Pure

by Julianna Baggott

  “You know my story. I told it at the meeting.”

  “Think of something else. Anything. Talk. I want to hear someone’s voice.” She wants to hear his voice, really. As angry as he can make her, his voice now sounds deep and calming. She realizes that she wants him to talk because, whether she agrees or not, he’s always honest and she can trust the things he tells her.

  And so it surprises her that the next thing he says is, “Well, I lied to you once.”

  “You did?”

  “The crypt,” he says. “I found it when I was just a little kid before I came across the butcher shop. I slept there for days while people were dying everywhere. And I prayed to Saint Wi, and I survived. So I kept coming back.”

  “You’re one of the people who prays for hope?” Pressia asks.

  “I am,” he says.

  “That’s not a terrible lie,” she says.

  “Nope. Not terrible.”

  “Did the prayers work? Do you have hope?”

  He rubs his jaw roughly. “Ever since I met you, it seems like I’ve got more to hope for.”

  She feels heat rise in her cheeks, but she’s not sure what he means. Is he saying that he hopes for something that has to do with her? Is he confessing he likes her, now that he’s confessed his lie? Or does he mean something else? That she’s made him see things differently?

  “But that’s not what you asked for,” he says. “You wanted a memory.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Can you go to sleep now?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then. A memory. Does it have to be a happy one?”

  “No,” she says. “I prefer true over happy now.”

  “Okay then.” He thinks for a moment. “When my aunt told me to get out of the garage, I did. I poked the dead cat in the box. And then I heard the motor turn over—and one shout. It was the noise my own father used to make when he’d skin a knuckle or wrench his back. I pretended it was his voice. I closed my eyes and imagined my father coming out from under the car with a heart-engine fused in his chest like a superhero. I imagined him coming back to life.” Pressia can see Bradwell in her mind as a little boy with birds in his back, standing on a charred lawn, the dead cat in a box at his feet. He’s quiet a moment. “I’ve never told anyone that before. It’s stupid.”

  Pressia shakes her head. “It’s beautiful. You were trying to imagine something great, something else, some other world. You were just a kid.”

  “I guess,” he says. “You tell me something now.”

  “Obviously I don’t really remember much from the Before.”

  “It doesn’t have to be from the Before.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Well, there’s something I’ve never told anyone either. My grandfather knows, but he doesn’t know, not really.”

  “What?”

  “I tried to cut the doll head off when I was thirteen. Or that’s what I told my grandfather. He stitched me up quickly. But he never asked me why I did it.”

  “Is there a scar?”

  Pressia shows him the small mark on the inside of her wrist where the doll meets her arm. The skin on her wrist is etched with delicate pale blue veins and has a little rubbery give.

  “Were you trying to take it off or…”

  “Or,” Pressia says. “Maybe I was tired. I wanted not to be lost. I missed my mother and father and the past, maybe because I didn’t see enough of it in my head to keep me company. I felt alone.”

  “But you didn’t do it.”

  “I wanted to be alive. That’s what I learned as soon as I saw the blood.”

  Bradwell sits up and touches the scar with his fingertip. He looks at her as if his eyes are taking in her entire face, her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. Normally, she’d look away, but she can’t. “The scar is beautiful,” he says.

  Her heart skitters. She pulls the doll head to her chest. “Beautiful? It’s a scar.”

  “It’s a sign of survival.”

  Bradwell’s the only person she knows who would say something like that. She feels slightly breathless. She can only whisper. “Aren’t you ever afraid?” She isn’t talking about all the things she should be afraid of—heading back into the Deadlands tomorrow, the Dusts that rise up from that ground. She’s talking about his fearlessness right now, calling the small scar beautiful. If she weren’t afraid, she’d confess that she’s happy to be alive because she has this moment with him.

  “Me?” Bradwell says. “I get so scared that I feel like my uncle under the car, with pistons in my chest. I feel too much. It’s like being drummed to death from within. You know?”

