Only Ever Yours (18 page)

“No need to bite my head off,” she replies, digging around in her handbag before throwing me a wet wipe. I dab at the stain, groaning as I spread it wider across my chest. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” She looks hurt, drawing her hair over one shoulder and pulling at it, a dusting of blond hairs falling across the table.

“I’m worried about isabel,” I admit quietly so that the others can’t overhear.

“That’s obvious.” Of course megan is listening. “You can’t stop staring at her.”

“I’m worried about her.”

“She’s a big girl . . .”

“Not so big anymore!” jessie giggles to liz.

“. . . she can take care of herself,” megan finishes, smoothing her hair into a loose chignon. She looks lovely today, her yellow halter-neck dress cut daringly low, cinched in at the waist and flowing out to a full skirt.

“I don’t know.”

“freida, we’ve talked about this.” megan shakes her head in frustration, bulbous sapphire earrings banging off her neck. “Who cares about isabel?”

We all look at her, sitting alone again, wearing a marl-gray T-shirt dress with cutout panels at the side, her ribs thrusting through her skin like crocodiles’ teeth. She seems to wear less and less clothing these days, as if she wants to draw attention to her shrinking body, using her emerging skeleton as a disguise. But it’s still isabel, still the girl who used to laugh loudly and often, her mouth wide open as if she found our world so delicious she wanted to swallow it whole.

“Where are you going?” megan hisses. If I am a Judge’s companion, she will never hiss at me again.

“isabel.”

She ignores me and keeps playing with her cucumber soup, ladling a spoonful before tipping it back into the bowl.

“I’m worried about you.” I crouch beside her. “You have got to start eating.”

The background hum is dying down. I can hear swishing as people turn in their seats to look at us.

“Leave it, freida,” she whispers, staring into her soup bowl. It feels so good to hear her say my name that my eyes sting. “It’s better this way.”

“What are you talking about?” My voice is echoing in the hushed room, louder than I intended. “What’s better this way?”

“Lower your voice, #630.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, standing up straight to meet those wolf-gray eyes, “but I can’t stand by and watch my friend starve to death.” I point at isabel, who is trying to pretend that this conversation has nothing to do with her. “She’s wasting away. She only gets the 0-kcal option at mealtimes, and then throws most of her food away, and no one is doing anything to stop her.” Anger is crawling in my debt, searching for a crumb of SleepSound to smother it.
I don’t need it. I don’t need it. Darwin doesn’t like girls who take drugs
.

“What are her weigh-ins like?” I lash out, a flash of lightning running through me, white hot. “It doesn’t fucking look like she’s within target range to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I say as the curse word shoots into the air, exploding like a firecracker. “That just slipped out. I’m sorry.”

“Interesting.” chastity-ruth suppresses a smile as she scans isabel’s wasted body. “Perhaps you are correct, #630. But don’t worry your little head about it. We will take care of isabel.” At this, isabel’s face crumples like a chocco wrapper held over an open flame.

“As much as I appreciate your desire to assist us . . .” she rolls the sleeves of her robes up as if preparing for a fight—“I cannot allow you to disturb the peace during mealtimes.”

I wait for isabel to defend me but she is motionless, reading the lines on the palms of her hands like a treasure map.

“#630, what am I going to do with you? This is the second ePad that you have broken this year.”

“I’m sorry, chastity-ruth.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, I’m afraid. Apologies are not going to pay for a replacement computer, are they? I don’t know why I continue to be surprised at how utterly useless you are.”

“It’s not her fault,” isabel broke in. “I broke it. It was my fault. freida was just trying to be a good friend.”

She kicked me in the shin under the table and I kept quiet.

“Very well, isabel,” the chastity said finally, her lips tight with annoyance. “You may give #630 your old ePad in replacement.”

That evening isabel had a new computer, a thinner, lighter one with a hot-pink cover. “A present,” she said.

I wanted it. I wanted a present too.

And instantly my gratitude broke, cut to shreds by jealousy
.

