I’d spent most of the day secluded in Simone’s room, helping her with cold cloths and glasses of water as she suffered through constant nausea and vomiting. It was the third day in a row and we’d thus far managed to keep it from Lorraine, but I wasn’t sure how long that could last. Between the nausea and some specific points of tenderness, I had the bad feeling Simone was pregnant.
It happened sometimes, because no contraception is completely foolproof, but it always meant another filled display case and a temporarily empty room. I don’t think Simone had realized her condition yet. She thought Avery had brought the flu back into the Garden. She was finally asleep, one hand pressed against her stomach, and Danelle had promised to stay with her until the morning.
The smell of sour, stale vomit clung to me, strong enough to make me semi-nauseated as well. I’d long since earned the privilege of turning my shower on whenever I wanted, but the idea of being stuck in another little room was almost physically painful. I stopped by the room just long enough to shove my dress and underwear down the laundry chute—far too narrow for a person to fit through, as Bliss had informed me—and went out into the Garden itself.
At night the Garden was a place of shadows and moonlight, where you could more clearly hear all the illusions that went into making it what it was. During the day there was conversation and movement, sometimes games or songs, and it masked the sound of the pipes feeding water and nutrients through the beds, of the fans that circulated the air. At night, the creature that was the Garden peeled back its synthetic skin to show the skeleton beneath.
I liked the Garden at night for the same reason I loved the original fairy tales. It was what it was, nothing more and nothing less. Unless the Gardener was visiting you, darkness in the Garden was the closest we got to truth.
I stepped through the echoing cave and into the falls, letting the water pour over me and wash away the sourness of sickness and coming death. It was just strong enough to beat at muscles sore and tired from three days of bending over someone, of perching on an uncomfortable stool and expecting every second for Lorraine or the Gardener to come investigate. I let the water pound that away, then used the mist-dampened rocks to haul myself up to the top of the cliff and the sun rock. I wrung most of the water from my hair and then lay back with closed eyes, sprawled inelegantly over the rock with its trace of sun warmth left over from the day. Breath by breath, I could feel my muscles slowly relax.
“Direct, but not very modest.”
I sat up so fast something seized in my back, and I spent the next several minutes swearing at people who couldn’t give proper warning. Desmond stood on the path five or ten yards away, hands shoved deep in his pockets, craning his neck back to stare at the glass tiles of the greenhouse roof.
“Good evening,” I said sourly, rearranging myself more comfortably on the rock. All of my clothing was either in my room or waiting to be laundered, so there wasn’t much point in shrieking and trying to find something to cover myself with. “Come to take in the view?”
“Rather more of a view than I expected.”
“I thought I was alone.”
“Alone?” he repeated, meeting my eyes and very carefully not looking any lower. “In an entire garden full of other girls?”
“Who are all either sleeping or occupying themselves in their rooms,” I retorted.
“Ah.”
That was the last thing said for some time. It sure as hell wasn’t my job to supply conversation, so I turned on the stone and looked out into the Garden, watching the surface of the pond ripple and sway where water emptied from the stream. Eventually I heard his footsteps on the stone and then something dark hovered in front of me. When I reached out to touch it, it dropped into my lap.
His sweater.
The color was hard to determine in the moonlight, maybe a burgundy of some sort, with a school crest sewn onto one breast. It smelled like soap and aftershave and cedar, something warm and masculine and mostly unfamiliar in the Garden. I twisted my wet hair into a messy knot atop my head and pulled on the sweater, and when everything was covered, he sat next to me on the rock.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said quietly.
“So you came out here.”
“I just can’t make sense of this place.”
“Given that it doesn’t make sense, that’s understandable.”
“So you’re not here by choice.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Stop looking for information you have no intention of actually using.”
“How do you know I won’t use it?”
“Because you want him to be proud of you,” I said sharply. “And you know if you tell anyone about all this, he won’t be. Given that, what does it matter whether we’re here by choice or not?”
“You . . . you must think I’m a despicable excuse for a human being.”
“I think you have the potential to be.” I looked at his sad, earnest face and decided to take a risk for pretty much the first time since coming to the Garden. “I also think you have the potential to be better.”
He was silent for a long time. Such a tiny step, a minuscule nudge, but already it seemed too big. How could a parent have so much control over a child, that paternal pride meant more than what was right? “Our choices make us who we are,” he said eventually.
It wasn’t what I’d call a substantive response.
“What choices are you making, Desmond?”
“I don’t think I’m making any choices right now.”
“Then you’re automatically making the wrong ones.” He straightened, mouth open to protest, but I held up my hand. “Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact. No one actually gets to live their lives that way.”
“Seemed to work for Switzerland.”
“As a nation, maybe. How do you think individuals felt, when they learned the truth of what their neutrality allowed to transpire? When they learned of the camps, and the gas chambers, and the experimentation, do you think they were pleased with their neutrality then?”
“Then why don’t you just leave?” he demanded. “Rather than judge my father for giving you food and clothing and comfortable shelter, why don’t you just go back out there?”
“You don’t really think we have codes, do you?”
He deflated, the indignation fading as quickly as it flared. “He keeps you locked in?”
“Collectors don’t let butterflies fly free. It defeats the purpose.”
“You could ask.”
“It isn’t easy to ask him for anything,” I said, parroting his words from a week or so ago.
He flinched.
He was blind, but he wasn’t stupid. That he chose to be ignorant really pissed me off. I shrugged out of the sweater and dropped it in his lap, sliding off the rock. “Thank you for the conversation,” I muttered, walking quickly down the path that sloped to the main level from the far end of the cliff. I could hear him tripping and fumbling after me.
“Maya, wait. Wait!” His hand closed around my wrist and tugged back, nearly pulling me off my feet. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re between me and food. Apologize for that, if you like, and get out of my way.”
He let go of my wrist but kept following me across the Garden. He hopped first across the small stream and reached out to steady me from the other side, something I found both bizarre and charming. The main lights in the dining room—and the attached open kitchen—were dark, but a dim light shone from above the stove for anyone seeking a late-night snack. The sight of the larger, locked fridge momentarily distracted him.
I yanked open the door to the smaller one and studied what was inside. I was genuinely hungry, but as being around vomiting people doesn’t do much for the appetite, nothing seemed appealing.
“What is that on your back?”
I slammed the door shut, blocking out the light, but it was too late.
He stepped closer behind me, walking us both over to the oven, and in the dim glow of the stove light he studied the wings in all their exquisite, excruciating detail. Under normal circumstances, I could have mostly forgotten what they looked like. He’d give us mirrors if we asked for them; I never had. Bliss, though, made a point of showing everyone their wings on a regular basis.
So we couldn’t forget what we were.