“What did you do?” Mom asks quietly.
“Nothing,” both Juniper and I reply at the same time, which makes us look at each other and smile for the first time in a long while.
Juniper throws me a worried look and whispers, “Did you do something yesterday?”
I swallow hard. I think of meeting Crevan and wonder if he discovered I was looking for the guards and Mr. Berry, and if so, what is my punishment. Mary May marches into the kitchen in her black-and-red coat and looks straight at me. I’m so afraid that it has something to do with my trip to Highland Castle and asking for the guards that when she produces a newspaper and slams it down on the kitchen counter, I’m relieved.
Now I know that I can’t trust Pia. It’s a ridiculous article about how I am getting preferential treatment at the school by missing classes and swimming, something I know was written purely to pressure the principal to make me leave the school. If he is seen as aiding a Flawed, or even making my life easier, then the parents will want his head on a plate. The picture that appears alongside it is a photo of me taken sneakily by someone at school. It’s supposed to be a photo of me with my braids down, covering my temple, which is against Flawed rules.
“That’s not me,” I say instantly.
We all huddle in closer.
“That’s me,” Juniper says.
“You understand the rules, young lady,” Mary May says to Juniper. “You cannot lie for your sister, or you will face punishment or incarceration or both.”
“I’m not lying,” Juniper says, and I can sense her getting a hot head. The old Juniper is back.
“The newspaper says it is Celestine,” Mary May says, a little put out, folding the paper again. “This photograph is a clear breach of the rules, Celestine. You will receive a punishment.”
“I’d like you to call the newspaper and get clarification,” Mom says quickly. “A mistake has clearly been made here. I know my daughters, and that is not Celestine in the photograph.”
Mary May is having none of it. “For a total of one week, starting Monday, you will be under house arrest. You cannot leave this house after school hours.” She signs a form, leaves it on top of the newspaper, and leaves.
“I hate her,” I say quietly, watching Mary May drive away.
Mom shushes me even though she’s too far away to hear.
“She’s just a stupid woman in a ridiculous costume,” Juniper snaps.
“No, no, no.” Mom grabs her by the shoulders and looks her straight in the eye. Juniper is startled by Mom’s aggressiveness. Mom realizes what she’s done, and she sighs. Then she leads us both to the kitchen table and we sit. “Girls, we have to be careful. You think she’s a woman with a grudge, but Mary May is one of the most senior Whistleblowers, and do you know why?”
“Why?” Juniper asks.
“She reported her sister to the Guild as soon as the Flawed rules were introduced. And then when her family turned its back on her, she reported all of them. Her father, her sisters, and her brother, something to do with their family business. Everyone was taken away, branded, punished.”
“What?” I gasp. “Her own family?”
“She might look like a woman in a stupid costume, but she’s dangerous. Let’s not find out how far she’ll go.”
I swallow and nod. I may have gotten away easily here. My weeklong detention isn’t the worst punishment in the world. It means that I can still go to Logan’s party tomorrow night, which I’ve been excited and anxious about, but it will pause my Carrick-finding mission, and I need to find him before Crevan manages to make any more people disappear.
FORTY-ONE
“SO DID YOU speak with the guards?” I ask Pia, biting into my apple.
An urgent request to meet with me has brought Pia to my house extremely early Friday morning. I can hear everybody getting ready for school and work, but I’m in no rush because the principal just called to say that due to the reaction to Pia Wang’s article, I can’t attend school until we figure out other arrangements. They have finally gotten their way, and they’re using the article to get at me, no doubt Crevan’s idea. I’m gone, now Art can attend. He just needs to be found first.
Pia is in casual mode, jeans and pumps and a cotton T-shirt, which is unusual on her. She almost looks human.
“I asked for Tina, June, Bark, Funar, and Tony at reception, just as you told me to,” she replies.
“Great,” I say enthusiastically. “So they were all able to back me up, corroborate my story?”