“Thank you for the apology,” chastity-ruth says. “However, I’m afraid I’m still going to have to chastise you for your rather
ugly
display of insolence. What will it be . . . what will it be?” She taps her mouth with her fingertips. “Ah, yes! I know. You shall be ineligible for the next session of Heavenly Seventy.”

“But . . .” I stutter, disbelief and panic spontaneously combusting in my chest, “that’s not fair.”

She turns away and I want to scream, pick up isabel’s tray of uneaten food and throw it at her. I want to fling a bucketful of Unacceptable Emotions and watch them splash all over her face like paint.

Nice girls don’t get angry
.

I clutch at the empty locket hanging around my neck, wishing more than anything for it to be full again.

“So, after that little incident, I’m afraid #630 is unavailable for selection today,” chastity-ruth informs the Inheritants.

“That hardly seems appropriate, ruth,” Albert says, failing to detect the faint pucker of her lips as he drops the “chastity.” “Surely it’s up to us men to decide whom we want to choose.”

chastity-ruth is firm. “The chastisement of the eves is under my jurisdiction while they are still at School.”

There is a frisson of anticipation in the room, everyone wondering who my lucky replacement is going to be. I don’t look up. I don’t want to see Darwin choose someone else, see him walk into our cupboard with another eve.

And all this because of isabel. I’ve lost precious time with Darwin because of someone who barely acknowledges my existence. Everyone must think I’m so stupid. I
am
so stupid.

“Mr. Darwin, who will it be today?” chastity-ruth asks, padding her way softly through the classroom until she’s
standing beside me, presumably to have a better view of my misery.

“I think,” his voice is careful, every eve in the room holding her breath, “I’ll go with agyness.”

agyness doesn’t move. Earbuds already in place and watching a Nature Channel rerun on her desktop, she cries out in pain when megan grinds a heel into her foot.

“What?” she asks, looking in confusion when megan points furiously at Darwin. And then I know. He’s chosen her as a message to me, the only eve in our class I won’t feel threatened by. And I feel like I can breathe for the first time since lunch, the tension thawing out of my shoulders.

“What is Darwin’s deal?”

“I know! Is he only into freaks?” gisele pauses for a second too long. “Not including you, freida, obviously.”

Her fake smile is nauseating. We’re at our usual table in the Nutrition Center, but no one is monitoring the buffets. There could be a run on death-by-chocolate puddings and I doubt it would merit a comment.

“Wait, here she comes,” megan mutters.

agyness is drifting dreamily away from chastity-anne’s desk, balancing her tray and her vial of daily meds, her peacock-blue maxi dress sweeping the tiles.

“agy!” megan calls to her, stacks of thin gold bangles clinking on her wrist as she waves.

“Good day to you, my fellow eves,” agyness announces theatrically, the other girls barely suppressing eye-rolls.

“I love your dress. The color is adorable on you!”

agyness looks down at her dress to remind herself what she is wearing.

“Oh yes!” she says, her velvety skin going pink with excitement. “I was watching a program on peacocks the other day so I requested a dress in the same shade.”

“So, tell us . . .” megan’s voice drops as liz asks jessie what a “peecuck” is, “what happened during Heavenly Seventy?”

“You were there.” agyness blinks.

“I wasn’t in the cupboard, was I? What happened with Darwin in the cupboard?”

“You said after the first week it was unfair to discuss what happened during the task,” agyness says, and I bite my lip, trying not to laugh out loud.

“agyness, just tell us what happened.”

“Well, nothing.” agyness makes a face to indicate her tray is getting heavy. “We talked.”

“Talked?”

“Yes.”

“What is with this guy and talking?” megan says, turning her back on agyness. “We’re done here. You can go.”

“She’s painful,” she sighs as agyness floats away. “Well, Darwin sure likes to talk, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. What’s that about?” daria asks, shaking her wispy bangs out of her eyes.

“What if he’s an aberrant?” liu exclaims, breathless with excitement that she’s been allowed to sit with us for once.

