scratches the bridge of his nose. “Hi, Morgan.”
“Hi, kid,” I say. I try not to laugh at Basil’s fretful expression. “The tie will turn up somewhere,” I say.
“It’s the third one you’ve lost this year, Little Brother,” Basil says.
“Or maybe it’s been the same tie being found and reissued to me all along,” Leland says, walking ahead. “We’ve never seen more than one at a time.”
“Interesting theory,” I say.
He beams. “Are you coming for dinner?”
“Another night,” I say. Basil and I quicken our pace to keep up with him. Leland is all skips and twirls, always in motion. I think he’ll become something theatrical, or at the very least some kind of athlete.
Or an explorer. The thought comes to me now and again, though I know it isn’t logical. Explorers are for stories about the people of the ground. Explorers are for those who weren’t born in a city that has been interned in the sky.
“There wasn’t even a patrolman watching the playground,” Basil says, quiet enough that his brother won’t hear.
“There never used to be,” I say. “When we were little, sometimes it was dark out by the time we went home for dinner.”
“That was then,” Basil says. Too late, he realizes the worried expression on his face and tries to smile for my sake.
I catch his arm and stop him from walking. “Nobody is going to hurt Leland,” I say.
He locks his arms around the small of my back and draws me to his chest. I feel like a jar filled with lightbugs that have burst suddenly into flight. How can our little world be unsafe? How can it be anything but perfect?
Several paces ahead, Leland has made a game of leaping among the biggest cobblestones. He won’t end up like Daphne; of course he won’t. He is brimming with so much energy and life, not even death would be able to catch him as he skips toward the melting sun.
I wonder if the people of the ground ever feel that their children are too big for their world, too.
After dinner, my mother settles on the couch with her sampler. I sit on the floor with my homework spread out in front of me, but sometimes my gaze wanders to the underside of the fabric. I watch as the arches become stitched full with color. Whatever the colors mean, it has my mother in a good mood. She’s humming.
But it doesn’t take long, of course, for the headache elixir to exhaust her. She stoops down to kiss me before she goes to bed.
I finish up my equations sheet and wait for the soft snoring that means my mother is asleep, before I take my unfinished leftovers from the cold box and wrap them in a few sheets of water-soluble cloth. That way the evidence can be tossed into the lake. I don’t know if I’m trying to protect Judas, or myself.
When I open the door, a slip of paper flutters from the doorjamb. I unfold it, revealing Pen’s swirling, flawless handwriting:
My natural inclination is to include her, the way I’ve always included her. But Judas barely trusts me, and Amy is starting to—I can see it. Bringing Pen along would scare the both of them off. Amy is the one, after all, who answered Pen’s question to indicate that we were dealing with a murderer.
For all the secrets Pen keeps for herself, surely she can allow me this one.
The cavern is empty when I arrive. Maybe Judas and Amy have decided not to trust me after all.
I leave the food anyway.
There are no further broadcasts, but news travels anyway. On the train the next morning, the word has spread that the jury selection for Judas Hensley has begun. Everyone is murmuring.
Pen isn’t paying attention. She breathes onto the window and writes her name in the fog.
“Such a clear day,” Thomas says. “We can almost see the ground.”
I look over Pen’s shoulder, and “almost” is the best way to describe any notion of seeing the ground. All I see is the wooden fence that borders the train, and then the sky and Internment’s uninhabited outskirts. If I were standing on the edge, then maybe I would see the patchwork of land that is captured by the scopes.
The thought of the edge has caused me to clench my fists. Basil touches my wrist.
Pen is someplace far away. With a flourish and a sigh, she rests her head against my shoulder and watches her name fill up with daylight in the window and then disappear.
Ms. Harlan pours us each a second cup of tea toward the end of our session.
I would love to believe that she’s trying to help me, but her presence only serves to make me anxious. She asks how I’m sleeping and how frequently my mother takes her elixirs. She asks about my brother and even about Alice. Stoic Alice who never flinches even when things are at their worst. Even when she was on the verge of becoming a loner forever.
“I understand your sister-in-law underwent a termination procedure,” Ms. Harlan says.
I stare at the bell that’s near the ceiling, willing it to ring.
“Yes,” I say. “Three years ago.”
“Was she ill afterward?” Ms. Harlan asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I was too young to have paid much attention.” This is a lie. I remember everything about the weeks to follow. I remember wondering how it was that Alice could be physically healthy, while it seemed so very possible the grief alone could kill her.
“I understand that you were young. Thirteen, was it?” Ms. Harlan says. “But do you remember anything at all about her or your brother being angry with the king? Questioning the rules that keep Internment functioning?”
“No.” Also a lie. I had never seen Lex so angry in my life.
“It’s all right. They aren’t going to be in any trouble,” Ms. Harlan says. “Questions are normal after procedures like that.”
“I really wouldn’t know,” I say.
Procedures. Like “incident,” this is another word that covers a broad range of unpleasant things. There is the termination procedure. The dispatch procedure. The dusting procedure that reduces bodies to ash. The mercy procedure that dispatches the infants who are born unwell. Lex wrestled with these things constantly as a pharmacist. I would never hope to know the things he has seen.
Mercifully, the bell rings. I’m gone even before the tea has had a chance to cool.
Basil is waiting for me outside the headmaster’s office, and immediately I go under his waiting arm, and he steers me away from Ms. Harlan and her questions. It’s Friday, but the thought that I’ll have two days free of questioning does little to settle me.
“What did she say?” Basil asks.
“She knows,” I say softly. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s something about my family.”
After class, Pen and I walk to Brass Beans Trinket Shop. It’s a little toy store modeled after a storybook castle, complete with a balcony atop a tower. We don’t actually have castles—they’re too large and impractical— but the notion of them has existed for as long as Internment has been above the ground, like a secret we were never meant to have. Or maybe the stories of castles on the ground are untrue, and we dreamed them up for ourselves. Even the princess has said she longs to live in one; our centuries-old clock tower is as close as she’ll come to that.
Pen and I fell in love with the trinket shop when we were toddlers and never quite outgrew it. We have an annual tradition of picking out our festival of stars gifts here and exchanging them early.
Though the people of Internment don’t exchange gifts for birthdays, Pen’s and my festival gifts also double as late birthday presents, because it marks the anniversary of our friendship. Her birthday is only a handful of days after mine; in fact, that’s how our mothers met and how we came to be friends. She was part of an October batch of due dates, while I was to be part of a November group, right along with Basil. But in late October, my mother was rushed to a hospital room with early labor pains, just as Pen’s mother was being dismissed from it with false labor. We were both eventually born that week—I too eager, and Pen too hesitant.
