“You’re strong,” he says. “Believe me about that.”
His fingers weave between mine, and if I were bolder, I’d bring his hand to my heart so that he could feel what he’s doing to it.
He kisses my temple and I feel his breath on my forehead and I nearly feel safe.
Nearly, though not nearly enough.
“Sometimes,” I say, “I want the world that was promised to us when we were small. Uncomplicated and nonviolent.”
He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t be happy with that.”
“I’m not happy with the way things are now,” I say. “I don’t want to be scared that every time I leave my apartment I’ll find a dead body or see a building catch fire.”
“I’m not certain what’s to become of the city,” he says. “But I know we’ll be able to face it.”
“I wish I had your courage,” I say.
“I’m drawing it from you,” he says. He bumps my shoulder. I don’t know how he’s able to make me feel better in the darkest moments.
“I have a thought,” I say. “The two of us running into the sky and disappearing.”
He closes his eyes to see it too.
Outside my bedroom, I hear my father’s patrolman shoes on the kitchen floor. The entire apartment shudders with the authority of them. Basil takes his place at my desk, and my body goes cold where he was holding me. My door creaks open and I close my eyes. As Lex promised, my father is here to check on me. And as promised, I pretend to be asleep. Basil kisses my forehead and whispers “Good night” before he leaves.
I stay very still as the university student dies a thousand deaths behind my eyelids.
17
—“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten
I DON’T SLEEP. WHILE I WAS PRETENDING TO, though, my father escorted Basil home. I didn’t move when Basil blew out the lantern and kissed my forehead in good-bye. I didn’t get to tell him to be safe.
Now the sunlight is giving me a new day. And guiltily I take it. I’m craving the brightness, and I stand before the mirror studying desperately the highlights in my hair and the shadows cast by the rounds of my shoulders. I am where the sun can find me, I tell myself. I am safe.
“So much like a woman,” my mother says. I don’t know how long she’s been watching me from the doorway, but a smile swells the cheeks under her sad eyes. I can’t tell if she’s admiring or mourning me.
“I was just about to get ready,” I say.
“There’s no class today, heart,” she says. “Come have breakfast; I’ve baked some blackberries.”
No classes. Internment is back to its state of panic, then. I wonder if there was a broadcast last night that nobody told me about. It doesn’t seem so. Over breakfast, my mother tries to tell me about the body that was found at the shuttle station, but her voice keeps trailing off. Her head is down, and all she manages to say is that a university student was killed and that the king has asked everyone to stay inside their apartment buildings until further notice.
The blackberries are flavorless. The sunlight has dimmed and everything is like a grainy image.
“Mom?” I say. “Was the city like this after the murder that happened when you were young?”
She clears the plates from the table without asking if I’m done, and she touches my head as she moves to the sink.
“No,” she says.
Pen and I sit on the staircase in our apartment building’s lobby. We can’t go outside, but younger children in the building have gathered nearby and are playing games. Pen stares through the window of the image recorder her father gave her last year for her festival of stars gift, not taking any images. He makes more money than most do for his work in the glasslands, but Pen hardly ever uses the expensive things he buys her; this is the first time I’ve even seen that thing out from under her bed. Through the bubble of glass, she watches tiny versions of the children run, all of them shrieking with laugher.
“Why do we scream when we’re excited?” she says. “Why is it always the most graphic, violent things with us?”
The clouds have grown especially heavy as the day goes on, coloring the sky white through the windows.
I keep my voice low so the children won’t hear me ask, “Do you suppose the university student screamed? And Daphne?”
She blows a curl from her eye. “Nobody heard them, that’s for sure.” She grunts. “Thomas is going to be unbearably clingy tomorrow.”
“He only wants you to be safe,” I say.
“Only so he doesn’t have to be alone in life if I get killed,” she says. But we both know there’s more to it than that. He adores her. Most of us are content to love our betrothed. But Pen does have a point. Is there anything worse than being alone in life? Alone like Judas. Alone like the murdered university student’s betrothed.
She stares into her image recorder again, but still she doesn’t capture any images. There’s nothing about this day she wishes to remember.
“I’m going to get drunk now, I think,” she says, standing. “You’re welcome to join me.”
I grab her wrist and pull her back down beside me. “Now’s not the time for that,” I say.
“On the contrary, the timing is ideal. We’re both miserable, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” I say. “We promised to sneak tonic bottles only when we’re looking to have fun. This wouldn’t be fun. It would just be sad.”
She opens her mouth but doesn’t argue.
I worry about Pen adopting her mother’s habits, but I know better than to tell her this.
Last year, when she fell ill during class, I was the one to ride with her on the train and be sure she made it home safely. Sallow and stumbling, she insisted the whole way to her bed that it was a stomach virus. But I could smell the tonic in her bedroom. It was heady and stagnant, and I felt that I was returning her to a bad memory that no one should face alone. So I didn’t go back to the academy like I was supposed to. I helped her into pajamas, tucked the blanket around her shivering body, and read aloud from her class textbook about the life cycle of insects.
By the time Thomas came to see her, she was asleep. He sat on the edge of the bed, holding her clammy hand and frowning as he traced her knuckles. “We’ll have to be more vigilant,” he said. “Especially you. She tells you more things.”
“Not when it comes to this,” I said.
There are many afflictions on Internment—viruses, sores, infections, diseases—but what’s to be done when the affliction is the remedy itself? Tonic is a peculiar medication I will never understand. I’ve asked Lex and he says it makes conmen of anyone it affects. I suppose he’s right. I am inconspicuous when I check for the scent of it on her clothes and on her breath on the days when she’s especially morose. She doesn’t see that I peek into her satchel on the train. And when she brings tonic into the cavern, I don’t fight her. I come along, entertaining her jokes to keep her spirits high. I make sure she gets home safely.
Thomas has argued with me about this. He tells me I should take the bottle away. But I know that if I did, she would only avoid me the way she avoids Thomas when she feels smothered. I wish she would stay away from her mother’s tonic, but if she must have it, I would prefer she isn’t alone. I never judge her.