“He can’t be. He’s a Judge’s son,” megan snarls, and liu quakes, panicking that she might have ruined her chances
of sitting with us ever again. megan catches herself. “And, liu,” she adds smoothly, “you know as well as I do, no aberrants have been born since they made those prenatal tests mandatory. Are you questioning the Genetic Testers’ ability to identify the aberrant gene?”

“No, of course not,” liu whispers. “I was . . . I was only joking. Of course I don’t think Darwin is an aberrant.”

“He’s definitely not,” I blurt out. There is a roar of raucous laughter, a sliver of food flying out of cara’s mouth and landing on the table, making everyone laugh even louder. Questions fly at me, jumbling on top of each other.

“Are you in love with him?” cara laughs, pressing her hands to her heart.

“No.” megan’s voice is low but there’s something in it that makes everyone stop laughing instantly. “She can’t be. That would be love before marriage, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m not in love with him,” I scoff to hide the fear prickling in my chest at her words. “Of course I’m not.”

“Thank you.” I make myself break away from Darwin. I’ve wanted to say thank you since he chose me for today’s Heavenly Seventy, but once the doors of the cupboard closed behind us, he had his hands in my hair and his mouth was on mine, and I forgot where I was. He always makes me forget.

“For what?”

“For choosing agyness.” I blush, afraid I’m presuming too much. “At the last Heavenly Seventy session.”

“Ah, the future chastity-agyness! The first one since chastity-magdalena, I do believe.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I pay attention, freida.” Darwin winks mischievously at me. He is so cute. We kiss again and my mind goes liquid.

“agyness is nice,” he says as he pulls me into his chest, his legs wrapped around mine. “I’ve had some great
Interactions with her. She’s smart. It’s almost like talking with a guy.”

“Don’t say that outside this cupboard,” I say, becoming serious. “If chastity-ruth hears you say that about agyness, she’ll be in trouble.”

“They’re hardly going to think she’s an aberrant. They sorted that problem out years ago.”

I freeze, but he doesn’t seem to notice, his lips tracing the veins in my skin.

“A what?” I ask, pushing him off me. “But she’s a girl. There isn’t such a thing as a female aberrant.”

“I guess not,” he agrees quickly. Too quickly. “Forget it.”

He starts kissing me again but I can’t concentrate, my brain swirling with thoughts about what this could mean. Images flash into my mind of isabel and me, lying together on my bed, our fingers intertwined as we talked and talked for hours. I’ve never felt the same connection with anyone else that I have with isabel, not even with Darwin. She has been the other half of me for the best part of sixteen years. What does that mean? Is there something unnatural about me? Could isabel sense it? Is that why she’s been avoiding me?

“No,” I say, pushing him off me. I need to know. “Wait. What did you mean by that?”

“Come on, freida,” he pleads. “Can we just forget it?”

“I can’t forget it.” I shuffle away from him until we are sitting parallel, our backs pressed against the cold mirrored wall. I turn my head to look at him. “Don’t you trust me?”

He hesitates. “Of course I do.” Indecision is etched all over his face. “But, I just—”

“Please tell me,” I interrupt. I need to know. “Pretty please?”

I’m rewarded with a reluctant smile. “If I tell you, do you promise that you won’t repeat it to anyone else?”

“I promise,” I lean over and whisper into his ear. I lick it with the very tip of my tongue and he shudders slightly. I know what he likes.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he groans, shaking his head as he reaches into his pocket to get his eFone, angling it toward me so I can see properly. On the screen appears a large rectangular-shaped hall, cast in gray concrete. There are dozens of huge wooden doors along each side, a wooden label on each one.

“What do they say?”

“They’re the names of the rooms.”

“But what do they
say
?”

“What the room is for.” He looks away.

“Like what?” I persist, staring at the squiggles of letters and words, wishing I could understand them.

He exhales loudly. “Well, this door is Taboo, this one is Reluctance, this one is Non-Consent. That one over there is Back Door, this one is Group. There are loads of them,” he says, the words rushing out.

