Even Basil and Thomas aren’t speaking.
Pen watches the clouds blurring past us, and in the window’s reflection I think she’s watching the patrolman standing at the head of our car. As promised, there was no lack of them this morning, holding open doors for us, nodding, saying, “Good morning” as though to reassure us that our little world is safe. They cast suspicious glances at the men in particular. I don’t know that I like this. The vigilance of the patrolmen is supposed to make me feel safe, but all it does is further the knowledge that something has changed.
There are patrolmen watching us step off the train; Pen stays close to me, huffing indignantly as she tugs her skirt pleats down past her knees. “Are all these eyes really necessary?” she says.
“They’re only looking out for our safety,” Basil says. “Try to ignore them.”
She looks over her shoulder after the patrolman who opened the academy door for us; she crinkles her nose but says nothing more.
Normally we’d have at least ten minutes of free time in the lobby, but today we’re supposed to report to our first classes immediately. “I’ll see you at lunch,” I say to Basil.
He reaches for my hand, hesitates, and drops his arm back at his side. “See you at lunch.” I watch him disappear into a group of his morning classmates.
“What was that about?” Pen says after we’ve rounded the corner.
“I think he’s going to kiss me soon,” I say, suddenly feeling very awkward about what to do with my own hands. “It seemed like he wanted to yesterday when he walked me home.”
“At last, my little girl is growing up,” she says.
“I’m three days older than you,” I say.
She bumps me with her shoulder. “But I know all the things you’re too sweet to know.”
Her laugh gives me more reassurance than all the patrolmen on Internment combined.
The cafeteria at lunchtime, in contrast to the rest of the academy, is alive with chatter.
“I’ve found a few things out about Daphne Leander,” Pen says, setting her tray on the table across from Basil and me. She rifles through her satchel and pulls out a folded piece of paper. “These were tacked up in the ladies’ locker room. They’re all handwritten but they say the same thing. Look at the date—it’s from last month. It was her essay on the history of the gods. But we had to read our essays aloud, and this isn’t the one she read. If I had to guess, it was a draft she didn’t intend to have anyone find.”
As I’m unfolding the page, Basil says, “Should we be invading her privacy like this?”
“They’re all over the academy,” Pen says. “Someone wanted them seen, to be sure.”
I smooth the page flat against the table and begin to read.
“You look lovely today,” Thomas says, seating himself beside Pen.
She glares at her lunch tray and mumbles a dispirited, “Thank you.”
I fold the paper before Thomas notices it, and tuck it into my skirt pocket.
“How are you handling the news?” Thomas asks, glancing between Pen and me. “It must be pretty frightening for you girls.”
“Everyone’s frightened,” Pen says. “Not just the girls.”
“Of course,” Thomas says. “I only meant that you must feel more vulnerable. The fairer sex and all that.”
“How do you know it had anything to do with being a girl?” Pen says. “The patrolmen aren’t watching
“I didn’t mean to offend,” he says, looking between Pen and me. “Forgive me.”
I concentrate on my tray. It isn’t hard to understand why Pen is always avoiding her betrothed, even if to an outsider they’d seem like the perfect pair; he’s every bit as attractive as she is, in that pristine, bright-eyed way. And he has her same spiritedness, but they are far from compatible most days. She has confided in me that she’d cheerfully marry a dead trout in his place.
Thankfully, Basil is an excellent conversationalist, and he and Thomas begin talking about last week’s squares tournament and some apparent controversy about a referee’s call on a blunder.
Pen pushes her vegetables around with her fork.
“You should try to eat,” I say.
“I will if you will.”
We make a silent game of synchronizing our bites.
After lunch, we drop our utensils, trays, and uneaten food into the respective recycling and compost tubes and we move in four different directions to our next classes. The paper in my pocket feels heavy.
The evening train is less somber than the morning’s was. Basil is trying to cheer me with plans for the weekend. He thinks we should go to the theater; one of his favorite books has just been adapted into a play.
I rest my head on his shoulder. His collarbone presses into my cheek, and I breathe in the sharp linen of his uniform and something faintly spicy-sweet. Up until last year, he smelled only of soap, if anything at all.
“You don’t have to walk me to the door,” I say. His train stop is right after mine, and if he walks me inside, he’ll have to walk a section over to his apartment.
“I don’t mind,” he says as the train begins to slow.
“You’ll be safer on the train,” I say. “It’d make me feel a lot better. Please.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect her,” Pen says, tugging me to my feet after the train’s final jolt.
“Come by tomorrow afternoon,” I tell him. “We’ll see the play if you want.”
We step off the train and Pen checks her reflection in her wristwatch. “You’re lucky, you know,” she says. “You aren’t doomed to marry a complete ass.”
The patrolmen open the double doors for us, nod as we pass through.
“Maybe Thomas isn’t as bad as all that,” I say. Her being envious of Basil would defeat the purpose of arranged betrothals. “Plenty of couples argue.”
“I’ll never fancy him,” she says. “He has a face like composted broccoli.”
I laugh. “No he doesn’t.”
“He does. Which is why I intend to never enter the queue. I couldn’t inflict such awful cheekbones on future generations, even if there’s a chance our children could look like me.”
Though it’s a long way off, I’ve given some thought to the queue. I might like having children, but more than that, I think my parents would want a grandchild. Lex and Alice will never be eligible now that he’s disabled, but they applied for it six years ago when they were newlyweds.
Because of Internment’s land limitations, there can’t be a round of pregnancies until there has been a sufficient amount of deaths. It’s a long wait—years—which is why so many couples enter the queue while they’re still university students. My parents reentered the day my brother was born, and it was more than seven years before they were allowed to have me.
Alice got pregnant out of turn. It wasn’t intentional; she’d been neglectful with her pill. She pleaded with the decision makers, even writing a personal appeal to the king himself, but she was years from the front of the queue. She offered to give her child to the next eligible couple, as a last-ditch effort to let her child be born, but of course that isn’t allowed—giving away a child could lead to resentment and jealousy, which could prove dangerous. There’s a story in
After weeks of fighting for her cause, Alice was forced to have a termination procedure. She came home from the hospital with darkness under her eyes, and she retreated immediately to bed, where she stayed for days. Her skin and even her hair seemed to have lost their color.
It took her a very long time to act like Alice again. I would follow her around the apartment and on her weekend errands, coaxing her to take me shopping for new jewelry and to tea shops, throwing my arms around her without warning on shuttles and while she was cooking dinner.
Lex won’t have anything to do with pharmaceuticals now. In studying medicine, he used to help manufacture the elixirs that precede the termination procedures, among other things.
Pen is still musing about the queue. “You do have nice eyes,” she tells me. “Blue isn’t very dominant against brown, though, is it? Well, still, Basil isn’t
