Perfect Ruin

6

IN THE MORNING, I AWAKEN WITH STIFF muscles and the notion that something is wrong. But it isn’t until I realize I’m still on the couch, Lex’s unfinished quilt replaced with the heavy blanket from my own bed, that I remember.

“Good morning, love,” my mother says, setting down her sampler when she sees that my eyes are open. “Would you like breakfast? I brought home some fresh strawberries.”

That’s right. She was at the market when the fire happened. “Are you okay?” I sit upright. “When did you get home?”

“There was a broadcast,” she says by way of an answer. “Your father wanted me to wake you for it, but you seemed so exhausted.” She’s sitting on the edge of the couch now, smoothing back my hair. When Lex grew too old for her affections, she lavished me with double, and to make up for his absence I’ve always welcomed them.

“What did the broadcast say?” I ask.

“The king’s investigators are looking into the cause of the fire. He just wanted to reassure us that everything will be fine.” While my father is trying to introduce me to a more honest view of the city, my mother is still trying to coddle me.

“Investigators?” I say. “I didn’t know the king had investigators.”

“He does. For incidents like this.”

I don’t like that word, “incident.” Three years ago I was pulled from my classroom and told my brother had had an incident, and I was brought to see him at the hospital, where he lay unconscious and within a sliver of his life.

I think of what Basil said yesterday on the train, and the worry clouds into panic. “Something is happening, isn’t it?”

My father has never been one to lie to me, but the same can’t be said of my mother. Now, though, perhaps because I’m old enough to wear my betrothal band, she says, “It’s possible, love. We’re all waiting to find out what’s happened. They’ve stopped the train for today; nobody is supposed to leave home. The shops will stay open late tomorrow so people can do the rest of their weekend shopping after work and class.”

I’ve always wanted for her to be honest with me. When I was little, I’d try on her dresses and fantasize about the day when they would no longer pool around me. The highest honor was when she’d sit me on her overstuffed red stool and brush colors onto my eyelids and lips and cheeks. I wanted very much for us to be equals.

Now, suddenly all I want is to put my head in her lap, for her to tell me it’s going to be okay and this feeling that I’m trapped in my own city will pass. I want the mother I had before Lex became a jumper. I want to stop pretending that I don’t need her, that I’m not a child.

Instead, I ask for strawberries. We eat breakfast and make meaningless talk about nothing important—homework and what should be for dinner.

“Your father won’t be eating at home tonight,” she says. “I do hope he doesn’t work himself too hard. He was barely able to take a nap before he was called in this morning.” She’s staring past me, through the window that overlooks the city.

She has been a bit distant these days, my mother. There has always been a little worry in her eyes. I follow her gaze to the city and I can still taste the smoke on my tongue no matter how many strawberries I’ve eaten. A girl with glittery eyes was found on the train tracks with a slashed throat. Saying nothing, I stand, go to my mother’s chair, and put my arms around her.

“What was with that strange little girl in the theater?” Pen asks. As she walks, she holds her hand over her head, watching the way her betrothal band fills with light where there will one day be blood.

“I think she’s Daphne Leander’s sister,” I say. “I caught her putting up passages of Daphne’s essay.”

“Really?” She stops walking and swirls to face me, eyes wild with excitement.

Basil looks sharply at me.

“Keep it moving, ladies, please,” the patrolman behind us says.

“Being herded into the academy like animals to slaughter,” Thomas complains, appearing from nowhere, as is his skill. “I feel like we’re in section seven with all the beasts.”

Pen makes some comment about his smell resembling that of a cow, and he artfully retorts with a compliment about her redolence-dabbed wrists. Basil leans close to me and says, “You didn’t tell me about Amy being the murdered girl’s sister.”

“There was no time,” I say. “And I’m not certain. Not yet.”

“Maybe it’s best not to get involved,” Basil says. “Copies of Daphne’s essay were in the men’s water room, too. I read it, and it’s pretty sacrilegious. With all that’s going on, that’s bound to draw unwanted attention. People are already nervous.”

He’s right, of course. But I can’t stop thinking about it.

