“Of course.”
“Could I have Tina’s contact details? A phone number? Or e-mail address? Anything. I just want to ask her something. I won’t bother her in any way if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She bites on her lip. “I’m not really supposed to…” but I can see doubt there somewhere. “Just one moment.” She stands up and makes her way into the room behind her, and I wait, still in shock that they’re all gone.
I drum my fingers on the countertop, watching the clock. Mom will be collecting Juniper soon. She’ll flip when she finds out I’m not going home with them. I need to make this risk worth it. When the door opens, I expect to see the receptionist, but Crevan steps out. My heart hammers wildly. I haven’t seen him since the Branding Chamber, and it brings it all back to me, the lunatic look on his face as he shouted at me to repent, as he ordered the unbelievable pain on my skin. He’s wearing his red cloak, ready for court. My breathing becomes heavy. I’m afraid of him. I don’t see Art’s father anymore. It’s another man, an evil man, and I understand how Art can’t stand to be near him anymore. Neither can I, so my body shivers from head to toe.
The receptionist’s face has turned scarlet behind him. She has a piece of paper in her hand, and I know it’s Tina’s contact details, and I want it so badly. If I don’t get it now, she will never give it to me. But Crevan is looking from her to me, and if he snatches the note from her hand, then it’s all over.
“Celestine,” he says, nostrils flared, as though there were a bad smell in the room. He looks at me with more hatred than I’ve ever seen in anyone. “What are you doing here?”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“WHAT AM I doing here?” I ask, and I can hear the tremble in my voice.
My obvious fear only makes him stronger, gives him an amused, patronizing look.
“I’m … I’m…” I can’t even think. I can’t lie, and I can’t come up with any reasonable explanation. I am so stupid for putting myself in this position. I feel light-headed. What would happen if I just ran? Would he chase me?
“There you are,” Pia Wang says suddenly from behind me, all business. “I was looking for you. I’m ready now.”
Just what I need, Pia and Crevan together at the same time.
She stops beside me and looks up at Crevan. “Oh, Judge Crevan, hello, how are you? Celestine and I were just about to begin the next part of our interview. Were you looking for me?” she asks me.
I look at her in surprise. She’s helping me? I nod.
The receptionist crumples up the piece of paper in her hand, and my heart drops.
“Let’s go. There’s a café around the corner,” she says. “Judge, nice to see you,” she says confidently, and leads me away.
With wobbly legs, and not a second look at Crevan in case he calls me back, I go with her. There are many narrow alleyways and cobblestoned pathways around and through the castle. Pia leads me down one and into a tiny café with five tables close together. She must have known it would be empty, and the spotty teenager behind the counter makes us our coffees and sits on a high stool and disappears into his phone. Even if he hears every word we say, I doubt he’ll care in the slightest.
By the time we’ve sat down, I’ve managed to gather myself.
“What are you doing here?” Pia asks.
“Looking for you, obviously,” I say, sarcastically. “And ta-da!”
She views me with suspicion, but if I don’t go along with her idea, then she’ll want to know why I’m really here, and I can’t tell her anything about looking for Carrick.
“I thought about your proof,” she says, looking at the teenager, then back at me.
“Right.”
“And it doesn’t hold up. You could have done that to yourself.”
I almost choke on my coffee, and she at least does seem to feel a little stupid for saying it.
“Or somebody else could have done it. There’s no proof that … he … did it.”
“There is definitely something wrong with you if you think that I would sear my own skin with a burning-hot iron without an anesthetic,” I say a little more loudly than I mean to, but she is making me so angry. We both look at the teenager, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off his phone.
“There’s just nobody who can back up your story,” she says. “Your family and Mr. Berry were all taken out of the room for the fifth brand. Nobody was in the viewing room. There’s nothing about it in the reports.”
She really doesn’t know about Carrick or Mr. Berry, and I’m sure Funar wouldn’t have told anybody that they managed to rush into the room and witness it all, seeing as it was his mistake.
“Have you talked to the guards?” I ask.
“No. But I’ve read the reports. The guards write them.”
“Yes. But did you speak to them?”
“No.”
“Interesting.” I finish the last of my coffee and stand up feeling more confident but hoping more than anything that I won’t bump into Crevan again. It’s clear that I’m putty in his hands now. “I have to get home, or my mom will be worried. You should talk to the guards. They might tell you something different. Tina, June, Bark, Funar, and Tony. You should ask for them at the front desk.”
She scrambles for a pen and writes those names down. The speed of her reaction reveals her desperation for the truth. If I can’t find them, she can do the work for me, though it doesn’t mean I can trust her to write the truth if she learns it.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I say. I put on my cap, adjust my F sleeve, and go back out into the world. I leave three voice mail messages on Mr. Berry’s phone, urgently asking him to call me.
There’s one more place I want to visit before I get home.
Part of the Flawed rules is that the Flawed aren’t allowed to be buried with their families; there’s a graveyard especially for them. The idea is that you can’t force the regular moral and ethically abiding people of society to be buried in the ground for all time alongside the Flawed. I go to the only Flawed graveyard in the city, which is surrounded by bright red railings.
