Perfect Ruin

Page 6

“I’m sure they do.”
Lex says something about my teeth rotting out of my head and how the only way to stop me from crying as a baby was to give me sugar water, and the conversation moves into the comfort of trivial things. But in the window, among the clouds, I see the reflection of the girl in the blue tie. I can’t shake the idea that she looks familiar, even though I can’t remember ever seeing her in the city.
The train stops and Alice and I guide Lex onto the platform, keeping him out of the way of passengers entering and exiting. I feel a tug at the back of my shirt, and when I turn around, the girl in the blue tie is holding a silver star earring in her palm. “You dropped this,” she says. Her eyelids are smeared with pink glitter, and it isn’t until after she has walked away that I realize why she looks so familiar. She’s a younger version of the murdered girl. They could be sisters. And they probably are.
The jumper group is held behind a closed door in a recreational room of the courthouse that used to be a holding cell for criminals decades ago. Even spouses, siblings, and parents aren’t allowed inside.
Alice straightens the collar of Lex’s shirt and kisses him. “Handsome,” she accuses. “I’ll be right outside when it’s time to go home.”
“I’ll be waiting, gorgeous,” he says.
“Gorgeous,” she says, exhaling a little laugh. “For all you know, I’ve colored my face green.”
“Then you’d be gorgeous and green,” he says.
She does her best not to show it, but it’s hard for her to relinquish her husband into the care of a fellow jumper, who ushers him to the circle of chairs. They’ve always shared everything, and this is something he never talks about. There’s a camaraderie among these group members that never leaves the room.
The girl in the blue tie slips past us into the room and finds a seat. She looks so small and out of place there among the others. Most of the jumpers are old enough to have grown cynical about our little world, discontent. I’ve never heard of a child jumping. The others are disfigured and disabled from their attempts, but she looks polished and thin in her pressed uniform. Her hair, the same sweetgold blond as the murdered girl’s, is held back by a white band with a bow on one side. Someone hands her a paper cup and she manages a polite if despondent smile.
“Okay,” Alice says, putting her hand on my back and guiding me toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.” We pass others who linger in the hall, waiting for their loved ones while reading or talking amongst one another. This is where Alice would have waited in her pretty dress, and when she went home she would have simply hung it in the closet again. I don’t know that I can ever forgive Lex for squandering her. And yet she has never complained about having to care for him. She could go out more if she wanted to; if he’s in the throes of a novel, he probably won’t even notice. But she mostly just leaves for work in the greenhouses.
A patrolmen opens the door for us. “Ladies.” He nods as we pass by. “Be safe out there tonight.”
The orange glow of street lanterns outlines the cobblestones with shadows. Yet in the distance, the glasslands shimmer in the moonlight.
“That little girl is part of the jumper group?” I ask, once we’re beyond the earshot of the patrolmen.
“I’ve seen her the last few times,” Alice says.
“So she’s jumped?”
“She must have …” Alice’s voice is trailing off. She takes a deep breath and says, “Look at that moon, Morgan. It’s so close. As if we could just walk right up to the edge and reach out and take it.” She closes one eye and holds up her hand, balancing the moon on her palm.
I hook my elbow around hers. I don’t like what she has said. I don’t like the thought of her crossing the tracks and chasing the moon to Internment’s edge. People go mad there. They see all of that sky and nothingness and they lose themselves.
“Is this the tea shop?” I say.
“Oh! Yes, it is. Look, the sign is shaped like an actual teacup. Isn’t that quaint?”
It would be, if not for the patrolman standing at the entrance.
5
Every moment is a gift, from the frivolous to the dire. The taste of sweetgold, and the rough paper of our favorite books. I find a god in these things—which god, I cannot say, but I’m grateful to it.
—“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten
PEN FIXES THE HEM OF MY RED VELVET glove that’s starting to unroll from my elbow. “You look classic,” she says, and then holds up her own blue gloves with a look of disdain. “Aren’t these archaic? They’re my mother’s. She used to wear them on dates with my father. You know, back when Internment was still part of the ground.”
“I think you’re a vision,” Thomas says, coming up behind her, gripping the overhead handle as the shuttle begins to move.
She looks over her shoulder at him, and the sunlight catches the shadows of her neck and collarbone in a way that makes her seem more woman than girl. “I thought for sure you’d missed the shuttle.”
“I caught it just as the doors were closing,” he says, and looks at me. “I take it your other will be joining us shortly?”
