Perfect Ruin (Internment Chronicles, Book 1)

by DeStefano, Lauren

Uncertainly, I nod.

  “I’ve read your academy file, and it shows that three years ago you suffered a pretty traumatic incident.”

  My blood goes cold. I don’t like where this is heading. “I didn’t,” I say. “It was my older brother.”

  “But surely that was traumatic for you also,” the specialist says. “To have someone close to you fall victim to the edge’s allure.”

  “He couldn’t help it,” I say, repeating what I’ve been taught, what every student is taught in their first year of academy and reminded of every year after that. “We have the free will to stay on this side of the train tracks. If we cross over to the other side, we get too close to the edge, and it mystifies us. We see how infinite the sky is and we lose our senses. Even the people we love most disappear from our thoughts in that moment.” I am quoting a textbook exactly.

  The specialist takes notes. I clench my interlocked fingers in an effort to keep still.

  “What about your parents?” she asks.

  “My parents?”

  “Your father is a patrolman—please congratulate him for me, that’s quite an honor—and your mother works in a recycling plant in section fourteen. Has either of them ever discussed the edge with you?”

  I think of my father waking me for the broadcast, the darkness of my room doing little to conceal the sadness in his eyes when he told me that life could be awful sometimes. “Only to warn me to stay away,” I say.

  “Would you say they’re protective of you?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And your brother, Alexander, does he talk about his experience with the edge of Internment?”

  I’m starting to feel ill. This conversation has moved far from Daphne Leander. Were the others questioned so personally?

  And then I make the connection. Most of the others don’t know someone who tried to jump over the edge. Daphne Leander knew someone, though. And now she’s dead.

  “He doesn’t talk to me about it,” I say. “He goes to his support group every week. What happens behind the closed door is confidential.”

  More notes.

  “Morgan, I know that these personal questions are probably uncomfortable for you to answer,” the specialist says. “Right now, the king has asked me to speak with you and your classmates only to ensure your safety. Several years ago, we had a murder. Your parents probably told you about that. It spurred a lot of talk about Internment being unsafe, and many people became, as you put it, mystified by the edge. We had a few very close calls. I found myself standing on the platform contemplating the other side.”

  I can see the platform under my feet, the black rails and the gray pebbles that fill the space between the wooden planks. The fence far on the other side, bold and stoic against the meandering clouds.

  I look at the king’s specialist and I do not believe her when she says she’s contemplated the other side. I believe that she is testing me.

  “If you feel tempted, please come and speak to me at any time,” she says. She’s handing me a small card, gray like her uniform, with the address for a section three apartment complex.

  “Thank you,” I say, tucking the card into my skirt pocket.

  “You’re free to return to your class now,” she tells me. “You were my last student of the day.”

  I take great care not to stand in a hurry. Just as I’m turning the doorknob, she says, “Morgan?”

  I turn.

  “Have you had thoughts of going over the edge yourself? Even for a fleeting moment?”

  “No,” I say. My palms are starting to sweat, which happens when I lie.

  On the train home, Pen stares into the loose-leaf pages of her notes. Thomas tries to talk to her and she shushes him repeatedly, swatting him when he tries to read over her shoulder.

  “How’d it go with the specialist?” Basil asks me.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “What sorts of questions did she ask you?”

  “She asked about my parents, mostly. Their trades, and if they told me about the murder several years ago.” He tucks a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “Then she asked about my studies.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Me too,” I say, but I think he catches my hesitation. “My father said that everyone doesn’t have to come right home after class and work anymore,” I say. “You can come over for dinner if you want. My mother always cooks too much food during the festival month.” There are things I’d like to tell him, if not for the patrolman pacing the aisle, making sure we’re safe and that our feet and our minds lie firmly on Internment’s floating floor.

  “I’d love to,” he says. “I don’t have to be home to watch Leland. My mother is taking him to get fitted for a new uniform.”

  “Don’t tell me he managed to lose an entire uniform,” I say. Basil’s brother is famous for losing things. It’s a wonder he still has his betrothal band on a chain around his neck.

  “He didn’t lose it, exactly. He’s pretty sure it’s at the bottom of the lake. Part of it, anyway.”

  Even Pen looks up from her notes at that.

  “He was trying to use the pant legs as a net to catch fish.” Basil sighs. “These are the sorts of things that happen when I take my eyes off him for five minutes.”

  I laugh. “Poor Basil,” I say. “The great fun in being a younger sibling is getting to torture the older.”

  “You were an uncorrupted compared to Leland,” Basil says.

  “What about the time we were seven and we tried to bake a cake?” I say.

  “I don’t recall any baking,” Basil says. “I recall cracked eggs on the floor and a sack of flour that was too heavy for you to carry.”

  “That mess happened on Lex’s watch,” I remind him. “He’s the one who had to clean it up.”

  Now Basil is chuckling with his lips pressed together. He’s looking at me.

  “What?” I say.

  “I’m just remembering all the flour in your hair.”

  “It got up my nose. I couldn’t stop sneezing.”

  We’re both trying to quiet our laughter so as not to disrupt the solemn mood of the train.

  “Is this what passes for romance between you two?” Pen says.