There is a list of occupants at the graveyard office along with a log of their misdemeanors, part of the philosophy of being branded Flawed. Even in death, there is no escaping it. I don’t need to go to the desk to search through the logbook. It’s easy to find Clayton Byrne’s grave site. It looks like that of a celebrated martyr. There are dozens of fresh flowers and sweet-scented candles decorating one side of his grave, out of respect for a man who died so tragically. His grave site has become a place for the Flawed to come to, with hope that he is the symbol of change, that his situation will bring light to their plight. I know this because I read the dozens of notes and cards that have been left behind. Others who visit are those who feel his death is a symbol that we are all truly doomed, that there is no hope. This comes in the form of the black roses and black candles that line the other side of the grave. I look at the color and I look at the darkness, the hope and the despair, and I don’t know which side I fall on.
I sit by his grave and light candles; one black, one white. And I cry, for his loss and for mine.
THIRTY-NINE
I OPEN THE front door of my home, and the media look at me in shock. One photographer actually freezes with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. It is the first time since the bus that I have left from my own front door, having always arrived by car and driven directly into the garage. Even after my solo visit to Clayton’s grave, I’d called Mom to pick me up. After being beside herself with worry and anger, she was understanding when she collected me at the graveyard, knowing it was a good step for me to make in my life. I still will do anything to avoid the scrum outside our house. Driving into the garage doesn’t stop the barrage of lenses against the window, but at least it stops the men with cameras trying to aim their lenses up my skirt as I get out of the car, which they have been doing with Mom and Juniper. The prospect of exposed leg or parting thighs is too exciting and appealing for th
em to miss.
Mom has appeared on online sites most days. She is more than pleasant to look at and refuses to have a bad day, so they keep coming back for more, her wardrobes being analyzed daily, with captions under the photos of how Summer North “shows off” her long legs, “displays” her slender body. I understand that, for the media, shows off and displays merely mean has. They also describe her clothes as “snug” and “tight-fitting,” and if she ever wears a trouser suit, they say she is “covering up,” like women who don’t reveal their entire figures are trying to hide something.
There is a stunned pause as the press all look at me, and I take advantage of the element of surprise and take off down the driveway. Finally, they remember what it is they’re doing camped out in front of our house and fumble for their cameras and microphones to chase me. I cross the street, but they catch up to me. Now I’m surrounded, finding it difficult to know where to walk as their flashes blind me and they block my path. Their cameras bump into me as they push and pull one another for the best shots. I have to push through them as though they’re not there. Some are shouting, “Give her space!” while another man shouts at me to blow him a kiss. I try not to react. I know that’s just what they’re looking for. I keep my eyes down, focused on the ground that I can see, knowing that if the line in front of me trips, then I will trip. I pass the FOR SALE sign in the Tinders’ yard, and the media must stay outside their grounds. I go straight up their driveway and ring the doorbell.
Bob Tinder answers. He looks much older than the last time I saw him a few weeks ago. Grayer. Exhausted. He looks past me and sees the media at his gate and lets me in immediately. I can almost hear their disappointed sighs as I close the door behind me.
“Celestine,” he says, not looking too ecstatic to see me with what I’ve brought to his front door. “Colleen is out.”
“I’m not here to see Colleen.” The fact that she and I have never called each other has obviously not registered with him. “I’m here for my piano lesson.”
He frowns.
“It’s Thursday,” I explain. “I always have piano lessons on Thursdays.”
“She hasn’t…” He swallows, his voice cracking. “She hasn’t played since…”
“She should.”
“She thinks it’s damaged her hands. That she can’t play anymore.”
“Can you tell her I’m here?”
He thinks about it. “You can wait in the music room.”
I walk down the corridor and turn left into the music room. I haven’t been here since my life has changed. The room hasn’t changed, and yet everything seems different. I go inside. I sit at the piano. I wait.
I lift the lid and run my fingers over the tops of the keys. I’m waiting a long time. I can hear the rise and fall of Bob’s and Angelina’s tones as they talk down the corridor. She doesn’t want to come in. I will make her.
I begin by playing the most recent piece she taught me, and my favorite. “Nocturne Carceris,” a haunting piece. I play it better than I’ve ever played it before. And I play it from memory. I never liked piano class. It was always something that stopped me from seeing my friends, and then practice was something that stopped me from watching TV or going out. It was always an obstruction. At gatherings, I was always asked to play for everyone, and that, too, used to bother me because I’m a perfectionist, or at least I was, and I wouldn’t be able to relax the entire evening until my party piece was over. And if I made a mistake, it would play on my mind for a week. Piano always seemed to stress me out. I played it for other people. I played it for Angelina in class, I played it for my parents when I practiced, and I played it for guests at parties. I never played for myself. I never had the opportunity. But that all changes in this moment. I play for myself. I play better than I have ever played before, getting lost in my head as my fingers glide over the keys.
