Perfect Ruin

8

BASIL THROWS A STONE INTO THE LAKE, trying to make it skip.

“Like this,” I say, pitching the stone into the water at an angle. It hits the surface and promptly sinks. Basil tries not to laugh.

“Well, I was good at it when I was little, anyway.” I fall back into the grass and watch a cloud that’s sloping over the atmosphere.

“Our engineers spend so much time studying the ground,” Basil says, settling beside me. “Ever think about what’s above us?”

“The tributary,” I say. “The god of the sky.”

“But those are intangible,” Basil says. “Spiritual. What I mean is, what if there’s more land up there? What if there are people living on the stars?”

“I’ve never thought about that,” I say, and suddenly I feel overwhelmed by how much there is to know, and how much I will never live to figure out.

In the distance, there are patrolmen sitting in the gazebo, trying not to seem as though they are watching. I can no longer tell if they’re trying to protect us, or if they’re suspicious of us.

Basil tilts his head against mine. From a distance, we’re just another young couple lazing about in the park after class.

“You aren’t crazy,” he says.

“What?”

“I’ve known you all your life, and you’ve always tried to hide the parts of yourself that you think are wrong. But nothing is wrong with you.”

Those may be the best words he’s ever said to me. I mutter “Thank you” but it doesn’t feel adequate.

I don’t tell him about the card Ms. Harlan gave me, and I don’t tell him that I’m beginning to think I need her help.

Don’t focus on the edge, I tell myself. Stay inside the tracks. Stay in this little place where awful things happen, but where beauty hides in beams of sunlight, in the green grass and the gentle lapping of the lake forming and destroying watery shapes. Ignore the men in uniforms that stand at length, sullying the image. They’ll be gone soon. Everything will go back to normal.

On Friday, Lex doesn’t go to his jumper group. Instead, there’s a cavalcade of footsteps above our common room, rattling the hanging light.

It sounds as though they’re having a party upstairs, but that can’t be right. Lex would never allow something like that. I’d like to ask my mother about it, but she’s asleep, which is something that happens more and more lately with the prescription she’s taking. I don’t tell Lex; he’s opposed to all the pharmaceuticals, even the mildest ones. But she’ll often be asleep when I get home, and then late into the night, I’ll hear my bedroom door creaking open as she checks in to be sure I’m safe. I pretend to be asleep when this happens. I have to seem unburdened. After all that has happened with Lex, I can’t give my parents cause to worry about me.

When I can take the stomping no more, I head upstairs and knock on the door. Alice opens it just as far as the chain latch will allow. She never uses the chain latch.

“Morgan.” She blinks. “Is everything okay?”

I try to see behind her, but whatever’s happening is in another room. I can smell something baking—apple pie, I think. “Are you having a party?” I ask.

“We can’t get into the courthouse until the trial’s been had,” Alice says. “So Lex is having his group here this week. I’m sorry, love. I can’t let you in. I’ve been stuck in the kitchen myself. Come back later and we’ll have some desserts, if they haven’t eaten everything in the cold box.”

She closes the door before I can get in so much as a word.

The door opens again just as I reach the stairs. “Morgan,” Alice calls, and I spin around, hopeful. She hands me an envelope. “Would you mind dropping this in the message bin for me?”

I don’t have to read the envelope to know what it says:

Clock Tower

Medicinal Affairs

Every week she fills out a mandated report of the pharmaceuticals she and Lex pretend to be taking, and orders more to keep from arousing suspicions.

I drop the envelope in the tall metal bin outside the apartment. In the morning a messenger on a bicycle will retrieve the envelopes and take them where they need to go. A messenger comes in the afternoon and evening too, but never this late.

I’m too restless to go home; the thought of listening to clocks ticking until I fall asleep is unbearable. Pen won’t be able to leave; her parents don’t let her out after dark since the fire happened, even if it’s just upstairs to my apartment. She’s their only child and her mother is particularly protective. Though, as Pen says, her mother’s protectiveness is subject to her whims and sobriety.

