“Nettie Starling.” Eleanora Burnish, Lia’s charming, gorgeous—and today, clearly buzzed—mother, swings the front door open, and suddenly there are scents: perfume, alcohol, and another, more pungent, acidic odor that I can’t place.
“Haven’t seen you in a while.” Every element of Mrs. Burnish’s all-voxless look is askew: Her plum lipstick is smudged. She has a diamond stud in her left ear but not in her right. Tendrils of strawberry blond hair have escaped her bun.
“I know. I’ve been busy, with the Double A coming up.” Is that urine? I cover my nose with the back of my hand while I look behind her, horrified. What is going on?
“What an adorable pursh.” She means purse but it came out slurred. I gulp. Uh-oh. She straightens up, trying to convince me she’s sober. “You look so beautiful. Are you doing something new?”
“It’s my mom’s,” I pat the leather purse under my arm. “Nothing new.” A lie. This morning, I put all the Makeup Session lessons to use, wanting to look good for Callen. I braided my hair, then spent almost an hour figuring out what to wear. In the end, I paired the sleeveless top Selwyn chose for me at Delton’s with checkered shorts—I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard.
“Well, whatever it is, it’s working. Come in, come in.” She ushers me inside, flinging out her arm dramatically, like a matador facing a bull. “What’s up?”
“Is Lia here?” I step into the dark front hall. A massive chandelier drops from the ceiling, hunks of glass shimmering in the pale morning light, making a daytime constellation on the polished wooden floor. The odor grows stronger.
“Yes, she’s getting ready for the Festival,” she trills. “Are you going downtown with her?”
“Actually, I’m skipping it this year.” I inch farther down the hall, toward the staircase. My hip grazes the sharp edge of a tarp-covered bulk. It must be furniture she ordered for the motif change. More draped pieces are scattered down the hall.
“Be careful. That’s my new armoire,” Eleanora confirms, her voice wavering unsteadily. “Haven’t had time to uncover the new furni . . . shur.” She slurs the last word.
“You’ll find the time,” I murmur, taking a few more quick steps until I’m right at the foot of the stairs.
Eleanora arches her back coquettishly, bumping into a silver-rimmed clock hanging on the wall. “Ow.” She rubs her head, a cracked smile emerging on her face. “You’re in such a rush,” she croons, a light admonishment.
Nine according to the clock. I can’t stay long. “Yeah, I’m meeting someone after. I’ll talk to you later, Eleanora.” I gallop up the stairs, away from the nasty smell and her desperation. I idolized Eleanora when I was younger, but it’s difficult to be around her now. I thought the suggestions Lia got for the Initiative might help her, but she actually seems worse than ever. Is that what the Audience wants?
I knock on Lia’s bedroom door, but walk in without waiting for a response.
“Nettie?” Lia whirls around from her full-length mirror. She’s wearing jeans and a sleeveless blouse with a bib collar, and a garland of violets and bluebells around her head. My carefully chosen outfit looks plain by comparison. “Why are you here? Selwyn said you were sick. Staying home from the Festival.”
“I’m not sick,” I say, studying her face. I need to tell her now, before more lies get spun around this situation.
“There’s something I want—” A crash downstairs interrupts me, followed by a squeal. Lia rushes to her door and closes it, blushing. She begins running around the room, pitching clothes into her closet, throwing out wrappers, and returning hair ties and fallen jewelry and lipsticks to drawers.
“I didn’t know you were coming. It’s a mess in here,” she says, biting her lower lip. She pauses, hand on her hip. “Was my mom really bad?”
“No.” I walk over to her bed, push aside her beloved colony of stuffed animals, and sit cross-legged. “But what’s up with that smell?”
“The cat,” Lia says, scratching behind her ear. Lia’s reward, I remember now. “We got her two weeks ago, and my mom isn’t changing the litter box in the kitchen. I refuse to, and I don’t think my dad even noticed. Oh, the cat’s right there.” She gestures toward the stuffed animals, and now I see that one of them is moving. A sleek white cat stretches out her paw and purrs flirtatiously.
“She’s cute,” I say, shifting over to avoid the paw. I’m not much of an animal person.
“Oh, Nettie. That’s how you looked when Witson used to kiss you.” Lia laughs. I freeze at “kiss,” but Lia’s oblivious. “Luna, you adorable little thing.” Lia comes over and strokes the cat’s head. “You vanished last night. What happened?”
