the feeling of an unseen storm about to creep up over the horizon. I smelled it in the air, felt it prickle my skin. It had been so real that a few times I’d run outside, my arms spread, my mouth open, convinced that rain would fall any moment, only to be met with dust and wind. But the truth was that I was strange long before the world of the Game began. Mama and Papa had thought I was funny, a little tomboy with her head in the clouds. My strange girl, Mama would call me. Her favorite story was how when I’d been born there had been blackbirds all over our roof. Not anyone else’s roof. Just ours. She said they’d given me a blackbird blessing.
They’d read me books about knights and heroes, made up stories about inventive young girls who saved the day, and gradually I grew to understand that all these plucky young heroines were me in disguise. They both believed that I was special. And special people were born for a reason. Even after the accident that claimed Papa’s life, even after our world ended and the walls started going up, Mama never stopped believing that my specialness, my destiny, would make itself known. That I would make a difference someday. And when I smelled rain on the wind for the first time and it didn’t come, she didn’t think I had lied about it. Not exactly. But she didn’t believe it was real yet. She believed that I thought it was real. And to her, if I believed it, it wasn’t a lie. I should have known that not everyone thought that way.
When morning came, I woke to a throbbing nose, filled with dust and dried blood. I washed up in the trough and got dressed in my shabby Sunday dress that was about two inches too short, and carefully shadowed my face with an old straw hat.
But as I was passing the hospital, a nurse appeared, Nurse Gladys Ann, on her way to open up the hospital, and she stopped in her tracks when she saw me.
“Sal Wilkerson?” she said. “Well, bless my soul! How are you doing these days?”
“Fine,” I said. “Just… trying to get some errands run.”
“I see,” she said. She glanced at my face and saw my nose. “What happened? Somebody beat you up? Because if they did—”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just stepped on a rake.”
“Well, next time you find yourself in a situation like that, you run away as fast as you can. There’s no shame in running, you know. And stay out of unsafe areas. Wandering out on your own where no one can help can get you killed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said flatly. “I know all about that.”
“Oh, Sal,” said Nurse Gladys. “I didn’t mean… That was different… You were just a little girl. And there’s no running from a dust storm, Sal. You know that.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but before I could, there was a crash from inside the hospital. A full bedpan was hurled against the nearest window and its contents splattered all down the glass.
I jumped.
From inside, I could hear the overnight nurses running down the hall, and a woman shouting in Spanish.
“Oh, Lord, what is it now?” said Nurse Gladys.
“Hold her down!” came a muffled voice through the window.
“I’m trying!” said another.
“Quick! The syringe!”
“?HOY!” the woman shouted. “?Ella viene hoy!”
“Hold her!”
Then there was a high, keening noise and she fell silent.
I glanced at Nurse Gladys. “Who is that in there?” I asked.
“Oh, just Miss Ibarra,” she replied with a knowing look.
I’d heard about Miss Ibarra, though I’d never seen her myself. During the unstable time when Elysium was still reeling from Olivia Rosales’s banishment, a young woman named Angélica Ibarra had gone absolutely insane when her fiancé had fallen from the west wall and broken his neck. She ran around town screaming and shouting and causing a ruckus until Mother Morevna had her sent to the hospital, where she’d been ever since. She was, possibly, one of the few people in Elysium that I pitied.
“She’s an odd one, that girl,” said Nurse Gladys. “Always seeing things that aren’t there. People that aren’t there. Of course, in a world like this, who’s to know what’s real and what’s not? Still, she’s crazy as a horsefly in a henhouse.” She stopped, thinking of my rain visions maybe, and straightened herself. “Best not to talk about it. Now you’d better get on with your errands,