It isn’t late, and Basil will go for a walk with me. He might be a little unhappy to know I traveled to his section by myself, but the murderer, also suspected to be the arsonist, has been caught and there are still patrolmen at every turn.

A patrolman opens the front door for me. “Be safe out there tonight,” he says. It’s a phrase that’s starting to lose meaning now.

But somewhere out there, my father is saying the same thing, over and over. I wonder if he believes any of us are safe now.

Outside, warm lantern light greets me. The sky is smeared with stars like the glitter over Daphne’s eyes in her class image. I don’t know why this makes me feel at peace. Like everything is connected in some way, that humans are just that, whether they’re on the ground or in the sky, and that we all belong to the same greater something.

I gave a lot of thought to the gods when I thought my brother was dying. Pen says people get the most spiritual when things are at their worst. She was right about that. I wondered about the atmosphere that keeps us contained on Internment, and when my brother reached the edge, I wondered if the sky god felt betrayed. I wondered if the god of the earth had called out a temptation and set it on the wind. In the texts, we’re taught that it’s a hypnotic melody.

If Lex were to die, I wondered what would become of our family then.

I try not to dwell on it anymore. He lived. I don’t have the answers and it would be ungrateful of me to ask for them.

It’s a beautiful night; a bit colder, as the short seasons tend to be, but I don’t mind. It’s a short walk to Basil’s section, and I’ll pass the lake on the way. There will be patrolmen, inevitably, but if I’m lucky, they won’t send me back home. Now that the murderer has been caught, things are starting to relax. Or so the king would like us to believe.

There are fewer patrolmen than I expected. They stand guard outside apartment buildings and on certain corners, but then I see none for several blocks.

The lake is serene.

It casts a flawless reflection of the stars, as though it isn’t a lake at all, but a hole in the city itself. Lex and Alice used to take me here when I was small. They taught me how to swim in the shallows, and how to stand very still so that the trout would flutter up against me. I have a memory for every part of this city. With the exception of the sections accessible only to workers, I’ve been everywhere.

The stillness is broken by something rustling in the shrubs that outline the park. In the darkness just beyond the street lanterns, I see what looks like a figure hurtling toward me. Whatever it is, it brings the sound of more footsteps approaching, voices shouting, “This way!” and “You cover that area!”

If I can hardly make out the figure, it definitely can’t see me in the darkness, because in the next instant, it crashes into me and we grab each other to steady ourselves. There’s heavy breathing and the smell of sweat and possibly tears.

In the starlight, I can just barely make out the person holding my wrists.

I’m staring right into the face of Judas Hensley.

The voices are getting closer, and I hear bodies breaking apart the shrubs. Of course they’re coming for him. He murdered his betrothed. Supposedly. Maybe not.

“Help,” he says softly.

I think he’s surprised by the way my fingers tighten around his forearms. “Quiet,” I say, and push him under the lake water.

He disappears under the surface immediately and without struggle.

I stoop down and gather a handful of pebbles, toss one into the rippling water just as a patrolman approaches.

“Are you alone here, miss?” he asks me, doubling over to catch his breath. It’s been a long time since the uniforms have had cause to run.

“Yes,” I say. “I saw someone run through here a while ago.” I point toward the cobbles. I toss another pebble into the lake to mask the ripples being caused by the body under the surface. “He seemed to be in an awful hurry. Has he done something wrong?”

“He was caught stealing, miss,” the patrolman says. “You shouldn’t be out this late alone.”

I’m not quick enough to come up with an excuse, but it’s no matter. He’s run off to chase the phantom thief, who is really no thief at all.

It isn’t a moment too soon, because Judas bursts from the surface of the water, spluttering. I offer a hand out to help him, but he stomps past me, his bare feet making squishing sounds in the mud. He moves into just the right beam of moonlight and I see that his eyes are swollen from tears. I have seen enough crying eyes to be certain.

This is the boy that’s got Internment so scared. He’s tall and lean, and his face is all sharp angles. He holds his chin up high. But I can’t bring myself to fear him. It’s the bleary eyes, I think.

