“Be quiet.” chastity-ruth cuts across the sudden roar of voices. “Control yourselves.”
“Can you believe that? What the—”
“Do you think I have fine lines under my eyes?” megan interrupts liz, pulling her temples taut in the mirror. “SkinCare have just released a new study in the Americas-Zone proving that they form underneath the skin from age twelve.”
“What?” liz screams, pressing her face down on the desktop until she is about an inch away from the mirror. “But I can’t see any.”
“You can’t see them yet,” megan says. “They’re hidden underneath your skin until you leave School and then they just appear. Out of nowhere. They had to specifically develop a new eye cream to fight it: Juveneyle.” She pulls out a small tube in the gold mosaic of the SkinCare range from her clutch.
I push my tray away.
“Where are you going?” megan demands.
“Hopefully to the Vomitorium after eating all those carbs.” jessie wags her finger at me. “Naughty, naughty.”
“Come on,” cara says, fiddling with her charm bracelet. “freida’s still recovering from being ill.”
“Yes, jessie. I’m on a weight-restoration plan because I’m underweight at the moment.” My gaze lingers just a little too long on her tanned thighs peeking out from under the table. “It’s something you couldn’t possibly understand.”
I grab my satchel and make an exit before the twins can find a spare brain cell between the two of them to retaliate. My eFone is still pinging persistently. Grabbing it from my bag, I quickly log onto MyFace, ignoring all the VideoChat requests and voicemails. karlie has uploaded a video of isabel’s entrance, spliced with the newest song from the slutz. “Big girls . . . don’t get the guy-yi-yi . . . don’t get the guy.” karlie’s voice-over: “Well, well, doesn’t look like she’s such a big girl anymore, does it?”
I click on a foto of me hugging isabel, spindly arms creeping out of my Breton-striped T-shirt dress, even more wretched in comparison to isabel’s toned limbs. “Looking hot, isabel,” rosie has commented. She didn’t say anything about me.
“isabel.”
I can barely see her, the black outfit a perfect camouflage in the dimly lit corridor, but I catch a flash of blond hair as she turns the corner toward the dorms.
“isabel,” I call as I chase after her. I reach out to grab her arm, yanking her back.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
Her eyes are clean, unseeing, and she moves away from me.
“isabel!”
“What do you want?” Her voice is glacial, the frost crawling up her throat and hardening in her eyes.
“I wanted to see you.” I’m flustered. “I’ve been so worried . . .” I trail off at the look on her face. “Are you okay?” I reach out to touch her hand, and she flinches. My voice drops to a whisper. “Did they do something to you?” I’m afraid to ask. I’m afraid to know.
“Now?” she spits, rubbing her eyes, and I want to tell her to stop or she’ll get crow’s feet. “Now you ask me if I’m okay?”
“I don’t understand . . . I don’t . . .” I stutter. “I thought that we were friends again. I don’t understand why . . .”
“No.” Her voice cracks. “You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me. How am I supposed to help you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong?”
“Forget it.”
“Forget it?” I’m shouting now, my voice booming in the empty corridor. “So this is my fault, is it? I’m not the one who buried herself in her room for two months. I’m not the one who thinks that she’s so important, so much better than everyone else that she has to keep secrets all the time.”
She laughs, a shrill joyless sound that scratches my heart. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about me or our friendship.
I will make her care.
“It’s not my fault you’re such a fat greedy bitch that they had to put you into quarantine. Do you know what everyone was saying about you?” The words are spewing from my mouth, hot as vomit. “Everybody hates you; nobody likes you. You are so disgusting that we all wish you didn’t exist. We wish you were dead.”
She starts, recognizing the anonymous hate message left on her MyFace page and I see the real isabel behind the mask, my isabel. She thinks I sent them, and she’s looking at me as if she’s never seen me before in her life, like I’m a total stranger. And I can’t take it back. I can never take it back.
“isabel, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
She shoves me with such force that I fall to the floor, involuntary tears springing to my eyes as she walks away. At the sound of clacking heels approaching I jump up and lean against the black wall, breathing deeply to compose myself.
