward me. I jump back, ice-cold fear gripping me as realization seeps into my brain like dark ink. Markee grabs my arm and tugs me to her side, gazing at the man before us with guarded eyes.

"You," Markee starts, her voice resonating in the suddenly all-too-quiet forest. "You're an Outlander."