“They weren’t there,” she says quietly. “They no longer work at Highland Castle. But you already know that. You were there looking for them yesterday.”
I shrug and bite into my apple. “Maybe, maybe not. I’m gutted, as you can imagine. Now I have absolutely no proof whatsoever that Crevan gave me a sixth brand.”
She flinches at me, saying it aloud.
“My family was thrown out of the room, the guards were fired, and Mr. Berry has taken a sudden and unplanned holiday. He hasn’t worked on a Guild case for the past two weeks and isn’t responding to any calls. Everyone is gone. It’s almost like somebody didn’t want anybody who was present at the branding to talk about what happened at all. Like a conspiracy! Oh, wait a minute!” I gasp sarcastically.
This is obviously deeply distressing to her, and she sits very still in the armchair, lost in thought. It is terribly distressing to me, too, in fact, though I’m trying to hide it. It means Crevan really is hiding what he has done to me, somehow getting rid of the witnesses, which makes me feel unsafe.
“There weren’t any reports of incidences of the guards’ bad conduct,” Pia says. “There were no warnings before they were let go. No reported incidences. No budget cuts. No contracts that had come to an end. It was very sudden. All gone. On the same day. The day after the Branding Chamber. As far as I can see, they’re not currently employed elsewhere. I rang Tina’s house. There was no answer. She has a daughter, so she must know something. I think I’ll take a drive out to her tomorrow.”
“So you believe me,” I say nervously.
“No, I’m not saying I believe you,” she says quickly. “I mean, I don’t know, but, maybe, I think that I have to cover all areas before … you know. It’s a very serious thing, and if he did it, then…”
“Then what?”
“Then…” She sighs. “Then it calls a lot of things into question.”
“It calls the entire system into question,” I say.
“Unfair treatment in the Branding Chamber doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not Flawed, Celestine.”
I roll my eyes. I can’t win with her. “No, but it means he is. And what happens if you have a Flawed person at the head of a Flawed court?”
She goes quiet. “I heard the school won’t let you attend.”
I feel the anger rising within me. “Because of your article, with the photograph of my sister.”
Her guilty look tells me all I need to know. But it also shows me that perhaps there’s a conscience knocking around in there that I never knew existed.
“Isn’t it better to be at home?” she asks. “So that you’re not the only Flawed in the school. That can’t be easy.”
“Are you trying to convince yourself you’ve done me a favor? Because you haven’t. I wanted to be at school. It’s my right.”
She looks confused and thinks about it. “What’s it like to be Flawed at school? The only Flawed person.”
I can’t find any hidden agenda with this line of questioning, but she’s never asked me questions like this, about how it feels, because the readership isn’t supposed to care about how it feels for a Flawed, unless it’s to scare them.
I sigh. “I don’t know what it’s like when you’re older, but every teenager wants to be perfect. Nobody wants to stand out, at least I never did. And the people that do stand out, they’re just being themselves. Everybody wants to look like they know what they’re doing, when really most of the time nobody has a clue. Maybe
it’s different with adults.”
Pia smiles. “Not really that different with adults at all. It’s not easy being a journalist,” she says, and I throw her a bored look. “No, seriously. Not everything we write is published the way we want it to be. We don’t always have control over our voice.”
She’ll never apologize for the article that got me thrown out of school, but perhaps this is the closest she’ll come to it. Today her article is about whether Angelina Tinder “coached” me to become Flawed and questions who else she taught piano to. She misquotes me a few times from previous interviews, twisting my words to fit into her context. There is a photograph of Angelina before the Ousting and a photograph of my startled face leaving her house. The headline is FLAWED PIANO TEACHER RECRUITS.
I study Pia, and I know what she’s struggling with: tell the sixth-brand story or not. Bring down Crevan, or not.
“So tell them you want it to be said your way.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Yes, it is.”
“They don’t listen.”
“Then leave. Go work somewhere else.”
“The world doesn’t work like that, Celestine.”
I shrug.