In the lobby, Basil takes my hand and squeezes it before we’re to part ways. I think there’s something more he’d like to say, but a patrolman interrupts us. He’s standing on one of the benches and yelling for all of us to stop chattering and turn our focus to him. His voice echoes off the marble walls.

“Your classes will resume as planned in a moment,” he says. “I was asked to inform all of you that throughout the day, students will be taken individually from their courses and interviewed by a specialist employed by the king. It’s nothing to be alarmed about.”

I wonder if there are others who see my father the way I see this patrolman—intimidating and cold. I wonder if there’s anyone who sees this patrolman the way I see my father. Whenever there’s something I don’t like about a stranger, I try to imagine that someone out there loves them, and it puts them in a different light. Most of the time, anyway. Not now. All I can feel right now is anxiety.

The patrolman stops talking, but he has successfully extinguished our chatter. There’s not so much as a murmur as we shuffle to our classrooms. All the lessons pick up where they left off in the textbooks, but the instructors seem distracted by the absence of each student who’s called. Even our morning instructor lacks his verve as he discusses the history of section fifteen’s abundance of minerals and how they are to thank for our towering apartments.

A student returns and there’s a synchronized shuffle as we all turn in our chairs to face him. The instructor, after a pause, says, “Well?”

“They want Margaret Atmus in the headmaster’s office, sir,” he says.

Pen gives me a look that is part reassurance, part worry. She takes her time stacking her notes, tucking them into the cover of her textbook, and filing the book away in her satchel before she stands.

She’s gone for the rest of the period.

At lunch, the cafeteria is subdued. Basil rubs my arm and tells me I should try to eat.

“Pen’s still gone,” I say, twisting my fork. “Could they still be speaking to her?”

“They spoke to me this morning,” Thomas says. “It’s nothing horribly elaborate. They just want to make sure we haven’t gone mad. You haven’t gone mad, have you?”

The sharpness in his eyes frightens me. He realizes this and he softens. “It’s not anything to be concerned about,” he says.

Somehow, this doesn’t feel true. The king is looking for something by sending his specialists out here.

I don’t see Pen again until our last class of the day, which is more of Instructor Newlan’s passion for our little world. It’s torturous not being able to ask her about where she’s been, but she seems intact. She’s taking notes, at least.

Instructor Newlan is talking about section nine’s cow pastures. Or maybe it’s section seven. I can’t concentrate, though I try. I’ve never noticed how wedged together we are, each section like a thin slice of a pie in the window of the bakery. Below us, is the ground just a larger version of what we have up here? Is there a bigger train that goes in a bigger circle? Do the people on the ground also fear stepping over their edge? What if there’s a bigger ground below them? What if everything is floating in the sky?

Maybe I am going mad. Maybe I’m turning into my brother, so hypnotized by the edge that I can’t stop myself from scaling the fence, so frenzied by the idea of the ground that I forget where I belong.

Another student returns from the headmaster’s office, and this time nobody else raises their head to listen for their name. Everyone in this room but me has already been called.

“Hello, Morgan,” the specialist says. She’s tall and wiry and dressed all in gray. “My name is Ms. Harlan. May I call you Morgan?”

Ms., not Mrs. For a woman to be unmarried at her age, it can mean only that her betrothed is no longer living.

“Yes,” I say, mindful of sitting very straight. I fold my hands in my lap, which is something my mother taught me when I was a fidgety child. I’ve always fidgeted too much. I’ve always thought too much. I’m very like my brother that way.

“As you know, we’ve had a couple of tragedies. Did you know Miss Leander?”

“No,” I say. “But I was sorry to hear about what happened.”

I’ve never been in this room. I’ve seen the door in the headmaster’s office and always assumed it was a closet. It’s not much bigger than one; there are only two chairs to fill the space, and the persistent clicking of the specialist’s pen, which ceases only long enough for her to scrawl the odd note.

“It was an especially violent crime,” the specialist says. “It must have scared you to know something like this could happen in your lifetime.”

“Yes,” I say, grossly understating it.

“It must make you feel that Internment is unsafe,” she says.

“Internment is my home,” I say. “I’ve always felt safe here.”

She smiles, but there’s something unsettling about it. She leans forward, resting her arms on her crossed knees. “Morgan, I’d much like to be honest with you. You seem like a bright young lady. May I be honest?”