  She nods. It’s quiet a moment. They both hear Partridge mumble in his sleep.

  “So…,” Pressia says.

  “So?”

  “Why did you come after me if it wasn’t for my grandfather?”

  “You know why.”

  “No, I don’t. You tell me.” They’re so close that she feels the heat of his body.

  He shakes his head and says, “I have something for you.” He reaches for his jacket. “We looked for you at your place. Your grandfather was gone.”

  “I know,” Pressia says. “I know. He’s in the Dome.”

  “They have him?”

  “It’s okay. He’s in a hospital.”

  “Still,” Bradwell says. “I’m not sure—”

  She doesn’t want to talk about her grandfather now. “What do you have for me?”

  “I found this.”

  He pulls something from his jacket pocket and lays it on the spot where her ribs meet in an arch.

  One of her butterflies.

  “It made me think,” Bradwell says. “How can something so small and beautiful like this still exist?”

  Pressia’s cheeks flush. She lifts the butterfly and holds it up so that she can see the pale light through its frail dusty wings.

  “All the losses mount up,” he says. “You can’t feel one without feeling the others that came before. But this feels like an antidote. I can’t explain it, like someone fighting back.”

  “They seem like a waste of time now. They don’t even fly. You can wind them up and their wings flap but that’s it.”

  “Maybe they just didn’t have anywhere they needed to go.”

  LYDA

  LITTLE BLUE BOX

  TO PASS THE TIME, Lyda reweaves her sitting mat over and over, but it never pleases her. She hums the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle.”

  No one has come to visit, not her mother, not doctors. The guards arrive with food on trays, pills. That’s all.

  When Lyda woke up the morning after the redhead tapped out her message on the small rectangular window, the redhead was gone. Maybe she was crazy after all. Who would think that there were many people who thought they could overthrow the Dome? Tell him? Who, Partridge? Did the redhead think that Lyda could communicate with him? And why would Lyda tell him this if she could? The redhead must be crazy. Some people here are crazy. It’s why these places exist in the first place. Lyda’s an exception, not the rule.

  There was another girl in the redhead’s place that next morning. A new one, dazed with fear. And honestly, Lyda was relieved. What would she say to the redhead after her message? If she was ever going to get out of here, she couldn’t be seen fraternizing with loonies, especially not revolutionary loonies. Revolutionaries didn’t exist in the Dome. That was one of the nice things about it here. They didn’t have to worry about those kinds of conflicts—like in the time before the Detonations—not anymore.

  Lyda hasn’t been taken back to occupational therapy either. As soon as the privilege was given, it was gone. She asked the guards when she’d be given permission again. But they didn’t know. She could have asked them for more information, but that seemed dangerous. It was like admitting what she didn’t know. She wants to seem like she knows something.

  But then today, two guards show up before lunch and say they’re taking her to the medical center.

  “My
relocation came through?” she asks.

  “We’re not sure,” one guard says. It’s a different guard. She has a partner waiting for her on the other side of the door. “Right now, no extra info. Just where to drop you.”

  Before she’s escorted from her chamber, they cuff her, a plastic cinching device ratcheted so tight that she feels her pulse.

  But then they pass two doctors in the hall. One whispers to the other, “Is that necessary? Think of Jillyce.” Jillyce is her mother’s first name. It seems so strange to hear them refer to her mother with such intimacy. They don’t want her mother to see Lyda cuffed, the shame of it. Does this mean that she’ll see her mother before she leaves?

  As an act of mercy, they tell the guard to cut the cuffs. The guard is only a few years older than Lyda. She wonders for a moment if the guard once attended the academy, if they ever passed each other in the halls. The guard takes out a large, red-handled knife, fits it between the plastic cuffs and the inside of one of Lyda’s wrists. Lyda imagines for a fleeting moment what it would feel like if the guard slit her wrist. She’s still dressed in her white jumpsuit and head scarf. The blood would stain the white so brightly. They ask her to walk with her hands clasped in front of her and she does.