  “Yes,” I say. “And we like it this way, don’t we, Basil?”

  “Quite,” he says.

  The evening sun catches every bolt and scrap of metal on the train, and for an instant we are suspended in an atmosphere of stars.

  My mother is of course thrilled that my betrothed is joining us for dinner. Not only does she find him charming, but she is also eager for a sense of normalcy. Though the ash from the fire at the flower shop has long since disappeared, a grayness still blankets the city. I’ve never known anything like it, but something about my mother’s despondency of late tells me she knows it well.

  My father’s absence at the table doesn’t help.

  I force myself to eat everything on the plate, despite the lingering dread in my stomach after my interview with the specialist, which I leave out of the dinner conversation.

  After we’ve cleared our plates, I say I’m feeling tired and I’m going to lie down, and I pull Basil toward my bedroom.

  “Did you take your pill this morning, love?” my mother asks.

  I feel my cheeks burning. “Yes,” I say, and I can’t meet Basil’s eyes. I’ve been taking my sterility pill since about the time my betrothal band started to fit on my finger. I know my mother doesn’t want for me to repeat Alice’s mistake, and I’ve heard it isn’t uncommon for girls my age to be intimate with their betrotheds, but the idea still embarrasses me.

  When I close my bedroom door, I sag against it with a deflating sigh.

  Basil sits on the edge of my bed and holds his arms out to me. “Come here,” he says, and when I take his hands, he pulls me down to sit beside him.

  “Today was awful,” I confess, making a little game of rolling and unrolling his red necktie. “In just a few days, I fee
l as though everything has changed.”

  “I keep thinking it’ll all go back to normal,” he says. “Each morning I wake up and tell myself there won’t be a patrolman at the door when I leave. They’ll have found the murderer. The fire will turn out to have been an accident.”

  We sit without speaking for a while, me staring at my lap, as the sunset makes everything orange.

  “You can tell me anything, you know,” Basil says.

  He knows something is wrong, then. He’s an excellent reader of people, and I am terrible at hiding things. Another reason we’re probably a good match—he keeps me from getting lost in myself. And I always relent, telling him the little things, like my fear of giving verbal presentations before the class, or that I don’t like his mother’s walnut cookies—which she gives me every year for my festival of stars gift—as much as I let on. But how can I tell him that I fear I’m becoming like my brother, or that I have perhaps always been like him? That for all of last night I dreamed of Internment’s edge, Amy scattering pages into the clouds, and a fire raging behind her so that she had no choice but to jump?

  I think of the specialist’s card in my pocket.

  “Basil?” I say. “You want me to be safe, don’t you?”

  He puts his hand over mine, and his tie unrolls from my fingers. “Of course,” he says.

  I can’t tell him, then. If he knew that I was this curious about the edge, he would drag me to the king’s home atop the clock tower himself. He would ask to have me declared irrational, and I’d be fitted with an anklet made of blinking lights and never be allowed to step outside again. Just like the woman who used to live downstairs. I used to pass by her door and see her sometimes, standing just inside her threshold after her husband left for work. I’d hear the whimpers of pain when she tried to follow after him.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  I’m trying to think of a way to answer without lying, but then I’m saved by a knock on my door. “A patrolman was just here.” My mother’s voice. “There’s going to be a broadcast. They’ve found that poor girl’s murderer.”

  7

  Even gods must have their secrets.

  —“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten

  THE BUILDING IS SHAKING, FOR ALL THE footsteps fighting to get down the stairwells at once. Our fascination is as great as our horror, as though knowing the name of the person responsible will explain what has been done. As though it will bring us peace.

  I hold Basil’s hand, and when we make it downstairs, the broadcast room contains what I’m certain is everyone in the apartment complex.

  Even my brother, who never comes down for these. I spot him standing along the wall with Alice. He’s most comfortable when he can be near a wall or sitting on the floor; he’s told me it’s the only way he can keep from feeling like he’s falling through the sky. In the first months, when he was still adjusting to the permanent darkness, he used to crawl.

  Alice waves us over.

  “They found the murderer?” Basil asks.

  “That’s what we’ve heard, too,” Alice says.

  Lex mumbles something I don’t catch. I touch his arm, to let him know where I am and to console him before he starts to get angry. He has never had a kind thing to say about the king, or his announcements. Especially since Alice’s ordeal. He could get us all arrested for treason.

  I stand on tiptoes to reach his ear. “It’ll be okay,” I say.

  “It’s already plenty not-okay, Little Sister,” he says.

  Alice shushes him. A patrolman is shaking the screen, trying to get it to work. There are a few seconds of static, and then the king appears, wobbly and distorted on the screen.

  Everyone in the room has gone quiet. When the roar of the static reduces itself to a faint crackling, we can finally hear what the king is saying. “—are appalled by our findings early this evening that after a thorough investigation, based on extensive evidence, there is reason to believe that Judas Hensley is responsible for the murder of Daphne Leander, his betrothed.”

  My blood runs cold. Basil squeezes my hand.

  “No,” Lex murmurs beside me.