“We’re taking the train to his section and walking from there,” I say, feeling strange about the word he has used: “other.” He likes to talk like a period actor; he’s always reading romantic classics—a woman on the cover with an elaborately floral hat, looking faint as a man in a tuxedo steadies her. Things of that nature.
When the shuttle jolts and pushes Thomas toward her, Pen swats at him, complaining that he’ll make her hat go crooked. She’s wearing a candlebox hat that has been dyed the same color as her gloves. Candles come in small, cylindrical stiff paper boxes that can be taken to a clothes maker to be recycled into a hat. They’re dyed desired colors, given a brim, and affixed to a band so that the hat will sit firmly on one side of the head.
They look ridiculous on me. Few girls are bold enough to pull them off, but Pen is the sort of girl who can wear anything.
Thomas smiles at her averted face. “I’ll have your heart yet, Margaret Atmus.”
“You already have it.” She holds up her hand, betrothal band gleaming in the light. “Not that I had any say in the matter. And you know I hate when you call me that.”
When we make it to the train, I notice that it isn’t very crowded, which is strange for the weekend. “Looks like a lot of people decided to walk today,” Thomas says.
Pen flattens her dress against her knees, indifferent to his arm around her shoulders.
“I’ve been reading a peculiar little story,” Thomas says, looking at me because he knows Pen won’t humor him with interest.
“What about?” I say.
“It’s about the people of the ground trying to reach us. They craft a sort of machine and harness it to birds.”
“Birds couldn’t lift something that heavy,” Pen says. We don’t know very much about birds—they’ve never flown so high as Internment, but we’ve seen images of them taken with the scope. Skinny white blurs traveling alone or as beads in a necklace of Vs.
“Well then, you’ve figured out the conflict,” he says. “Anyway, they don’t make it. The story was really more about their trying to reach us. Some think they are, and others say we’re nothing more to them than a giant rock in the sky. Perhaps they think we’re a dusty moon.”
“I wonder about that all the time,” I say.
“Don’t get Morgan started on the ground,” Pen says, rising as the train rolls to a stop. “She’ll be lost in thought for the rest of the day, and I need someone to whisper with if this play is no good.”
Basil spots us as we’re stepping out onto the platform. The gold trim of his jacket matches the flecks of light in his brown eyes. Pen calls it a shame that my eyes aren’t dominant, but I think it would be nice if my children look like Basil. He holds his arm to me, and I look at my velvet glove against his gray suit, imagining we’re figures in a very old image. Though I know I shouldn’t, I imagine that the steps leading down off the platform will go all the way down the sky until we reach the ground.
“How are you?” he asks, so close that his breath reaches the nape of my neck.
“I’ll feel better once they’ve caught the person responsible,” I admit. “My father came home last night with an extra bolt for our door. Every time I look at it, I see that girl’s face.”
“A lot of people in my building are installing locks, too.” He frowns. “They’ll find whoever’s behind this. Internment is only so big. There aren’t many places to hide.”
That’s what has me so afraid. I’ve always liked the smallness of Internment, always liked lying in bed at night and hearing the trains rush by, always on time. But now it’s starting to feel smaller, as though every day since Daphne Leander’s murder has crumbled the edges a bit more, and the city is closing in on me.
Even the seats in the theater feel smaller and closer together, the dim lights getting dimmer.
“Are you okay?” Pen says. “Your cheeks are bright red.”
Basil touches my forehead. “Do you feel sick?” His touch is supposed to comfort me, but all I want is to get away from him, to get away from this air that everyone else is breathing.
“I need to use the water room,” I say.
“I’ll go with you,” Pen says.
“No,” I say, too quickly. “No, you might miss the opening. I’ll be fast, I promise.”
I can see that she’s wary, but she doesn’t try to stop me as I shuffle down the aisle.
With all of the shows about to start, the lobby is empty aside from the ticket vendors, who pay no mind as I stumble toward the water rooms. But when I push the door open, I find that I’m not alone.
Though she’s not in uniform, I recognize the little girl from last night. She’s kneeling on the edge of the sink, tacking a piece of paper over the mirror. But she stops when she sees me, stumbles to her feet, and backs against the wall.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I say.
There’s a piece of paper over each of the mirrors. A quick glance and I can see that they’re select passages from Daphne Leander’s essay. All of them are handwritten. Typewriters are a rare luxury afforded to those who write for a living; a past king once considered making them a household item, but decided against it. He said that if words could be easily printed and erased, we would lose our appreciation for what we wrote.
I’d like to ask her about the pages, but she runs past me and pushes her way through the door.