And for some strange reason, she expects to look into the room overhead and see a house with flowers stitched into the sofa, bright windows with wind-swelled curtains, a family with measuring-tape belts eating a shiny turkey, a dog smiling at her in sunglasses, and outside, a car wearing a bow—maybe even Fandra, alive and combing her fine golden hair.
She knows that she’ll never forget the pictures she saw. They’re in her mind forever. Bradwell too, with his mussed hair, his double scar, and all the things that poured from his mouth. Sweet-talking him? Is that what he accused her of? Can that even matter now that she’s heard the Detonations were orchestrated, that they were left to die?
There is no sofa, curtains, family, dog, or bow.
There’s only the room with the dusty pallets and the barred door.
PARTRIDGE
TICKER
PARTRIDGE’S ROOMMATE, SILAS HASTINGS, walks to the mirror attached to the back of the closet door and slaps his cheeks with aftershave. “Don’t make this one of those things where you have to study right up to the last minute. It’s a dance, for shit’s sake.” Hastings is a clean-cut kid. He’s bony and way too tall, and so he’s all arms and legs and always looks oddly angular. Partridge likes him all right. He’s a good roommate—fairly tidy, studious—but his one flaw is that he takes things personally. That, and sometimes he’s a nag.
What’s made things tense is that Partridge has been avoiding Hastings, saying he has to study more, complaining about pressure his dad’s put on him. But in reality, he’s been trying to find time alone—when Hastings is shooting hoops or goofing off in the lounge, things Partridge used to do with him—so that he can study the blueprints from the photograph taken in his father’s office, the one his father sent to Partridge’s academy postal box. Sometimes he winds up the music box and lets it play itself out. The music is the tune to a little song his mother used to sing about the swan wife, the one she taught him on that trip to the beach. Could that be just a coincidence? He feels like it means something more. This is what he’s hoping to do for a few minutes once Hastings is gone, listen to the song and study the blueprints while all the other boys are arriving at the dance.
Right now Partridge is stalling. He’s still wrapped in a towel, his hair wet from the shower. He’s got his clothes laid out. Partridge blew up the picture of him and his father so that he could see the details of the blueprint. He found the air-filtration system, fans built into tunnels at twenty-foot intervals. After lights-out, he illuminates the blueprints with the small dim bulb that sits on the top of the special pen his father gave him as a gift for his birthday. It came in handy after all.
He’s been blowing Hastings off too because his father made good on his threat. There have been lots of tests, batteries of tests, just like Partridge’s father said there would be. Partridge has become a pincushion. He has a new understanding of what that means—he feels perforated. His blood, his cells, his DNA. His father has scheduled a test so invasive that Partridge will have to be put under—another needle in his arm that will be taped down and made into a shunt, connected to a clear bag of something that would render him unconscious.
“I’ll be there eventually,” Partridge says. “You go on.”
“Have you looked out on the commons?” Hastings asks, leaning up to the window that overlooks the grassy lawn dividing the girls’ dorms from the boys’. “Weed is sending messages with his laser pen to some girl. Can you imagine that dork asking out a girl dork via laser-pen messages?”
Partridge glances out at the lawn. He sees the small sharp zigzags of a red pinpoint moving through the grass. He looks up at the lit windows of the girls’ dorms. Someone over there knows how to read this stuff. It’s amazing how inventive they have to be to get a chance to talk to girls. “Everybody’s got to have an angle, I guess,” Partridge says. Hastings has no angle with girls so he’s really in no position to judge Weed on this one, and he knows it.
“You know,” Hastings says, “it breaks my heart that you can’t even walk down to the dance with me, your compadre. Little by little, you’re killing me.”
“What?” Partridge says, trying to play dumb.
“Why don’t you tell me the truth, huh?”
“What truth?”
“You’ve been blowing me off because you hate me. Just say so. I won’t take it personally.” Hastings is famous for saying that he won’t take personal insults personally, and he always does.
