Perfect Ruin

Page 17

Amy’s presence, perplexing as it is, adds to my relief. She wouldn’t be here if she thought Judas had murdered her sister.
“You should leave,” Judas says. “Now.”
And here comes the moment of decision, because I believe him. I believe that something permanent will change if I don’t turn for those trees and return to my apartment and try to study to the sound of Alice’s shoes. I don’t know what will happen if I stay, and I don’t know why I do.
When I don’t take a step, he growls. Muscles move in his throat.
His eyes look better, not so swollen. His hands are no longer bleeding.
“Why isn’t anyone looking for you?” I say. “How did you escape?”
He folds his arms, laughs in tandem with a breeze that comes through the leaves, the woods shaking around us like paper bells.
“Because no one can be smarter than a patrolman?” he says. “No one can be smarter than your father?”
This is meant to offend me, but it doesn’t. I have seen my father concede to utter defeat in the hospital room. I’ve heard him choke on sobs and whisper angry things to the god of the sky when he thought I was asleep at Lex’s bedside. I know that those uniforms are worn by men—only men.
“They are looking for me,” he says. “The king probably doesn’t want to announce that he was foolish enough to let a prisoner escape. Wouldn’t want people to think he’s lost control.”
“The woods is the first place they’d look,” I say.
“There’s plenty of evidence elsewhere,” he says. “And as I said, I have a spy.”
“A little girl,” I challenge. “And her parents must be looking for her.”
His next laugh comes sadder. Something stirs in the cavern and we turn our heads.
Amy Leander is small as she crawls out into the starlight and shadows. She’s wearing the red sweater now, and it falls halfway to her knees as she stands, her eyes trained warily on me.
“Your father’s a patrolman,” she says, the words something between an accusation and an observation. “Is that why you keep following me?”
“No,” I say. “Is that why you ran away from me? You thought I’d turn you in for hanging up those essays?”
She stares at me a moment longer, then looks to Judas, who tells her, “Those were a bad idea. I told you they draw too much attention.” He nods to me in indication.
“My father doesn’t know I’m here,” I say. “I’m not planning to tell him.”
“What about your friend?” Amy asks. “The one with the curls.”
“Keeps secrets better than anyone else I know,” I assure.
Amy is wary; she stares at me with her dead sister’s eyes. There’s no glitter this time. It’s hard to reconcile that this girl, who can’t be older than eleven, belongs to a jumper group, that a bag from the pharmacy arrives at her front door and that she had the gall to cross the train tracks and peer over the edge.
The feeling that overtakes me as I stare back at her, I realize, is envy.
But there’s curiosity, too. She looks unscathed, but the edge always leaves its mark on those who dare to face it. She must have demons, too. She must recoil from society in agony on bad days.
“You know my brother, don’t you?” I say. “Alexander Stockhour. Lex. He’s in your group.”
Her gaze shoots to the ground. “Has he said anything about me?” she mumbles.
Only that I should stay away.
Judas huffs impatiently. “You still haven’t told us what you’re doing here.”
“I can go wherever I want,” I fire back, surprised when the words come out so steadily.
“You were looking for me,” he says.
“I—” I hesitate, because I can’t come up with a lie fast enough. It’s true, I was looking for him. I should be safe at home doing my assignments and preparing for bed, but instead I’m in the woods because—why? I’m looking for—what?
More. The answer is as confusing and as simple as that. I’m looking for more than what I know.
“I wanted to see if you were okay,” I say. “That’s standard after saving someone from imprisonment, I think.”
“I’m fantastic,” he says. “You’re free to leave now.”
“Judas,” Amy says quietly. His face softens for her. “She isn’t going to tell anyone. She would have by now.”
“I can bring food, if you like,” I say. “My mother always makes too much. She still cooks like there are four of us at home, but really it’s just me.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Will you be here?” I say. “Tomorrow night? If you’re not, I can just leave it here for you.”
“Maybe,” is all he says, before he turns and begins pacing away.
Amy stands between us, gnawing her lip, as if deciding which of us should get her attention.
“Your parents must be worried,” I tell her. “I’ll walk you home.”
“I told you, they won’t know I’m missing,” she says.
I open my mouth to tell her that she’s wrong, of course they’ll notice; how could parents who’ve lost one child not notice the absence of another? But then I remember my own apartment, my father who likely won’t be home before midnight, if at all, and my mother coasting in the haze of her headache elixirs.
