“If Josephine gets caught, she won’t be coming back here,” he says softly as I open the door to leave the Fieldhouse. “Mr. Gregors will find a way to make some money, to punish her, but she will never see any of us again. Whatever you’re feeling right now, think about that, Elimina. Please, I was going to tell you, I swear. But I didn’t want you to have to lie. I was just—”
“Goodnight, Rowan,” I say, before heading toward the West Hall.
I can feel Rowan standing at the door to the Fieldhouse as I make my way down the path. I can feel him watching me, waiting for some sign that I’ve forgiven him, that I’ll protect Josephine and David. But I don’t pause or hesitate, and I don’t look back. I just walk toward the dorm as the Mainland Guard dogs on the other side of campus growl and bark in the darkness.
13
MR. GREGORS IS STANDING BY THE WINDOW WEARING the same gray slacks from the employer fair when I arrive in his office the next morning. His pants are stained, his shirt is untucked, and his hair is loose and messy so that he looks wild and unkempt in a way that’s unsettling. I can tell from the way the pillows are bunched at the end of the couch and the way his jacket is draped on the chair that he slept in his office last night—and that, like me, he slept very little.
“You wanted to speak to me, sir?”
He continues to stare out the window, pausing for a long moment as though he hardly knows that I’m here.
“I’m very concerned about Josephine, Elimina,” he says. “The Mainland Guards searched all night. They found pieces of her uniform all over campus but no significant scents to follow into the forest. I find that very strange, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” I say with a small nod of my head. “That’s very strange.”
“Do you know how this makes me look, to have all these people here thinking I don’t know how to run an academy, that I can’t keep track of my students?”
I’m not sure if this is a question I’m meant to answer, so I don’t say anything, and Mr. Gregors moves closer, like a dog approaching its prey.
“What do you know, Elimina?”
I shake my head side to side. “I don’t know anything, sir.”
“I made you a Red Coat for a reason, Elimina. So you would keep an eye on things. So you would know what’s going on on my campus. And you’re telling me you don’t know anything?”
“I don’t know anything, Mr. Gregors.”
“I have heard from other students that you and Josephine were friends. Is that true?”
I can smell stale liquor on his breath and I try not to breathe in through my nose.
“Elimina, were you two friends?”
“I don’t know where Josephine is, sir.” And as soon as I say this, I regret pulling the real story out of Rowan last night, because lying makes me nervous.
Mr. Gregors stares, watching me carefully, puzzled by the tightness in my jaw, the way I drop my head and trace my scar. When I look up, he’s pressing his thumb and his index finger against his forehead and moving them in circles, like he’s trying to think more and think less at the same time.
“What happened when you saw her, Elimina?” he says quietly, careful with each word. “I understand you were the last one to see her. I’d like to know what she said, every detail, no matter how small.”
I nod. “She didn’t want breakfast,” I say. “That’s how it started. When I went to get her out of bed.”
“And this is unusual for her?”
“Yes, sir. Very unusual. She loves food.”
“You told Miss Templeton she was sick,” Mr. Gregors says, like he’s waiting for more.
“Yes. Her skin was really hot.”
“Her skin was hot?”
“It was damp, sir. Like she’d been . . . Like she’d been . . . tossing and turning all night with a fever or something,” I say, and I wonder if she was sweaty from dropping her uniform all over campus or if that was something Rowan or David did for her.
“So you’re a nurse?” he says, pouring himself a drink.
I can hear the meanness in his tone, the anger from last night rolling into today, but he raises his glass for me to go on.
“I put my hand on her head. Like Mother used to do. And she was really hot, sir.”
“But you are not a nurse?” he says, his face reddening as he swallows his drink down quickly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“No, sir.”
“Did you send her to see the nurse?”
“No, sir.”
He walks past the window again, past the shelves, holding his empty glass and studying it carefully with a scowl that creases his brows and the skin around his mouth. “If she was too sick to work and if you are not a nurse, why wouldn’t you send her to see Nurse Gretchen, Elimina?”
Because Nurse Gretchen would have just told her to eat something like she did with May Bennet. “I don’t know, sir. I’m so sorry, Mr. Gregors.”
“You’re sorry?”
“I made a mistake, sir.”
“You’re goddamn right, you made a mistake!” he says, slamming the glass down and leaning over the desk like he needs it to hold him up. “Do you know how much money I lost with this little escapade? Do you know how much money I lose when one of you Gutter kids decides to go and lose your goddamn minds? Who do you think has to pay for all these Mainland Guards? Who is going to pay for what I lost yesterday chasing that little . . . ?” He wanders over to the window and looks out on the field, running his hands through his hair, so that it sticks up on one side. “And you. What a disappointment you are. I thought you were different, that you were raised better. But all you’ve got for me is ‘sorry’? ‘I made a mistake’?”
He laughs an ugly laugh, shaking his head and pointing in my direction.
“I hate losing money, Elimina,” he says, grabbing a file and whacking it against the desk. “I hate losing money!”
He pulls a chair from the other side of the room, so that when I turn to him we’re face to face at eye level.
