Chapter 11
When we land at dusk, the press is already there, their cameras popping off like sparklers.
I keep my eyes down on the tarmac, refusing to let myself play the shell game as Hux disappears into a mass of Hammers. But
still, the second I look up, I can tell he is already gone, immediately certain none of the identical black-clad figures are
him. He must have slipped away when everyone was exiting.
I hate that I don’t feel as relieved as I hoped I would.
A crowd has gathered, a sea of people who scream and cheer when I step off the plane.
I’ve seen the capital on news streams, but it’s so much bigger than a tablet screen. It’s one of the only original cities
that has survived the Streamlining. Historical significance, the administration said.
No one said the same thing when Miami and New York disappeared into the sea.
Metal buildings are fortified with chrome bracing, reinforcing where the foundation has given way because of the acid rain.
The fake-looking blue water must be so chemical-ridden that I’m pretty sure anyone who drank it would drop dead within minutes.
The Washington Monument towers above it all, shiny rose-gold plating embossed with a profile of President Graves’s face.
In the crowd, I recognize faces from my DopaMine, the pretty people who tell us everything from how to wear our hair to how
the war is going overseas. Nerves rush through me. They’re capturing me, frozen here on the tarmac, and these images will
fill other people’s feeds.
Through the cold white light, a slim form races across the blacktop to me.
“Ettie?” I ask, half laughing. The last time I saw her, she was six, interrupting me and Callum. She pestered me to paint
her nails in this swimming-pool pattern she had seen on her feed. Callum pretended to be annoyed, but he’d helped her pick
a color from my desk and reminded her not to move while I worked.
Now she’s a teenager. Her face has lost all traces of the round, baby-like smile I remember, leaving high cheekbones and a
small, turned-up nose that wrinkles as she grins. Her soft pink dress flutters behind her with her soft blond hair, and for
a moment it looks like she has wings. Ettie has become a princess from a fairy tale.
I wonder if I look as strange to her, in this dress they’ve put me in. Did they pick her clothes, too, or is that only reserved for fake fiancées?
“I am so excited,” she says as we hug, and it feels as natural as breathing. “I didn’t know you and Callum were still talking!
I was so pissed that he didn’t tell me!”
My heart sinks as I realize the lie I have to tell. Of course. We can’t announce that this whole fiancée arrangement was a
planned PR stunt. I just didn’t realize we’d be lying to everyone.
Unsure what to say, I let Ettie squeeze me and breathe in her familiar smell, peony and laundry detergent.
“Come on,” she whispers as she draws back. “I’m supposed to show you around.”
On reflex, I reach for my mask, but they took it with the rest of my things.
“They’ll give your tablet back—”
“No,” I say quickly. “My mask?”
Ettie shakes her head. “You don’t need that here.”
I gape, looking up.
The sky is darkening—we only have about an hour of daylight left. But I can see the actual blue. A dark blue, tinged with orange and purple at the edges where it curves into the earth.
“Wow,” I whisper. “I can’t remember the last time I saw the sky.”
The moment is shattered by a wave of laughter.
I had forgotten our audience—the dozens here, and the millions watching at home.
My cheeks color. Every moment here—every first, with and without Callum—will be cataloged and shared with an entire nation hungry for a distraction after a shift at the data mines or a long day cataloging data.
And I’m gawping up at the sky like a simpleton.
But they wanted a real girl, didn’t they? The girl next door, Callum had said.
Well, none of my neighbors have ever been able to see the sky.
“You’ve been on the West Coast too long,” Ettie says with a social laugh. “My dad has been cleaning up the air. It’s a different
world, here in New Washington.” I accept her elbow, and she leads me through the crowd, which parts for us to pass, revealing
a streetscape bright with holoscreens and a massive metallic dome. She gives me a look and says, “Good.”
“Good what?” I breathe.
“You actually look impressed. They’ll love it.”
I don’t know how to say I am impressed.
“Keep that up when you see your new home,” she says. “I mean, Dad’s been trying for eight years to get the stains off the stone, but it still sort of looks like shit.”
I flinch. The swear feels unnatural coming out of her rosy lips. A laugh bubbles up in my throat and in reply she pinches
my arm.
“What?” she presses. As we cut down the mall, the invisible bubble around us seems to extend.
People walking, zipping on escooters, racing on hoverboards; they all move away, maintaining a football field’s distance.
It takes a few moments to notice the Hammers, holding a perfect periphery.
