SCORN: $36.99
Penepoli Graethe showed up at our door the next morning. Her eyes were wet with tears.
“You can’t come in,” Sam said, opening the door a crack. I couldn’t hear her response. She wasn’t speaking, but she was still making noise. I pulled a jacket on over my nightclothes and went out to her. Sam crossed his arms and followed me into the hall.
Penepoli looked from Sam to me and back again with wild eyes. Her face was twisted with confusion, lips mashed tight. She made a wide gesture, a ring with her hands, traced in the air, and then walked her fingers into the space it had defined.
Sam and I looked at each other. “I don’t know what that means,” he said with a sigh. “Do you want to just tell us?”
Penepoli bit her lip, then zippered it and looked pitifully sorrowful. It was hard to believe that not very long ago, Penepoli, Nancee and I would talk, carefree, about nothing at all. It felt stupid, and beautiful, and sad to think of it. My hand reached out for hers, but I had to stop myself and pull it back. I couldn’t get charged for a gesture now. I had no way to reach her.
“Mmmmhhm, mhhmm, mhmmm?” Penepoli tried, humming out what she wanted to say. Her brows wrenched up and she hunched down to my height, her lank hair falling forward.
“The fruit stripe garden?” Sam guessed, shaking his head.
Anguished, Penepoli spoke, but not fully. She whispered through clenched teeth, like a panicked ventriloquist.
“Mandett is rounding us up.”
“Who is us?” Sam asked.
“The Silents!” Penepoli squeaked.
Sam looked at me. I didn’t know anything about it. Had Mandett really gone silent? If he had, how was he getting people rounded up? Then I remembered that Mandett hadn’t had his Last Day yet.
“He says we have to do more than not speak,” Penepoli said, her lips straining to form all the words while keeping her mouth shut. “He wants us to show ourselves, prove we’re here. He is asking—”
The sound of the elevator arriving stopped Penepoli. Her hand clamped to her mouth.
“I’ve said too much!” she mumbled under her fingers.
Sam rolled his eyes. The elevator doors opened, and Mrs. Harris stepped out, looking both irritated and pleased.
Penepoli dropped her hands, like she had been caught doing something illegal, and said, “Good morning, Mrs. Harris.”
Mrs. Harris squinted at Penepoli, as if trying to recall her name. Then she addressed me, as if Penepoli were unimportant.
“Speth,” she said coolly, “I need to speak with you. I have news.”
Sam’s gaze burned at her. He hated her unannounced visits. We all did.
“Mrs. Harris,” Penepoli said with a nervous swallow. Mrs. Harris raised an eyebrow. “Do you know what happened to Nancee? You were her guardian, right?”
Mrs. Harris chewed on this question and sneered a little. “I was.”
“Do you know what happened to her?” Penepoli asked again, sort of through her teeth.
“I do,” she said, and then returned her gaze to me. “Does your friend understand I am not budgeted to speak with children who are not my charges?”
In lieu of answering, I glared at her and tried to match her coldness. Her sour face twisted with an ugly glee I had seen her wear only a few times before. She kept her eyes trained on me and answered Penepoli’s question.
“Nancee has been Indentured within the city to a woman who can put up with the girl’s insolent silence. It was challenging to place her. When someone selfishly refuses to speak, that puts all burden of speaking on the opposite party. My understanding is that Nancee is being trained to follow commands like you might teach a dog, which should solve most of the problem.”
My mouth tightened.
“And appropriately punished if she fails to obey.”
Pins and needles surged over me in a stomach-turning wave. I wanted to ask, Where? Who with? My lips longed to form the W, so I could have some answers, but I could not. I closed my eyes and imagined Kel’s Pad. Could I type Nancee’s name into it? Could I find her that way? I ached thinking of what she was enduring.
“I’m glad it upsets you,” Mrs. Harris said. “I know it is difficult to hear, but this is what comes from insolence. Perhaps this will help you better decide on your future.”
When she talked about my future, it felt like a place very far from where I stood. But I was beginning to think the future was where I stood. My decision had been made.
“Your friend can stop eavesdropping now.” Mrs. Harris sniffed and ran her key card over our door. “I’d rather not spend my entire visit in this hallway.”
“Should I find her?” Penepoli asked, wild-eyed. “Should I look for Nancee?”
Mrs. Harris narrowed her brows at Penepoli and pushed Sam and me inside. The door closed with Penepoli still gaping out in the hall.
“Your boyfriend’s grandmother’s been found out,” she said to me, stalking inside and rubbing at her fingers like she was sharpening claws. “She had been keeping a rather disgusting secret.”
