Only Ever Yours (22 page)

Just another night, I try to tell myself. The same Messages playing as every Thursday that came before it. Except it’s not just another Thursday night. It’s the
last
Thursday. The last Thursday in this bed, in this School.

“jessie, please share that SleepSound with liz. They are quite strong the first time you take them.”

chastity-anne is whispering, but my ears perk up at the word “SleepSound,” like hearing your name mentioned across a noisy room. She’s patrolling the dorms tonight, handing out meds like sweeties, making sure that everyone will look rested for our final meeting with the Inheritants tomorrow.

I took the last three capsules christy gave me earlier, but they must have been defective (
stupid
Euro-Zone and their
stupid faulty drugs
) because I’ve been lying on my bed
for hours, staring at myself in my ceiling, incubated in that pause between waking and dreams. A shadow floats past my room.

“chastity-anne.”

She stops abruptly, walking back toward me, her finger held up to her mouth to hush me. She points back into my cubicle and we go in together, the room seeming too small for both of us.

“I can’t sleep,” I say, scratching my arms brutally.

“I can see that.”

“I need more SleepSound.”

“I prescribed you a capsule earlier. I saw you taking it.”

I forgot.
One, two, three, four
.

“It must have been defective because I haven’t slept at all,” I say, lifting my chin defiantly.

“It wasn’t defective.” She turns to leave, and without thinking I grab her hand to stop her and she gasps.

“I’m sorry.” I’m too tired to be shocked. “But I need more SleepSound.”

“I’ve prescribed you the maximum dose. I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she says, rubbing her skin as if I had poured acid on it.

“This is an emergency!” I say. She stops in the doorway and looks me up and down. I shift from one foot to the other, pulling at my black silk teddy.

“You look very thin. I wonder if I should lower your dosage of kcal blockers.”

“No!”

I can’t lose my supply of blockers. Without them I’d have nothing to trade with christy.

“My weight is fine. You’ve seen the reports,” I say, thinking of the two liters of water I drank before my weigh-in.

“True,” she replies, her forehead wrinkling in confusion. “Maybe it’s the light in here.”

Then she’s gone, taking the precious meds with her. She is doing this on purpose. She and chastity-ruth want me to look terrible so I ruin my chances with Darwin. I want to run after her and tackle her to the ground. I want to pound her bald head on the floor until I hear it crack open beneath my fingers, seeing her blood smear on the black-and-white tiles.

I sit on my hands and watch myself in the mirrored walls, at this face that is so familiar yet which never feels as if it belongs to me. It is the property of the School, of the Zone, of my future Husband. This face is my worth, my value. This face is all that I have to offer and it isn’t even mine.

I watch myself for hours. I watch myself until this face becomes meaningless.

At breakfast, everyone is gleaming. Teeth have been freshly whitened, skin steamed, hair styled. There is a conspicuous lack of clothing, even on the girls who want to be companions. Everyone is taking this final opportunity to show off their assets.

“I can’t believe you went for another bikini wax with chastity-hope. That’s every day this week!” daria says to gisele.

“I had to,” gisele answers, plumping her breasts up in a gold sequined minidress. “I don’t want there to be a scrap of hair anywhere.”

The dining room is oddly quiet. You can hear the metallic scrape of utensils against china as we ladle up cereal and dribble it back into the bowl.

It’s weird to think of the people that exist outside of this room. All the people in the Euro-Zone who don’t have sons as Inheritants this year are probably oblivious. They are going about their business, unaware that the biggest moment in our lives is approaching like a speeding train. Unaware that I’m standing on the train tracks, my foot trapped in a steel tie. And what about the girls in the other years, contentedly eating their breakfast? Are they thinking of us? Wishing us luck?

There is a sheen of sweat on cara’s brow and she dabs at it nervously with a napkin, looking around in case anyone else has noticed. And there is isabel, alone, sucking her protein shake through a straw. Her hair is falling loosely around her shoulders, a nude chiffon T-shirt dress hugging her slight frame. chastity-ruth watches her carefully from her perch, cooing, “I hope your breakfast is all right, isabel?” isabel merely nods, her eyes dropping to her lap, picking at loose fibers in her dress.