I trace the pattern on her comforter, at a loss for words.
“I thought my black dress looked pretty plus ten on Henna,” Lia says, bumping heads with the cat and giggling. “I really like her. I want her to be artsy and stuff, but not, like, an outcast. She’s my latest project.”
I think about Henna stuffed into that dress and glance down at the remnants of Lia’s Temptress Tin polish on my nails. Have I been a project too? “She seems nice.”
“Like Luna?”
“Hmm?”
“You called Luna nice too,” she says, sitting on the bed. She lets her hair fall in front of her face and ducks so her chin is right above the comforter, on the left side of her bed, in a place we know is difficult for the cameras. “Did you leave the party because you were upset about the courtyard?”
She didn’t seem to care about that before, and that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I straighten up and say on-mic, “Lia, about last night. Last night, Callen and I—we—we—” I breathe in, steadying myself. She inches backward, snatching up Luna and petting her roughly.
I grind the toe of my sneaker into her carpet, creating a flat space in the shag. Without looking up, I say, “Lia, we kissed.”
For a long moment, silence envelops the room until finally, she speaks, lifting her head, a familiar, imperious tilt to her chin. “You and Callen?” she says. “Wow.” Luna springs off her lap and prowls the floor. Lia falls back into the fralling position, and I copy her, a mirror image, safe from the cameras.
“Luz didn’t suggest that,” she mouths, bringing her hand casually to her lips to be extra safe. “Did he?”
“No, he didn’t,” I mouth back. “It just happened, but—”
“But you like him, don’t you?” she finishes. “I knew that’s why Media1 gave you those suggestions.” She switches back to on-mic. “You lied to me. Nettie, you lied to me. You said you didn’t like Callen, and I believed you. I thought you were, like, congenitally honest.”
Congenitally. What does that mean? It sounds dirty.
“Lia, I’ve been scared to tell you, and it was already awkward, with the two of you going out—”
“Does everyone know?” she asks, sitting up, righting the garland. I follow suit. “Does Selwyn know? How long have you felt this way? Since before we were dating?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to—I didn’t think he did, and besides, you were dating, and I didn’t want to ruin things for you.”
“Nettie, you couldn’t ruin things for me.” She laughs, her voice skidding up and down, reminding me uncomfortably of her mother. “I mean, whatever. I don’t want to be with him. I don’t want to be with him,” she repeats. “But I can’t believe you lied to me.”
“You know, you’ve lied to me, too,” I say pointedly.
She rolls her eyes. “Nettie, I asked you not to talk to him, and now you’re sticking your tongue down his throat. Who else knows?”
“Selwyn and Scoop.”
“So everyone will know soon.” She sighs, looking down and twisting a ring on her finger while she thinks. “Callen’s so . . . Sometimes, Nettie, you put people on a pedestal, and you don’t really see them. Callen’s complicated. Nettie, are you sure you want to be with him?”
“I don’t know,” I say, which is sort of another lie. “But I want us—you and me—to be honest with one another. I don’t want to have to hide my feelings around you.”
Lia sighs again and raises her eyes to the ceiling. For a long moment, she’s silent, a range of emotions crossing her face: frustration, sadness, and right before she grabs my hand and turns to me, one I’ve rarely seen on her: resignation. “Nettie, I know—things haven’t been so easy lately, between us, Double A pressures, my play, my mother—and you know, other stuff,” she tacks on vaguely. “We’re friends, okay? Whatever happens with you and Callen. Our friendship is more important than boys.”
“Okay,” I say, just wanting to make peace, fast. “Yes, more important than boys.”
She gestures me back down into the fralling position again. “Callen doesn’t know about the suggestions, does he?”
I shake my head.
“Don’t tell him. He’ll freak out,” she mouths emphatically. She gets back on-mic. “You’re seeing him today, aren’t you? That’s why you’re not coming to the Festival.”
I nod. “We’re going to the Brambles.”
“Oh, God, like that’s so much better than the Festival,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Okay, never mind. If that’s what you want to do, go ahead. I have to finish getting ready.” She stands. “Onward . . .”
It’s not until I’m downstairs, heading out the door, that I realize that Lia was quoting from our play and that I didn’t return the gesture.