Saretha didn’t turn from the couch. She faced the screen and kept her attention fixed on a game show that let contestants vie for new Branding.
Mrs. Harris looked at my Cuff and then back at me.
“She sabotaged her Cuff,” Mrs. Harris said.
I gritted my teeth against this twisting of the truth. I didn’t suppose it would make any difference to Mrs. Harris that she hadn’t actually sabotaged it.
“Belunda Stokes has been speaking for years without paying the Rights Holders. Apparently many of the neighborhood children knew about it—including that girl, I imagine.” She jerked a thumb at the door and Penepoli beyond. “They have been using her as a source of unregulated information.” She glared at Sam. Sam glared back.
“Speth,” Mrs. Harris said, trying to imitate a reasonable person. “It occurs to me that you may have fallen in with the wrong element with her. Were you going to see her before your celebration? Perhaps she is the source of all of this nonsense? Perhaps the Silents were her idea?”
She made an odd maneuver that I think was meant to imply the zippered lips without paying the full service fee that was now charged for it. She was still charged something. Her Cuff buzzed, and Sam laughed at her. Her lips twitched in a frown. I couldn’t stand to look at her, and then I realized I didn’t have to. I had somewhere I had to be. I moved to walk out, but she blocked me.
“You were looking forward to your Branding,” Mrs. Harris said more softly. “I remember. I should really like to know what Mrs. Stokes said to you, and to Beecher, and, apparently, to Mandett, that could turn you all into such...”
She let her look of disdain stand in for whatever word she could not find or would not pay for.
“You’re not supposed to imply words,” Sam warned. Mrs. Harris’s brow furrowed. “It’s stealing from the Rights Holders.”
“Sam,” Mrs. Harris said, her voice dripping like Huny®, “I am gratified to know you have been paying attention. I shouldn’t be upset—people like Mrs. Stokes are no better than animals. Do you know what her words did to her son? The poor man drank a molecular ink and died almost instantly.”
“No, he didn’t,” Sam barked. I felt a little unsteady, wondering if that was actually true, but surely Mrs. Stokes would have told me if it was.
“It was covered up,” Mrs. Harris insisted with a flip of her hand. That made no sense. Who would cover it up? What would the point be?
“Belunda Stokes felt entitled to all those words she spoke, like a pig at a trough. How could she be expected to have any control? She simply expected everything to be handed to her for free.”
I couldn’t listen to her anymore, and I would not be late to my rendezvous with the Placers on her account. I pushed past her.
She breathed in sharply. “This is why the Onzième cannot keep a parent—they are too desperate to speak to and hug these children, even when it is far beyond their financial ability.”
I opened the door. Her words hit me like an arrow. She made it sound like our parents didn’t deserve to be with us.
“I am trying to help you,” Mrs. Harris said. But she wasn’t. Her guardianship wasn’t an accident. Our parents, all of them, had been taken away, and I’d never really considered why.
“I love you, Speth,” Mrs. Harris lied with a revolting lack of emotion. I grew dizzy and had to steady myself in the doorway.
“See what comes of it?” Mrs. Harris said, clicking across our floor in her heels to our screen. She tapped a few times, entered an address and stood back to let me see.
A feed appeared. I twisted to see it, one foot still in the hall. Elderly, trembling hands brushed the inside of a beautiful, graceful, spotted blushing flower with a yellowy powder. This was a direct feed from someone’s corneal implants, being broadcast for everyone to see on a micro-channel. My heart seized, thinking it might be my mother, but I realized my mistake almost immediately. The hands were too old. The owner of the feed was in a hothouse, lined as far as the eye could see with thin trees. Other bent, beaten workers hurried from flower to flower with delicate brushes, their faces covered with The Blocks. Mrs. Stokes glanced at herself for the briefest of seconds in the hothouse glass and then returned to work. Her image was allowed through without any blurring.
A sour lump formed in my throat as the feed cut away. Not only had they taken Mrs. Stokes and put her to work at her age, they’d forced implants into her eyes, despite her objections all those years ago. My own eyes burned just thinking of it.
Saretha tapped at her Cuff and turned back on her game show.
“That’s how your beloved Mrs. Stokes will finish out what days are left to her,” Mrs. Harris said quickly, with a flick of her eyes to the screen. “I thought you would like to know.”
Her voice held a note of amusement, and I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to lunge at her and wipe the smug expression off her face. But I did neither. Instead, I caught my breath and turned away. I didn’t want to leave Sam and Saretha with this woman, but I had to go. I pushed off the doorframe, passing Penepoli still standing baffled in the hall, and I fled.