Only Ever Yours (21 page)

It’s just another year to her, just another Ceremony.

“We don’t have time for the full Heavenly Seventy today, I’m afraid. We have rather run over schedule.” She’s getting a bit flustered. “Will twenty minutes suffice?”

“How much more time do we need?” a male voice yells out.

“Quite.” The chastity’s skin is blotchy with embarrassment. “Let’s begin. Darwin. Please select your eve for today’s task.”

My heart starts thumping against my ribcage, my mouth drying up. The room expands and contracts like an accordion, voices veering wildly between whispers and shrieks and back again.

“megan,” he says, his voice so familiar yet so distant, and she gets to her feet gracefully.

“Sorry, freida,” she says to me, her hand skimming my shoulder. “Can I get past you?”

I turn my legs to the side and cara does the same to allow her through. Darwin takes her hand, leading her toward the cupboard.

“What happened your arm?” I hear her coo.

“It was my own fault,” he says, and the door closes behind them.

I focus on my breathing, trying to ignore the others staring at me while the other Inheritants pick their now familiar partners:
miranda . . . rosie . . . karlie . . .
until there is only one Inheritant left. Socrates stomps down the steps to the front of the classroom, turning to face us, scratching his ginger hair.

“Well . . .” he begins, and heidi, his usual choice, rises from her seat, “I choose freida.”

He disappears around the back of the bleacher seating, and heidi hunches back down, playing with her bangs self-consciously.

“Ow!”

“I’m so sorry,” heidi says as I trip over her extended leg on my way down the steps. “It was an accident.”

The door of the cupboard closes behind us. It’s identical to Darwin’s cupboard, made out of mirrors, but the images reflected back to me are all wrong—Socrates’s skinny legs, his flushed skin, his hair standing on end. I hold a hand up in greeting, and he pounces, mashing his
face against mine. It’s so sudden that my mouth is still clenched shut and he has to shove his tongue through my tight lips, spittle trickling onto my chin.

I pull away, resisting the urge to wipe my mouth. He kisses my neck, moving his way down to the top of my dress. I am going to be sick. I’m about to tell him to stop when he wraps his hand around my jaw, pushing my head hard against the glass wall.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. “Your body is amazing.”

I take the hit, feeling it soar through my bloodstream.

“Really? Do you really think so?”

“Yeah, sure.” He grips my shoulder with his left hand, pinning me against the wall, and starts kicking off his sneakers, untying his belt one-handed. His jeans fall around his ankles.

“Wait,” I say. “
Wait
.”

He kisses me again, filling my mouth with his stale breath. His hand snakes down in between us and he tears at my dress, pulling it and my bra down.

“No, please.” I’m pleading now. “I don’t know if . . .”

He doesn’t seem to hear me, pushing himself nearer and nearer to the center of me.

“No can mean yes,” he murmurs against my skin. “You’ll like it.”

“Don’t.” I stumble, digging into his foot with a needle-sharp heel, and he yelps in pain. “Sorry, I’m so sorry.” I babble, wrenching my dress back on.

Socrates is hopping up and down, his jeans gathered around his ankles fettering him as he bends down to hold
his wounded foot in his hands. I stand as still as possible, playing dead.
Please don’t
. The possibility of what could happen shatters inside me.
Please don’t do this to me
.

“I’m sorry.” I hold out my hand to stop him from coming closer. “I don’t want to . . .” I quickly change tactics as he looks insulted. “I mean, of course I want to, but I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t move closer, thankfully, turning his back on me to fix his clothes in the mirror. He looks at me again, rolling his eyes in disgust. He doesn’t like me now. How did megan do it that first week? She didn’t have sex with Albert, but he still likes her; I’ve seen them chatting since. Why do I always get it wrong?

“What’s the difference between me and Darwin?” he asks furiously, trying to smooth his messed-up hair.

“I didn’t have sex with Darwin either.”

“That’s not what I heard,” he snorts, blood rushing back into his pale face with fury.