She is shining with indifference. I want her drugs the same way I used to want her beauty.

At least my dress is beautiful. It is intricate gold lace, overlaid with gold beading, and I chose rectangular earrings made of gold-plated glass and a wafer-thin gold cuff, cut so finely that it resembles snowflakes. It scratches at my skin like itchy wool, searching for someone who is more worthy of its perfection.

I am tired. I am so very tired.

The bell rings. The younger eves leave, their eyes wide with envy. I wish I could offer to trade places, buy myself more time.

I don’t have enough time.

“Go to class,” chastity-ruth says. She signals to isabel that she may stay where she is, and isabel flops in her chair, like a marionette that has had its strings cut. When did she become separate to us? I know if I follow the trail into the past that I will find the signs, the markers that led her away from me. But I cannot summon the energy. I’m so full to the brim with my own fear that I don’t have any room for anyone else.

I pass christy on the way out and we swap our treasures seamlessly, the routine perfected by now. I finger the precious meds.
Just a quarter. Just to relax me
.

I can’t. I need to be in control. This is my last chance. I insert the tablet into the locket around my neck.

“This is it.” megan spins on her mary-jane shoes once she’s arrived at the door to the classroom. The others
jostle to get as near to the front as possible, but I hang back, hiding behind agyness. I want to be the last to talk with Darwin so that the room will be relatively empty for our Interaction. I can pretend that we have some privacy.

“This is it,” she says again. “This is the last time we’re going to see them before the Ceremony on Monday. Are you ready?”

A few of the girls murmur, “Yes,” nervously peeking through the narrow glass pane in the door.

“I said, are you ready?” She places her hands on her hips. In her tight cream sweater and pink gingham miniskirt, she resembles a demented cheerleader from the time before us.

“Yes.” I echo my sisters. If only I could throw them all on the pyre. I would watch happily as they turned to ashes until I was the only one left. Surely then I would be good enough.

She opens the door to the classroom, progressing from desk to desk in the circular room, a simpering smile on her face. As she leaves the classroom she brushes against me as I wait for my first Interaction to begin. I raise my arm to my nose, sniffing the smear of vanilla sweetness she has left on my skin. One by one the others finish too and join her outside the classroom, loudly comparing notes on how they think this final test went.
I’m so tired
.

“Girls!” chastity-magdalena storms out to confront them. “Have some respect for the other eves still completing their Interactions. Go to the next class immediately.
chastity-ruth is expecting you for the final session of Heavenly Seventy.”

At the mention of chastity-ruth they scurry away, and chastity-magdalena returns to her seat at the front of the classroom.

The bell rings and I sit at Socrates’s desk. He fishes his eFone from his pocket and I can only watch as he squints at the screen, canned laughter from some Americas sitcom spitting out of it. chastity-magdalena weaves around the desks, smiling at Darwin as she passes, much to the chagrin of alessandra, sitting across from him, her elbows clenched together to boost her cleavage.

I continue on. George and Sigmund and Albert tell me how excited they are about the Ceremony, and can I believe it’s only three days away now? I nod and smile, but tiredness has swallowed my voice. My body sways, sleep calling me for a split second before I jerk upright again.

I am so aware of his presence. Every time he moves, I move too, as if he has a leash around my throat. Does he feel it too? He must. This kind of physical attraction has to be rare. I don’t feel it with any of the other Inheritants. How could he feel it with anyone besides me?

Because they’re prettier than me. Because they’re better than me.

Fewer and fewer people are in the room, each Inheritant leaving after their Interaction with me. With each stilted conversation, I realize how little I know the others. I have invested everything in Darwin. He is my only hope. I am getting nearer to him now, nearer and nearer.

“That’s a good point,” I hear him say to agyness.

I want to think of a good point as well, a way to explain why I told megan about the aberrants, but my mind is filled with cotton wool. I lick my lips, trying to excavate moisture from somewhere, but my mouth is bleached dry.