  She looks for her mother as they leave the rehabilitation facility but doesn’t see her.

  The guards accompany her on a solitary train car, which stops in the medical center, and now they lead Lyda down another corridor. She hasn’t ever been to the medical center, except to have her tonsils out and once for a little flu. Academy girls aren’t coded. There’s too much fear of damaging their reproductive organs, which is more important than enhancing their minds or bodies. Her chances of being approved for reproduction now are almost nothing. Those who are a bit older and don’t reproduce can be taken in for enhanced brain coding. But she probably wouldn’t be a good candidate for that either. Why enhance a brain that is psychologically compromised? She knows, too, that there’s a chance of entering New Eden in her lifetime. At that point, won’t everyone who can reproduce be needed for repopulation, maybe even those who’ve done time in a rehab center, like her? She still has hope.

  The wallpaper is floral as if trying to pass for a hallway in someone’s home during the Before. There’s even a pair of rocking chairs, like it might be cordial to sit awhile and chat. This is supposed to set people at ease, Lyda supposes. Unlike the other girls who do so well in their lessons on small talk, Lyda has to memorize the list of appropriate questions just to keep up her end of the conversation. She always feels the panicked burden of conversation as if its end marked a greater ending. She thinks of what Partridge said to her when proposing that they dance. “Let’s do what normal people do,” he said, “so no one suspects.” She’s not normal. Neither is he.

  But these little mock moments of domestic living wouldn’t fool anyone, would they? Not with the fluorescent lights flickering and buzzing overhead. Not with the doors that sometimes yawn open, revealing a pallid room with a body cast set on a flat bed, bars on either side. Is there someone in the cast? She can never tell, not with the medical workers whizzing by in their masks and gowns and gloves.

  Up ahead, there’s a single-file line of academy boys. Her eyes flit quickly down their faces. Some recognize her; their eyes catch and go wide. One smirks. She refuses to look away. She’s done nothing wrong. She lifts her head and steadies her eyes straight ahead, locking onto a call box mounted on the wall at the end of the corridor.

  She hears her name, whispered. She hears Partridge’s name, too. She wants to ask them what story they’ve been told—something, anything, even the lie that’s being dispersed would be better than knowing nothing.

  The guards turn at the end of the hall, and they finally arrive at a door. The nameplate next to the door reads: ELLERY WILLUX. Her breath catches in her throat. “Wait,” she says. “I didn’t know.”

  “If they didn’t tell you, then it’s supposed to be a surprise,” says the guard who’d cut her cuffs loose.

  “Give me a minute,” Lyda says. Her palms have gone sweaty. She wipes them on the legs of the white jumpsuit.

  The other guard knocks. “We’re on time,” she says.

  A man’s voice calls out, “Come in.”

  Willux is smaller than she expected. His shoulders are rounded, curled inward. She remembers him as robust. He used to be the one to give speeches behind microphones at commemorations and public meetings. But she realizes now that Foresteed took over all of that a few years ago without explanation. Maybe it’s because Foresteed is younger and his teeth shine like he’s swallowed the moon, as if he’s lit from within. Willux has aged. So many of the most important men in the Dome seem toned, with a dense larded look to their guts, whereas Willux looks frail, his stomach a deflated paunch.

  He swivels in his chair, situated in front of a bank of monitors and keyboards, and smiles softly. He removes a pair of glasses—are they for show? She can’t remember when she last saw glasses. He folds them and holds them to his chest. “Lyda,” he says.

  “Hello,” she says and she extends her hand.

  He shakes his head. “No need for formality,” he says, but she feels like she’s been shunned. Or is it rebuked? Is she unclean now that she’s been a patient in the rehab center? “Take a seat.” He indicates a small black stool. She sits on the edge of it. He nods to the guards. “We’ll talk in private,” he says. “Thank you for delivering her here safe and sound!”