“What do you mean by—”

“Anyway—” he cuts across me and I swallow my question and the implications of what he said—“you’re wasting your time there, little eve.” He looks me up and down, lingering on every inch of my body. “You’re not what the Judge will want for Darwin.”

He sits on the ground, immediately engrossed in the eFone he has fished out of his pocket, and I become invisible to him. My feet are rooted to the floor. I lean against the wall, watching the opposite mirror as my thighs slowly ooze out beneath my dress, splayed against the glass behind
me, getting fatter and fatter and fatter. I’m disgusting. I’m not what the Judge will want for Darwin. I’m not what anyone would want.

The bell rings and the trapdoor springs open. He scrambles to his feet but I can’t move. Maybe if I just hide in here no one will ever know.

“Darwin, dude, why did you choose that bitch every week?” I hear Socrates say. “Frigid freida.”

The Inheritants burst into raucous laughter, some of the eves tittering too.

It’s my own fault
.

Darwin’s words echo in my ears, like a mantra.

I wait until I’ve heard the last of the stilettos clacking on the tiled floor outside before I fall out of the cupboard. Impossibly, the room is the same, the tiered rows of seats, the ten upright wooden cupboards surrounding them like a moat. I take off my heels and run as fast as I can. My feet skim across the chessboard, the chipped yellow paint on my toenails a fluorescent blur.

At my cubicle, I reach for the handle of the door tucked into the top of the door frame, trying to tug it down to close off the outside, but it’s stuck, rusted from lack of use. I’m sick of being in this School. I’m sick of being in this body. I’m sick of being me. Every toxic feeling I’ve ever had seems to explode inside me, like a million different voices screaming to be heard at once, and I throw myself onto the bed, biting the pillow to muzzle them.
Crying is ugly
, the chastities yelled when as children we fell and
scraped our knees.
Crying makes your skin blotchy. No man wants a girl who cries. You must be happy and lighthearted at all times
. So I don’t cry. I am torn apart with not crying.

Socrates is accustomed to heidi. She probably had sex with him within the first five seconds of meeting him. heidi is just a stupid slut.
At least I’m not a slut
.

I dig my ePad out from underneath my pillow.

“Hello?” she answers in a bored tone.

“Hi, megan.”

“freeds?” She peers at the screen. “Is that you? I can’t see anything.”

“The camera is broken.” I lie. I don’t want her to see my face, mottled from the effort of not crying.

“I hope they can afford to fix that.” She’s reapplied her makeup by hand, her eyes dark with kohl, her full lips tinted pale pink for a change. “It’s not like you can depend on isabel to get you a new one this time.”

“Did you do anything with him?”

“With who? Oh. Darwin is it? Let’s just say we didn’t do much talking.” She touches her throat delicately. “I guess things didn’t go well with Socrates. I heard what he said about you as he left.”

“And I heard you laughing.”

“I would never do that,” she cries. “We’re best friends.”

“Are we?”

“Tell me what happened,” she persists, ignoring my question.

“I just didn’t—”

“Don’t you like him?”

“No,” I say bluntly, forgetting myself.

“So, you think you’re too good for him?”

“No . . . I . . .” I stutter. “
Darwin
is mine.”

“He was supposed to be mine in the first place.”

“The rankings are meaningless now.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. We both know the rankings matter. They have been our benchmark the whole way through School. It’s how we measure ourselves, how we know how much we’re worth. They matter.

“I couldn’t help it if he kept choosing me!” I say, sitting up and shifting the ePad onto my lap.

“And I couldn’t help it that he chose me today.”

“He only asked you to make me jealous,” I mutter under my breath.

“Oh, freida. How presumptuous.”

“He told me he doesn’t even like you.” I want her to feel as bad as I do.

“Who cares? You think I care? All that matters is that he
chooses
me. All that matters is that I win.”

“What about love?” I say, starting to bite my nails, peeling off neon polish with my teeth. “Darwin will want someone who is in love with him.”

“I thought you said you’re not in love with him?”

“I’m not.” Love makes you weak. I cannot afford to be weak. “But I . . .”

“You what?” she asks, staring into the camera, handing me the rope to hang myself.

