know what Lissa’s writing, why she’s continually clicking her pen in that obsessive-compulsive way, what brought her here, and why she didn’t flinch at the scene of misfits in the cafeteria tonight at dinner. I want to know what the colored armbands mean and why Alex Cartmill is here. But it’s late, and Lissa reminds me we need to be in the dining hall at seven thirty for breakfast, so no more questions for now.
I stay in the common room with only the red LED light from the television for company, and I think about mating rituals, and creatures that run from the strange, and my dreams of dancing Qs whose tails wrap themselves around children, carrying them away.
I think about Freddie and wonder whether she’s crying herself to sleep tonight.
Like I know I will.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee are not at their desk when I leave the common room. I check the double doors leading to the faculty building’s vestibule, which is more Checkpoint Charlie–type inspection room than lobby. Open.
The main doors, however, are not. A sign on each of them warns again that an alarm will sound if any attempt is made to open them between the hours of nine and seven.
My watch shows eleven forty-five when I let myself into the apartment. One glass with a quarter inch of clear liquid sits on the kitchen table. I pick it up, sniff at it, and recoil. It smells like fire. Corn-flavored fire.
What the hell, I think, and I drain the glass before shedding myself of my heavy gray shell and pulling on pajamas. Cotton never felt so delicious.
Ruby Jo is sprawled diagonally on the lower bunk bed, one leg hanging off the mattress, red curls lying in thick ropes on her pillow. If the mound of blankets weren’t rising and falling on top of her, I’d think she was dead. Lissa, on the other hand, already snores softly in the twin bed opposite. She sounds like a content kitten.
And me? I’ve never been so wide-awake.
I climb the wooden ladder near Ruby Jo’s feet, bump my head on the ceiling, and tumble onto a mattress that falls somewhere between rock and iron on the spectrum of uncomfortable. Above me, the plaster is close enough to feel like the lid of a coffin. Terrific.
Wide-awake and buried alive. I can’t think of a worse fate.
And I’m still awake.
Sleep eventually comes, and the last thing I remember seeing is the wall directly above my head, white as ignorance and solid as steel.
I need to bust through the damned thing.
And I need to see my daughter. I need to tell her everything is going to be okay.
The problem is, I’m not sure I believe it.
FORTY-SIX
An alarm sounds in a room I don’t recognize, and I bump my head on the ceiling. Again. Not an auspicious start to the day.
Lissa is already up and dressed; Ruby Jo is in the kitchen rinsing out the glass of moonshine while I shake off a bad night’s sleep and pull on my gray uniform.
On our way to the dining hall, we speculate about the meaning of the colored bands.
“What color did your girl have on?” Lissa asks me.
“Purple. And Freddie hates purple.”
The dining hall last night was full of purple bands, some new like Freddie’s, others faded and frayed at the edges. I make a mental note to look more closely during breakfast.
What a strange thing, that purple used to be the color of royalty. Now, if I’m right, it’s the color of failure. Bomb your test, win a purple band.
“Only one boy had a dark blue one,” I say, redrawing the postdinner exodus scene in my head. “The boy in the wheelchair.”
“So maybe that means handicapped,” Ruby Jo says. “And the pregnant girl wore red.”
Get knocked up, win a red band, I think, the twentieth-century scarlet A.
“What about orange? A few of the others are wearing orange,” I say, remembering a couple of girls whose backs were to me.