“Where’s isabel?” cara asks me, arm in arm with megan, jessie and liz following closely.
“I couldn’t catch her.”
“Have you been crying?” jessie asks, her face brightening.
“No.” They look at me doubtfully. “I haven’t! I just twisted my ankle running in these stupid shoes.”
“Well, those shoes are pretty stupid.” cara grins at me.
“Come on, we’re going to be late for class,” I say, making a face at her.
“You know, I’m not trying to be a bitch . . .” megan begins. “I mean this in the nicest possible way, but I’m not that keen on isabel’s new makeover. Like the eyebrows? Everyone knows eyebrows are cara’s thing.”
“I don’t mind,” cara says with a shrug, ever the peacemaker.
“Well, yours are nicer anyway,” megan says, and cara goes pink with pleasure.
We’re nearly at the classroom when she turns to me. “Maybe you can talk some sense into isabel, tell her to start eating her meals. What’s the point in going skinny this late in the year?” I nod, paranoia squeezing my smile. “I mean, obviously you’re skinny, freida,” she says, “but you’re trying so hard to get back to target weight. Proud of you!”
She gives me a hug to reinforce how proud she is and then breaks away, staring into my eyes. “But isabel—she’s just weird. I mean, you know her better than anyone. She’s weird, isn’t she?”
With one word I can cast off my itching guilt like a snake shedding its skin.
“Weird,” I agree, another word that can never be taken back. She smiles, perfect teeth glinting.
As we walk into class, I see isabel seated in the front row and I forget myself, pausing at her desk like I always used to.
“freida! Come sit with me!”
The twins move seats obediently so that megan can snuggle up to me, resting her head on my shoulder. I’m instantly anxious. I’m afraid that my shoulder might be too hard or I might be doing it wrong, that she’ll keep her head on my shoulder for the whole of class or, worse, that she’ll stop and never do it again.
“I missed you!” she coos. Yes. Those five seconds we were apart must have been torture.
I watch the rest of the girls spilling into the room. There is an almost imperceptible pause, their eyes darting between isabel and the rest of us. It’s like a documentary on the Nature Channel, wild animals sniffing the air to determine who is the alpha. They want to know where they should place their loyalties.
megan waits until everyone has settled into their seats. “I hope you don’t mind, isabel, but I uploaded our photos onto Who Wore It Best.” isabel stretches her arms overhead and yawns. “And I got eighty-seven percent of the votes so far! I think the pleather leggings look more modern, you know?”
“But how . . .” agyness starts, and cara elbows her in the ribs to shut her up.
“Something to think about. I’d hate for you to do badly with the Inheritants due to poor clothing choices.” megan is so sweet, no one could accuse her of being nasty. Not that any of us would be brave enough to do so anyway.
“That is such good advice,” jessie says, cocking her head to the side and gazing at megan in admiration.
“For sure,” liz reiterates.
/> “Yeah. For sure,” I say, playing my new part. The classroom expands with a sigh as the hierarchy is clearly defined. We don’t like uncertainty. Our rankings may have been deemed obsolete, but somehow they have never felt more important. My stomach shudders, bellowing flames of fear to my heart.
isabel.
If she just looks at me, even once, I’ll know that she cares and I’ll be sorry and I’ll apologize and I’ll get up and walk over and sit in that empty chair beside her. Anything would be better than her indifference. It’s as if she always expected this from me.
Look at me, isabel. See me. But her eyes remain fixed on the tiled floor, avoiding the mirrors although they can hold no fear for her now that she is beautiful again.
A shadowy outline melts into the corner of my eye, black robes swishing past. Once again we did not hear her arrive, the rubber soles slithering silently, so different from the clatter of our high heels. She casts her gaze around the room, noting our new seating arrangements with a raised eyebrow. A shiver of numbness runs its tongue up my spine and I tell myself I don’t care about isabel. I don’t care either.
“eves,” chastity-ruth says, “shall we begin?”
