Lauren DeStefano - Perfect Ruin

“I know that,” Amy says, and looks sharply out the window, where the smoke has turned the city into an old image.

“Are you frightened?” Thomas asks Pen.

She’s looking at her lap, but he tilts her chin and she meets his eyes.

“I won’t ever let anything happen to you, you know.”

She nods, leans her forehead against his.

For all their arguing, they have kissed. It first happened several months ago. He kept dropping hints and she decided to just be done with it. It wasn’t terrible, she told me. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible. I had a hard time believing it—she’s always evading him—but I’m starting to see that there’s a reason they were betrothed. There’s always a reason.

Basil grips my hand as the shuttle comes to a stop. “It’s going to be chaotic. Don’t let go of me even if people rush between us,” he says. With my free hand, I grab on to Pen and we rise to our feet.

An instant too late, I remember that Amy is behind me. In that instant, she dodges under Pen’s and my interlocked hands and disappears into the crowd.

“Amy!”

“Let her go,” Pen says. “Where did you find such a strange child, anyway?” She’s trying to act nonchalant but the fear is still in her eyes.

I’m scanning the crowd for Amy; with the patrolmen steering us all right onto the waiting train, there’s nowhere for her to go, and I still want to ask her about the essay.

But it’s taking all my efforts to hold on to Basil and Pen; I’ve never seen Internment in such a panic, and other worries start to invade my mind. My father is patrolling today; that means he must be out in this mess. And Alice will be out running errands; she frequents the flower shop, has a side job designing event bouquets.

And what started the fire to begin with?

Amy said it was only going to get worse. I see this panic all around me, while news of Daphne Leander’s murder is still fresh, and I cannot fathom what worse should look like.

By the time we make it to our seats on the train, Pen isn’t the only one with tears in her eyes. Other passengers have the same frightened expression.

Even Basil is looking worriedly at the city through the window. A patrolman is standing at the head of the car, instructing us not to check in on family and friends, to step off the train at our appropriate sections and go straight home. The train will stop for an extra two minutes on each platform to ensure everyone has a chance to exit the overcrowded cars in time.

“Something is happening,” Basil says, “isn’t it?”

“I’m sure it was only an accident,” Thomas says. “That building was so old that it has never been properly outfitted with electricity. Most of the rooms were lit by flame lanterns. One of them probably tipped over.”

“Do you think so?” Pen says.

“I’m almost certain.”

None of us believes it, but we don’t have the nerve to say so.

“Your mascara is running,” Pen says. “Here.” She rubs her gloved thumb under my eyelid.

“Thanks,” I say, though from the black smear on her glove I suspect she’s made it worse.

When the train stops in our section, Basil squeezes my hand. “I’m sorry I can’t walk you in,” he says.

“I’ll be fine; my building is right there,” I tell him, wishing desperately that I wasn’t about to leave him behind. “Stay safe.”

I don’t know what it is—the noise or the distant smell of the ashes or the fear—but I get the thought that I’d like to kiss him. I lean forward and press my lips against his forehead, pleasantly surprised by the softness and the warmth of his skin.

I don’t get a chance to see his reaction; Thomas is pulling Pen, and Pen is pulling me.

We can still smell the fire, though it happened several sections away and has since been extinguished. The blue of the sky is still up there, if a bit obscured, and I might have started to feel relief if only there weren’t a patrolman forcing me down the steps.

Thomas lives in the same section that Pen and I do, but his building is a block over, and at the fork in the pathway, he leans in for a kiss and Pen backs away. “Let’s not capitalize on a tragedy,” she says. “I’ll see you on Monday, provided the academy is still standing.”

He smirks, nods to us, and turns into the crowd.

She shakes her head. “Strange thing, him.”

“He’s just a little old-fashioned,” I say.

“And you!” she says. “Don’t think I didn’t see what you did as we were getting off the train. We’ll be talking about that some other time when we’re not being manhandled by patrolmen.”

“Move along, please,” the patrolman says from somewhere behind us. “Move along, toward your own buildings.”

It is wildly inappropriate that Internment is crumbling around me, but all I can think about is the warmth of Basil’s skin lingering on my lips.

Alice is frantic. When I open the door to my apartment, she’s got her arms around me before I know what’s happening. “She’s home,” she calls to Lex, who’s got an unfinished quilt draped across his lap and a spool of thread in one hand and a needle in the other. He does his best work when he’s anxious. But he drops all of these things and starts making his way to me.

Alice is holding me by the shoulders now. “Are those bruises?”

“She’s hurt?” Lex says. He rarely seems to regard me at all, much less show concern. Normally I’d appreciate it, but right now it only adds to this feeling that Internment has gone mad.

“It’s cosmetics,” I say, reaching my arm out to Lex so he can find me. “I’m perfectly fine. Where are Mom and Dad?”

“Dad has been patrolling all day,” Lex says. “Mom was at the market. We came down so someone would be here when you got back.”

“They’re making everyone go home,” I say. “The trains are running slowly. The cars are all overcrowded, so they want to make sure everyone has time to get off at their stops.” I thought I was doing better, but there’s a stone in my stomach at the thought of my mother and father out in all that chaos. And I can still smell the burnt air, though maybe it’s just clinging to my dress.

Alice sets me in a kitchen chair, moves to the sink, and returns seconds later to wipe the cosmetics and sweat from my face with a wet cloth. My tears are only from the abrasiveness of the ashes, but they still earn her sympathetic touch.

Lex, sitting across the table, still has his hand over mine. He keeps pressing his palm into my knuckles like I might vaporize into nothing if he doesn’t hold tight. Sometimes he hides in the darkness of his blindness, and other times he fears it will swallow everyone up and leave him alone.

Alice dabs the cold cloth to my forehead and then drapes it across the back of my neck, still fretting that I’m too red.

“Thomas thinks it may not be cause to panic,” I say, trying to reassure her. “He said the flower shop still uses flame lanterns and it was probably an accident.”

“There will be a broadcast tonight for sure,” she says. “Thank goodness you’re safe. We heard the fire was near the theater and we’ve just been all over the place about it.”

Lex is squeezing my hand. I close my eyes, trying to pretend that I’m blind, trying to understand what it means to be in this world without seeing any of it, not knowing where anyone is, if they’re safe.

I can see the red of my eyelids, but it’s still horrifying. It isn’t simply that I was missing in that chaos—without the sound of my voice, to him I’d disappeared into that darkness entirely. I could have fallen over the edge of Internment.

“I’m sorry I made you worry,” I say. I lean over the table so that I’m closer. “I’ll never disappear. I promise that every time I leave, I’ll always come back.”