“In all my years, I’ve never lost or misplaced a child. Do you understand me, Elimina? Never. This happens in other places, but it has never happened here. And now you’re here. And it does. Is that a coincidence?” he says.
“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir,” I say, biting down on my lip.
He leans forward, his face red and stony, nostrils flaring like wings.
“Did you do this, Elimina?” he says, watching me carefully.
“No, sir. I didn’t do this,” I say, looking him straight in the eye.
He stares at me for a long while before shaking his head and turning away.
“I thought I could trust you, Elimina. I really thought you were a different kind of student. That you were special.”
I feel a sharp pain in my belly when he says this, like the tip of a knife is pressed into my skin. I want to yell, I’m not like them, the way I did when I first arrived, but I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know what that means anymore.
“I can’t believe you would do this to me,” he says.
“I didn’t help Josephine, Mr. Gregors. I wasn’t involved in any way. I swear. Please believe me.”
He looks at me, tired and annoyed, but I can tell that he almost believes me.
“Yesterday was a good day,” I say. “You made good money. And I’m going to bring you another good day just like that. The Freemans . . .” I pause, thinking about Josephine arriving and settling in, before clearing my throat. “The Freemans want me. They will pay well. Please believe me: I didn’t know anything. And all I want—all we both want—is to get to that day.”
Mr. Gregors rubs the bridge of his nose.
“Elimina, there are problems in these kids, ways of thinking that you’ve avoided by growing up on the Mainland. But I worry that they’ve already got to you somehow, damaged you. That you don’t know right from wrong.”
“I’m not damaged, sir,” I say, but he keeps on talking as though I haven’t spoken at
all.
“It’s the hardest part of my job here, you know—convincing students that life here is far better than whatever it is they think they remember about living in the Gutter. That’s why parents send their kids to us. For a better future and reliable work and food and shelter. Don’t I care for you all better than those other headmasters, Elimina?”
“Yes, sir,” I say. “But—”
“I would like you to turn over that red coat,” Mr. Gregors says, extending his hand, ready to receive it immediately.
“The coat?” I say, one hand against my chest. “Why?”
“You are, at the very least, an unknowing conspirator in Josephine’s disappearance,” he says. “You didn’t follow health protocol and as a result a student has gone missing. Your actions threaten my entire reputation and the reputation of this school, and on that basis alone I should get rid of you. But you’re right. You are valuable to me, and so I will squeeze every penny I can out of you to make up for what I’ve lost. When it’s time for you to graduate, those Freemans are going to pay. They’re going to pay a lot or I’ll find someone else who will. I’ll make that money back somehow, Elimina. But for now, I want that red coat. I will not have you walking around campus like you’ve done nothing wrong. Perhaps Louis was right. Perhaps you are too soft for the job.”
“But who’s going to be the Red Coat?” I say.
“Murray Smith will serve as the campus Red Coat, and I believe he’s best suited to doing it alone. And I’m going to tell him to keep a special eye on you,” he says.
Mr. Gregors holds his hand out and stares at me with a kind of loathing I haven’t seen in him before. I look down at the wood floor, my face red and warm, angry and afraid at the same time.
“The coat, Elimina,” he says, moving to the door, like the meeting is done.
I give Mr. Gregors the coat, and when I step out of the office, Murray Smith is standing next to Miss Templeton’s desk. When he sees my plain gray uniform, and the red coat in Mr. Gregors’s hand, he winks at me with a wicked, crooked smile.
14
THE STUDENTS AT LIVINGSTONE ACADEMY TREAT ME differently without my red coat. Some return to taunts and cruel notes—payback for all the time I spent being the campus Red Coat. Others smile and nod their support, convinced that I somehow helped Josephine, and that I’m a hero of sorts.
Ida doesn’t ask me about the red coat when I visit her. She just holds her arms out wide, like she knows that’s what I need right now. When she finally lets me go and guides me to the chair, one arm around my shoulder, I wonder if looking at me in that red coat was always difficult for her, if she’s grateful that it’s gone.
When Ida asks me about the fair, I act like I hardly remember it, even though I’ve hardly thought of anything else for the past few days. “It was . . . unexpected,” I say as I climb into the chair.
“It always is, baby girl.”
I tell her about Shanta Cinder and about the bad deal Mr. Gregors made with the men who hired Violet, and Ida shakes her head.
“At least you got a teaser before you go for real,” she says as she twists the roots of my hair. “When I went, it was a mess, people touching and pulling at me, like I was fruit at the market. I wondered if what was coming up ahead was worse than where I’d been. Lucky for me, I was wrong. I left hell that day and I ain’t never going back to something like that. No way.”
I tell Ida about the Freemans and the way they stepped in and hired David, but Ida just nods. When I tell her that the Freemans want to hire me too, that Mr. Gregors said I could go in a year without having to go back to the fair, she nods again, smiling with only the corners of her mouth.
“Going to the Hill? My goodness, ain’t that something, baby girl,” she says with a voice that’s strangely high.
“Did you know that the Hill is a real place, that there are folks like us with no scars, Ida? You should’ve seen their clothes. They were so beautiful and colorful. Mabel Freeman looked like a queen, and Mr. . . .”