• • •
I recognize the Pigeons cap right away. Callen is smoking in front of the statue of the first mayor, an Original. She stands with one stiff index finger raised, and it looks like she’s rebuking the teenage smoker below her. I lock my bike by the gates.
“I’m here,” I announce as I walk over to him. “Sorry I’m late.”
“I thought you might have gone to the Festival after all,” he says, stubbing out his cigarette and tossing it into a nearby trash can.
“Nope.” I stop a foot or so away from him, unsure how we’re supposed to greet each other, excruciatingly conscious of the sweat trickling all over me—I biked hard in my attempt to get here on time.
“You got home safe last night?” Callen asks. The cap shadows his eyes, so I can’t read his expression, but he shifts from foot to foot. Nervous.
“Yeah.” With bleary eyes and a stomach tight from being trailed by crickets all the way from the playground to my front door.
“You’re being mysterious again,” he says, his lips curving up in a slight smile.
I tense. “Oh, oops.”
“No, it’s okay,” he says. “I like it. Come on.” He takes my hand. I relax and let him lead me down a path through a thicket of scabby birch trees. “Watch out,” he says as we turn onto another, narrower trail, ducking to avoid low-hanging branches. Thankfully, a soft breeze dries the bike ride sweat, and the farther we walk, the more comfortable I feel. The path gets steeper and shadier, smothered in ferns and shrubs, crowded with saplings shooting to the sky, and covered by ancient gnarly oaks. Holding hands makes navigating clumsier, but neither of us lets go.
I don’t mind not talking. The deeper we delve into the forest, the more comfortable the silence becomes. Callen glances at me once, then a second time, a shy smile on his lips, as we trample over twigs and matted leaves. The third time he does it, I tug his hand before he can look away.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
He leans over, and we kiss again, my forehead bumping into the brim of his hat.
This time is different, slower—I didn’t think I was timid before, but now, as I put my arms around his neck, and his hands press into the small of my back, I know we both were. I pull away, to breathe, and his smile appears. I smile back, this tension I didn’t even know was there melting away. Our faces are inches apart.
“How long?” My fingers play with the soft hair at the nape of his neck. “How long have you liked me?”
“How long have you liked me?” he counters.
“I asked first,” I protest. The sun beams down between the branches, and above us the sky is completely clear. No weather chemicals, either, just one glorious day.
“I know you did,” he says.
I think back. “I remember the first time I knew. You gave me a ride to school, and the car broke down when we were only two blocks away. Do you remember?”
“Yeah.” He holds my hand and guides me down the winding path made out of mulch and twigs. “I missed my first two classes, waiting for the tow truck.”
“And you told me to go ahead, so I walked and just made the bell. But it was before all that, when the car cranked out, and you—” I feel silly for a second, but I go ahead and say it. “When the engine stopped, you just smiled and looked outside, and said, ‘We were so close,’ and you weren’t swerved off at all. That’s when I knew.”
“So way before Lia,” he says, climbing over a fallen branch. “Good to know.”
“Your turn.” I give him a playful shove. He wobbles but stays on the log.
“Six months ago,” he says. “I was behind you in the lunch line, and you were telling Selwyn how excited you were about this telescope you’d built. Your eyes were all lit up, and suddenly I knew I needed to know you better. But you were with Witson.”
“And then I wasn’t.” I can’t keep the reproach out of my voice.
He looks into the distance, and I remember Lia’s perfect imitation of his evasive stare. “Nettie, you were kind of ignoring me,” he says finally. “I actually started thinking you might dislike me . . . until that day it rained on the porch, when . . .”
When I had flirted with him because of the suggestion.
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. “Guess what? I told Lia about last night.”
He hops off the log. “Really?” He takes my hand in his again, and we start walking downhill along the trail toward the Brambles lake, a perfect circle with a camera-horror spigot coughing up water in the center. Not a shining moment for the crickets—it makes it obvious the lake is fake. “How’d she take it?”
“Like you’d expect. Angry, but then she calmed down, and I think she might end up, just, okay with it,” I say.
“I hope so,” Callen says, tugging me off the path and onto the grass. “Let’s get closer to the water.”
We walk up to the water’s edge, where pondweed and cattails burst out from under the surface. Callen points out tiny frogs hopping around, then starts to identify scores of flowers and plants.