  They bow lightly. The guard who cut her cuffs glances at her, as if trying to offer her some courage. And then they leave, shutting the door with a click.

  Willux puts his glasses on the edge of his desk, next to a small pale blue box. It’s just big enough to hold a cupcake. She remembers the cupcakes from the dance, the spongy texture, how each bite was almost too sweet, but how she marveled at the way Partridge ate such huge bites. He ate with abandon. She wonders if the box holds a gift of some kind.

  Willux says, “I suppose you’ve heard that my son is missing.”

  Lyda nods.

  “Perhaps you don’t know that he’s actually gone.”

  “Gone?” Lyda isn’t sure what this means. Is he dead?

  “He left the Dome,” Willux says. “I would like to ensure his safe return, as you can imagine.”

  “Oh,” Lyda says. Even the girls locked away in rehabilitation centers knew it. He’s out there, somewhere. Should she act more surprised? “Of course you want him back. Of course.”

  “And there’s a rumor that he was quite fond of you.” He lifts his hand and smooths the thin hair on his head. His head, nearly bald, reminds her of a baby’s head and the word fontanel, the soft spot on top of the infant’s head where you can see the pulse and check for dehydration if the baby is sick. They’ve had many lessons on the proper care of infants. She always thought the word fontanel was more fitting for something exotic, like an Italian fountain. Willux’s hand is trembling. Is he nervous? “Is this true? Did he have a thing for you?”

  “I don’t claim to know anyone’s heart but my own,” she says.

  “Let me start more simply then,” he says. “Did you know his plans?”

  “No.”

  “Did you help him escape?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Did he steal a knife from the display, and did you allow it?”

  “He might have stolen something when I wasn’t looking. I don’t know. We were in the Domesticity Display together.”

  “Playing house?”

  “No,” Lyda says. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think you do.” He taps the pale blue box with three fingers.

  She’s afraid of the box now. “I don’t.”

  He leans forward, lowers his voice. “Are you intact?”

  She feels the heat rise in her cheeks. Her chest feels compressed. She refuses to answer.

  “I can call and have one of the women check,” he says. “Or you could just tell me the trut
h.”

  She stares at the tiled floor.

  “Was it my boy?” he asks.

  “I haven’t answered your question,” she says. “I’m not going to.”

  He leans forward then and pats her knee, then rests his hand there. “Don’t worry,” he says.

  She feels sick. She wants to kick him. She closes her eyes; maybe she clenches them shut. His hand slides off her knee. She looks down at the tiled floor.

  “If it was my son, we can still arrange for him to set this right—if, that is, we can find him and bring him home.”

  “I don’t need to marry him,” Lyda says, “if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “But maybe it would be nice? I mean, after all, with your recent history, you will be hard to place.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  The room is quiet for a moment, and then Willux says, idly, “Will you survive?”

  Her heart pounds in her ears. She realizes that her hands are clasped again, sitting on her lap, both gripping the other so tightly that her nails are digging into her skin.

  “We have a plan and it requires your participation,” Willux says. “You’re going out.”

  “Where?”

  “Out of the Dome to the other side.”

  “Out of the Dome?” It’s a death sentence. She won’t be able to breathe the air. She’ll be attacked. The wretches will rise up, rape her, and kill her. Outside the Dome, the trees have eyes and teeth. The ground swallows girls who have any bit of their human shape left. They are burned alive at stakes and feasted on. This is where she’s going. Out.

  “Special Forces will bring you to a location on the outside, and you will lure my son back to us.”

  “You’re sure he’s alive?”

  “Yes, at least as of the last few hours, and there’s been nothing to indicate a change.”

  She feels some small measure of relief. Maybe she can lure him back. Maybe Willux would even let them get married. But of course, what will happen to her when they find out that he doesn’t love her? That he was only being kind after she’d helped him steal the knife?