“I thought you said we were best friends,” I finish uncertainly. “I believed you.”

“No, you didn’t,” she says with a hard little laugh. “You think I don’t know how you feel about me? What you’ve said about me behind my back? You’re as bad as
she
is, with all her fancy things that no one else could have. She thought she was so special. She was too good for everyone else. Never wanted to hang out with anyone else but
you
, of all people.” She spits out the words, coated in vitriol. “And now look at her. Perfect isabel, with her perfect blond hair and her perfect rankings. Just another casualty, another one who couldn’t hack the pace.” She curls her lip in disgust at me. “And you’re as bad. isabel got sick of you, and now Darwin has too. Maybe isabel and you can become chastities. You can live here, together forever, never needing anyone else to play with, never letting anyone else join in.”

She catches sight of herself in her video-feed, her face contorted with fury. Wiping spittle from the sides of her mouth, she reaches behind her to grab her lip gloss and reapplies it. “And don’t even start thinking about what a bitch I am,” she says. Her eyes are steady, the heat receding from her skin. “This is not my fault. I’m just doing what we have been trained to do. This is who we are, freida. This is who we were designed to be.”

“There is a world outside of the School, you know.” Darwin had jokingly chided me for my lack of curiosity. He was right, of course, but sometimes it feels impossible that anything exists outside of this glass dome. It feels as if this is all that exists or ever will exist.

We eves in final year were designed on the same day. We were hatched together and we have lived as we will die, our bones touching. Yet it has only been these last few days that I have felt like I am suffocating with our togetherness. All I want is to be alone, to stay in my room and pretend time is standing still, but I can’t. I can’t escape from it. When daria passes me a hula-hoop during PE I wonder if she is thinking “frigid freida.” When megan smiles in my direction, paranoia gnaws at me that somehow she has been in contact with Darwin, that he has promised to make
her
his companion.

And she will have all the power. And I will be alone.

I am losing. I am losing him. I have lost him already. What happened during his last visit is a tapeworm, eating all my good memories, leaving me consumed by doubt.

The tapes play on. Socrates’s voice when he said I wasn’t good enough for Darwin. The moment where I told megan his secrets, selling him out for popularity. I imagine myself spinning out of my body and melting into his so I can see the scene as he might have. Through his eyes, megan gleams with beauty and I am a shadow, whispering wickedness.

Although I doubt any of the others can be as frightened as I am, there are signs of frayed nerves. Tension is crackling between us.

“Can I have that?” freja asks at lunchtime, pointing at the untouched bowl of ice-kream.

“Why didn’t you get your own?” gisele snaps, pulling her tray away from freja.

“I don’t eat dessert,” freja replies proudly, squeezing her shoulder blades toward her chest and watching in the mirror as her collarbones pop out. “Hey!” she protests as gisele throws the bowl in the garbage.

“It would be wasted on you,” gisele mutters. “All you’re going to do is spit it out anyway.”

Every morning we are awoken by a new announcement blasting through the dormitories.

Nine days until the Ceremony.

Eight days until the Ceremony.

I don’t have enough time
.

We are woken by the lamps. We sit together at mealtimes. We pretend to listen in class. We look the same, as if we are
going through the motions of our usual lives, but if you peer closely you can see the signs. There are no requests to VideoChat. MyFace has gone silent. cara ate an entire slice of Death by Chocco at lunch the other day and megan didn’t even comment. Her eyes slipped over the gooey mess, clouded by visions of her future glory. All charades of friendship or alliances are forgotten. We have battened down the hatches as we wait out the storm, waiting to see who will survive.

Six days until the Ceremony.

I cannot breathe with the fear.
I’ve lost him. I’ve lost him
. I need to make it better. I need to make him forgive me. chastity-bernadette said they would be here on Friday. Three days. I have to wait another three days until I can see him and make him understand. He has to understand. I have to
make
him understand.

Every morning I break open the silver-handled drawers of my dressing table, counting my stock before distilling my meds into the silver locket. I can’t stop touching it. The heavy metal between my fingers comforts me. I like knowing the option is there, if I need it. I don’t take too much. I’m not messy. Some of the other eves might look at me a little sharply when a faint slur coats my words at times, but no one says anything. No one wants to get involved.

