Perfect Ruin

“How artistic,” Thomas says. “Ladies, I applaud you.”



Pen rolls her eyes.



The shuttle jolts to a stop. The patrolman is telling us the usual: Keep it moving. Be safe.



The essay sits in his pocket, just another of the many secrets the patrolmen surely keep.



I hesitate.



Pen balances herself on the ladies’ room sink and pushes on the window until it opens out. She frowns. “It doesn’t open very far, but we’ll be able to get through. I’ll go first if you promise not to look up my skirt.”



“I don’t know about this,” I say.



She stops pushing at the glass and stares down at me. “What’s the worst that can happen?”



“We could get caught.” I say.



“And then what? A few demerits? We’re not doing anything wrong, you know. The king is the one letting us all go on in oblivion while a murderer is out there.”



There’s no sense trying to reason. She’s made up her mind. “Stay if you want, but I’m going,” she says pertly. “If I’m brutally murdered by Judas Hensley, it’ll be because you weren’t there to protect me.”



Before I can say a word, she dives through the window.



I hear the swish of leaves as she lands in one of the hedges.



I hoist myself onto the sink and peek outside after her. “Did you die?” I ask.



“Like landing in a cloud,” she says, tugging a leaf from her hair and flicking it away. “You coming?”



I think about Judas’s white hair in the moonlight and his bleary eyes and the words Pen left for him in the cavern: “Are you a murderer?”



I push myself through the window.



Pen reaches up for my hands as I wriggle through and helps me accomplish a slightly better landing. And then we’re both standing outside the academy in the middle of the day, while our classmates are at lunch and our betrotheds think we’re writing a play. It seems as though something should stop us. The god of the sky himself should send a gust of wind in warning. But nothing happens at all.



Pen and I make our way along the stone fence that divides the academy’s property from the university’s, and we step over a shallow river that trickles in a ravine at the base of the woods. If Internment were a clock, the section with our academy would be the six and the section with the park would be the twelve; it’s a short walk.



Everything about this feels wrong, but I don’t stop.



“Basil is going to be hurt if he finds out I lied to him,” I say.



“He’ll get over it. It isn’t as though you won’t still marry him in a couple of years.”



My palms are sweating. My chest feels tight.



By the time we reach the cavern, the seams under my arms are damp with sweat and I can scarcely breathe. Pen looks into the cavern.



“Morgan!” she says. I crouch beside her and follow her gaze.



Her question has been smoothed away, and scrawled in its place: Yes.



Pen has her hand over her mouth, but by the swell in her cheeks I know that she’s smiling.



I crawl into the cavern. He was here. That’s all I can think. He was here.



“We should ask him something else,” Pen says, wiping away his response.



All I’d like to ask is why he’s lying. But I don’t say that. Maybe I’ll come back and ask him myself.



“We have to go,” I say.



She turns a pebble in her hand, considering. I take it away and set it in the dirt, and continue, “We’ll barely make it back before lunch is over if we leave now.”



“Fine,” she huffs. As we make our way back to the academy, she perks up at the sound of every snapped twig, every rustled leaf. It’s a game to her. Our secret murderer stowed away in the trees, sending us messages.



I would tell her that what we’re doing is wrong, but I like that we have a secret together, like the kinds we had when we were children. It’s been so long since she’s shared any secrets with me.



When we return to the academy, the window to the ladies’ room seems a lot higher than either of us remember, and there’s no sink out here for us to stand on. Pen tries using the hedge, but that proves impossible.



“Okay,” she says, “if I hold my hands out, you could use them as a step and make it inside. Then you can pull me up after you.”



“Or you ladies can enter through the proper door,” Headmaster Vega says from behind us. “I’m more than happy to escort you. It seems we have some things to chat about in my office.”



11



Our bodies are burned when we die. All the good in our soul lives on in the tributary, while all the bad in us burns away forever. This frightens me. Who decides what is good and what is bad? Who decides what is saved and what is lost from our souls?



—“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten



PEN HAS A POWERFUL SKILL IN GOING FROM defiance to contrition. She is all “Yes, sir” and timid nods the entire way down the hall. As the headmaster turns to open his office door, she smirks at his bald spot.



“Ladies,” he says, standing aside to let us in.



“Yes, sir,” we murmur, heads down.



We file past the receptionist, who does nothing to hide her surprise that among all the mischief makers she’s seen in this academy, we’re the latest—a star student and a patrolman’s daughter. The headmaster leads us to his office and closes the door behind us.