“I understand,” I say, even though I don’t understand, not at all. As he fidgets with the keypad, the camera moves forward through the hall, more and more doors on each
side. The motion stops, a hand with scarlet-painted nails coming into view as it rests on the door.

“Whose hand is that?” I ask.

“Mine.”

“Sure it is. Which is why you have nail polish on. That’s a girl’s hand.”

“Well, it’s not
my
hand, obviously. But it’s my avatar’s hand. An avatar is sort of like my character in this game. I control her.” He tries to explain, sensing my confusion. “She’s my visual alter ego. Does that make sense?”

“But that’s a real hand, not a computer graphic,” I say, more baffled than ever.

“Well, yeah, the game is called Controlled concubines. Look, I’ll show you.”

He presses a few buttons and the camera pulls back, cutting to a different angle so that I can see the full scope of the hall. Standing at the door, with that same perfectly manicured hand resting on the handle, is a young concubine in a scarlet leotard, cut high on her slim thighs. Her dark hair is pulled away from her face in a ponytail and there are wires wrapped around her head, like tentacles.

“What are those wires for?”

“That’s what connects the concubine to my eFone. While she’s hooked up to the sensors, all of her movements are completely controlled by me.”

I squint at the screen. Her skin is tanned and smooth, as dark as mine, her hair the same lustrous brown, her vacant eyes tinged with yellow. The similarities between us are uncanny.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

I look away, afraid to agree in case it’s some sort of test of my modesty.

The concubine pushes the door open. All the walls of the room within are made of a quilted black pleather, a steel pole like a ballet barre bordering it. Hundreds of implements are hanging from the pole: whips, paddles, cuffs, and shackles. There are two other concubines there, both in red latex catsuits. They turn as the door opens, their faces as blank as that of Darwin’s concubine, gesturing at the newcomer to join in. One of them is brandishing an iron rod, wiggling her hips lewdly.

“Wrong room,” Darwin mutters as he makes the concubine leave, shutting the door behind her. She waits passively until he makes her walk toward a different door.

“This is the Sapphica room,” he tells me. The avatar strides into the room and walks up to the nearest available concubine, a black girl with a huge blond afro. He makes the avatar grab the other girl by the head, her red-painted nails digging into those yellow curls. She pulls her near, and their mouths are touching, their tongues are touching.
They’re kissing. There are two girls kissing
. The screen cuts out, Darwin cursing under his breath. “My battery must be dead.” He shoves the fone back into his pocket. I’m too shocked to speak and he pushes his dark curls off his forehead uncomfortably. “Some guys are into it.”

Are you into it? Is that why you showed this to me?

“Then why haven’t we been instructed in this? If it’s something we might have to do if we become concubines, we should have classes in this. Why haven’t I heard of it before?”

“Leave it, freida,” he snaps, and we both reel from the harshness of his tone. He’s never spoken to me like that before.

“Sorry.” He reaches his hand out to cover mine and my gut clenches at the touch of his skin. “I don’t want to upset you.”

“I won’t be upset.”

“It was years ago,” he says emphatically. “I wasn’t even born. It’s a waste of time even talking about it.”

We stare at each other in silence, waiting it out to see who will crack. After years of dealing with megan, I’m not surprised when he groans in defeat.

“Do you promise you won’t tell anyone?” he asks again.

“I swear, Darwin. You can trust me.”

“It was years ago, remember,” he begins, and I have to lean in closer to hear him, our faces nearly touching. His aftershave is making me woozy, something dissolving to liquid inside me. I nod at him to continue, just keep talking. If he starts kissing me again, I know that I’ll forget all about female aberrants.

“These two eves were best friends. The chastities thought they spent so much time together because they were friends, but it turned out to be more than that. They fell in love.”

“What?” I jerk up, hitting his nose with my forehead, and he chokes backs a howl of pain. “Sorry, I’m sorry,”
I jabber, ignoring the dull ache forming across my head. “I’m sorry.”

“Anyway . . .” he laughs it off, “they tried to run away together.”

“What?” I say in shock. “But how did they get out? The entrance to the trains runs out of the chastities’ quarters.”

