Chapter 7 #2
I went to Delphine’s table and tried for a smile that I was pretty sure failed miserably when Delphine looked up and said, “That bad?”
“My face is doing announcements again?”
“Your facing isn’t particularly subtle.”
“That’s disappointing. I was hoping my time here was making me more mysterious.”
“You can sit,” she offered this time.
I sat. The other student—a boy—didn’t look up.
Delphine tore a piece of bread and slid it to me.
“Juno?” she asked.
I took the bread and nodded.
“How did you know?”
“You came in through the east corridor entrance, and Juno always sends people to lunch when she’s finished ruining their day.”
“She has a system.”
“She has several.”
I ate the bread because I didn’t really feel like talking. Delphine pressed me anyway.
“Was it really that bad?”
“It was a thing I’m not supposed to talk about.”
“Of course.”
She tore another piece of bread. This one she ate herself.
I wanted to ask what happens next.
I wanted to ask whether girls ever came back from wherever the doors with the carved symbols led.
I wanted to ask a dozen things.
But Delphine wasn’t the one to ask.
Instead, I asked the only question I could think of that Delphine might have an answer to.
“You said you have a brother?”
“I do.”
“Tell me about him.”
Delphine considered me for a moment, then decided I was trustworthy enough to have a conversation with.
“His name is Lior. He’s twelve. He thinks everything in the world will always go his way.”
“Terrible condition. Optimism.”
Delphine almost smiled.
“He has a Mark on the back of his hand. The village Oracle said it would settle by thirteen.”
“And do you believe the village Oracle?”
“My parents do.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
She looked down at the bread in her hands.
“The Oracle was wrong about me. He said my Mark would be strong and true. My parents aren’t poor, but they aren’t rich enough to buy a second opinion. So when the same Oracle said I belonged at Zenith, they sent me here.”
“And now?”
“Now Zenith is telling me I’m out of time.”
The bread stopped halfway to my mouth.
“Out of time for what?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point. They said I’ll have a quiet transfer if my Mark keeps fading.”
“Transfer where?”
“They didn’t say.”
The boy beside us turned a page in his book.
I didn’t think he’d been reading. He would have turned several pages by now if he had been.
Delphine noticed too. Neither of us said anything about it. We just exchanged a look.
“I’m writing to Lior tonight,” she said.
“Why not your parents?”
“My parents will wonder what they did wrong, blame themselves, try to fix it when they can’t.”
“And Lior?”
“He’ll remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Whatever I tell him. The words they use. The order they use them in. The names. The doors. Lior remembers everything.”
“So you want him to know what happened to you.”
“I want him to know before anyone decides it should happen to him too.” She said it plainly.
I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked at me then.
“Sit with me again tomorrow.”
“I can do that.”
“We can find a table to ourselves.”
Her eyes moved to the boy with the book.
I looked at his page.
It was upside down. He definitely wasn’t reading.
Delphine said nothing else for the rest of the meal.
Neither did I.
When she stood, she pushed the last piece of bread toward me.
“For later,” she said.
Then she left.
I ate it before I reached the door.
When I left the dining hall, I didn’t go straight back to Room 114.
The thought of my room with its wall-facing window and the basin in the corner felt too small for everything Juno had put in my hands.
So I walked.
I followed the corridor along the dining hall windows until the clock tower came into view at the far end of the quad. From inside, it looked less like a tower and more like a narrow dark door with a clock face above it.
I had taken three steps toward it when Hale’s voice said, “Not that way.”
The leather-warm pull reached me before the voice finished.
I knew who it was before I turned around.
Instructor Hale stood beside the south corridor.
“I’m not allowed to walk the halls now?”
“You are.”
“Then what’s the issue?”
Hale looked past me to the clock tower door.
“That was not on your tour.”
“That wasn’t a tour. That was a map with most of the useful parts missing.”
“It was the map you were given.”
“And the tower?”
“Off limits.”
“There’s no sign.”
“There isn’t always a sign.”
“Who made the rule?”
“The same people who notice when it’s broken.”
He pushed off the wall.
“Go back to your room, Astra.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
His eyes moved to my wrist.
“Then know who you’re letting see you where you don’t belong.”
Then he walked away.
I stayed where I was for three more breaths, looking at the clock tower door.
Then I went back to Room 114.
Not because Hale had told me to.
But because I remembered what Juno had said about people documenting me, and the corridor had started to feel full of eyes that made my skin crawl.
When I opened the door to my room, an apple was on the bed with a note beside it.
I stopped in the doorway.
There was no one in the room, but the feeling was there.
Green apple hit first. Ordinary enough. Then the river stone, warmed by the sun, underneath it.
I grabbed the doorframe until the dizziness passed.
Then I looked at the apple.
Then at the door I was sure I had locked.
The window didn’t open far enough for a hand to reach through. The wall outside it was close enough to block my view but not close enough to climb.
I crossed the room and opened the note.
For later.
No name.
It didn’t need one.
I had a strong suspicion about who had written it. Someone with bright green eyes and terrible manners.
I put the apple in the drawer.
The note, I kept.