“Wow, you know this stuff pretty well.”
“I picked it up from Mom,” he says, sitting on the grass and tugging me down next to him. “Those are called popcorn flowers.” He points to the tiny white and yellow flowers crowding around a tree trunk.
“Plus ten,” I say, and the flowers are nice, but I’m more interested in how much he likes them. “Can’t you apply for an apprenticeship that’s environment related? Like your mom? Hey, wait”—I get excited—“isn’t there a park ranger slot?”
He shrugs. “Dad wants me to do baseball.”
I picture Mr. Herron in the brand-new Harrow that they must have gotten off of the baseball ratings boost.
Callen takes off his Pigeons cap and lies on his back. Feeling bold, I straddle him, bracing my hands on the grass on either side of his head and dropping down to kiss him greedily. His breaths are shallow and fast; his arms around me grow tight.
“This is so much better than the Flower Festival,” I whisper. He laughs, and I move off him, flopping onto my back, letting the sun dazzle my eyes.
He reaches into his back pocket and takes out his cigarettes. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Noooooo.” I stretch languorously, then turn on my side and watch him light up. His lips pucker when he inhales, then part. The smoke floats up into the air, and I remember how he said he used to set off the alarms in their house. Smoke. The smoke from the burning toaster that sent all the Reals racing out of Character Relations.
I know how I can get the jumpsuit for Scoop.
“Could I try a cigarette?”
“Really?” he says, but he’s already fishing one out. I put it in my mouth, lean forward, and he lights it for me. I puff delicately and manage not to cough.
“Not bad,” I force out.
It does make me feel light-headed and giggly. Between the nicotine and the natural high of being with Callen, I feel charged, and all I can think about is getting closer. And not just physical closeness. When the cigarette’s finished, we’re lying facing each other, and I fling my arm over him, pulling his head toward mine, concealing both our faces from the cameras. “Do you ever think about the Patriots?” I mouth.
“Sometimes. More since Belle and Revere. But not a lot.” His eyes soften. “I know you must, because of your dad.”
“And because I’ve been on the E.L.,” I add. Some shame steals in, but I want to share everything with him—including our ratings. “Have you ever been on?”
He shakes his head. “Not with baseball.”
It’s so silly, but something about how he says it makes me want to leap on top of him again. Short. Simple. Direct. I trace his cheekbone, then his nose, then his jaw, marveling that I’m here, we’re here. That there is a we. I slide closer.
“I saw them yesterday, Callen. I saw the Patriots.” I tell him what I saw in the courtyard and what I overheard on the radio about the caves in the Drowned Lands. “And—” I hesitate, uncertain about whether I should bring Scoop into this. I decide not to. “Someone told me that they use them for medical experiments. Then I thought—what if they’re in the army?”
Callen listens intently, stroking my arm the whole time. He nods and asks what they were wearing, which names I heard on the radio, and so on. But when I’m done relaying the facts, the questions stop. I like how cautious he is with words, and how steady and comforting he can remain when hearing all this. His calm balances everything inside me.
“I’ve never trusted Media1,” he mouths finally. I’m tempted to tell him all of it, my mind running through wild scenarios where he helps Scoop and me, but a cloud moves, unveiling the sun, and light fills his blue eyes again. Mesmerized, I realize the last thing I want to do is risk him in any way.
“Let’s not talk about it anymore,” I mouth. He raises his eyebrows, surprised, so I go in for another kiss to distract him. In between lip-locks, I catch sight of the cigarette pack lying on the rocks near us.
“Hey.” I quickly switch to on-mic, before he can mouth anything else about the Patriots. “Is it okay if I take a few more cigarettes? I kind of liked it.”
“First the graffiti, now the smoking? You’re really going wild.” He smiles and passes me three. I tuck them into my mom’s purse, then lay my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, trying to sink back into the moment, but I can’t. In my head, I’m working out how I’ll secure the jumpsuit. First, I have to remember to grab the lighter at the bottom of the kitchen junk drawer on my way to the Report tomorrow.
Callen seems to sense my distraction. “Up here,” he coaxes, pulling me up to kiss him, and as I do, for a second, I think, This is all I need. And it should be enough. If I could make it be enough, if I could banish all the worries I have about the Patriots, I would.
But I can’t, and it’s not.