Chapter 16
April
Three months until the Ceremony
After that, the Inheritants start visiting the School three times a week, coming from the main Zone by train. Because we’re never quite sure when they’ll arrive, everything tastes of anticipation, as if our excitement has bled into the water, the food, the air we breathe.
The Euro-Zone sends in a medical expert to examine us. He spreads my legs apart, shoving a rod-like instrument deep inside me, ignoring my gasp of pain. “Better get used to it, sweetheart.” He winks at me, marks me as satisfactory, and issues me my fertility certificate.
The Inheritants sit during our PE classes as we grind our hips, gripping a steel pole with our thighs. They watch as we cook dinner and as we sew a loose button back on a shirt, all pointless tasks as we have machines to do them now, but apparently it will give them clues to “our nature,” which third we are best suited to. At the end of each visit we are ushered into a new classroom, one we have never used before. It’s a round room, with walls covered in cream embossed paper and ten individual stations dotted around in a semicircle. Each station has a small wooden desk with two steel-framed office chairs on either side. The Inheritants claim their places, their backs to the wall, while we eves move from one desk to the next, a shrill bell signaling the end of each Interaction.
“How could you have said that?”
“What?” rosie hitches her red PVC skirt up even higher in the bathroom’s full-length mirror until I see a flash of black lace underwear. At least she’s wearing underwear. Her black crocheted tank clearly broadcasts her decision to forgo a bra.
“I overheard your Interaction with Sigmund. He told you that King Solomon fable and you said that you would have cut the baby in half! He’s never going to want you to bear his sons after that.”
“freida, my darling.” She looks at me pitifully as she washes her hands. “Not everyone wants to be a companion. They get terminated at forty. Do you know what forty looks like? Have you looked at chastity-bernadette lately?”
“That’s just the chastities.” With a shudder I picture the loose skin sagging at chastity-bernadette’s jawline. “As a companion you’d get an Age Redesign. You might be forty, but you would only look twenty.”
“But you would still be forty,” she says, pouting at her reflection. “You would still be old.”
The classroom is breaking apart with noise now that the Inheritants are here today, the eves getting louder and louder, screaming over one another to laugh the hardest at the boys’ jokes, but I have lost my voice in the din, my legs jittering with adrenaline.
“Hey,” Mahatma says, grinning broadly as I sit opposite him for our Interaction. He is brown-skinned, like me, his eyebrows like two black caterpillars over deep-set brown eyes, small ears sticking out at right angles. His prominent nose appears to have been reset badly after a break, veering to the left at the tip.
“Hi.” My mouth is already drying up. Yesterday I watched the Introduction videos again, rehearsing relevant conversational topics for each Inheritant, but now my mind is like a black hole. We’ve been sitting in silence for at least two minutes when megan struts past in sprayed-on jeans and a cropped vintage T-shirt, an inch of tummy flashing between. She looks as if she’s oblivious, but I can tell that she knows she’s creating a stir, her eyes trained steadily on a point in the middle distance. Mahatma gulps, still dazed as the bell rings and I move on, heavy with my inadequacy.
I just can’t seem to forget that they’re not girls, as stupid as that sounds. Their very differences seem so alien that all I want to do is stare at them, take countless fotos to scrutinize later, learn them all by heart. Can they tell how dry my mouth is? It feels as if my lips are cracking as I drag them into a smile. I go back to my dorm after each visit and practice. I look at myself from every angle, trying to figure out what I would have looked like from the left or the right. Did I look prettier when I was smiling or when I was concentrating? What did my legs look like in my leotard when I was hanging upside down from the stripper pole? I play the Interactions over and over in my head, like a spinning wooden top. But it’s always my Interactions with him that I return to, taking my favorite memories out of their box to look at, to admire.
Interaction 4: Darwin told me I looked pretty in my yellow halter-neck dress.
Interaction 5: I felt dizzy when I stood up too quickly so Darwin gave me the last of his can of EuroCola, watching in concern as I gulped the drink down, a rush of sugar and shock fizzing through me.
