Perfect Ruin

17

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.

“Let’s stay here,” I say.

I rest my head on her shoulder and watch the world through her recorder.

Even in a city so high up that the weather hardly changes, a fog has settled here. I’ve passed at least three pharmacists that are scurrying around the building this morning, delivering pharmacy bags to the apartments of those who need a pill to calm them. My mother was one such delivery, answering the door in her work clothes, her hair still rumpled, her eyes bleary. She grabbed my arm as I passed her, pulled me a step back, and kissed my forehead. She hates that I’m going to class today. She hates relinquishing me to this city that has become so unsafe.

The students are escorted single file to the shuttles. Pen and I hold hands, saying nothing as we’re nudged up the train platform by a patrolman. Pen glares over her shoulder at him, though.

We meet up with Thomas and Basil while we’re looking for empty seats, and despite Pen’s complaining about Thomas yesterday, she seems glad to have his arm around her shoulders now. The boys sit on either side of us, and I let myself pretend it means we’re safe.

“What do our instructors expect us to learn today?” Thomas finally says, his whisper loud in the car of somber students.

“There’s a screening room,” Basil says. “Maybe there’s going to be a broadcast.”

“We could have watched a broadcast from home,” Pen says to the clouds. Even her hair is paler than usual today. Internment has a history of kings and queens with fair hair and light eyes, because it was believed that fairer complexions caused sun disease and that they were too delicate for outdoor labor. And for that reason they used to be a trait that distinguished the upper class, back when Internment practiced such rankings. Because of Pen’s fair hair, two hundred years ago, she would have been able to commission a girl like me to do her laundry. We used to tease each other about it when we were children; she would demand that I lace her shoes, and I would throw one of them at her.

“Maybe it’s just going to be a normal day,” I say.

Please let it be a normal day.

Pen pats my cheek.

The train stops and we’re all escorted right to the academy’s doors.

The headmaster is standing on a chair in the lobby, waving his arms, telling us all to face him and be quiet. There are seconds of murmuring before a hush falls over the room. It’s a wonder the way students are programmed to obey, when as individuals we have trouble just sitting still. Basil holds one hand and Pen holds the other, and all around us, others are finding ways to cling to their betrothed and their friends. It never used to be this way. Closeness never came from fear.

“In a moment, you will proceed to your scheduled classrooms,” the headmaster says. “The king has been kind enough to lend us a few of his specialists, and they will be speaking with you in lieu of your instructors today. I’ll expect your best behavior. That is all. As you were. Move on.”

Pen and I turn to our betrotheds for a quick good-bye, and then the boys have to leave us for their classrooms.

“Morgan?” Pen says.

“Mm?”

“It’s going to be all right. Isn’t it?”

“Of course it will,” I say. “How’s your mother holding up with all of this?” My mother has a penchant for headache elixirs, and everyone knows that a tonic addiction is far worse. Inebriation is a sleep from which one cannot awaken; it steals the will to return to the waking world. The eyes will still be open, but the stare will be vacant.

“She’s out of her senses, of course,” Pen blurts, like it’s nothing. “This will knock her right off the edge. She’s convinced I’ll be snatched from the cobbles.”

I’ve known Pen all my life, and when it comes to her mother, I can never tell if it’s all as nonchalant as she makes it seem. When common sense would dictate that she’s hurting, that’s when she turns indecipherably glib.

I tug at one of her curls and she smirks. “Don’t get sullen on me now,” I say.

“Now, who could be sullen looking at your pretty face? It’s why Basil is about the happiest boy alive.”

She hears it right after she says it. Alive. There is something about a citywide tragedy that makes us remember how strong certain words are.

The specialist standing in our instructor’s place is as dull as death, though. He stands tall and pencil straight, except for his hand, which waves at us so we’ll take our seats. Some of the students seize the opportunity to change the seating arrangement to be near their friends.

“Who here knows what treason is?” For such a slight man, the specialist has a harsh way of speaking. We all look to one another uncertainly. Of course we know what it means—the first years could boast that—but none of us has the wherewithal to answer.

“It’s disloyalty,” he answers for us. “In more barbaric times, the punishment was decapitation. We’re more civilized now, of course. We don’t even use the word ‘treason’ much these days. That’s because we’ve lived in relative peace for several decades.

“These murders and the fire in the flower shop were acts of treason,” he says. “The king has had his finest patrolmen investigating these incidents, and the finding has been that the betrothed of one victim, whom as you all know has been incarcerated and is awaiting trial”—Judas—“did not act alone. There is a group of rebels spreading blasphemous propaganda. Perhaps you’ve seen the literature posted about the city.” He must mean Daphne’s essay. “The king’s patrolmen believe that there is a group of rebels slaying our own as part of a blasphemous ritual. They won’t stop until all teachings of the god of the sky have been stopped. The king has received demands from this group that a ladder be built that will lead us to the ground. This is clearly impossible. The air beyond our atmosphere is too thin to breathe. These are the workings of madmen.”

The room is silent, and the specialist’s hard, enunciated words strike chord after chord within me. It’s too much to comprehend at once. I think of my brother warning me to stay away from Amy, and then I think of Amy wearing a hair ribbon and sticking her dead sister’s essays to the water room mirrors. There’s nothing evil about her. There’s nothing dangerous in Daphne’s essay. The only danger lies in what happened to Daphne after she wrote it.

This isn’t adding up. Not at all. And the way the specialist talks reminds me of the way my father spoke to me in the kitchen when he said that Judas was still locked away. He was lying, and I suspect everything this specialist tells me is a lie as well.

And then I begin to worry about Amy, who hides in the darkness and whose parents don’t miss her when she’s gone. Is she in danger? I can’t let myself think about what will happen to Judas when he’s found. If he’s found.