“So if I left this extremely well-paid job, where I might not get to report everything in the way that I want, but I get to report it—I have my own show, my own column—who would feed my two children?”
“Lies wouldn’t.”
This strikes her, and she’s silent some more.
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to call Tina’s house today, ask some questions. Can we meet later tonight?”
“I won’t be here.” On her look, I give her more. “I’m going to a party. Someone from school.”
“Good for you,” Pia says.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was almost happy for me. But I can’t trust her fully. What if she is working with Crevan to find out what my plan is? What if she finds the guards and talks them out of telling the truth? Threatens them with a story or with accusing them of aiding a Flawed? And if I tell her about Mr. Berry’s recording of the Branding Chamber, what if she destroys the video? No, I can’t trust her. She is too close to Crevan, and she has done little so far to earn my trust. I can’t tell her about Carrick or Mr. Berry’s video.
I’ll just have to get to them before she does.
FORTY-TWO
“SO WHOSE PARTY are you going to?” Juniper asks me at breakfast, after Pia is gone.
“Logan Trilby’s.”
She stops chewing her cereal, her sugary cereal that she continues to eat while I’m limited to oatmeal. “Logan is the biggest asshole going.”
“He’s been nice to me.”
She frowns. “What’s he celebrating?”
“His eighteenth.”
“I’m pretty sure Logan is nineteen. He had to repeat his final year he’s so dumb.”
“No, he’s not.” I whip out the invitation.
She studies it with a frown. “Oh.” She hands it back, and we sit in silence. “I didn’t hear anything about it.”
Despite the tension between us over the past couple of weeks, she is my sister and I do have the capacity to feel sympathy for her. I’m thankful for that. It reminds me I’m human.
“Well, I’m sure they were just being nice to me. I wouldn’t feel bad about it,” I say gently.
She starts laughing. “Do you think I’m jealous? No way. Believe me, I’m not. You can have your party. What I meant was, I never heard about a party, and I wouldn’t trust them.”
“Why? Because I’m Flawed?” I ask, my anger flaring up instantly, always there ready and waiting for me to use in my overflowing reservoir. “You think the only reason I could be invited anywhere is because it’s a trick?”
“I’m not saying it’s a trick,” Juniper says weakly.
“So where are you going tonight?” I ask, the anger thumping inside me. “Are you going to disappear tonight like you do every night?”
Juniper looks at me in surprise, a mouth full of cereal. She chews slowly, and I can tell she’s trying to think.
I know it’s unfair of me to bring it up so loudly in front of everyone, but she is up to something and what she said about Logan has really hurt me. Finally, I’m making friends and she’s taking away from the thrill I should be feeling. My heart is racing as I watch her eat her sugary cereal; it’s making me angrier and angrier.
“What are you talking about?”
“For the past two weeks I’ve gone into your room at midnight most nights, and you haven’t been there.”
She laughs as if I’m ludicrous, which annoys me. I don’t like people thinking I’m crazy. Not now. Not after seeing Angelina Tinder lose her mind. I don’t want that to happen to me. Mary May looks up from her paperwork. Mom and Dad watch us with interest.
“Fight, fight, fight,” Ewan chants, before Juniper kicks him under the table.
“Maybe I was in the bathroom.”
“You weren’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I checked.”
“Okay, stalker.”
I don’t like how she looks at me.
“Is this true, Juniper?” Dad asks, coming over to the table.
“You’re going to give me shit when you know Celestine was leaving the house most nights to meet Art?”
Mom looks at Mary May in panic. “Before the branding. Juniper, please clarify,” she says sharply.
“Before the branding,” she says as though she’s a scolded child.
“What you both used to be able to do before and what you can do now is different, Juniper. If people see you and think that you’re Celestine, she will get into trouble. Like the hair,” Dad says, looking at Mary May angrily.
“So I can’t live my life because Celestine can’t?”
“Celestine can live her life, so watch your mouth, young lady,” Dad raises his voice, which startles us all.