Partridge decides to tell him a little truth, just one, to appease him. “Look, I’ve got a lot weighing on me. My dad is bringing me in for a special mummy mold session. All the way under.”
Hastings touches the back of his desk chair. His face goes a little pale.
“Hastings,” Partridge says. “It’s me. Not you. Don’t take it so hard.”
“No, no.” He flips his hair out of his eyes, a nervous habit. “It’s just, you know. I’ve heard rumors about these kinds of sessions. Some of the boys say that this is how you get bugged.”
“I know,” Partridge says. “They can put lenses in your eyes and recording devices in your ears and you’re a walking, talking spy whether you know it or not.”
“These aren’t just your typical chipping devices so some high-strung parents know where their kid is at all times. These are high-tech. The sights you see and things you hear are monitored on full-color high-definition screens.”
“Well, it’s not going to be like that, Hastings. No one’s going to make Willux’s kid a spy.”
“What if it’s worse?” Hastings says. “What if they put in a ticker.” A ticker is supposedly a bomb that they can plant in anyone’s head. It’s controlled via remote. If you suddenly become more of a risk than your value, they flip a switch. Partridge doesn’t believe in the ticker.
“It’s just a myth, Hastings. There’s no such thing.”
“Then what do they want to do to you?”
“They just want biological info.”
“They don’t need to put you under for info. DNA, blood, piss. What more could they want?”
Partridge knows what they want from him. They want to alter his behavioral coding, and for some reason they can’t. And it has to do with his mother. He’s told Hastings more than he wanted to. Mainly, he can’t tell anyone that he’s planning to get out. He knows how to get out of the Dome. He’s done the research, the calculations. He’s going to go out through the air-filtration system. There’s only one more thing he needs, a knife, and he’s going to get it tonight. “No need to panic, Hastings. I’ll be fine. I always am, right?”
“You don’t want a ticker, man. You do not want that.”
“Look, you’re all dressed up, Hastings. Don’t worry about it. Go have fun. Like you said, It’s a dance, for shit’s sake!”
“Okay, okay,” Hastings says and lopes to the door on his long legs. “Don’t leave me alone down there forever, okay?”
“If you’d stop bugging me, I could go faster.”
Hastings gives a salute and shuts the door.
Partridge sits down heavily on his mattress. Hastings, that idiot, Partridge says to himself, but it doesn’t help. Hastings has freaked him out, talking about the ticker; why would officials want to off their own soldiers? He could have told Hastings that he should watch out for himself. Hastings’ behavioral coding has probably already been altered a little. It might even be one of the reasons why he doesn’t want to be late for the dance. Punctuality is a Dome virtue.
Partridge can’t imagine how it would feel to start acting differently, just in the littlest of ways. “It’s just like growing up. A maturation.” That’s what parents think of the behavioral coding—for boys at least. Girls don’t get coding, something about their delicate reproductive organs, unless they’re not okayed for reproduction. If they aren’t going to reproduce, then brain enhancements can start up. Partridge doesn’t want to change at all. He wants to know that what he does comes from himself—even if it’s wrong. In any case, he has to get out before they
find a way to mess with his behavioral coding or else he’ll never do it. He’ll stop himself. He might not even have the impulse to get out anymore. But what’s outside the Dome? All he knows is that it’s a land filled with wretches, most of whom were too stupid or stubborn to join the Dome. Or they were sick in the head, criminally insane, virally compromised—already institutionalized. It was bad back then; society was diseased. The world has been forever changed. Now most of the wretches who survived are atrocities, deformed beyond human recognition, perversions of their previous life-forms. In class, they’ve been shown pictures, stills frozen from ash-fogged video footage. Will he be able to survive out there in the deadly environment among the violent wretches? And it’s possible that once he’s out, no one will come looking for him. No one is allowed out of the Dome for any reason—not even for reconnaissance. Is this a suicide mission?
Too late. He’s made up his mind. He can’t afford any distractions right now—from Hastings or himself. He hears the ventilation system click on and checks his watch. He stands and climbs the short ladder to his bunk. He pulls out a small notebook wedged between the mattress and the railing. He opens the book, notes the time, shuts it, and pushes it back into its spot.