When I was a child, I always thought that to run away, you had to physically get up and run, as the kids did in the movies. A hateful shout, a slam of a door, then run. I’ve learned that lots of people run away without even going anywhere. I see it in Mom’s newly polished face, I see it when Dad disappears into his head at the dinner table, I see it when Ewan gets down on the ground and really focuses on his cars and helicopters. Juniper does it when she puts on her headphones and blares her music with her back to the world. I’ve never known how to do it before. But now I do. I’m running and running and running in my mind, through endless nothing but feeling free. When I open my eyes, I see Angelina Tinder standing at the open door, her head-to-toe black a stark contrast to the fresh white walls. She stands at the door listening, so I continue to play. Then she slowly nears me. I feel her beside me, behind me, and then she sits beside me. I’m afraid to look at her in case I scare her away. Bob stands at the door with a smile on his face. Happy and sad at the same time. Then he closes the door gently on us both.
When I’m finished, I look at her, the room in total silence. Tears stream down her face.
“You play,” I whisper.
She shakes her head.
I look down at her hands, once again covered by the black fingerless gloves. They are clasped tightly on her lap. I slowly reach down and take her hand in mine. She doesn’t protest, but she is intrigued, as though she has no control over her hands. So I slowly bring her hand up to the piano keys and uncurl her fingers. I reach for her other hand and do the same, getting more confident as I lift it to the keys and uncurl her fingers again.
She sits there, perfect posture as she always used to, her in that position fitting better than any glove over a Flawed hand. Her fingers start to move slowly over the keys, not pressing them. No sound is being made, but she gets a feel for the keys again. She smiles.
“Go on,” I whisper encouragingly.
She lifts her hands gracefully, and I’m waiting, holding my breath to see what she will play, and then she quickly slams her hands down again on the keys. Up and down, up and down, bang, bang, bang, like a toddler let loose on the instrument. I jump at first, then freeze as I watch her, waiting for her to stop this madness. And it is madness; I can see it in her face. There is anger and hate and pain all bursting through her, trying to get out, but her eyes are mad and wild. The sound of the keys is disturbing, the clash of the notes being hit over and over again.
I look around uncertainly, not sure what to do.
“Angelina,” I say gently, but my voice can barely be heard over the notes. So I raise my voice. “Angelina, please stop.”
She ignores me, continuing her attack on the piano, moving from the lower keys to the higher keys, making the most unusual, distorted sounds from something that she used to make sound so beautiful. I wonder if it sounds beautiful to her, now that her mind, too, has become so distorted. If she hears Mozart where I hear madness. She continues as if I’m not there, her elbow digging into me, almost pushing me off the bench. I stand up and move away from her, and I wonder if I should call for help, as she’s having some kind of an episode.
The door is flung open.
“What on earth?” Bob says, stepping inside.
She ignores us, continuing to be lost in her music with a smile on her face. But there is no happiness in it, just a demented picture of contentment.
Bob stands there in shock, watching her, not recognizing her.
“What’s she doing here?” Colleen asks suddenly, appearing at the door. “What’s going on?” She looks inside and sees her mother. Her mouth falls open. “What did you do to her?” she shouts over the noise.
“Me?” I ask, shocked. “Nothing. I didn’t do—”
“What did you do to my mom?” she yells, angrily, coming close to my face.
I back away. “Nothing. I didn’t do…” but she’s not listening.
“Get out of our house,” Colleen shouts.
I look to Bob for some kind of normality, to bring logic to the situation, but he is distracted. He makes his way over to his wife, holding his hands near her, hovering arou
nd her body as if he’s afraid to touch her.
Colleen puts her hands to her ears as though she just can’t take this anymore, not just the sound of her mother but whatever else she is hearing in her head. Her own voice, her own cries, her own anguish.
“Get out,” she says to me, disgust written all over her face.
I move closer to the door. I give one last look to Angelina, crazily banging down on the keys, an entirely different woman, maddened by the branding of her body and the treatment that comes with it. Suddenly she lifts one hand off the keys but continues banging with her right hand, and she reaches for the lid. I think she’s about to stop playing just as Bob is asking her to, and then I see what’s about to come.
“No, Angelina!” I shout, and they both look at me and miss her slamming the lid down on her right hand. The hand that is branded.
Once is not enough. She cries out in pain yet continues it over and over again.
“This is not my hand! These are not my fingers!”
It takes both Colleen and Bob to stop her, but by then I know the damage has already been done. She has broken her own fingers.
FORTY
STUNNED, I STUMBLE down the corridor to the front door. I open it and am faced with the media. They see the look on my face, which I have forgotten to adjust.
“What happened, Celestine?”
“Are you planning a coup?”
“Are you gathering a Flawed army?”
“Is Angelina Tinder part of your alliance?”
“Is it true you’re setting up a Flawed political party?”
I push through them and stagger forward to my house.
Mary May waits for me at the front door. The press aren’t allowed to photograph her, but I know they’re loving this. They can sense that I’ve done something wrong, that I’m in trouble again. Big news day. Already upset by what has just happened in the Tinders’ house, I don’t think I can take any more. Mary May steps aside so that I can enter.
Juniper and Mom are standing nervously in the kitchen. Ewan runs upstairs and away from me as he always does, afraid to be in the same room as me.
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