“SleepSound withdrawal.”
“I knew you would be awake,” she says again, as if I haven’t spoken. “And do you know why?” She peers at me across the dimly lit room. “Do you?”
“No, ruth.”
“Because I know you. I always have.” I wait, unsure of how I am supposed to react. “I know your exact eye color and the texture of your hair. I know what weight you are. Obviously, I know about your difficulty sleeping. I know you pretend to dislike chocco but secretly it’s your favorite food. I know how much you resented isabel at times and how hard you tried to hide it. I know you hate #767. And I know how prone to flights of fancy you are. I’ve been trying to crush it out of you for years, haven’t I?” I nod, as she seems to expect me to. “But even I was astonished at your conviction that Darwin Goldsmith could somehow save you from your fate. Foolish little girl. Did you believe he was going to choose you? Did you? It has been amusing watching you scurry about the place, all fret and bother, scrambling to improve your ratings, desperately trying to cling onto Darwin. Honestly, #630, I’m sure he thought you were good for a bit of fun, but it’s unlikely he ever considered you companion material, my dear. Not you. He’ll probably find some . . .” she pauses, looking me up and down, “exotic companion to quench any physical urges. Maybe, from time to time, he’ll even close his eyes and pretend it’s some girl he used to know, some girl whose name he can’t quite remember.” I force my face to remain very still. “No, Judge Goldsmith made the right decision with #767. She will follow the rules. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes, chastity-ruth,” I say on reflex, and her lip curls.
“You see, I knew you would agree. You really are utterly predictable. Always so eager to please other people, so willing to do whatever it takes to make people like you. It’s just so, so . . .” she stares at me as she searches for the word that best describes me—“repellent. That’s what you are. #767 never acted like that, did she? She didn’t snivel and beg for scraps of approval like you did. And look at her now—the companion of a Judge.” The chair keeps rocking back and forth, back and forth. I don’t understand. I thought we eves were supposed to be willing to please.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, you know,” she continues, gripping the armrests tightly. “I was made the principal chastity almost twenty years ago, the youngest principal in the history of the School. Twenty years, and every year a new batch of eves, countless girls, as you can imagine.” She half smiles. “Yet I still remember the day when you and your sisters were hatched. And that’s because of you, #630.”
“Me?” I repeat, my voice barely a whisper. I grab the black blanket on my bed and hug it close for warmth.
“Yes,” she says. “I walked from cot to cot, looking at each new-design in turn. And there you were, your face screwed up, making so much noise and commotion, drawing all that attention to yourself.” She shudders at the memory. “If my instincts were right, and they were always right, you were the runt of the litter, the one who wouldn’t withstand the race. There’s always one, every year, an eve that has a little ‘accident,’ then another, then too many accidents to ignore and the eve has to be taken Underground, to help the Engineers with their studies. Waste not, want not.” I swallow hard. “But not you, #630. Because isabel—wonderful, darling, special isabel—took a shine to you, didn’t she? And that changed everything. She loved you.”
“Really?” My voice is small, like a child’s.
“Why of course she did.” chastity-ruth says the words plainly and, hearing them, I know deep within my bones that she’s telling the truth.
“And with her love came her protection. It was all so inappropriate. I could hardly bear to look at you, as with each passing year you continued to undermine the natural order of things with your very existence. And then you broke the rules so flagrantly with Darwin. It really was deliciously stupid of you, #630.” Her lips tighten. “But, once again, isabel fought for you. It was she who pleaded with the Father to grant you immunity, and He agreed, provided isabel promised to maintain her target weight. Judge Goldsmith was most displeased, but what could he do? The Father had spoken. My goodness, He did spoil isabel. There was always a present for his ‘special girl’ on her design date, lockets and jewelry boxes and other such nonsense.” She rolls her eyes to heaven. “He even gave her a pair of snakeskin boots in exchange for her maidenhood last year. As if He wasn’t taking something that didn’t belong to Him already.”
