Perfect Ruin

I don’t have time to apologize to my betrothed before I’m dragged back into the academy. Pen says something to a patrolman about having left her assignment at her desk. When we’re alone, she leads me into a janitor’s closet and shuts the door. She shuffles through the darkness and eventually finds the hanging cord that turns on the overhead light.



“Pen, what—”



“Finally.” She claps her hands on my shoulders. “We’re alone. I’ve been feeling that the boys have been hovering around us all day, haven’t you?”



“Well, yes, they’re betrothed to us. That’s what they’re supposed to do.”



She shushes me, and we listen as footfalls approach and then fade down the hallway.



“We’re going to miss the train,” I say.



“There’ll be another one.”



“In nearly an hour.”



“So we’ll walk home,” she says. “There are bigger things to worry about.”



“Like what?” I say.



“Like that boy I saw you with on Friday night.”



I’m suddenly aware of how small this space is, how warm the buzzing lightbulb is making it. “I don’t know—What do you mean?”



“You aren’t going to lie to me, are you?” she says. “You’re the only person who isn’t brimming over with just complete nonsense, and if I can’t rely on you, I’ll go crazy.”



One of us is going crazy, all right, but it isn’t her.



I stare at the door; I’ve never been in the academy when it’s empty. It feels wrong. “What did you see?” I ask.



“You know what I saw. You were following a boy through the woods and then he told you to go home.”



“You were in the cavern?” I say. “So late at night? What for?”



“Don’t make this about me,” she says. “The cavern is our safe house. Nothing that happens there leaves with us. Remember? The tonic we snuck from my mother’s cabinet?”



I do remember. We were both sick for a whole day after that. Our parents still think it was a stomach virus.



“We aren’t in the cavern. We’re in a closet,” I say. “And we’ve missed all the shuttles for sure.”



Pen reaches for the cord, turns out the light. “Fine,” she says, opening the door. “If that’s what it’s going to take, come on.”



As we walk down the hallway, Pen fumbles through her satchel until she’s found one of the day’s assignment sheets. She waves it at the patrolman who opens the door for us, and she giggles and says something about being absentminded.



“About an hour until the next shuttle, ladies,” he tells us. There’s always a later shuttle for the staff members who stay after hours.



“We’re walking,” Pen tells him, tugging me along by the elbow. “My mother insists. She says I need the exercise if I’m going to fit into a wedding dress someday.”



Before I turn away, I see the flustered look on the patrolman’s face. This may have less to do with Pen’s words and more to do with the wink she gives him as she goes.



She hugs her arms as she walks, as though fighting a chill, although the air is tepid. She’s got that distance in her eyes again.



“My brother used to work with the engineers that man the scopes,” I tell her. “They couldn’t tell him much—only things that would help him in developing new medicines. But they told him that this time of year, the ground is covered with white dust.”



“Dust?” she asks.



“Well, not dust exactly. More like ice shavings, I think. When the clouds send down water and it begins to freeze. It melts away in the long season.”



“The ground is an absurd place,” she says. “Imagine what their buildings must be made of to withstand all the things that fall down on them from the clouds.”



“Maybe they don’t care,” I say. “They’re probably always building new things. Why wouldn’t they? They must have infinite resources.”



“Nothing is infinite,” Pen says. She doesn’t want to hear me go on about the ground. I think she’s angry with me for keeping secrets. But she brightens when the lake is in sight.



I look for signs that Judas might still be here, but of course there are none.



“If I were to build a house,” Pen says, “it would be made of rock. In fact, maybe it would be underground.”



I laugh. “Even if worms are dripping down from the ceiling?”



“Worms don’t tell secrets,” she says.



She ducks into the cavern ahead of me. When we were children, we were just barely able to stand if we kept our heads bowed, but now we have little room to do more than sit across from each other.



“Okay,” Pen says, clasping her hands together so they form an arrow pointed at me. “Tell me everything. And I’ll know if you’re holding back.”



“You won’t believe me,” I say. My heart is pounding in my ears, the way it did that night when I was tasting the blood on Judas’s hand.



“Look at you, all red.” Her eyes are suddenly serious. “Is it someone you’re seeing behind Basil’s back? Because, Morgan, it would mean a lot of trouble—”



“No!” The tips of my ears are burning. “Don’t even joke about that. You’ll get me whisked away to an attraction camp.” I focus on a pebble on the ground. I thought I’d feel safer here than in the closet, but I keep imagining that the rocks will cave in on us.



