“Would that be so terrible?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Why is it ridiculous? It sounds . . .” she breaks off, searching for the right word, “peaceful.”
“But . . .”
But we’ve always wanted to be companions, I want to say. This is what we have wanted since we were in 4th year, learning how to change diapers on our training dolls in Little mama classes. We were going to raise our sons as best friends. Don’t you remember?
But I do not say this. If I remember and she doesn’t, it seems like I care more than she does. And that would make me vulnerable.
“Did you go to the chamber?” I ask instead.
“Yes. Just two-pound weights. But the humidity was crazy.”
“What was your Improvement soundtrack like?”
“I didn’t have one.”
“You got off lightly,” I reply, surprised.
I’ve only been in the chamber once, after I broke my leg when I fell from that tree in the garden when I was four. I gained five pounds and while I ran on the treadmill I had to listen to “Fat girls must be made obsolete” on a loop for two hours every day for three weeks until I was back in control. I had assumed the chastisements became more demanding with each term. It’s for our own good, I suppose. I know.
“How long will you have to attend for?”
“Until my weight is acceptable. They’ve upped the kcal blockers as well.”
“I thought they said it wasn’t safe to do that.”
“No choice, I guess.”
Her voice cracks, as if she swallowed back a sob midsentence. Is she crying? She knows we are not allowed to cry and, unlike me, isabel has never had a problem obeying that rule, her easy smiles the touchstone of my childhood. I freeze, glad of the dark so that I can pretend I didn’t notice. I listen to her labored breathing and I want to shake her, I’m so exasperated by her sudden inability to follow the rules like the rest of us. What does she want from me? Does she want me to comfort her? Am I supposed to care after months of silence, isabel ruthlessly unknotting any ties of friendship between us. But I do care. That’s the problem. Years of our shared memories are steeped in my blood. It would take leeches to suck them out.
I move toward her, crouching down beside her to take her limp hand in mine. She pulls it away, rejecting me again, and my stomach clenches with hurt. But there’s anger there too, anger at my stupidity at ever having allowed someone to get close enough to have the power to hurt me.
“So, what happened at PE?” she asks, inhaling deeply.
“Nothing,” I reply sullenly, my knees cracking as I stand up. “We had better get to class.”
“The Monday votes from the Euro-Zone have been counted and your updated rankings are now available online.”
There is a scurry of activity as eFones are snatched from bags and pockets to check how valuable we are this week. megan is first again, followed by liz and jessie in second and third place. I scroll down and down until I find my face. I’ve dropped from #8 to #10.
“It’s not too bad,” cara says kindly. “The top ten are still definite companions.”
Easy for her to say, steady at #4. daria and gisele commiserate with me, saying they’re “soooo sorry” and that they hope I won’t be mad that my falling to tenth place has bumped their rankings up. Maybe I should bribe chastity-anne to mix gisele’s meds again. See how high she ranks with another rash of hives.
isabel’s face is still missing from the ranking tables, but for some reason I can’t explain I still don’t say anything to her about it.
“Are you all right, isabel?” I ask instead as we trudge back to the classroom for Organized Recreation. She nods wearily and we fall into our now familiar pit of silence. I look at where megan is sitting, the twins, cara, gisele and daria taking up the rest of the row. Some of the lower-ranked girls are sitting on the floor, congregating at her feet like she’s a deity, screaming with laughter. It used to be isabel at the center of everything, me by her side, made safe by her affection. cara catches me staring.
“What do you think, freida?” She smiles, trying to include me.
“Sorry, cara, I didn’t hear what you said.”
“I said—”
“Look!” megan cries, shoving an eFone blaring the Dome Dudes’ latest music video in cara’s face, and I’m left on the outside once more. I want to go over, to reclaim my position, but I feel shackled to isabel. I look at her, slumped in the seat beside me, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that her belly is folding into rolls of fat beneath her thin vest top. My skin itches with irritation at the sight.
“Alphabetical order,” chastity-anne orders, materializing out of thin air. “It’s time.”
