Before the Turn there had been a zoo in the parklands. There had been other buildings, too, but concrete falls and wood rots. The animals, however, remained. Even though Nell and Ruby had never seen much more than a tall stray stag or heard more than some rustling or growling from the thickets, they knew there were bigger things lurking. Animals they weren’t sure they had the right names for. Animals they had half-whispered histories for. The girls were quiet and respectful when they passed through these less charted lands. They made this journey twice a week in the dark. Nell lately had been making it alone after she could slip out of the Bayou unnoticed. The dark wilderness of the park held a strange comfort for her.
The light from the Bayou appeared in the distance like a flicker at first, but it rose into a bright candle of gaiety the nearer and nearer they pulled. It was a low, old building that had been dressed up in finery and brazen electric lights like a delighted great-aunt at a wedding party. The building had a whole generator of its very own, hard won and, through favors owed and favors done, carefully hidden. The Fox twins, Antoinette and Tomas, had been orphaned by the epidemic. They’d spent their childhood in the city orphanage and apprenticed in the production line at the Tea Factory, but as soon as they were old enough, they had set off into the world.
And eventually, in the dank tangle of the parklands, they’d opened the Bayou. A shred of real happiness in the city again. It changed everything for the young survivors of the epidemic, gave them something to look forward to. The parents and elders in the community steered clear, far too jaded to dance and sing. Two other watering holes opened up in its wake: quieter, more austere venues. This place, however, gave the young a chance to feel young.
The doors had first swung open on the party five years ago, to the night.
The Fox twins, green eyed and blond, had truly contributed something.
Nell hated them. Or something like hated them, something she was too ashamed to call jealousy.
As the girls approached the building, Nell’s stomach dropped with dread, heavier than usual. She didn’t want to go in. She wanted to go home and draw the hand and its person some more. The ticking in her chest had escalated without her noticing, but now it was all she could hear against the night air, over the hot breeze as she cycled.
Here was the thing about bad feelings: they arrived for a reason, and some people felt them more intensely than others. Some people trusted them; others didn’t. Nell, unfortunately, was acutely aware of the things her body did and what they meant, and she knew the tightness in her abdomen only meant trouble. Rising panic. It meant, “Go home now, Nell.”
They passed the lanky iron gate that would have been imposing if not for the strings of tiny white electric lights. They locked up their bikes along with all the others on the rails set up specially for that purpose. The garden was chaotic and colorful, full of flowers and plants in big terra-cotta pots. The Bayou itself lay before them, thrumming with life, stretching so far back into the knotted throngs of trees that it was impossible to see how big it really was in the dark of the fresh night.
Nell scooped Kodak, docile and wide eyed, out of her basket and placed him on her shoulders. He made a rumbling sound that wasn’t quite a purr, and she was comforted, if only a little. He was well used to this.
“You’re ticking fierce loud, Nell. Can you”—Ruby hesitated—“can you get it to shush? A little bit?” Everything in her face was: “Please don’t make a show of me.”
Nell just stared at her friend, the bad feeling in her gut growing, the ticking spitefully rising in volume.
“No?” Ruby asked. “Really?”
“You know I can’t do anything about it.” Nell’s words were all teeth.
“Okay. Right, well, maybe the music will drown it out.” Ruby knew she couldn’t backtrack so just flashed Nell an apologetic smile as they walked toward the door. Every muscle in Nell’s body and the steel in her chest told her to turn around and leave. Instead, she followed the shorter girl to the closed door.
Ruby knocked confidently, and a slat briskly opened before them, revealing a pair of arched brows and brightly painted eyes.
“Password?” asked a throaty voice.
“FridayFriday12345ExclamationPoint,” Ruby recited cheerfully.
The door swung open, the music from indoors now fully audible and bright and infectious. Nell felt sick.
“Ruby Underwood and Nellie Crane, sure, it’s only great to see you!” gushed the tall young woman, hair curled high on her head, decked out like a carnival in bright colors and sequins. Her smile was huge, and her eyes sparkled.