Wherever he is now, whether he’s lying there in his mummy mold undergoing radiation or waiting for another vial to be taken from him or during his classes or in his dorm room at night, he studies the patterned hum of the filtration fans—the dull whirring that vibrates throughout the Dome at timed intervals. He makes notations in a book he’s supposed to use to keep track of his assignments and his coding sessions. He barely noticed the sounds before. But now that he’s begun, he can sometimes anticipate the quiet tick just before the motors kick in. He knows now that the air-filtration system leads out of the Dome and that the fan blades turn off at certain times for a period of three minutes and forty-two seconds.
He’s going out because his mother might exist. “Your mother has always been problematic.” That’s what his father said, and ever since Partridge stole his mother’s things from the Personal Loss Archives, she’s felt even more real. If there’s a chance she’s out there, he has to try to find her.
He gets dressed quickly, pulling on his pants and shirt, looping and tightening his tie. His hair is so short it doesn’t need a comb. Right now he has to concentrate on one thing: Lyda Mertz.
LYDA
CUPCAKE
WHEN LYDA HELPED DECORATE the dining hall with streamers and gold-foil stars glued to the ceiling, she hadn’t yet had a date. There were a few people she would have been willing to go with, but Partridge was the only one she wanted to ask her. When he did, standing by the small set of metal bleachers out by the athletic fields during a rare moment when she wasn’t being corralled by one of the teachers, Lyda had thought, Wouldn’t it be nice if it was a little chilly and we were both windblown and the sky was blustered, like a real fall day? But of course, she didn’t say this. She only said, “Yes, I’d love to go with you! That sounds great!” And she fit her hands in her pockets because she was afraid he might try to hold one and her palms were now sweating.
He looked around after she agreed, as if he was hoping no one had heard them, as if he might take it back if someone had. But he said, “Okay then. We can just meet there.”
And now here they are, sitting next to each other at the skirted tables. Partridge looks perfect. His eyes are such a beautiful gray that whenever he glances at her, she feels like her heart might burst. Still, he’s barely glanced at her even though they’re sitting side by side.
They’ve piped music in overhead, all the oldest songs on the sanctioned list. This one, swirling now, is a melancholy but kind of creepy song about someone who is watching every step and every breath someone else takes. It makes her feel a little paranoid, overly scrutinized, and she’s self-conscious enough about the dip of her dress’s neckline.
Partridge’s roommate is leaning up against the far wall, talking to a girl. He looks over and sees Partridge, who gives him a nod. Hastings smiles goofily and then turns back to the girl.
“Hastings, that’s his name, right?” Lyda says. She’s trying to make conversation, but also doesn’t mind lingering on Hastings, maybe to hint that she and Partridge could be sitting closer, whispering.
“That’s a small miracle,” Partridge says. “He doesn’t have a natural way with the ladies.” Lyda wonders if Partridge has a natural way with the ladies but, for some reason, isn’t turning on the charms for her.
Because it’s a special occasion, their food pills—bullets, as the academy boys call them—have been replaced by cupcakes sitting on all the tables on small blue plates. She watches Partridge fit large forkfuls into his mouth. She imagines that it must feel like near suffocation by eating—a rarity. Lyda nibbles her cake, savoring it, making it last.
She tries to start up the conversation again. This time she talks about her art class, which is her favorite. “My wire bird has been chosen to be in the next display in the exhibit in Founders Hall—a student art show. Do you take art classes? I’ve heard they don’t let the boys take art, only things that have real-life applications, like science. Is that right?”
“I’ve taken art history. We’re allowed to have some culture. But really, what good would it do us to know how to make a wire bird?” he says, gruffly. He leans back in his chair, arms crossed.
She says, “What’s wrong? Is it something I said?” He seems to be disgusted with her, so why did he ask her to be his date anyway?