We have Organized Recreation daily and it’s always the final class of the day. It was devised to combat female hysteria syndrome: any hysterical, overemotional girl behavior is deliberately induced in a controlled environment until the urges dissipate. We need extra sessions on the weekends or during the summer holidays, whenever we have more opportunity to infect each other.
We line up and approach the desk to collect our meds from the chastity. The doors of the two glass boxes on either side of the desk swish open, allowing one girl in at a time before disappearing into the ground. I hold my breath as the doors close after me. What will happen if chastity-anne programs the elevator incorrectly and it goes too far?
“Are you crying, #630?”
“No, chastity-ruth.”
“Good. Because you know what we do to girls who break the rules, don’t you? We send them Underground. Do you want to go Underground, #630?”
The elevator opens into the Organized Recreation Space. It looks like an empty swimming pool lined with numerous pipes snaking their way Underground. Thirty individual glass coffins are lined up in five rows, six in each row. I climb into the box with my design number on it, picked out in baby-pink sequins. The glass door shuts and I wait anxiously for the other boxes to fill so that we can begin. chastity-anne nods and I swallow my meds.
Hush. Hush. A shiver begins at my feet, swelling, spiraling up and down the core of my body. A beat pulses through the box, a melody throbbing in my ears, in my mind, in my heart. My spine undulates until I am boneless. A wave of rapture surges and I am engulfed by it. I am free. I am free of all this. My mind tears for a second and I fall back into the room, the edges of my anxiety sharpening again. I can see the lid of the glass box, can see the road map of ducts and wires crawling over the ceiling, can see the other girls staring out with sightless eyes. The mist chokes me again, smothering me until I feel nothing, nothing at all.
The bell rings and we are switched off simultaneously, the doors springing open. I climb out, my legs wobbly. My mind is wired but lethargy is sucking at my body, the two parts of me cracking apart.
The others look similarly exhausted. We half smile at each other as we shuffle back to the dorms, but we avoid conversation of any kind. I throw myself on my bed, praying for sleep, but I know it’s useless. Turning on my side, I press my fingertips into the glass wall, watching that girl in the mirror. Her features float off her face, swimming in the air before rearranging themselves in the strangest way. Her eyes are too big, black in her pallid skin. Her lips are bloodless, gloopy bits of dried spit forming in the cracks, her jaw jutting out.
The emptiness in my body is vast, wide open spaces with nothing to hold on to.
I won’t remember any of this tomorrow.
Chapter 5
We are wound up and wound down, like mechanical dolls. They turn the lamps on, they turn the lamps off. And another day is done.
“I wish I could just stop time until I’m ready,” I told isabel some night last year when neither of us could sleep. We sat on the floor in her cubicle, our backs against the mirrored wall, legs stretched out in front us, and I tried not to compare the size of my thigh gap with hers. “Do you ever feel like that?”
“No,” she said, and I felt illogically betrayed
. I pulled away from her a little, loneliness burying itself deep within me. She shifted closer, refusing to allow me to sulk. “Don’t worry about the future,” she said. “Things are only going to get better. I promise.”
She promised me.
The dorms are hazy with steam tonight. It’s crawling into my mouth, gathering in the back of my throat.
I need to breathe.
I pause by isabel’s room on my way out of the dorms, see her platinum hair spilling over the pillows. It’s been a long time since she has come into my room at night.
I follow the floor tiles, black to white, black to white, until I reach the cloisters, walking the long nave with its curved window frames on either wall, each one sealed up to block out the dead outside. The windows are covered with giant paintings, seven on each side, all depicting images from life before us. The Empire State Building, the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall of China, the pyramids, the Coliseum, the Taj Mahal. I imagine them now, baking like clay in the blistering heat. Or maybe they’re swimming underneath the Great Ocean, only fish bones left to keep them company.