He drops to the grass and huddles forward, and his shape protrudes through his wet shirt, the muscles moving as he takes in oxygen. Like some sort of machine. Like there are gears under his skin. He seems too exquisitely crafted to be all human.

Cautiously, I kneel beside him. “I’ve seen you,” I say.

“On the king’s broadcast?” he says bitterly.

“At the academy.” There are four academies and universities on Internment. “We’re in the same year.”

“We were,” he amends. “There’s not much of an education on my horizon now.” His jaw is trembling, and I wish that I had something to offer him for warmth.

I don’t see something deranged, like how the killer who went mad from tainted pharmaceuticals when my parents were children must have looked. I don’t see Daphne Leander’s murderer. Just a ragged shirt and water dripping from all the angles of his collarbone, moonlight darkening the notches of his throat. Just a boy.

“Your father is a patrolman,” he says. “Stockhour? Am I right?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I say, feeling oddly brave. It’s strange that he would know this about my father; if anything, most of my classmates know me for having a brother who’s a jumper. “Your hands are bleeding.”

He stares at his open palms, marred with bloody lines, and then he rubs them in the dirt. I wince.

“Why did you help me?” he says. “Don’t you know who I am? I could have killed you.”

“How? By wringing your wet hair out on me?” I say. “You need to get someplace warm before you catch a chill.”

“Don’t have that luxury,” he says, pushing himself to his feet. He has already begun to walk away when I start after him.

“Where are you going?” I say. He can’t be thinking of hiding. “There are patrolmen on almost every corner. At the doors of every building, for certain.”

He doesn’t answer, pushing through the shrubs and crossing into the small woods that encompass the park. The trees are mostly insubstantial, skinny things only as thick as arms.

Basil would never go for this—me chasing after an accused murderer in the darkness. He says there’s nothing wrong with me, but it’s entirely possible he hasn’t been paying enough attention.

“You aren’t thinking of jumping over the edge, are you?” I say, ducking a low branch as I keep several paces behind him. “That isn’t the answer, you know. It’s worse than suicide. My brother tried.”

For a while there’s only the sound of twigs cracking under our feet, and then Judas asks, “Does he regret it?”

“He went blind,” I say.

“But does he regret it? Has he said he wishes he could undo it?”

I stop walking. He moves a few steps ahead before he notices and turns to face me. I can see only his hair and one side of his face.

“No,” I say. “He wouldn’t tell me something like that. He doesn’t talk to me like he used to. It’s implied, though.” I’m not oblivious to the uncertainty in my voice, and Judas isn’t either. I can just make out his sad grin before he turns away and stomps onward. It’s amazing how little noise he makes for one with such angry footfalls.

I follow. I know where we are. When we were kids, Pen and I found a shallow cavern here made up of rocks and we turned it into our secret house. I ruined the game when I told Basil and he brought Thomas into it. It was a full day before she forgave me. The boys have forgotten about it, but Pen and I still go there sometimes.

“If you keep following me, I really will have to kill you,” Judas says.

“My father is a patrolman,” I say. “You were right about that. But if you kill me, it’ll be a week before he notices.” It’s been about that long since I’ve seen him.

The frail moonlight blurs and in the next instant a tree trunk is pressing into my spine and I can taste the blood and the dirt from Judas’s hand against my mouth.

He begins with the word, “Listen.”

I do. Listen to a heartbeat throbbing in my ears. The slight wind moving leaves gone silver all around. His heavy, grieving, shaking breaths that go toward and then around me like clouds to our atmosphere.

“Go back,” he says. “Go back home to your safe apartment high above the city, and forget that you saw me here.”

When he moves his hand away from my mouth, I’m not breathing. My arms are wrapped around the tree behind me and that’s the only reason I don’t fall forward when he moves away. There’s a sense that I am weightless, that if I let go, I’ll be carried on the wind of his strides and I’ll go wherever he goes. Something keeps me here, my eyes straining to see what I can of him as he leaves. But the image isn’t perfect. My memory of Judas Hensley will always be dark. It will always be moving away from me.