Chapter Eight In Which Zada Is Flummoxed #2
And the rest was history. One day, Carine was sitting with the rest of them at lunch in the solarium, laughing and correcting Augusta’s lab report. The next day, she’d vanished. The sudden terrible, inexplicable absence kept Zada awake for nights after.
“She made her choice,” Zada managed at last.
“We all do,” said Daphne.
Zada felt her throat beginning to close up. Blinking hard, she made herself swallow and breathe.
“It ruined her parents,” Zada said quietly. “Carine being Extricated, I mean. Hardly anyone talks to them. Her mother used to work in biosystems, but she lost her job.”
“How do you know that?” Daphne’s voice came out harsh.
“My mother. She went over to check on them a few times,” Zada said. “But you see why I did what I did? I couldn’t let that happen to my parents.”
“But what does Carine have to do with you? Whether she meant to or not, she committed treason. She broke into a sealed facility, Zada. We were pulling pranks and ditching class. Those aren’t the same at all.”
“But I didn’t know that!” Zada slumped back, rubbing her forehead. “Carine disappeared one day, and we all acted like it was perfectly normal. I was afraid, Daphne.”
“You think I wasn’t?” said Daphne. “You think I don’t—she was one of my best friends too.” Her throat worked. Zada had a sudden intense urge to lay a comforting hand on Daphne’s knee, and an equally intense certainty that it would not be welcome. Her fingers twitched at her side.
“I’m sorry,” said Zada. “It’s horrible. I still wonder what happened to her.
” Sometimes at night, she’d written little stories in her head: Carine, saved by a hardscrabble family of scavengers.
Carine, saved by her own ingenuity. At some point, she’d stopped.
It had hurt worse, for how improbable it all felt.
She swallowed. “But it’s different if you’re not a Fallow.
It’s different if you have to live every day knowing you could just as easily suffer the same fate. It just is.”
“Okay,” said Daphne. “You’ve made your point. I get it.”
“I know I should’ve talked to you,” Zada added. “I know I should’ve tried to explain.”
“Yes,” said Daphne, jutting out her chin. “You should’ve. Instead of cutting me off like a gangrenous limb.”
Once again, Zada reminded herself to breathe.
Inhale, exhale. Don’t tell your mercurial, charismatic former friend that the reason you never broached the concept with her was because you knew she would find a way to argue you back into her inner circle, the way she could always convince you to go along with her plans, voice low and exciting, eyes sparkling with mischief—
Zada forced her mind off that path. Unfortunately, it brought her back to Carine.
She could still remember, with the clarity of a cut, how it had felt to walk into social studies the day after Carine’s Extrication.
The empty desk, not yet cleared out. Carine’s reader lying where she’d always forgotten it, on the windowsill.
It was the only time Zada had faltered before entering the field that scanned her thoughts for the Core.
She’d worked hard to maintain impeccable grades, determined first to qualify for Dalrymple and then to justify her presence there, which meant that unlike some of the more disruptive students, she had never fed the field false intelligence for the sake of a joke.
She had carefully left out most of her and Daphne’s shenanigans, but she had always been honest. Assuming her responses had been correctly cross-referenced against those of her fellow students, the Core—and thus, anyone with the authority to access it—knew all of Zada’s hopes and dreams as well as she knew them herself.
The Core knew that she longed to be a musician but worried her shyness would kill any performing career before it began.
The Core knew that Zada loved her parents very much but preferred spending time with them separately.
The Core knew who Zada’s best friends had been in the past and who they were now, and the Core also knew Zada’s shame that despite a lifetime of a loving family and almost absurdly kind friends, despite her years of top-tier education, despite every considerable advantage she had been lucky enough to receive, Zada had never, not for one day, felt good enough.
And, from age sixteen onward, the Core had known that Zada missed her treasonous former friend like an open wound.
“So,” said Daphne, “let’s try this again. How do you feel about Buford?”
“I feel good.”
Her cuticles were getting a bit rough—Zada pulled her gaze back up to the carriage window. The city blurred by in a hodgepodge of architectural styles, everything from Tudor to rococo to Victorian.
“Try looking me in the eye,” said Daphne. When Zada wrestled her focus back to Daphne, it earned her an exaggerated eyebrow waggle. It was the kind of thing Daphne used to do during class to make her laugh.
“Now say it like you mean it.” Daphne folded her arms, waiting. “Go on. I’ve seen you read those romance novels aloud with Flora. I know you can do it.”