Of course. Ettie is the president’s daughter and I’m the soon-to-be daughter-in-law.
I shake my head. “Ettie, you’re not a baby anymore. It’s freaking me out.”
She snorts. “Tell that to my dad. And Callum. They don’t let me do anything. Callum is worried I’ll get hurt. But I think
Dad would be more upset that the press will get a bad photo.”
I can hear the slight tinge of bitterness in her voice, and I understand. At least Callum got to be a kid before he was thrust
into the public eye. She grew up like this.
“Look at you,” I say instead. “You couldn’t take a bad photo if your life depended on it. You’re beautiful, Ettie.” A swell
of emotion builds in my lungs, and I kind of want to cry. I missed Callum, but I also missed Ettie. Little Ettie, who always
made me feel like the coolest person alive.
I’m so busy smiling at her that I don’t realize we’ve reached our destination until we step into a massive shadow that pulls
my attention upward. The building isn’t as white as the name implies; decades of ash have shadowed the paint, and the roof
seems to sag. Still, a chill runs down my spine.
I’m going to have to meet the president. Suddenly that much is clear. I’ll be face-to-face with the man who outlawed reading and writing, who sent my friends to war and arrested my proctor. Will he see through me? I try to shove the thought way as Ettie leans closer.
“So I’m supposed to be telling you all about the architecture, blah blah blah, but that’s boring so we’ll just pretend. Tell
me everything. How’s your mom? How’s your dad?”
Aware of the cameras at our backs, I let Ettie gesture at the grand facade of my new house and I tell her about life—the AI
training, life in Post Angeles. I lie, of course, when it comes to how much Callum and I were talking. When she asks about
our “late-night phone calls,” I play along, saying that my mom would pop her head in and I’d pretend to be asleep.
That’s another thing I lie about: that my mom would still check on me in the middle of the night. For some reason, I can’t
bear to have Ettie lose the image of my mom that she had. To her, Mrs. Hart was the cool mom who made Halloween snacks every
night for the whole month of October.
So, for Ettie, my mom is the way she was Before. And maybe, if I play my cards right, the way she’ll be again.
Eventually, as my feet are aching in these impractical shoes, we make another turn and head back toward the rose-gold obelisk, the eerily blue pool.
Below us, the ground dips into a stairwell.
The Metro, Ettie explains, and I freeze, leaving her to lurch to a stop next to me, as our arms are still linked.
There—right in front. It’s so faint I would have missed it if it was any darker: an Ionic column, spray-painted just over
the M. With all the other tags and faded posters, it could be anything.
But I know what it is: the mark of Lyceum.
My heart stutters. I thought I was alone here, with no safe way of contacting anyone, with my tablet ripped away, unable to
even post a new chapter of Written in the Stars. I knew Lyceum was something that stretched across the nation, but didn’t know how to find it.
But now, it seems that Lyceum found me.
“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” Ettie laughs, and I come back to the moment. I’d forgotten she was next to me.
My mind races. “Ummm. Do you think I could use the bathroom?” I whisper conspiratorially, looking over our shoulders at the
security detail behind us and the influencers just behind them.
“In the Metro? It’s been years since it worked. Plus, it’s the Metro.” She wrinkles her nose. “We’re, like, a few blocks from home—”
“I just need a few minutes to myself,” I whisper.
Ettie purses her lips, turning as we pretend to keep walking slowly. “They aren’t going to let you out of their sight. You’re
basically part of the first family now.”
I make a face. “No more privacy, then.” My heart races as my mind whirls, trying to think of an escape route. Aloud, I find myself confessing a little bit of the truth: “This has just been really, really intense. I don’t know how you live like this—all the cameras, eyes on you all the time . . .”
Ettie pauses at the real emotion in my voice. “Okay. So this is against the rules,” she starts, and I already like the sound
of it. “But just . . . play along.”
Without further warning, she wheels around.
“My necklace!!” she gasps, throwing a hand up to her neck. The security detail stops; one puts a hand to the blade on their
belt before he can fully realize what Ettie is shrieking about. She marches over to the group of security guards, her eyes
on the ground. “It fell off! Oh my gosh, my dad is going to kill me! It was a gift from the English prime minister! He’s coming to the Union Conference and if I’m not wearing it we’re talking
an international incident!”
The guards’ faces go from confused to worried at her declaration, and all their eyes drop to the ground. Behind them, Ettie’s