“Still moonlighting as a bouncer after mornings in the shop, Janey?” Ruby asked, giving the girl a hug. Nell stood stock-still and didn’t move.
“Of course I am. Saving up my tokens to get a train ride with all my things way out to start over in the Pasture; got my sights on Tribe City!”
Tribe City, out by the Library Complex out by the ports.
“You are not!” exclaimed Ruby. “You’re really moving over there? It’s still wild out that way. There’s only around a hundred people there, and more than half of them librarians!”
“Ah, yeah, but there’s rumors of them opening up the ports, you know. Sending boats out. Look, if I volunteer service in the Libraries, wait around long enough, might manage to swipe an early ticket out!” Janey winked. “Could be a great big beautiful tomorrow out there for me, you know? Could get off this island and out into the world.” She lifted the hem of her blouse slightly to reveal the matte steel square over her left hip. “Sure, it might as well not even be there. Nobody would know if they weren’t looking for it, the way the Marvelous Dr. Crane has it done up for me!”
Nell inhaled deeply and turned slightly away.
“You are a scream, Janey. Delighted for you. I wouldn’t have the nerve myself to be working in those old stacks of paper; they give me the creeps: all that information, probably covered in code.”
Janey shrugged. “Look, if it gets me nearer the port and away from this kip, I’ll be all right to do the time in the silence. Sacrifices have to be made.”
“You’re something else, Janey,” Ruby said, while Nell busied herself admiring some unusually fascinating decorations, so she wouldn’t tap her foot with impatience.
“Sure, look. One step at a time. C’mere, Nell, your stoat is gorgeous. Oh and, eh”—Janey nudged her—“Oliver Kelly is inside looking for you.”
Nell gave her a tight-lipped smile. Instead of saying, “Don’t ever touch me ever again,” she said, “Why is Oliver Kelly looking for me?”
“Oh, he didn’t say!” Janey smothered giggles and shot a knowing look to Ruby, who returned it. Nell knew full well why he was looking for her, and she wasn’t in the temper for it at all.
“See you later!” Ruby cooed to Janey, and the girls walked down the winding hallway that led to the ballroom. The place reeked of hops, that warm dinnertime smell that gets all over you and makes you feel as if you’ve overeaten. It made Nell woozy before she’d even picked up a drink. She’d be drenched with sweat in no time; the purple wings on her eyelids would start running soon, too.
The grand dance floor split open before them, the ballroom a lush, gleaming treasure trove. Tobacco smoke hung in the air like something dangerous, something Nell couldn’t handle. The ceilings were high, dazzling with chandeliers made of old bottles. The walls were papered in a close floral pattern, and the floor was covered in a thick red carpet; each footfall landed with a quiet thud on the shag. It was lavish, and week after week this decadence seemed to grow. Every time she walked in there was a new fixture. A mirror with a gilded frame built to look like a whale, above the bar. A set of lights with a rotating filter that changed color every minute: pink, then purple, then yellow, then back to pink again. A set of pink flamingos, poised elegantly by the footlights on the stage. Bunting, miles and miles of it. All gifts, all offerings, all barters for more jars of that shining white peace or hoppy comfort in a
shade of honey.
Nowhere else in the broken-down city looked like this. This was the contribution that mattered most to the apprentices: this place to go to forget.
There must have been two hundred, maybe even three hundred people crowded in there, at the bar and on the dance floor and scattered at the dozens of small circular tables at the edges of the room. Just about all the apprentices who lived in Black Water City. A whole squad from the monument construction. A janky, enthusiastic band of daytime plumbers and bakers and nurses huddled on a small platform stage, pulling old torch songs out of an accordion, a banjo, a fiddle, a bodhran, a double bass, and a heavily beaten piano. The singer was belting something about churches into a handmade microphone system hooked up to an amplifier made of an old crate and some metal scrap. It was tinny and distorted, but it worked. The dance floor oozed with life.