Zada tried to conjure up every simulacrum of passion she’d ever witnessed in fiction. She thought about her favorite lines from Austen and then she thought, inexplicably, of touching that soft sliver of Daphne’s wrist the other night.
“I’m so happy to be with Buford,” said Zada, holding Daphne’s gaze. “When I kissed him, I knew that we were meant to be together. The feeling was electric, like every cell in my body was drawn to him. Like he’s all that there is in the world. Only him.”
Daphne’s dark brown eyes were intent on hers. She tilted her head slightly, giving Zada an appraising look. “Better. A little over-the-top, but people will be expecting that. When you’re asked about Buford, just try to hold on to . . . whatever that energy was.”
Zada nodded, her cheeks flushing.
“And do you have plans for children?” said Daphne, and Zada choked on nothing. “You’ll need an answer.”
“I don’t—” Zada began. “I mean, I haven’t discussed that with him yet.” Zada didn’t even notice herself looking down again to worry at her callus on her thumb until she felt careful fingertips warm on her chin, tipping her face back up.
“Look at me,” Daphne murmured. “You can’t sell a lie without it.” Something about her hand on the delicate skin at the underside of Zada’s jaw made Zada swallow hard, unable now to look away until Daphne finally let go.
“Seems like we’re here,” said Daphne. Sure enough, the carriage had stopped at the gates of the magnificent Fallow estate.
The sprawling mansion, built in the red-brick Georgian style, the gleaming green artificial lawn—Zada had only seen such splendor on the celebrity feeds Flora used to follow.
They climbed down onto the sun-dappled cobblestones.
“Come on,” Daphne threw over her shoulder as she began to walk up the long driveway.
A gentle chime sounded in Zada’s ear, someone trying to get ahold of her via earring. She tilted her head and let the message filter through, smiling slightly when she recognized the voice.
“Augusta says she wants to get tea together,” Zada called. “Should I tell her this is a bad time?”
“Tell her to come here instead.” Daphne strode back, picked up Zada’s bags, and jogged ahead again. “We haven’t had the chance to chat for a while. My grandfather’s away on business, so we can be as loud as we like.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. It’ll be fun!” Daphne paused on the front steps, her face cast in shadow. “And loud noises scare the ghosts away.”
“Sorry.” Augusta laughed. “Say that again? Ursa Neale implied that all engaged women—”
“Have some sort of special telepathy with each other?” Daphne filled in. “Yes, that seemed to be what she was getting at.”
“And then she hugged me so hard, I think she permanently reshaped my organs,” added Zada.
Augusta’s eyes danced. “At least you can comfort yourself with your special psychic bond to Ursa Neale, so long as you avoid her proprietary palette of salmon pink and silver.”
The three of them were clustered together at one end of an enormous dining table, its gleaming surface marred only by the mess of crumbs, teacups, and plates of biscuits and jam between them. Zada found it intoxicating, being able to laugh with her friends once more.
Daphne had remained close with their set, even after Zada had removed herself from Daphne’s company.
They had joint custody, as Daphne would no doubt have put it, a scandalous air of implied divorce clinging to the words.
Zada felt a twinge of guilt for what she must’ve put her friends through when she’d cut off Daphne.
But they were together now, for the first time in years, and it was wonderful. Well, Flora still wasn’t responding to messages, and Carine was gone, but Zada would take what she could get.
“If Ursa truly had a psychic link with me,” Zada said, “she would’ve noticed how hard I was fighting not to completely bust my gut at Daphne behind her, expertly miming the construction of an escape tunnel—”
“Why thank you, I’m glad someone noticed my tunneling skills.” Daphne took a long sip of her steaming hot tea.
Augusta grinned. “Was the tunnel really so expertly pantomimed, or was Zada just that good at knowing what you meant? Remember how the two of you used to dominate in charades?”
“Nobody was willing to go against us,” said Daphne with a laugh.
“It’s hard at the top,” Zada added. “Or should I say—” She pretended to lug an imaginary trophy up a steep slope.
“What in the world—?” said Augusta.
“She’s dragging her prize up a mountain, obviously,” said Daphne, and Zada giggled from sheer joy.
Augusta glanced back and forth between the two of them. “I have to say, it’s good to see the two of you getting along again.”
“Agreed,” said Zada.
“Agreed.” Did Daphne sound more hoarse than usual? It might have been a trick of the acoustics. Sound bounced oddly in such a high-ceilinged, tiled room.