“They didn’t get very far.” He stretches away from me, and I want to reach out and pull him close again. “They were caught,” he mumbles almost unintelligibly, “and punished.”

“How were they punished?”

“It’s not like they were innocent,” he says, kicking his foot off the mirrored ground beneath us. “They deserved to be punished . . . They had to be punished,” he says again, like he’s trying to persuade me. Or himself. “My dad said the Zone had to set an example.”

“So what happened?” I’m holding my breath, every instinct telling me I don’t want to know the answer.

“The Father was fair.”

I nod automatically. Of course He was fair. He’s always fair.

“He married them off to lower-ranked Inheritants whose wives had died unexpectedly in son-birth. But they wouldn’t obey the rules. One of their husbands caught them together, in his bed.” I gasp at the audacity. They must have been desperate. “It didn’t matter that it was two women,” Darwin continues, scratching roughly at his neck. “It was still adultery. So the adultery sentence still stood.”

“What’s the adultery sentence?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“Did they throw them on the pyre? Or did they send them Underground?” I can’t stop myself. I need to know.

“Not exactly,” he says simply, and I feel goosebumps break out across my skin.

“Tell me.”

“They . . . Look, freida, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Tell me.” I cup his chin in my hand and turn his face toward mine, staring at him steadily until he continues.

“First they tried to rehabilitate them again. ‘Straighten’ them out, force them to enjoy the love of a good man. Quite a few good men, if the stories are true.” I don’t move, and he hesitates again, clearly wishing he had never started this conversation. “When that didn’t work out, they were sent Underground for a few weeks. For the usual genetic testing, you know. To see if they could find the faulty wiring.”

“And after that?” He doesn’t answer. “Darwin. What happened to them after that?”

“And then . . .” he takes a deep breath, forcing the words out, “they sewed up their . . . er, their . . . you know, their
private parts
. And then they shot them. Two clean bullets right through the brain.”

The room swarms, our reflections looming from the mirrors and pressing in on me, stealing the oxygen from my lungs.

“Did your dad set that sentence?”

No answer.

“Did he?” I ask again as he looks at me helplessly.

“It’s standard for companions who commit adultery.”

I try to appear blasé, but I’m too stunned to make a good job of it.

“My dad was in a difficult position,” he says. “He had to . . . They weren’t even
trying
to control their unnatural urges, freida. My dad says that the whole Zone would fall apart if everyone did that. We all have to play our part in order to survive.” He reaches out to hold my hand. “They introduced Isolation for eves after that. Why do you think it is so strictly enforced?”

Not always, I think. Not when isabel was involved.

“Why haven’t we heard of this before?” I say. “Wouldn’t it have been on TV or on the Nature Channel?”

“Ah, the all-knowing Nature Channel,” he teases, but I don’t laugh. He sighs. “It’s censored, freida.”

“Do the chastities know?”

“Probably not. It was years ago and the Genetic Engineers isolated the Rainbow24 gene in women after that so it wouldn’t happen again.”

“Then why enforce Isolation?”

“To be safe, I guess. I reckon they’re afraid that if they mention the Sapphica idea at all, even just as a method to turn guys on, that the eves might get ideas.”

“But what about the concubines in this game? What if they ‘get ideas’?”

“That doesn’t matter.” He shrugs. “They don’t remember anything that happens while they’re hooked up to the
sensors. So it’s okay, you know? They don’t feel anything anyway.”

That’s all I’ve ever wanted. To switch off all these emotions. Not to have to feel so much. But not like that. Never like that.

The bell rings and we both flinch, startled by the interruption. I get to my feet, feeling older than I ever have before.

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” Darwin says, grabbing my hand to stop me from leaving. He lowers his voice. “It’s just, well, my dad would kill me. I only told you because I trust you. Promise me you’ll keep it a secret.”

“I promise,” I reassure him, warmth spreading through me. I can have secrets too.

And we walk out of the cupboard and into the classroom together, but this time he doesn’t let go of my hand.