“That boy you saw”—I take a deep breath, lower my voice—“that was Judas Hensley.”



I can feel Pen staring at me. Painful seconds go by in silence, and then she bursts into laughter.



In answer, I meet her gaze with a guilty smile.



“Oh—” Her laughter subsides. “Oh. Morgan. Please tell me you’re kidding.”



“Nothing we say leaves here, right?”



She drags her finger over her heart in an X, sealing the promise, and I do the same.



I tell her everything, and as I say the words out loud, I realize how little there is to tell, how I’ve been obsessing over something that lasted for a handful of minutes. I don’t tell her about the taste of his blood or the tantalizing sense of weightlessness. I don’t tell her that in my dreams last night I followed him right to the edge of our floating city, and that the thing that called my brother to cross the tracks very well may be calling me.



“You’re sure it was him?” she says breathlessly.



“I’m certain.”



“Then—why hasn’t there been a broadcast? Why did they just let us go to the academy and walk around the city while there’s a murderer running free?”



“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “I didn’t ask many questions. He said he’d kill me if I followed him.”



“He didn’t seem so big,” Pen says. “We’ll kill him first if he tries.”



“I didn’t believe him. I don’t think he killed Daphne,” I say. “I know it doesn’t make much sense, but I’d much like to think I’d know a murderer if he was standing right in front of me.”



“Well, we’d all like to think that,” she says. She leans back against the rock wall, smirking. “You had a tryst with a murderer, you wicked thing.”



“It wasn’t a tryst!” My heated cheeks only fuel her delight. “And I don’t think he did it. He was so … unassuming.”



“He had you pinned to a tree.”



“For a few seconds.”



“Maybe he’s still here,” she says excitedly. “Maybe he’s watching us.”



I know it’s absurd, but I’ve felt as though he’s been watching me since we parted ways that night. “Of course he isn’t,” I say.



Pen grabs a pebble from the ground and scrapes it against one of the larger rocks, spelling out the words: “Are you a murderer?”



“There,” she says. “When he comes back, he might answer us.” She sets the pebble in the dirt with finality.



“Assuming he returns.”



“He’ll return,” she says. “Internment is only as big as the king’s fist. If you’re going to hide, you have to circle the same places over and over again.”



I wonder what makes her such an expert on hiding.



My mother is sitting by the window when I come home. She’s wrapped in Lex’s blanket, working on her sampler.



“I was starting to worry,” she says, squinting as she pokes the needle through the fabric. “You’re home late.”



“I was helping Pen look for an assignment she lost at the academy,” I say. “We missed the shuttle and walked home instead.” The lie has me averting my eyes, but she isn’t looking at me anyway. Instead she asks me to warm the kettle and check on the bread she’s got baking in the oven. The loaf, stuffed with roasted vegetables, is enough to feed a dozen. Half of it will probably go upstairs to Alice and Lex. My mother feeds them so often that Alice hardly bothers to cook anymore.



“It gets dark earlier now,” my mother says. “Maybe it would be best if you didn’t dawdle so much.”



“I’m sorry,” I say, pouring the tea and bringing it to her. She sets down her needlework. She works from her own patterns, and this one is of a cloud, and coming from the cloud is a peculiar flash of what I presume to be light. I run my finger along the strip of yellow.



I envy her talent for inventing strange and beautiful things the rest of us can’t see. But I don’t ask her about it; I think my questions frustrate her. Or, my lack of understanding frustrates her. She has one like-minded child, and he’s on the verge of being declared irrational. Maybe he would have been by now, if Alice weren’t so patient.



“The bread looks done,” I say.



“Bring half upstairs for your brother and Alice. Tell her to be sure he eats something. He’s getting too thin.”



I don’t know how she knows this; my brother lives right upstairs, but they never visit each other. The sight of him in this state is too much for her. Instead I’m their messenger, and most of my mother’s messages are simply food.



Dutifully, I wrap half of the bread in a cloth.



My brother’s door is locked again, and when I knock, it takes a long time for Alice to answer. She’s still in her work clothes and her shoulders are drooping with exhaustion. She sees the bundle in my hands and gives a weary smile. “Come on in,” she says, “but try to be quiet. He had a rough night and today isn’t very much better.”