Nell’s ticking was so loud that it reverberated through her arms and fingers, out of sync with the music, a misplaced metronome. Ruby was obviously eyeballing the span of the room for faces she knew.
“Do you want to dance with me?” asked Ruby tentatively, knowing the answer, already grateful for Nell’s permission to leave her alone, a grim buoy moored at the bar.
“No. I’m going to sit at the bar for a while, I think. Have a drink. Do you want one?” Nell recited just what she thought Ruby wanted to hear.
“It’s fine. I’ll grab one once I’ve got the lay of the land!” Ruby flashed her a grateful smile, kissed her cheek, then disappeared into the throng in what might as well have been a flash of lightning. She wouldn’t strike near Nell again that night.
Nell avoided bumping into any of the small clusters of her acquaintances but offered thin smiles to the piques of “Hi, Nell!” and “Oh, look, Nell Crane is here!” and squirmed her way across the room to one of the tall stools at the bar. She lifted herself up onto the gilt and velvet seat and rested her elbows on the dark wood of the countertop. The new whale mirror was surrounded by decorative cabinets full of ornate handmade bottles of spirits and bitters and tinctures. Draft taps with hand-carved heads linked to fat kegs full of beer stood in lines like faithful soldiers. Nell caught her reflection and immediately regretted the eyeliner and painted freckles.
Nell made eye contact with Antoinette Fox, who was always behind the bar on weekends; she was busy but gave Nell a nod. “The lady professor Crane, what’ll it be tonight?”
Antoinette was the very specific kind of wild gorgeous that implied she woke up almost exactly in the shape she stood there. She made Nell’s throat want to close over. An effortless arrangement of blond locks, wide eyes, impossibly white teeth: she was too good to be true. Even her augmented limb, right arm from the elbow down, was encased in white porcelain with tiny blue flowers painted up the side. New, Nell noted. As she went to answer, she was suddenly interrupted by the deep and affected tones of the absolute last person she wanted to see.
She’d spent too many afternoons trapped next to him at a work desk ever to want to sit next to him at a night out, but here he was. Here he always was.
“Drink, Crane?”
“Not half as much as you, Kelly.” Nell gritted her teeth. “But since you’re offering, I’ll have a—”
He leaned over the bar to get the barmaid’s attention, cutting Nell off.
“She’ll have a bathtub gin with two wedges of lemon and a splash of—”
“Elderflower tonic,” snarled Nell. “Good evening, Oliver.”
CHAPTER 8
You are twelve, and you cannot believe Oliver Kelly is still coming here every week. It is bad enough that you have to take Saturday classes without having to take them with him. And he still looks around seven. You didn’t mind him when he was seven and you were seven, but that was long ago; that was when you didn’t have to see him every single weekend. You aren’t seven anymore. You are twelve. It is bad enough that you are twelve.
Only half an hour left; then he’ll go home. Your eyes are on the clock, and you’re convinced it’s impossible for a clock to move this slowly. You’d really like not to be sitting beside Oliver Kelly, who apparently has just discovered cologne. Discovering it would be fine; but you’re fairly sure he’s also been bathing in it, and even your welding mask won’t disguise the stench.
You shift uncomfortably, leaning away from Oliver a little more, almost at such an angle now that you might fall off your chair. You don’t care if you fall off your chair. You just don’t want to sit next to him.
The clock’s second hand moves once. You scowl. Your goggles are starting to dig into your face. Another second.
Your father makes very intense eye contact with Oliver when he’s instructing. He laughs at Oliver’s weak jokes. This is good because it means that Oliver’s gaze never floats over to you (your neckline, mostly, and you’re never sure if it’s your scar he’s trying to see through your scarf or if it’s your breasts, and either way you hate it). The whole thing makes you want to overturn the entire kitchen table and all the tools that lie out on it, wreck the composition of the skeleton key or whatever it is you’re practicing this week. Metal casting and magnets and filigree for detail. It’s pointless anyway. You’re ready to make things move, and you keep telling him; but he’s dawdling on easier projects because of Oliver bloody Kelly.