The others think it’s weird that I love watching the Nature Channel to see what the world was like before us. They don’t understand why I would want to know about the life cycle of frogs or watch the sea roaring, throwing its spittle onto thousands of grains of sand. Fields of corn waving in the breeze, mountains capped in glittering ice, millions and millions of people living in the big cities, all performing their part in an intricate dance, weaving in and around each other unthinkingly.
The only nature they show us in class is in the authorized Destruction series. The ice melting, the seas reconciling their differences and drowning the doomed low-lying countries, never to be seen again. There was relief at first, the hope that they had found an organic solution to the population crisis, but that soon turned to fear. The remaining people moving inward and inward and inward, until the Zones were formed to protect the remaining few from the scalding sun and the rising waters. The Noah Project. Two by two the humans entered, all marching forward to create a new world. They got rid of anything we would not need, like animals, and organized religion. They got rid of anything that would weigh us down.
I reach the giant wooden doors guarding the entrance, each one engraved with the white, red, and black triangles of the triquetra. I twist the brass handle to release them, my sweating hands slipping, leaving a mucus-like residue behind. The gates stand sentinel next, rusty metal arches reaching into spikes, waiting for intruders that will never come.
In the garden I walk along the circular concrete path looping our living quarters, stepping off the path into the grass, the synthetic blades scratching my bare feet as I weave my way around the army of trees. Each one is positioned at an equal distance from the next, their plastic limbs extending into painted leaves embellished with crystals, stuffed birds glued on like feathered tumors. I think of the videos on the Nature Channel of the vast orchards in Old England, the gnarled branches heavy with natural food. They must be dead now, those trees, like everything else. Rotted away, decaying like female babies in the uterus. Decomposing from the inside out.
“You are fortunate,” chastity-ruth told us as we were formally inducted into the School in 4th year. I still remember how strange the new clothes felt, how heavy my lips were with the coating of unfamiliar lipstick. We were in the Hall, watching as she gave her speech on the stage, our bodies so little they were nearly consumed by the cushioned velvet seats.
“Fortunate,” she repeated sternly. I pulled down the cropped T-shirt with glittery lips embroidered on it, the gap between it and the new denim hot pants too bare for comfort. Her lip turned up into a snarl when she saw me fidgeting, her eyes fierce, and I felt afraid for the first time. And then she showed us the video. The infamous “girl Graves,” thousands of unwanted daughters disposed of in an ever-expanding hole, their heads crushing against each other like broken china dolls. Drugstores with shelves upon shelves stacked with gender-specific fertility drugs, as easy to buy as chewing gum. And the body learned. It learned that a female baby was an invader, come to steal her mother’s beauty. A female baby was dangerous.
“There was concern of course,” chastity-ruth told us, her serene voice at odds with the horror of her words, “when years passed in the Zones and no female babies were born. Soon there was only a handful of the original women left, all past childbearing age, and the threat of extinction seemed far too certain. Genetic Engineers were forced to create women to ensure the survival of the human race. And since they had the opportunity, it would have been foolish not to make necessary improvements in the new women, the eves.” She coughed delicately. “And the Schools were formed to house them.”
“Why didn’t they give the girl babies to the companions to raise as their own?”
She stared at me after I said this, identifying me as trouble. “Who would have wanted you?” she said. “Who would want you until you could be of some use?”
I didn’t understand what she meant by “of use,” not then. isabel slipped her hand into mine, anchoring me. And I knew she could protect me.
I blink twice, my vision blurring. Pushing my way through the tinselly plants, I arrive at the outer limits of our world, my hands reaching out to meet the shell that keeps us all in here, safe from the wastelands. It has been tinted an inky black tonight, twinkling flakes precisely penciled in, a huge white moon drawn like an unblinking eye. I get as close as I can, flattening my body against the glass, feeling its solid resistance meeting me. I can see nothing beyond this, everything swallowed up by the night.
“What are you doing?”
I flinch, my right knee screaming as it hits the sky. She looks perplexed, her hands folded across her chest. Her black robes are strange against the colors of the garden, the light from the moon surrounding her bald head like a halo.