“There now,” he says. His chair creaks under his weight and he gestures for us to sit in the chairs on the other side of his desk. Pen fans her skirt daintily over her knees.



“The obvious question here is what you were both doing outside during academy hours. The second question—and I do believe this is the most important—is why you were trying to enter through a window rather than a door.”



He waits for our answer. Pen glances at me, clears her throat. “We were talking,” she says.



“Talking?”



She raises her shoulders, feigning embarrassment. “Female matters, sir. I’m a little more—seasoned—than Morgan and she was asking me for advice regarding a private conundrum with her betrothed.”



Headmaster Vega clears his throat and straightens a stack of papers on his desk, clearly flummoxed. There’s a bit of a blush across his dark face. “Why couldn’t these matters be discussed during your lunch period?”



“Lack of privacy, sir,” Pen says. My face is burning and I want to kick her, I want to kick her, I want to kick her. It isn’t the lie she’s telling so much as how much she’s enjoying my reaction. At an age when intimacy between betrotheds is a distinct possibility, parents and academy officials try to stay uninvolved for the most part. It was the one topic she could broach without being challenged.



“We would have used the door, but Morgan didn’t want her betrothed to know we’d left.” As if taking a cue from a stage director, she looks at her lap and blushes. “We were trying to execute discretion. Sir.”



Headmaster Vega clears his throat again. “I see. Given that this is a first offense for both of you, I see no need to summon your parents. I trust that from now on you’ll keep your private affairs outside academy hours. This is an institute of formal learning.”



“Yes, sir,” she says.



“Sorry, sir,” I say. My mouth has gone dry.



Headmaster Vega scrawls something onto a piece of paper and hands it to Pen. “You can head to your next class, Ms. Atmus. Stay for a moment, Ms. Stockhour.”



Pen is just as perplexed by this as I am, but she doesn’t question it. She squeezes my shoulder as she takes her leave, obeying the headmaster’s signal to close the door behind her.



After the humiliation I’ve just endured, it is with great effort and embarrassment that I meet the headmaster’s eyes. He picks up on my anxiety and says, “You aren’t in any trouble, but I was hoping to speak with you.”



“Yes, sir?”



“As you know, an academic record is kept of every student from their kinder years. In the last three years, your grades have faltered. You aren’t struggling by any means, but when a record goes from flawless to flawed, it is noticeable.”



This has nothing to do with being caught outside the academy. But that does nothing to quell my anxiety, because before the headmaster says another word, I already can see where this is heading.



“Your family has had a rough go of things since your older brother’s incident. I understand it left him disabled.”



“Functionally disabled,” I amend. There are those who have been dispatched after jumping from the edge damaged their cognitive functions. There are those who died on their own. “He’s still able to contribute a trade.” His identification card used to say he was a medical student. He threw it away after his incident, and Alice quietly retrieved it from the recycling. She keeps it hidden among her jewelry, and I’ve seen her take it out sometimes, turn it over and over in her palm. She loves my brother entirely, even the parts of him he’d like to forget.



I don’t like talking about Lex to people I barely know. It isn’t enough that I could have lost him, but what happened is a pall that will hang over my family for always. When it happened, my friends distanced themselves, one by one, until only Pen remained with that unwavering loyalty of hers. My father busied himself in his work, protecting Internment when his own son proved to be beyond protecting. My mother has been half herself.



Headmaster Vega attempts to smile. “I’ve only received happy reports from your instructors, and though one or two have said you’re a bit of a daydreamer”—Newlan—“it’s clear that you’re a bright girl. I’m concerned that something is holding you back. I know that you met with the king’s specialist, Ms. Harlan, and she informed me that she gave you a card with her home address, but that you haven’t called on her.”



“I didn’t want to impose,” I say. That’s not true. I’ve been considering it. I came so close to telling Basil.



“I’d like you to meet with her,” he says. “I gather that part of your hesitation comes from not wanting to burden your parents, am I right?”



Reluctantly I nod. It’s the absolute truth.



“I don’t think there’s any reason to make them worry, then, provided you’re willing to meet with Ms. Harlan during your lunch period. You may bring a cafeteria tray with you. How does that sound?”



He’s asking, but it’s not really a question. The headmaster is an authority figure, and authority figures don’t make suggestions to students. They tell. Until we become the property of our spouses, we are the property of our educators.