You like the tiny blowtorch, though, the raw blue flame. You like the whispery roar it makes. You like the smell of the molten iron as it casts and cools; you like carving away at it with raw heat. You like the shape of the key’s teeth, hungry for locks, confident that it can open anything, get in anywhere. You like its hidden magnets, how it can pull secrets apart.
You like learning. You like building. You just don’t like Oliver.
You don’t like watching how slowly and clumsily he puts things together; you don’t like his earnest questions, his shaky requests to be shown everything twice or three times. You don’t like how he keeps dropping his tools and how they clang onto the floor. You don’t like how he’s here.
You turn the key over and over; you can’t do anything else to it. It looks exactly as the blueprints intended. You pop your goggles up onto your head and take off your face mask. Oliver shoots you a jealous look; he’ll be at least five more minutes to get the last corner done. You cup your face in your hands. “Da, I’m done,” you offer sweetly, pushing smugness down.
Your father waves you off and continues to hover around Oliver. “All right, Nell, calm down just a moment.”
Calm . . . down?
You seethe. Why should you even calm down? You’ve done exactly what you were told, no questions asked, got everything right the first time, and are done twenty-four minutes before you’re meant to be. You resist the urge to rap your fingers against the table, and your ticking escalates in that very specific way it does when you’re upset. Another furious minute drags itself by. White heat curls behind your eyes. Tick, tick, tick.
“Could you”—Oliver turns to you—“do that a little more quietly? I’m almost there. I’m trying to concentrate.”
And just like that, the spark of irritation catches flame.
“Do that a little more quietly?” you snap. You stand up, and your chair clatters to the tiles. “What? Exist? Exist more quietly? This is my home, Oliver, and you can’t just tell me to exist quietly in my home. Why are you even here? Why are you even allowed to study with me? You should be back in the morgue, poking away at dead people and minding your own business!” You throw your goggles down and you can’t even look at your father and you’re out of the room, giving the stupid chair one last good kick as you go. You are a tempest, ticking faster and louder and louder as you storm toward the stairs.
Each step is a protest; you take each one hard, trying to shake the whole damn house. Stupid . . . Oliver . . . Kelly.
The kitchen door clicks closed.
“Penelope.”
Your father stands at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed sternly over his starchy lab coat, goggles pushing back his wil
d black hair. You turn to him, trying to make yourself bigger, more fierce.
“What?” you ask, but any sass you were trying to muster fizzles out under hot tears of frustration and that ugly weak thing crying does to your throat.
“That was quite a display.”
You want to say, “You think?” but know already that it’ll come out ugly and warped. You want to tell him you’re not crying because you’re sad but because you’re angry. Really angry. Instead, you just sniff and wipe your face indignantly.
“Look. I know you don’t like this. And me telling you it’ll get easier as you get older isn’t what you want to hear. But it’s one day a week. I’m asking you to pull up your bootstraps, kiddo.”
His voice is stern, with hard, pleading edges that make the tears come even hotter and even faster. You don’t have any choice with him when he talks like this. You want your ma, to put your head on Ma’s shoulder. You want the smell of her hair and skin. You have none of that. Just a flight of stairs and your exhausted father and Oliver Kelly sitting in the kitchen.
“But why? Why is he here?” you sob, stamping your foot.
“I owe his mother a favor. We owe her a favor.”
A favor! What favor is worth this? You have never taken anything off either of the Mrs. Kellys. What is worth letting someone else into your apprenticeship even one day a week? What do the florist and the undertaker even have to give your family?
“Please try to like him. At least tolerate him. Then see what happens.”
Your father’s voice is all soft now, all well done, girl. You can’t say no to him like this, when that particular desperation hangs on the edge of his tone; how easily it disappears once he has his way, once you do what you’re told.
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