“You scared me,” I say, and I sit heavily on the lime-green lawn, squashing some poppy flowers as I do. chastity-magdalena comes closer, arranging her robes around her as she sits next to me. Her skin is still smooth, with only the beginning of faint lines forming around her copper-colored eyes. She’s the youngest chastity, but still old—in her midthirties, I think.
“Do you want to talk about it?” She hesitantly pats my shoulder and we both flinch. The chastities never touch us. “Is this to do with the Ceremony, freida? It’s okay if it is. It’s normal to feel apprehensive.”
I’m not sure if that is the reason. I don’t know what this thing is, twisting in my gut, thirsting for something I can’t name, but I nod my head. It’s easier.
“What third do you want to be chosen for?”
“I want to be a companion.”
“Not a concubine?” she asks, her cheeks coloring at the word.
“If that is the third the Inheritants think I’m best suited to, then of course,” I say, although I would rather die than become a concubine.
“No interest in joining the chastities?”
As if anyone would want to become a chastity, faced with a lifetime of caring for newer, more nubile students as you grow old and decrepit, without the luxury of a Termination Date appointed to preserve your beauty. My eyes are drawn to the laughter lines scoring into her skin. I imagine her at forty, at fifty, at sixty, and I shiver.
“I didn’t think I would be a chastity, at first,” she says, oblivious to my thoughts. “But, well . . .” she looks sad for a moment. “Anyway I liked spending time with the younger children, and I, well, I didn’t think I would be able to fulfill the duties of the other thirds so it was for the best, in the end.”
We both look away, the suggestion of sex looming between us. “I felt safe in the School,” she adds hurriedly. “It’s peaceful here.”
“That’s what isabel said. Maybe she’ll join agyness,” I joke. “Imagine! Two chastities in one year. I bet that has never happened before.”
“Oh, isabel will never be a chastity. There are much greater things in store for her,”
she says, her voice oddly sad.
But you thought it was an option for me? Why aren’t there “much greater things” in store for me? Why does everyone always think isabel is so much better than me?
I touch the poppies at my feet, rubbing the fabric petals between my fingers. In the center of each flower is a miniature mirror, big enough to hold your eye if you lean in close. I crush it, the cloth tears easily, the glass bud shattering, breaking my reflection.
“Time for bed, freida.”
We walk in silence back to the dorms. The others are still sleeping deeply, my absence unnoticed.
“May you get what you wish, freida,” she whispers as I lie down on my bed, turning in the doorway as she leaves. “May you be the mother of a hundred Sons.”
“All eves are created to be perfect but, over time, they seem to develop flaws. Comparing yourself to your sisters is a useful way of identifying these flaws, but you must then take the necessary steps to improve yourself. There is always room for Improvement.”2
2. Audio Guide to the Rules for Proper female Behavior, the Original Father
Chapter 6
January
Six months until the Ceremony
I loved Fridays as a child. I remember being obsessed with these ancient picture books we had in our dorm, which we were only allowed to look at on weekends. I spent hours constructing detailed plans to make sure I got my hands on them before the others. Not that they ever wanted them anyway, preferring the interactive ePad games. Every Friday evening I would sneak into one of the blocked-up window frames in the cloisters, leaning against a painting of sea cliffs or the pyramids, pretending the windows were merely closed, that I could look out if I chose to. That the world outside still existed. While the other girls were playing Be a Stylist and Plan a Party! on their ePads, I was poring over fotos of princess sparkles, a skinny lady with big breasts, long legs and blond hair. She had a pink car and a pink house and there were little pink buttons on the page you could press to make her speak in an Americas-Zone accent. Pink’s my favorite color. You’re my best friend. Math is hard. Wanna go shopping? Then I made the mistake of asking one of the chastities what math was and they confiscated the books. Weekends were never the same after that. All we seem to do is burn through the hours between Organized Recreation sessions as fast as we can, listening to celebrity gossip on Artificial.com or updating our MyFace photos, trying to forget about what happened in that Friday’s Comparison Studies class.