My stomach goes into free fall. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t know? And I thought you two were such good friends. The Father and isabel celebrated her design date together every year, of course, but on her sixteenth He took her for a ‘test drive,’ as it were.” She chuckles at her own wit.
“How . . . how . . . how do you know that?”
“Unfortunately, I had to clean her up afterward. He did make a bit of a mess.”
isabel never told me. She never told anyone.
“It has been a strange year, I must say,” she muses, folding her hands across her stomach. “If the Father hadn’t chosen isabel, she would have been the perfect companion for Darwin; he would never even have noticed you if isabel had been in her full health. It would have been more natural than some second-tier eve leapfrogging over more suitable girls. For a few weeks there I was almost concerned. Darwin kept choosing you; he seemed as blind to your many failings as isabel had been. But I told myself to trust my instincts and to wait. If I just waited, you would ruin it all by yourself.” She starts to slow-clap. “And you did, #630. Spectacularly so. Well, well done.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” I say, feeling as if the question is being torn from my throat.
“Why?” She raises an eyebrow at me. “Hmm. Yes, I must admit you’re correct. I am talking more freely than I ordinarily would, even with a fellow chastity. It’s all irrelevant now though, isn’t it? You won’t be able to tell tales where you’re going.”
“Oh, did I not say?” She smiles at my confused expression. “I do apologize, #630. It has been hectic this evening, fone calls back and forth with the Euro-Zone, frantically trying to arrange a replacement. Quite selfish of isabel to leave the Father hanging, if you’ll excuse the pun.” She shrugs. “But she always was impetuous, that one. She clearly didn’t consider the possibility that your immunity could be revoked after her death.”
Her words seem to float between us, and somehow it’s as if all the air in the room has been completely sucked away, and I can’t breathe. My ribs feel as if they are withering in my chest, squeezing my lungs together, breaking my breath down into shallow gasps.
“Oh, silly me. I didn’t mean to just blurt it out like that. But yes, isabel has decided to decline the honor of being the Father’s companion, rather permanently. Do you want to know how she did it? Do you, #630?” She waits expectantly for my answer, but the inside of my mouth is dry, painted in drought. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll give you a few hints. A bathrobe belt. A sturdy hook. An open door. You get the picture. It puts me in mind of that ridiculous rhyme magdalena insists on teaching the eves to help you tie your shoelaces. What is it again? Come on, #630. I know you remember.”
“Here’s a little rabbit, and here’s a great big tree,” I say quietly, the words coming to me effortlessly. “Watch the little rabbit run around the tree. Out pops his head, to see what he can see. Look how neat a knot he made around his . . .”
I can’t finish.
“I wish these eves would choose a more aesthetically pleasing manner to bid us farewell. I keep asking the Father if we can change the door frames, but there never seems to be enough money to fund it,” chastity-ruth says. I turn my face away from her. “Oh dear. You’re not going to cry, are you, #630?”
Her gray eyes are flickering with excitement as she leans forward in her seat, coming closer and closer to me, as if she wants to lick the very first teardrop, taste its saltiness on her lips. I close my eyes.
isabel. isabel. isabe
l.
I choose a memory of isabel and me as children and I hold it close to my heart, like a naked flame, waiting to feel it burn, but I feel nothing, numbness spreading through me like frostbite.
There are no tears in me. There is nothing left.
“Good girl,” she says, when I remain dry-eyed. “At least you learned how to do one thing right.”
She pushes herself out of the chair and glides past me until she reaches the doorway, beckoning for me to follow.
As a chastity, I must surrender.
Time stretches out before me, the possibility of infinite hours with this grief gouging itself into my heart. How many hours are there in a lifetime?
“Come, #630. We haven’t got all day,” she says, and I nod mutely.
As a chastity, I must be obedient.
I follow her out of the chastity quarters, past the garden gate and through the cloisters. She stays very close to me, but she need not be concerned. I will not try to run. Where could I go? Darwin does not want me. megan would build my pyre with her own hands. And isabel . . . my isabel, my isabel, my isabel, my isabel.
We have reached our old classroom. I avoid looking at the mirror-board.