The bell rings. Albert and I are equally relieved that our stilted Interaction has come to a close.

“Good luck on Monday,” he says as he marches out the door, agyness gliding behind him until Darwin, chastity-magdalena and I are the only ones left. Up close he looks tired too, dark circles ringing his clear blue eyes. He hasn’t shaved, his usual stubble now the beginnings of a scruffy beard. His injured hand is still in a cast, resting heavily on the table.

“You cut your hair.”

“Over a week ago.” He shrugs, leaning back in his chair and stretching out, his body forming a hard, straight line.

I preferred it longer, when I could run my fingers through the curls. It’s too neat now, the hairs almost standing vertically on his head. It’s at odds with his disheveled appearance, the wrinkled navy-and-blue striped sweater and jeans.

“Darwin, we have to talk about what happened.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he says, slouching so low in his seat I’m afraid he’s going to slip under the desk and make a run for it.

“Are you sure? Because you seem distant.”

“Distant?” He imbues the word with as much ridicule as possible. “How do I seem
distant
?”

Of course as soon as he asks me, I can’t think of a good example.

“I don’t know,” I say, struggling to explain myself. “You seem a little cold.”

“Cold?” He laughs. “Do you want me to ask them to turn up the heating?”

“Of course not. It’s just, it’s just that you picked megan for—”

“I didn’t realize I had to explain my decisions to you,” he cuts across me. “I thought it was my choice.”

“Of course it is! I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Good.”

But I can’t leave it like this. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” My voice nearly breaks with the weight of trying to make him understand.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, kicking his heel off the leg of his chair.

“Don’t say it doesn’t matter. It does.” My voice is rising. The room takes on a menacing aspect, the lights dimming, shadows furling around us. A sudden coldness comes over me, sucking at me. “I should never have broken my promise to you.”

“I shouldn’t have told you in the first place,” he says in a robotic voice. “That’s not for the eves to know.”

“I don’t know why I told her. I just . . .”

“You just wanted megan to be your friend again.”

When he says it like that, it sounds so stupid.

“I’m sorry, Darwin, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know I messed up, but I need you to forgive me. Can’t we just go back to the way we were before?”

There’s a long pause.

“Look, freida.” He avoids eye contact with me as he pulls the ends of his sweater over his hands. “It’s not that I didn’t care about you. I did. I mean, I do. Of course I care about you.” His voice is hesitant. “But I’ve been fooling myself, thinking that I could choose a companion on the basis of how much I ‘liked’ her.” He kicks the chair with a resounding whack.

“I know I messed up,” I repeat myself. I reach across the table to touch his bandaged hand but he pulls away, and starts drumming them against this legs. “But can’t we move past it? Why does it have to change things?”

“I’ve been talking with my dad.”

“What’s it got to do with him?”

“He’s making me understand.” He frowns at me.

“Understand what? That you’re obsessed with getting his approval? ‘My dad won’t let me have friends. My dad is so mean to me.
My dad
 . . .
My dad
 . . .
My dad
 . . .’?”

The rational freida is inside my brain screaming, telling me to play this better, to play by the rules, to be
nice
. But I can’t stop the words pouring out of me, as every hope I ever had seems to be going up in flames, Darwin indifferently watching them burn.

“Have some respect,” he says, and I shut up immediately, wilting under his critical gaze. He never looked at me like that before.

“He’s an important man, freida. And he knows what he is talking about.” He says the lines as if he has learned them by heart. “I need someone who will
fit
as a Judge’s wife. Someone with attention to detail. Someone who is controlled.”

“I can be controlled!” I sound hysterical, desperation unscrewing the hinges on my fear.

“Someone who can be trusted to be discreet.” He raises an eyebrow at me.

“I said I was sorry. How many more times do you want me to say it? Please. Please, Darwin. I’ll do anything.”

“Is everything all right here?”

chastity-ruth is standing there and she is laughing at my stupidity. She wants to see me fail.

“Leave me alone!”

“freida!” Darwin rebukes me, and when I blink I see it’s not chastity-ruth; it’s a worried chastity-magdalena.