The hallway is quiet as we make our way to our next class. Pen and I are forced in different directions.

When a hand touches my shoulder, I assume Basil has found me. But this isn’t his grip tightening around my forearm, and when I turn, I’m faced with Ms. Harlan.

“Morgan,” she says. “I was hoping I’d run into you.”

She already knows so much about me, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume she has access to my class schedule. “You found me, then,” I say. “But I’m going to be late to class.”

“Never mind class,” she says. “With all that’s happened, we should talk.”

Students are herding past me, like animals to slaughter, as Thomas would say. They don’t so much as turn their heads to me, they’re so lost in their worries. Or perhaps they don’t see me; it has been so long since any of them acknowledged me. There’s a stigma about the children and siblings of jumpers. I realize now that Daphne faced it herself with her little sister.

I wish we had known each other. This is a persistent regret of late. I would have talked to her, or at the very least smiled when we passed in the hallway. Something to show that she had done nothing to feel sorry for, and neither had our siblings.

I know what it is to be the reason a crowded cafeteria falls silent when I walk by. I have endured looks of pity and disapproval for an action taken by my brother. Pen would never say as much, but there was a time when Thomas had trouble meeting my eyes, and I suspect he discouraged Pen’s and my friendship.

I’ll never share this with Ms. Harlan, and I avert my eyes so she won’t try to read what I’m thinking.

“There you are,” Basil says. He’s beside me in an instant. “We’re going to be late for class.”

We don’t have our next class together.

“Actually, I was going to borrow our Ms. Stockhour for a bit,” Ms. Harlan says.

“What for?” Basil says. “Has she done anything wrong?”

His tone is pleasant, but I see the clench in his jaw and I feel his biceps tighten against my arm.

“Not at all,” Ms. Harlan says. “We only need to discuss her struggles with geography as we’ve been doing for a while now. It’s important to maintain a sense of normalcy even in times of chaos. Go on ahead to class. She’ll be with you shortly.”

Basil is looking into her eyes, unhappy, untrusting.

“It’s all right,” I tell him. What I don’t say is “Thank you.” Thank you for knowing that this is not right, and for trying to protect me. What I don’t say is that I want him to leave before he causes any trouble for himself.

He knows me well, though, and he understands.

“I hope you’re able to bring that grade up,” he says, kissing my cheek. Then he’s gone, and Ms. Harlan is smiling theatrically as she holds her door open for me.

I push past her, betraying no anxiety. I think of what Lex told me after I saw the university student’s body. I saw nothing. I was in bed, getting ready for sleep.

Ms. Harlan doesn’t ask about the university student, though. Strangely, there is nothing accusatory or suspicious about the way she sits across from me and pours two cups of tea. There is also a glass bottle on her desk, filled with a molten gold liquid with flecks that catch the sunlight. Sweetgold; it was a rare treat in my home, because everyone knows that its sugars are terrible for the teeth. Ms. Harlan uncorks the bottle and spoons a bit of it into my tea, causing an oily ghost in the liquid before the sweetgold sinks to the bottom.

“I thought we’d be indulgent today,” she says, her glasses misting briefly as she takes a sip from her own cup. “These are trying times, you know? My grandmother used to keep a bottle of sweetgold in her cabinet for the hard times. Not that there were many hard times when I was a girl.”

“Times will get better,” I say, sounding sincere, because it’s only after I’ve already said the words that I realize I don’t mean them.

“Did you know that at the end of the warm season, the sweetgold is at its peak? Something about the stress of the pending cold worries the bramble flies, causes a chemical reaction.”

“I don’t know much about bramble flies,” I say. “Only that they sting when they feel threatened, and that their stings leave a nasty welt.” This isn’t everything. I also know that they feature prominently in my mother’s old sketches, and that Alice can calm them by humming; she encounters them a lot, working with plants as she does.

“The venom in the stinger is also an ingredient in many healing elixirs,” Ms. Harlan muses. “Curious things, really.”

She’s watching me, so I sip my tea. The sweetgold glides along my throat, and warms my stomach the instant it’s down.

I’m waiting for the inevitable. To be asked what I saw. Maybe she even knows, somehow, that I saw the university student myself, that I know his name is Quince, and because Amy knew him, I suspect he was a friend to my brother’s jumper group. But Ms. Harlan is not as menacing or as suspicious as usual today. She only smiles at me in a sad way and says, “Your family must love you very much.”

It wasn’t a question, but I feel oddly compelled to say, “Yes.”

“And your betrothed, Basil Cowl.”

It worries me that she has taken the time to learn his full name.

My muscles tense. I say nothing. I finish my tea.

Still glancing at me, Ms. Harlan scribbles on a piece of paper and then slides it across the desk. “You should be going back to class now,” she says.

The rest of the day is as foggy as the morning felt. I don’t eat a thing off my lunch tray. Basil thumbs patterns along my thigh under the table. Thomas coaxes Pen to nibble some of her apple. Her eyes are sunken, the lids mapped by tiny purple veins. She’s the most spirited person I know, and as vivacious as she is most days, that’s how dark she is other days. I believe her broken spirit has more to do with the pall that hangs over the city than the university student’s death alone. She loves Internment more than anyone I’ve ever met, and when it’s miserable, she’s miserable.

I should be saying something to cheer her, but I can’t bring myself to open my mouth. The entire cafeteria is quiet.

I can still taste the sweetgold, but it has gone sour on my tongue.

The boys try to strike up a conversation. Basil says there have been a lot of clouds, and Thomas says this is always the case in the short season. It has more to do with the weather patterns on the ground than with us.

I think of the white, frozen dust that falls from the clouds and covers the ground. How green and new the world must be when the sun melts it all away.