“Anyway, I haven’t been sneaking out,” she says, eyes down, and I know she’s lying.
“Are you calling me a liar?” I ask.
She glares at me. “I don’t need to call you anything. Stick out your tongue, Celestine.”
“You stupid, little…” I pick up my oatmeal and hurl it at her.
Mom and Dad dive on both of us, separating us. Juniper is sent upstairs to change her oatmeal-covered clothes.
“Go on, take another hour to get dressed like you always do,” I shout after her.
“Celestine, stop,” Mom admonishes me.
Mary May takes out her notebook.
“What?” I snap. “Fighting with siblings isn’t allowed, either? What do I get as punishment, extra pumpkin seeds for dinner?” I stand up and make my way to the sink. As I reach past Mary May to get the cloth behind her to clean the oatmeal, she must think I’m going for her and brings her hand back and slaps me hard across the face with her leather glove. The pain stuns me as much as the shock of it.
“How dare you!” my dad yells, rushing over to her, but then he stops right in front of her as though there’s a force field stopping him from getting close, which I guess is exactly what there is. She’s untouchable. She is what I thought I used to be.
My eyes prick with tears, my face stinging, but I won’t let Mary May see me cry.
Mom rushes to my side, “My baby, my poor baby.” She hugs me while over her shoulder Mary May looks at me menacingly with cold blue eyes. Mom pulls away and takes the cloth it is now obvious that I was reaching for, though I don’t see a hint of regret in Mary May’s face. “I’ll do this,” she says, her voice trembling with anger. “A mother can help her daughter. Now, is there anything else I can do for you this morning, or is that all?”
Mary May seems to be unmoved by it all, maybe she’s even enjoyed it. “I understand that Celestine has a party tonight. Curfew breaking is considered a very serious breach of the rules. Celestine would have to go before the Guild court to decide her punishment, but punishments
usually bleed into the rest of your family. Simply put, if you break the rules, your family will be punished. Just ask your friend Angelina Tinder; ask her where her boys have been this week.”
I think of the silence in their house when I visited, how there were no signs of their presence, no sounds of their playing. I swallow.
Mom looks at me; her fear is clear. “They were taken into temporary foster care for one week.”
“I won’t be late,” I say quietly. I couldn’t cope with Ewan being taken away from us.
Mary May gathers her things to leave. “By the way, Judge Crevan tells me we will soon be recruiting an old friend of yours. Art Crevan is to become a new member of the Whistleblowers, and I’ve been honored to be asked to personally train him myself.” She gives me a look, a satisfied twinkle in her eye, before she closes the door behind her, leaving me shivering in fear.
“Art couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Working for the Guild is the last thing he’d ever do. He wants to go to university. I’m going to study mathematics; he’s going to study science. That’s what we planned.”
Dad sits on my other side as Mom applies cream to my face to stop the bruising from coming up.
Dad sighs. “Oh, Celestine, I’m sorry.” He kisses my forehead. “Try not to worry. Last I heard, they still don’t even know where Art is. Crevan has put a lot of manpower into finding him, but there’s been nothing yet.”
“I hope he got away,” I say, for the first time realizing Art might be right, maybe we can’t make us work.
“Me too.” Dad smiles sadly. “Now put it out of your mind. I know that’s hard, but you have to look forward. Let’s think of tonight. New beginnings. New friendships.”
I nod, trying to ignore the throbbing in my cheek.
“What was all that noise?” Juniper says, entering the kitchen. “Dad, did you shout?”
She has taken far less time to dress than I expected, and as soon as I see her, I suck in air. She is wearing my clothes. Pink skinny jeans and a cream crop top that I threw out last night. I’d tried it on, but it revealed the F brand at the base of my spine. I can never wear it again. I threw all those clothes out so I’d never see them again, never be reminded of the life I had to leave behind, the person I used to be. And now she’s wearing them. It all looks unusual on her, out of place.