chain clearly now, straining, pulled by unseen magic. She was moving straight through the crowd, and as girl after girl was dismissed, my heart sped, and some small, faraway, daring part of it seemed to take on the rhythm of what if, what if, what if? What if, after all this time, after all the hurt and sorrow and humiliation, this was what I was destined for? What would people say then? But Mother Morevna stopped in front of someone else.
Lucy grabbed my arm.
Trixie Holland, next to her bulldog-faced aunt and uncle. Three rows up, in a yellow dress patched with flour-sack fabric. Unlike the other girls Mother Morevna stopped before, Trixie didn’t cower or whimper. She gave Mother Morevna her wide smile, holding her broad shoulders back with the confidence of Roosevelt. Oh no, I thought, my nose throbbing as though it too was terrified. This isn’t good.
Mother Morevna raised her pendulum over Trixie’s head. I turned my eyes away. I couldn’t watch. Not Trixie, I thought. Not Trixie. But even as I thought it, I knew that Trixie would make sense. She had all the qualities a leader needed, on the surface, anyway.
My stomach lurched again. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch her be chosen. The Trixies of the world were always chosen. The mean, violent ones. The fight pickers, the hypocrites, the truly dishonest. But what did I expect? After all we’d all been through, it was stupid to think that anything could happen to us but the very worst thing.
Somewhere I heard Lucy’s voice say, “Um… Sal?” but I barely heard her.
What would happen once Trixie was the leader of Elysium? Would she toss me out into the Desert of Dust and Steel, like Olivia Rosales? In my mind, it seemed that Trixie’s shadow stretched over all of Elysium, her big hands grasping, her high voice laughing.
“Sal.” Lucy tapped my shoulder. “Sal!”
“What?” I snapped.
But when I turned, it felt as though my stomach dropped out of my body altogether.
Mother Morevna was standing right in front of me, her black pendulum straining against its chain, pointing at my chest like an arrow.
“Sallie Wilkerson,” she said, and her voice didn’t echo like it had before. “Well, well. This is a surprise.” Then she whispered to the pendulum, and it went limp in her hand. She raised it up, over my head, the black stone directly over me. My breath froze in my lungs.
It didn’t swing back and forth. It didn’t do anything at all. It hung still. Dead still. The crowd around me began to murmur, but Mother Morevna didn’t move and neither did the pendulum.
My body was full of something that felt like ten thousand bees were making a home in my rib cage. It was unbearable. Please, I thought at the pendulum. Please move. The hairs on my arms, on my neck, began to prickle, and I closed my eyes as I realized what I already knew: I want this. I want it to be me.
Then I felt the electricity intensify, go somehow gold above my head.
There was a gasp in the crowd. Beside me, Lucy breathed, “Oh my God…”
I opened my eyes and looked up. Above my head, the pendulum was swinging in a broad, frantic circle.
“My new Successor, Sallie Wilkerson,” said Mother Morevna, her magically amplified voice echoing from the walls of Elysium. Every eye was on me—me!—and before all those eyes, I felt so small. Was this a mistake?
Mother Morevna’s claws were on my arm. “Stand up straight. Don’t slouch.”
I stood to my full, awkward height—just shorter than her, I realized for the first time.
“Now, come with me.”
She pulled me through the crowd, and I saw face after shocked face as I passed. Trixie Holland looked about ready to explode from surprise.
We got to the platform, and Mother Morevna led me up onto it. In the bright light, I could see everyone in Elysium. And for the first time they could see—really see—me. I took a deep, shuddering breath and stood up straight like Mother Morevna had said.
“People of Elysium,” Mother Morevna said. “Welcome Sallie Wilkerson, my new Successor.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, a murmur of thought so loud I could almost hear it: the Girl Who Cried Rain? And then the people of Elysium, the people who had called me a liar, the indifferent and the pitying alike, slowly began to applaud. I stood there, pale as a fish’s belly, my stomach threatening to turn itself inside out.
Then Mother