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My day was destined to get worse. Saretha was bound to find out I’d been expelled, if she didn’t know already. Sam would be furious when she told him. They didn’t know that as a Placer I was safe, at least, from Indenture.
Unless I wasn’t. Kel had asked me to lay low and try not to draw attention. Clearly I had failed—though Mrs. Soleman’s outburst wasn’t exactly my fault. But if Kel didn’t let me stay on, I was out of options.
At least I’d be getting more sleep without school. I needed to move forward and focus. I’d found Carol Amanda Harving’s address. That was something. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good plan for how to use it.
When I got home, Saretha was on the couch watching Truly, Lovely, Danger!, a movie costarring Carol Amanda Harving as the best friend of the girl who accidentally falls in love with a muscular and inexplicably shirtless assassin. It was her last supporting role before she became a leading star. Near the end, Carol Amanda Harving turns out to be an assassin, too, and dies the ugly death of a traitor. Was that why Saretha was watching? I couldn’t blame her, though it seemed a little twisted. Carol Amanda Harving looked too much like Saretha for me to enjoy watching her characters die on-screen. Saretha paused the film and shook her head at me.
“Tell me you didn’t just drop out,” she said, her eyes closed, as though she couldn’t bear to look at me. Then, angered, she spit out, “You have no idea what you’ve done!” The contempt in her voice was worse and more difficult to hear than I’d anticipated. Panic rose in my chest.
“Have you seen this?” Saretha flicked away the cost of what she’d said and used her Cuff as a remote to pull up a news report on our screen.
The wall filled with footage of a beautiful young girl named Bridgette Pell, on the Ninety-Second Radian. She was a thin, lovely, wealthy young woman with her whole life ahead of her. She stood in her posh rooftop garden, a tall, skeletal waif, big-eyed and blank, in front of her Affluent friends and family. Instead of reading her Last Day speech, which would have been little more than a formality for someone with her money, she zipped her lips, bounced on her toes and let herself fall backward over the building’s side.
“Have the Silents gone too far?” the announcer asked with a dramatic glee.
My stomach dropped away. The Silents? She had killed herself!
“Is this what you wanted?” Saretha asked, as the commentators blamed me in the background.
This wasn’t my fault. I was stunned it was even possible for her to do this. Why weren’t the rails higher? Why would an Affluent girl care at all about the Silents or her Last Day? What was the point of killing herself? My head was swimming, trying to understand.
“Everyone’s going to copy you now,” Saretha said.
She wasn’t copying me! I screamed in my head. And in case you hadn’t noticed, I didn’t kill myself!
I sat on Sam’s bed, put my head back and closed my eyes. I listened to the voices discuss me on television. I was so tired. I had only a few hours before I had to go back out onto the rooftops and make Placements.
“Jim, I don’t think we should assign blame here, but isn’t this clearly the Silent Girl’s fault?”
“Ah, yes, Rebecca, given her petulant unwillingness to come forward and speak for herself, I hardly think it’s possible that any other conclusion can be drawn.”
“And, Jim, don’t you think Bridgette Pell’s family has a duty to sue?”
“Rebecca, I think every American® has a duty to sue, whenever opportunity permits.”
Almost on cue, I felt a suit arrive simultaneously on our Cuffs. I didn’t look. Saretha made an irritated noise and confirmed its receipt.
“Tylenola Ram was sent to the hospital. Zipped her lips and drank a food printer ink.” And with that, Saretha turned her movie back on. I couldn’t ask if Tylenola would be okay.
My stomach churned. I tried not to think about Bridgette Pell, or Tylenola, or Penepoli or everything else that was happening. How many Silents were there now? What did they think they were doing? What did they think I was doing? Everyone acted like I was some kind of leader, but I hadn’t led anyone.
Slowly, and in spite of myself, I fell asleep, hoping I could forget about Bridgette Pell and her suicide, all while I listened to Carol Amanda Harving scream in that film. A grim solution worked itself out in my head, in half thoughts and dreams. I tried to reason with the actress while she looked coldly away and sipped champagne at the edge of a cliff-side pool. I kept thinking, I could kill her. It was a sickening thought. I imagined her falling, then drowning, then laughing at me. Beneath the half dreams and fuzzy thoughts, I kept thinking that if the choice was her, or Sam, Saretha and me, then Carol Amanda Harving was going to die.