Interaction 1: “Hi, I’m Darwin,” he said, and I fought the urge to laugh. How could he think I wouldn’t know his name?
“I’m freida.”
“Oh.” His eyes crinkled. “I know who you are. I’ve been excited about finally meeting you.”
I couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about what “finally” could have meant. The other girls post detailed descriptions of their Interactions on MyFace, wondering about the meaning behind every sigh and flicker of eyelids, but for once I stay silent, unwilling to share.
“How fascinating,” megan says. We’re in the Interaction room again and she’s tapping her fingers against the wooden desk, visibly bored. Albert’s story of his most recent escapades with two concubines must not be to her liking. He frowns and megan pales, reaching her hand out to cover his.
“I am so sorry,” she says silkily. “I’m jealous, imagining you with other girls. I’m not normally this possessive. You must bring it out in me.”
He puffs his chest out, accepting her apology with a bow of his head, and continues his story, megan appropriately rapt.
“What do you think?”
When Leonardo smiles, his oversized mouth and nose spread across his face, dimples appearing in his cheeks and his chin. I have no idea what he’s asking me about.
“I . . .”
The bell clangs, rescuing me.
“. . . will see you next time,” I finish, waving idiotically at him. At his bemused face I stop, my hand flopping down like a dead fish. Is it possible to die of embarrassment?
“Hey, Albert.” He adjusts his considerable weight, excess flesh trapped in the cutout panel at the back of the chair. He fiddles around in the pockets of his gray blazer, pulling out a bar of chocco.
“Hey, freja,” he says as I sit down.
“It’s freida.”
“Oh, right.”
“That’s okay,” I say, heat rising in my face. Was correcting him a mistake? Should I have just pretended my name was freja?
“I’d offer you some, but I know you eves have to watch your weight!” he says as he unwraps his bar. Smears of chocco melt onto his fingers and he licks them with relish.
What about your weight, fatass? A nervous thrill runs through me. I wonder what would happen if I s
aid it, if I stood up right now and screamed FATASS at him, grabbed the chocco bar off him and smushed it into his face?
“So, my dad . . .” he’s saying, “he’s a Genetic Engineer, you know. Well, he bought me an hour with two concubines for my birthday last year. He knows I need more than one woman to satisfy me. Ha ha . . .” I laugh weakly to keep him happy. “Anyway, one of them was . . .”
“That is such a wonderful way to explain it. You’re so clever.” At the table next to us, megan drops her head, looking up at Darwin through lowered lashes. She might be my new best friend but, my Father, is she ever insincere. “But you’re the son of a Judge—of course you’re intelligent. You know, I’ve always felt like it was my destiny to be with someone intelligent, someone high-ranking, because I’m . . .” chastity-ruth glides past, fixing her with a vicious look. “Enough about me,” megan says, her unerring instinct for self-preservation kicking in. “Tell me more about you, Darwin. You’re much more interesting anyway.”
I feel sick and not just because Albert is now opening a second bar. He continues talking, mouth gaping open, a gooey mass of chocco congealing on his tongue. I’m trying to concentrate but it’s difficult with Darwin so close to me.
“. . . and then the second girl put the ping-pong ball in . . .”
“Wow.” If I ever had any doubts about becoming a concubine Albert just confirmed them for me.
He sniffs, brushing a lock of curly blond hair off his forehead. Uneasiness circles in my stomach. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying this Interaction as much as his one with megan. Maybe if I had chosen a different outfit he would be more interested in me. I should have worn my hair loose today. I thought the low ponytail was cute, but soft waves would have been more flattering.
“No, honestly, continue. It’s fascinating,” I say, a note of pleading creeping into my voice. The bell tolls again, and rosie has barely claimed my seat when I hear him launching into the same story.
“I’ve been practicing with a few ping-pong balls myself, you know,” she says seductively.
“I liked the ponytail,” Darwin says as I sit opposite him, shaking my hair out so that it fans around my face. megan is over by the door, her mouth puckering with distaste when he compliments me.