“It doesn’t matter now,” he says, as if she did say the wrong thing, and he’s punishing her for it.
She pokes the cupcake with her fork. “Look,” she says, “I don’t know what your problem is. If something is wrong, tell me.”
“Is that what you do? Look for people’s problems? Try to drum up new patients for your mother?” Lyda’s mother works in the rehabilitation center where some students are taken if they’re having mental adaptability issues. Every once in a while one returns, but usually they’re gone forever.
Lyda’s stung by the accusation. “I don’t know why you’re acting like this. I thought you were decent.” She doesn’t want to storm off, but she knows that she has to now. She’s told him that he’s not decent. Where is there to go from here? She throws down her napkin and walks off to the punch bowl. She refuses to look back at him.
PARTRIDGE
KNIFE
PARTRIDGE FEELS GUILTY BEFORE LYDA WALKS OFF, but he’s relieved once she has. It’s part of his plan. He wants the key that’s in her pocketbook. He’s acted like a jerk in the hope that she would walk away from him, leaving the pocketbook behind. But he almost apologized to her a few times. It was harder than he’d thought. She’s prettier than he remembered—her small sharp nose, freckles, her blue eyes—and it surprised him. Her looks aren’t the reason he asked her to be his date.
He moves so his hands are more behind his back, slips the ring of keys off the strap of her pocketbook and into the pocket of his suit jacket. He pushes his chair back angrily like this is part of the fight and walks off as if to the bathroom, then quickly down the hall.
“Partridge!” It’s Glassings. He’s wearing a bow tie.
“You’re scrubbed up,” Partridge says, acting as normal as possible. He likes Glassings.
“I brought a date,” he says.
“Really?”
“So hard to believe?” Glassings says with a joking pout.
“With that bow tie, anything’s possible,” Partridge says. Glassings is the only professor he can joke with like this—maybe the only adult at all. He surely can’t joke with his father. What if Glassings were Partridge’s father? The thought flickers through Partridge’s mind. He’d tell him the truth. In fact, he wants to tell him everything. By this time tomorrow, he’ll be gone. “Are you going to dance tonight?” Partridge asks, unable to look Glassings in the eye.
“Of course,” he says. “You okay?”
“Fine!” Partridg
e says, not sure what he’s done to tip Glassings off. “Just nervous. I don’t really know how to dance.”
“I can’t help you there. I’m blessed with two left feet,” Glassings says, and here the conversation stalls awkwardly for a moment. And then Glassings pretends to straighten Partridge’s necktie and collar. He whispers, “I know what’s going on, and it’s okay.”
“You know what’s going on?” Partridge says, trying to sound innocent.
Glassings stares at him. “C’mon, Partridge. I know what’s what.”
Partridge feels sick. Has he been that obvious? Who else knows his plans?
“You stole the stuff from your mother’s metal box in the Personal Loss Archives.” Glassings’ face goes soft. He smiles gently. “It’s natural. You want to have some of her back. I took something from one of the boxes too.”
Partridge looks at his shoes. His mother’s things. That’s what this is about. He shifts his weight and says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It was an impulse.”
“Look, I’m not telling anyone,” Glassings says quietly. “If you ever want to talk, come to me.”
Partridge nods.
“You’re not alone,” Glassings whispers.
“Thanks,” Partridge says.
Then Glassings leans in close and says, “It wouldn’t hurt you to chum up to Arvin Weed. He’s on to something in that lab, making great strides, you know. Smart kid, going places. Not to choose your friends for you, but he’s a good egg.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Glassings gives him a gentle punch in the shoulder and walks off. Partridge stands there for a minute. He feels derailed, but he shouldn’t. It was a false alarm. He tells himself to focus. He pretends he’s lost something. He taps his suit pockets—where the keys are hidden—and his pants pockets, and then shakes his head. Is anyone even looking? He then turns down the first dim hallway, the route back to the dorms. But once he’s around the corner, he turns again to the doors of Founders Hall. He pulls out Lyda’s keys, picks the largest one, and fits it in the lock.
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