Uncertainly, I nod.

“I’ve read your academy file, and it shows that three years ago you suffered a pretty traumatic incident.”

My blood goes cold. I don’t like where this is heading. “I didn’t,” I say. “It was my older brother.”

“But surely that was traumatic for you also,” the specialist says. “To have someone close to you fall victim to the edge’s allure.”

“He couldn’t help it,” I say, repeating what I’ve been taught, what every student is taught in their first year of academy and reminded of every year after that. “We have the free will to stay on this side of the train tracks. If we cross over to the other side, we get too close to the edge, and it mystifies us. We see how infinite the sky is and we lose our senses. Even the people we love most disappear from our thoughts in that moment.” I am quoting a textbook exactly.

The specialist takes notes. I clench my interlocked fingers in an effort to keep still.

“What about your parents?” she asks.

“My parents?”

“Your father is a patrolman—please congratulate him for me, that’s quite an honor—and your mother works in a recycling plant in section fourteen. Has either of them ever discussed the edge with you?”

I think of my father waking me for the broadcast, the darkness of my room doing little to conceal the sadness in his eyes when he told me that life could be awful sometimes. “Only to warn me to stay away,” I say.

“Would you say they’re protective of you?”

“Yes,” I say.

“And your brother, Alexander, does he talk about his experience with the edge of Internment?”

I’m starting to feel ill. This conversation has moved far from Daphne Leander. Were the others questioned so personally?

And then I make the connection. Most of the others don’t know someone who tried to jump over the edge. Daphne Leander knew someone, though. And now she’s dead.

“He doesn’t talk to me about it,” I say. “He goes to his support group every week. What happens behind the closed door is confidential.”

More notes.

“Morgan, I know that these personal questions are probably uncomfortable for you to answer,” the specialist says. “Right now, the king has asked me to speak with you and your classmates only to ensure your safety. Several years ago, we had a murder. Your parents probably told you about that. It spurred a lot of talk about Internment being unsafe, and many people became, as you put it, mystified by the edge. We had a few very close calls. I found myself standing on the platform contemplating the other side.”

I can see the platform under my feet, the black rails and the gray pebbles that fill the space between the wooden planks. The fence far on the other side, bold and stoic against the meandering clouds.

I look at the king’s specialist and I do not believe her when she says she’s contemplated the other side. I believe that she is testing me.

“If you feel tempted, please come and speak to me at any time,” she says. She’s handing me a small card, gray like her uniform, with the address for a section three apartment complex.

“Thank you,” I say, tucking the card into my skirt pocket.

“You’re free to return to your class now,” she tells me. “You were my last student of the day.”

I take great care not to stand in a hurry. Just as I’m turning the doorknob, she says, “Morgan?”

I turn.

“Have you had thoughts of going over the edge yourself? Even for a fleeting moment?”

“No,” I say. My palms are starting to sweat, which happens when I lie.

On the train home, Pen stares into the loose-leaf pages of her notes. Thomas tries to talk to her and she shushes him repeatedly, swatting him when he tries to read over her shoulder.

“How’d it go with the specialist?” Basil asks me.

“I don’t know,” I say. “What sorts of questions did she ask you?”

“She asked about my parents, mostly. Their trades, and if they told me about the murder several years ago.” He tucks a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “Then she asked about my studies.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Me too,” I say, but I think he catches my hesitation. “My father said that everyone doesn’t have to come right home after class and work anymore,” I say. “You can come over for dinner if you want. My mother always cooks too much food during the festival month.” There are things I’d like to tell him, if not for the patrolman pacing the aisle, making sure we’re safe and that our feet and our minds lie firmly on Internment’s floating floor.

“I’d love to,” he says. “I don’t have to be home to watch Leland. My mother is taking him to get fitted for a new uniform.”

“Don’t tell me he managed to lose an entire uniform,” I say. Basil’s brother is famous for losing things. It’s a wonder he still has his betrothal band on a chain around his neck.

“He didn’t lose it, exactly. He’s pretty sure it’s at the bottom of the lake. Part of it, anyway.”

Even Pen looks up from her notes at that.