  Rather than an academy image, there’s live footage of the accused, his arms shackled behind him, his head down, and his face half-covered by blond hair as he’s lead up the steps of the courthouse by several patrolmen. I’m uncertain what awaits him on the other side of those heavy wooden doors. Many generations before I was born, crimes were a routine part of Internment. Jealousy and greed bred most of them, and it was determined that arranged betrothals and assigned housing would diminish many such crimes. Things will never be perfect, of course. With free will comes inevitable error and misjudgment. There are still disputes and accidents that are resolved in the courthouse. If it’s an involved case, people are selected to serve as part of a jury.

  But a murderer? What sort of trial would have to take place? Where would they keep him in the meantime?

  Alice has her finger to Lex’s lips now, because he just said something I didn’t hear. What could this possibly mean to him? In the last moment before the image switches back to the king, I see Judas Hensley in the courthouse lights. I’ve seen him at the academy; we’ve had classes together, but I don’t think we’ve ever spoken.

  “Do you know him?” I ask Basil.

  “I’ve seen him,” he says.

  The king is still speaking, telling us there will be more updates to follow, but I’m distracted by Alice, who is pulling Lex out of the room and trying not to make a scene. I don’t understand why he’s so upset by this. What does he have to do with a murdered girl’s betrothed from the academy?

  The broadcast ends, and the room reaches a crescendo of chatter. Lots of speculation, but no answers among the lot of us.

  All night, my dreams are pervaded by my brother’s furious pacing overhead. I fear the floorboards will splinter and break.

  The cafeteria is filled with morbid, fascinated gossip. Judas is the name of a hero in the history book. The right-hand man to the king, he penned the first page of The History of Internment. The sky god favored him, and when Judas died, Internment experienced its one and only water storm. To think a boy named after Judas could commit such a crime.

  Pen pulls excitedly on my sleeve. “It’s all like a tawdry romantic horror,” she says. “Can you even believe it?”

  It’s all anyone in the cafeteria is talking about. I know because I overhear pieces of conversation—“Did anyone know them?”—“always a little strange”—“pretty girl”—“stuck up, if you ask me.” But I don’t find myself among them. I’m not interested in the gossip. I’m more worried about the aftermath.

  “Wonder when the trial will begin,” Basil says.

  “They’ll have a difficult time finding a jury, I imagine,” Thomas says. “It’s supposed to be unbiased. Who can be unbiased about murder? It’s clearly wrong.”

  “Unless he didn’t do it,” I blurt, surprising myself. Everyone’s eyes are on me. “I mean—that’s what the trial is for, isn’t it? To determine innocence?”

  Pen shrugs. “Guess we’ll see. Is there a math exam this week?”

  And the topic of Daphne Leander and Judas Hensley dies away.

  “Lex?”

  “What is it?” he says after a pause. I knocked, but he won’t open his office door to me. Lost in his brilliance, I suppose. He was always like that—going off by himself. But his blindness has intensified it.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” I say.

  “Talk about what?”

  “Things,” I say. “That’s what sisters do. You know, because you’re my brother and I care about you?”

  “You bug me,” he says. “That’s what sisters do. How do you know I’m not trying to nap?”

  “You aren’t,” I press. “The ceiling is practically crumbling over my bedroom.”

  He ignores me. Alice, standing at the end of the hall, frowns in apology. Lex has even begun to elude her. I worry for him, alon
e in all that blackness.

  I sit on the floor and lean against the door.

  “Who was that little girl at your jumper group?” I ask. “She had a bow in her hair.” Too late, I realize a physical description won’t do my brother any good. “She can’t be more than eleven or twelve.”

  No answer.

  “The day of the fire, I caught her putting up papers in the ladies’ room at the theater. I think she put them up at the academy, too. They were copies of a paper Daphne Leander wrote about the gods being a myth.”

  The door opens, and I tense to keep from falling backward. Lex reaches out for me.

  “Where are you?” he says.

  “Down here.” I hold up my hand and he takes it, feeling his way until he’s on his knees across from me.

  “That girl is none of your concern,” he says.

  “Is she really a jumper?” I say.

  “Yes. And you have no business talking to her.”

  “She’s Daphne Leander’s sister,” I say. “Isn’t she?”

  “I’m not kidding, Morgan. You stay away from her.”

  He’s in a miserable mood, and there’s no sense pressing him for more, but all he’s done is pique my interest.

  “Since you’re out, come on and eat something,” Alice says. “I made berry cobbler.”

  Later, when Lex has retreated to his office once again, Alice is washing the dishes and I’m drying them.

  “He is right,” she says. “It’s best if you stay away from that girl.”

  “Who is she?” I say. Alice takes her husband’s side about most things, but she’s always had a soft spot for me.

  “You were right,” she says, handing me a dripping plate. “She’s Daphne’s sister. She may be a little girl, but she’s got a lot of demons. It’s best if you let her alone.”

  I’ve heard that saying used to describe my brother. “A lot of demons.” That’s what my father said while we all kept vigil at Lex’s bedside in the hospital. I didn’t know what he meant. But now I’m thinking of Amy Leander, and what it must have been like to learn her sister wouldn’t be coming home. It was the most awful thing I could imagine, watching my brother fight to breathe in that sterile room. But at least he was breathing.