“It’s time, #630,” chastity-ruth tells me, pointing at the glass coffin on the right-hand side of the chastity’s desk. She takes her eFone from the pocket of her bathrobe and presses a button, the box lighting up immediately.
“Time for what?” I ask, but I step in anyway. I don’t really care what will happen to me now. The doors close and we stare at one another through the panes of glass.
“Time for you to finally be of use,” she says as the elevator descends into the bowels of the earth, maintaining eye contact until she disappears behind a wall of steel.
The elevator keeps going down, further into the ground than I have ever been outside of my most feverish nightmares. The doors open into a room I’ve never seen before, a waiting room of sorts. Wrought-iron chairs, gray concrete floors, steel-plated walls. A loud buzzer sounds and a red light above the heavy steel door before me flashes.
The buzzer sounds again. I move toward it, almost involuntarily. The door handle is icy to the touch. I walk into a corridor. It’s dark, muted-yellow bulbs melting into the walls. The path drops, the darkness deepening, swarming in to blind me, and I have to hold onto the frosted wall for guidance until I see a crack of light before me. It’s seeping out from underneath a door and I fumble toward it, patting the wall until I find the handle.
Inside, I blink in the dazzling white room, the edges cut with steel. When my eyes adjust to the glare, I can see that it’s a vast laboratory, about the same size as the Hall. One wall is made up of steel shelves lined with clear glass jars. In each of them what looks like a tiny chick-chick carcass is floating in fluid, wrinkled and red-raw. Lining the other wall is a row of clear boxes, each containing a naked sleeping woman. They’re bald too, held in a standing position by white belts secured around their feet, waist and head. The left arm of each one is strapped into a machine, red wires wrapped around their bodies like bulging veins.
“I’ve been expecting you.” A man approaches me. He’s wearing the white cloak of the Engineers, a white mask covering his face. Thick furry eyebrows are knitted together over pale brown eyes. “#630, isn’t it?”
I can’t move.
“Now, stop wasting time, girl. This is important.” I stare at him blankly. “You want to help me with my research, don’t you? Don’t you want to be of some use?” He walks toward me, snapping white gloves on. Snap. Snap.
I look at the naked bodies marinating in the clear containers. Some of them look so familiar, evoking memories of high jinks and raucous misbehavior, dropped trays in the Nutrition Center, raised voices screaming at the chastities.
“You know what we do with girls who break the rules, don’t you? We send them Underground. Do you want to go Underground, #630? Do you?”
I should be afraid, but all I can feel is the loss of her.
“I heard about your friend.” He inches closer to me. I do not want to think about her. I am tired now. I am so very tired. “This won’t hurt, I promise. You won’t feel a thing.”
“Nothing?”
“That’s right,” he says. “You could say that it will feel like nothing.”
Is this how isabel felt before she jumped? Did she feel ready, so very ready, for it all to be over?
I hold out my arm, offering myself to him. The needle sinks into my skin, the liquid whispering, forget, forget, to my blood. I can feel it burning through me, licking at my veins with thousands of tongues.
I am ready now too.
I am ready to feel nothing, forever.
Acknowledgments
None of this would have been possible without my parents, my two favorite people in this world. I love you both more than words can say.
I want to thank my sister, Michelle, for being as excited about my novel as I was, if not more. I hope you know how much your support has meant to me.
I’ve been blessed with incredible family and friends, far too many to list here. I must, however, mention Katie Grant, who read the first three chapters and encouraged me to keep writing, and who gave me a place to stay in London whenever I needed it. I’m equally indebted to Jonathan Self for his generosity, kindness, and advice.
I’m so grateful to the team at Quercus for all of their hard work. I was lucky enough to have a great editor, Niamh Mulvey, and Only Ever Yours is immeasurably better as a result of her insightful notes.
Thanks also to George, Milly, Philippa, and all at the Capel & Land agency, but especially to the lovely Rachel Conway. Thank you, Rach, for understanding what I was trying to achieve with this book from the very beginning.
Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours
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