“Who’s asking?”
She began to climb down. “And just so you know, this place is spoken for. I’ve got friends in the Domain that . . .”
Her words died away as she neared the bottom. “By all that’s new!” she gasped. “You’re beautiful! Look at you!”
Susan flushed and took a step backward. “Well, thanks,” she said awkwardly, not sure how to respond. “I mean, that’s very nice of you.” The girl’s tone had changed so suddenly that Susan didn’t know what to make of it, or of the fact that she gave compliments like an old aunt serving tea.
But the girl hadn’t finished. She tossed her basket into the grass, rattling the plums, and then leaped down beside it, landing half a foot from Jean. She wore a coarse red jumper with a large pocket across the front. When she stood up straight, she was Susan’s height. She gawked at Jean, then looked from face to face.
Something was wrong with her.
Susan tried to focus. The girl’s face put her in mind of those lenticular pictures that shifted between two things depending on which way you held them. For a flicker of an instant, she was a mild-faced girl with small almond eyes, light hair, and a narrow chin. The next second her features slid out of place, jaw wider than it should have been, nose and mouth jutting slightly forward so that her already narrow chin tapered to a point, and her eyes receded into deep sockets. Susan blinked, feeling cross-eyed and slightly dizzy, and the girl’s features settled.
The mild-faced version was gone.
Sunlight glazed the plums and leaves and grass. Squirrels chattered in voices that sounded like small gears winding. Susan took it all in and all she could think was — why doesn’t this feel more like a dream? She thought it must be a dream, after all, despite how wide awake she felt, because of the girl’s teeth. The bones of her face, too.
They were all wrong. Her chin and nose protruded, and her lips stretched over a set of sharp teeth that crowded her pointy mouth. Her wrong-shaped face was flecked with what looked like pencil marks.
No, Susan corrected herself. That was hair. A light coat of it dusted her cheeks, forehead, and nose.
For a moment, they all stared at her, struck dumb. Then Jean yelped and scooted behind Max.
“Jean!” Susan whispered. “That’s not nice!”
If the girl noticed, she didn’t show it. She was too busy looking from one face to the next, astonished.
“How’d they do it?” she asked. “Was it bad? Did they have to cut you?”
Susan had been rehearsing her mother’s people look different sometimes speech, for later, but that question stopped her.
“Cut us? What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re smooth as plums; look at you!”
Oh. Susan tried to be diplomatic. “Well . . . people are different,” she began.
The girl snorted. “Not that different, they’re not!”
She leaned in, squinting at Susan’s forehead. “I can’t see the seams of it! Are they under your hair?”
She raised a hand to check, and despite herself, Susan jerked backward. The girl’s fingers were knobby as a troll’s.
Max edged up beside Susan, and the girl turned to look at him, too. The small hairs on her face glinted where they caught the sun.
“What do you mean, seams?” Max asked her.
She tilted her head and began examining Susan’s neck so closely her hot breath lifted Susan’s hair. For her part, Susan stared at the light coat of hair that continued from the girl’s jaw onto her neck and shoulders. The red straps of her jumper were dark with sweat, and Susan guessed she must wear it every day, because the straps had rubbed a strip of each shoulder bald.
“Scars!” the girl was telling Max. “There ought to be scars when they do that kind of job on you. It’s not just a regular wax and file.”
As Susan stood half frozen, letting the girl look her up and down and thinking that people with awful illnesses like this one needed patience and an extra dose of politeness, Max flinched suddenly beside her.
“Ow!” He slapped Jean’s hand away.
“Will you quit that? We’re awake!”
Jean’s head poked from beneath his arm and she shook it — no. Max pushed her face back with the palm of his hand.
“We are! Now, quit it!”
The girl looked at them curiously. Her eyes tilted strangely toward her sloping nose.
“So they’re near here, are they?” She still leaned into Susan’s face. Her breath smelled of plums.
“Who’s near?” Susan asked, taking a step back. She’d meant it to be discreet, and it would have been if she hadn’t bumped into Nell, who was crowding her, trying to get a closer look.
“Not who — what. The workshops, I mean.”
A slight breeze lifted the plum leaves, and Susan took a gulp of humid air. It was strange, but she could no longer hear the girl’s accent. Susan wondered if she’d ever had one, or if that had only been a trick her mind played.
Nell looked from the girl to Susan. “Workshops?”
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t explain further. The girl wiped her hands down the front of her jumper, the large pocket in it lumpy with coins that clinked when she moved. “How’d you get loose, anyway?” she asked. “They must be near here, right? People say they’re in the center of the Domain, but maybe the Genius is even cleverer than that. Maybe, after all, they’re out here in the ruins.”
She said the word Domain like it meant something.
“Well? I’m right, aren’t I?”
While Max and Nell had moved in to look, Susan had been steadily inching away, and now she’d stepped completely out of the shade of the plum tree. She could feel the sun baking the top of her head. The girl noticed the grassy space between them and frowned.
“Well?” she said. “Go on and tell me. I figured it out, didn’t I? Ma always says I’m clever.”
Susan sighed. “I have no idea what you’re talking
