Esther smacked her arm, then took out her phone. Sloane fled the scene before Esther could talk her into another selfie, finding the gap in the wall and slipping into the monument.
Tiny letters—the name of every person killed by the Dark One—were carved out of the metal walls. It had taken years to find and cut them all, according to the artist, and most names were so small you could barely read them. The artist had set up panels of light behind the metal sheets so each name glowed. It was like staring at a night sky somewhere deep in the wilderness, where pollution didn’t interfere with the light of the stars.
Albie stood in the middle of the cube, staring at one of the wall panels.
“Hey,” she said to him.
“Hey,” he said. “Pretty in here, isn’t it?”
“The bronze was a good choice. Almost cozy this way,” she said. “Did you find your dad’s name?”
“No,” he said. “Needle. Haystack.”
“Maybe we could ask the artist.”
Albie shrugged. “I think the point is, you’re not supposed to be able to see the individual names. You’re just supposed to get an impression of how many there were.”
So many it stopped mattering, Sloane thought. She already knew the number of people lost to the Dark One. Anything from one hundred to one million was just a number, her mind too limited to really comprehend it.
“I like it this way,” Albie said. “It reminds me that we’re just a handful of people who lost something among thousands of other people who lost something. Not hurting any more or less than any of the families of these people.”
He gestured to the panel in front of him. Albie was only thirty, but his hair had gone feather-light and was receding at the temples. There were creases in his forehead, too, deep enough that she had noticed them. Time was wearing on him.
“I’m tired of being special,” Albie said with a shaky laugh. “I’m tired of being celebrated for the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
Sloane went to stand next to him, close enough that their arms touched. She thought of the stack of government documents in the bottom drawer of her desk, of Rick Lane discussing her like she was a slab of meat at a butcher, of the nightmares that chased her from sleeping to waking.
“Yeah,” she said through a sigh. “I know what you mean.”
Or at least, she thought she did. But when she watched Albie’s hand tremble as he brought it up to scrub at his face, she wondered if she really did know.
“Knock-knock!” Esther said. She was holding up her phone—at a flattering angle, of course—as she walked into the monument, her hair arranged perfectly over her shoulders. She turned so the shot included Albie and Sloane. “Say hi to my Insta! followers, guys!”
“Is this live?” Sloane asked.
“No,” Esther said.
Sloane glanced at Albie and then put up both her middle fingers while Albie put his palms up to his cheeks to make a loud farting noise. Ines walked in after Esther, looking nervous, to see Sloane waving her middle fingers around Albie’s face. Esther put the phone down, scowling.
“That was supposed to be a live capture of my first time through the Ten Years Monument!” she said. “Now I’m gonna have to do it again and act like it’s the first time.”
She stormed out, passing Matt on her way.
“What’d I miss?” he said.
“Hold on,” Albie said, touching a finger to his lips.
Esther came in again, the phone held up and away from her face, her eyes wide in faux-wonder as she looked at the glowing names. Albie darted forward and tipped his head so he was in the shot with Esther and said, “This is her second time doing this! Don’t let her lie to you—”
Esther shoved Albie away and put her phone down. “What is wrong with you guys?”
“Us? You’re the one who basically has a phone grafted to your hand!” said Sloane. “You’re worse than Matt.”
Matt put up his hands. “I am not involved in this.”
“I’m not the first person to use social media!” Esther said. “It’s my job, you don’t have to be so freaking judge-y about it.”
“This is supposed to be a somber occasion,” Matt pointed out. “And it could have been a good bonding experience—”
“Recording it doesn’t take away its somberness,” Esther said.
“It does when you’re recording from the ideal selfie angle,” Ines said, miming holding up a phone. She posed with her hip