“Are you awake?”

chastity-magdalena’s voice fills my cubicle, interrupting an empty daydream, my mind wiped clear by the quarter I dropped an hour ago.

“Don’t you ever knock?” I mumble into my pillow.

“Get up.” She sits beside me, grabbing my shoulders and yanks me up to sitting. “What have you taken?”

“Nothing,” I lie, licking my lips groggily.

She starts rummaging through my bedside locker and underneath my bed. I fall back onto the mattress, but she grabs me again, rolling me off the bed, ignoring my moan as I hit the ground. She shakes out my blanket and throws the pillow at me before searching the rest of my cubicle. She stops in front of my wardrobe.

“There’s no point,” I say. “The scanner will reject your body chemistry.”

A guttural sigh emerges from the depths of her stomach. I crawl back onto the bed, pulling the blanket around me, wanting the softness to devour me.

“You have to stop this, freida.” I wish she would go. Her voice is eating away at my blanket of drowsiness. “I want to help you.”

“Do you?” I unroll a corner of the blanket to peek my head out.

“Of course.”

“Can you sneak Darwin in? I need to talk to him. If I could talk to him, then everything will be okay.”

“I can’t do that,” she says, dashing my last hope, as I guess I knew she would.

“Then go away.” I pull the blanket over my head again.

“freida, it’s normal for a teenage girl to form these attachments, project feelings onto an Inheritant they don’t really know.”

I fight with the blanket to sit upright, my blood on fire.

“How dare you? You don’t know anything!” She stands very still, my screams bouncing off her.

“I know Darwin better than anyone. I know everything about him.” I want her to accept it, to understand that Darwin and I are meant to be together. “I know all this stuff about him, about his parents. Stuff that he hasn’t told anyone else. He trusts me.”

“What are his parents’ names?” she asks, arms crossed against her chest.

“I . . . I . . . That doesn’t mean anything. I know the important stuff. I know . . .” I trail off. What was I saying? What was I talking about again? “If only I could talk to him . . .” I say again. “If I could talk to him, it would all be fine. Do you think that you could sneak him in? Do you think that you could do that for me?”

“I just told you I can’t do that,” she answers. “Two minutes ago.”

I can’t remember. My mind has holes in it.

“It’s not us, you know. We’re fine. We get along really well. You should see us together. We get along so well. He thinks I’m beautiful.” She looks doubtful. “What, you don’t think that someone could think that I’m beautiful? Because it’s true. We are great together. If you had seen us together . . . Could you maybe . . . If we could just get away . . . his dad . . . Could you maybe sneak him . . .” I keep trailing off, forgetting what I wanted to say in midsentence.

“This isn’t the first time someone has been disappointed with how the Interactions went,” she says, so quietly I almost don’t hear her.

“Oh, what? Like you?” I laugh harshly. “Am I supposed to care about what happened to some chastity a hundred years ago?”

“Darwin is a nice boy, but—”

“But what?” I interrupt, daring her to say it. She thinks he is too good for me. She doesn’t think he would ever choose someone like me to be his companion.

“We are who we are. Sometimes, no matter how much someone might want to, they can’t escape that.” She has such a look of pity on her face that I feel ashamed to see it. How have I been reduced so low that a chastity feels sorry for me?

“Get away from me.”

“It’s because I care about you—”

“Stop caring. You’re not my mother. You’re no one’s mother.” I bury myself under the covers, my breath coming hot and fast. The sheets are sucking in like a plastic bag over my face and I come up for air, gasping. isabel has taken the chastity’s place, standing by the door in a shapeless gray sweater over leggings.

“What do you want?” I bark at her, catching a glimpse of myself in the wall. My hair is matted, teeth bared in a snarl. I hug a pillow lengthways along my body, hiding my ugliness behind it.

“Are you here to talk to me as well?” I shout from behind my shield. “Are you here to warn me too?”

“What would be the point?” she says. “What’s the point of any of this?”