Ida’s jaw tightens in the mirror, her fingers moving quick, tightening each lock, like she’s only pretending to listen when what she really wants me to do is stop.
“Ida?” I say, waiting for an explanation or a response.
She sighs, closing her eyes. “When I was growing up at the junior academy and even at North End Academy, there was talk of them guardian angel Hill types, baby girl. People who’d come save us,” she says. “There’s a Hill Coalition that helps Gutter folks. But they never come for North End kids. I figured if they didn’t come and save us from a place like that, they couldn’t be real. Because no guardian angel would ever leave a kid in that kind of place.”
Her fingers weave at the roots of my hair, and when she’s done, she gives me a handful of pins and shows me how to use them to style my hair by lacing the strands together or pinning them up at the sides. I watch our faces in the mirror, wondering what it might have been like to grow up with Ida for a mother.
“Is it true that you don’t ever want to have children?” I say.
She squints her face the way people do when they’ve eaten something sour. “Who told you that?”
“I heard that you were in love. That there was another Gutter Deco who worked here, who left because you didn’t want kids.”
She nods slowly, like the question brings back memories that are hard. “He was a dreamer, baby girl. Thought we could have it all—children and happiness and freedom, all in one lifetime. But that’s not how it works for us. Truth is, I don’t ache for a child the way some do. And I don’t ache for a man. I suppose I’ve got enough to worry about that those things don’t seem so interesting to me.”
I think about the things that worry me: Murray Smith, whether or not I’ll get to the Hill and whether it’ll be good.
“Do you think I’ll like it? At the Hill?”
“Do you even know who they are?” Ida says.
“They’re the ones who paid for their Redemption before the Gutter began.”
Ida looks at me and sighs, like she’s suddenly remembered who I am and how I got here—how little I know and why. She lowers my chair and pulls another seat close, so we’re facing each other, my legs tucked between hers.
“Baby girl, I’m going to tell you the truth every Gutter child is told before they walk out of those Gutter gates—a story we hear so much from the time we’re born, we can tell it ourselves from memory with our first words. Because if you go to the Hill, you should know where you’re heading and who you’re heading to,” she says. “Now, I know you’re grown, but I’m going to tell you this story the way my mama told me, because that’s how I remember it. And who knows, one day you may need to tell it to a child of your own.”
I watch as Ida takes my hands, clasping them between hers, pressing my fingers down so my fingers link together.
“Thousands and thousands of years ago, the world was good and healthy, connected just like your fingers—land, ocean and sky, all happy, good friends. But one day, the sky got jealous that the land and the ocean were together, and the sky was very alone, and the sky cried angry tears that made the oceans overflow.”
She leaves my hands clasped and raises her hands high, wiggling her fingers down like raindrops.
“It was a rain that seemed to last forever. And when it finally stopped, the sky—still bitter with jealousy—turned cold, and everything froze.”
She wraps her hands around my clasped fingers and squeezes tight, pressing my fingers until they cramp.
“Eventually, the sky got tired of the cold and the loneliness, so she sent the sun high like a bird with flames for feathers. But it was too late, and when the ocean melted, the earth cracked into pieces and spread apart.”
She pulls my hands apart slowly, my fingers tingling as she rests them against my legs.
“The earth floated in different directions, and the ocean filled up the cracks. Rivers and streams and small lakes came up everywhere, and the people moved with it, floating an
d moving up and down and around, mapping new land and territory. Those who survived the Freeze and the Thaw built homes and villages wherever they landed. There were people who lived inland and people who lived by the sea, people who lived in houses built on the mountains and others who lived amongst the trees,” she says, shaping each place with the motion of her hands. “There were small islands that you could cross by foot before dinner, and larger ones that took days. But our people lived on the Great Land, the largest body, the one shaped like wings. We were Sossi people—people with skin the color of earth, some as fair as the sand along the ocean, some as dark as fertile soil. We grew fast in numbers after the Thaw because of the abundance of our love and the sturdy bellies of our women,” she says, placing her hands on her stomach and tapping her belly like a drum. “We were Sossi and we were strong.”
She frowns, lowering her hands. “But when they came on ships, everything changed,” she says.
“Mainlanders?”
She gives a small, tense smile and turns my hands over, pointing at where the skin is pale and light.
“We called them Olo. People of the Sky. People the color of the moon and the clouds,” she says. “At first, the Olo said they were not staying for long. They were not farmers, like us. They settled along the shade of the mountains, and plunged into the earth with sharp machines, breaking rock and root to bring things out that could make light. They wanted to take it back to the place where they came from. But they did not return. They had run out of land and they wanted ours. We should have seen the dark sky that lived in their hearts, that jealousy that led to the rain and the cold. Mama told me, ‘You should never follow people who don’t know the way to their own joy, who seek it out in other places.’” Ida taps me on the chest. “She said joy starts right here, in your own heart. But our people did not remember that, and they agreed to let them stay—these people who are only happy when they get more from someone else.”
I think of Mr. Gregors at the fair and the morning after Josephine disappeared—the way money filled his face and his eyes with something so ugly.
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