“We can just ride the train for a while first,” I say. “Until we both get tired. That’s what I do when I’m not ready to go straight home.”
She’s considering it. She runs her betrothal band back and forth along its chain, her mouth twisting one way and then the other.
Judas calls her from somewhere in the shadows and she turns her head.
He calls again, and she begins moving toward him.
“You can bring food tomorrow, if you want,” she tells me, and then she breaks into a run and disappears into the darkness, after the boy accused of murdering her sister.
My father returns home long after I should be asleep. I’ve been lying in the dark, listening to the train and then the silence it leaves behind. It has gone by three times and I’m still awake.
I hear him pull out a chair, pour water for his tea. He moves down the hall, past my bedroom, and looks in on my mother. Soft words are spoken; the door closes again.
They were once wildly in love, my mother and father. Now they’re just sort of together. Glued to each other by Lex and me and the blood in their rings.
The kettle whistles and then the sound dies away. The quiet becomes too thick; even Lex has stopped pacing in his office.
I slip out of bed and ruffle my hair with my fingers to make it seem as though I’ve been sleeping; my father will worry only if he knows I’ve been awake. Or at least, he used to worry about me. Before Lex’s incident. Back when he still bothered to notice he had a daughter.
“Dad?” I say, stepping into the light of the kitchen.
He’s got a stack of papers on the table, and he turns it over, hiding the words from me. “You’re up late, heart,” he says. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I heard you coming in,” I say, wringing the hem of my flannel nightshirt.
“I didn’t mean to be loud about it,” he says.
“No,” I say, taking the seat across from his. “I’m glad. I like knowing that you’re home. It makes me feel better.”
“Do you feel unsafe when I’m gone?” he asks. “This building is safe; you know that, don’t you?”
I nod. “It’s just that I worry for you,” I say. “When you’re home, I know you’re okay. That’s all.”
He gives me a tired smile, reaches over the table and pats my hand. “Since you’re awake, would you like some tea?” he says. “There’s enough for two.”
I shake my head. “Dad? What’s going to happen to Jud—to the murderer?”
“What will happen?” my father says, shuffling his papers without turning them over. “That’ll be up to the jury. I don’t believe they’ve begun the selection process yet.”
“Why haven’t they?” I say. “Murder’s a serious charge.”
“I’m not involved with the politics of it,” he says. “The king makes all of those decisions.”
He isn’t meeting my eyes now. He gulps his tea.
“Have you met him?” I press.
“The king?”
“The murderer. Of course you’ve met the king.”
“I’ve seen him in the holding cell. I pass it when I’m turning in my reports each morning.”
“So you saw him today?” I ask.
“I suppose so, yes.”
He’s lying. He’s lying to me.
Maybe I’m lying, too, by keeping what I know from him. It doesn’t make me feel any less betrayed.
“Do you think he’s capable of murder?” I say. “I mean, a student my age?”
He clears his throat. “I’ve got a lot of work to contend with before I have any hope of sleeping tonight. And you have academy in the morning,” he says. “We can talk about this later. You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I murmur.
I understand. Later will never come.
Ms. Harlan taps her pen against her clipboard and tries to smile at me.
I concentrate on not fidgeting.
She asks me about classes and about my betrothed. She notes my reactions and makes direct eye contact when she isn’t writing.
And then, when the lunch period is nearly over, she asks about my family. She wants to know if things have changed since the incident, if any of us have taken medication to cope. Something about the way she asks leads me to believe she already knows the answers and there’s no sense lying.
“We were all medicated at first,” I say. “But it interfered with my father’s work. He has to be alert when he’s called upon. And my parents didn’t like how drowsy the elixirs made me, so I stopped taking them.”
That isn’t the whole truth. I had begun pouring my elixirs down the sink before they took me off them. I didn’t like the heaviness of my limbs, the blackness of my dreams. I didn’t like how sterile they made the world around me seem; I couldn’t think beyond what was in front of me, couldn’t fathom that there was a ground below this floating city, couldn’t wonder at the shapes in the clouds.
The only thing I liked about that awful time was going to the top floor of the hospital. Sometimes I wouldn’t even visit my brother. I would just take the stairs up to the cafeteria on the top floor. That hospital is the second tallest building on Internment, and the cafeteria is made of windows. On an overcast day there’s nothing to see but whiteness. Clouds turning and parting, revealing more clouds. It mesmerized me.