“He was trying to use the pant legs as a net to catch fish.” Basil sighs. “These are the sorts of things that happen when I take my eyes off him for five minutes.”

I laugh. “Poor Basil,” I say. “The great fun in being a younger sibling is getting to torture the older.”

“You were an uncorrupted compared to Leland,” Basil says.

“What about the time we were seven and we tried to bake a cake?” I say.

“I don’t recall any baking,” Basil says. “I recall cracked eggs on the floor and a sack of flour that was too heavy for you to carry.”

“That mess happened on Lex’s watch,” I remind him. “He’s the one who had to clean it up.”

Now Basil is chuckling with his lips pressed together. He’s looking at me.

“What?” I say.

“I’m just remembering all the flour in your hair.”

“It got up my nose. I couldn’t stop sneezing.”

We’re both trying to quiet our laughter so as not to disrupt the solemn mood of the train.

“Is this what passes for romance between you two?” Pen says.

“Yes,” I say. “And we like it this way, don’t we, Basil?”

“Quite,” he says.

The evening sun catches every bolt and scrap of metal on the train, and for an instant we are suspended in an atmosphere of stars.

My mother is of course thrilled that my betrothed is joining us for dinner. Not only does she find him charming, but she is also eager for a sense of normalcy. Though the ash from the fire at the flower shop has long since disappeared, a grayness still blankets the city. I’ve never known anything like it, but something about my mother’s despondency of late tells me she knows it well.

My father’s absence at the table doesn’t help.

I force myself to eat everything on the plate, despite the lingering dread in my stomach after my interview with the specialist, which I leave out of the dinner conversation.

After we’ve cleared our plates, I say I’m feeling tired and I’m going to lie down, and I pull Basil toward my bedroom.

“Did you take your pill this morning, love?” my mother asks.

I feel my cheeks burning. “Yes,” I say, and I can’t meet Basil’s eyes. I’ve been taking my sterility pill since about the time my betrothal band started to fit on my finger. I know my mother doesn’t want for me to repeat Alice’s mistake, and I’ve heard it isn’t uncommon for girls my age to be intimate with their betrotheds, but the idea still embarrasses me.

When I close my bedroom door, I sag against it with a deflating sigh.

Basil sits on the edge of my bed and holds his arms out to me. “Come here,” he says, and when I take his hands, he pulls me down to sit beside him.

“Today was awful,” I confess, making a little game of rolling and unrolling his red necktie. “In just a few days, I feel as though everything has changed.”

“I keep thinking it’ll all go back to normal,” he says. “Each morning I wake up and tell myself there won’t be a patrolman at the door when I leave. They’ll have found the murderer. The fire will turn out to have been an accident.”

We sit without speaking for a while, me staring at my lap, as the sunset makes everything orange.

“You can tell me anything, you know,” Basil says.

He knows something is wrong, then. He’s an excellent reader of people, and I am terrible at hiding things. Another reason we’re probably a good match—he keeps me from getting lost in myself. And I always relent, telling him the little things, like my fear of giving verbal presentations before the class, or that I don’t like his mother’s walnut cookies—which she gives me every year for my festival of stars gift—as much as I let on. But how can I tell him that I fear I’m becoming like my brother, or that I have perhaps always been like him? That for all of last night I dreamed of Internment’s edge, Amy scattering pages into the clouds, and a fire raging behind her so that she had no choice but to jump?

I think of the specialist’s card in my pocket.

“Basil?” I say. “You want me to be safe, don’t you?”

He puts his hand over mine, and his tie unrolls from my fingers. “Of course,” he says.

I can’t tell him, then. If he knew that I was this curious about the edge, he would drag me to the king’s home atop the clock tower himself. He would ask to have me declared irrational, and I’d be fitted with an anklet made of blinking lights and never be allowed to step outside again. Just like the woman who used to live downstairs. I used to pass by her door and see her sometimes, standing just inside her threshold after her husband left for work. I’d hear the whimpers of pain when she tried to follow after him.

“What is it?” he asks.

I’m trying to think of a way to answer without lying, but then I’m saved by a knock on my door. “A patrolman was just here.” My mother’s voice. “There’s going to be a broadcast. They’ve found that poor girl’s murderer.”