Any other girl in Oaks would say yes instantly, shocked to be invited into our clique, eager not to let the chance slip away. But Lark looks hesitant. “It’s my first day.”
“Exactly. This is your chance to have a little fun, and make some new friends.”
Lark glances outside the Egg. “Somehow I don’t think a lot of people are competing to be my friend,” she says, though it doesn’t seem to bother her. Plenty of girls pretend they don’t care, but you can feel their hunger to belong. Not Lark. She cares about something, though. I can feel it. Exactly what it is, I don’t know.
“Thought you said you’d be happy with just one friend,” I counter.
“Depends on the friend,” she says, but slides me a sly little sidelong smile.
“So is that a yes?”
“Perhaps,” she replies, and says nothing more for the rest of class.
I decide that “perhaps” is the worst word ever.
That night, though, I dress carefully. Perhaps might be a no, but I’m going to be prepared for a yes. I want to look beautiful, but not like I’m trying, or I care. I feel like one of those needy, desperate girls who will do anything to hide their desperation. This isn’t me.
I look in the mirror at my carefully made-up face. I’ve darkened my eyebrows too much. They don’t go with my blond hair. This isn’t me.
Instead of wiping the makeup off of my eyebrows, I tear through a jumble of discarded accessories until I find that hair alteration wand that Pearl despises. I stare at my refection, at the blond hair in its chiseled stair-step cut. It doesn’t look right, doesn’t suit my dark complexion. I stare closer. Right at the hairline I see a hint of dark shadow. Frowning, I peer closer. It almost looks like my hair is growing in darker, like I have deep brown, almost black roots.
I laugh and pull away, blinking my eyes. They feel dry all the time these days. At my last checkup (I always have them at the Center, when I visit my Mom, with their on-site doctor) I asked if my lens implants could be causing the irritation. “Nonsense,” he said. “You’ve had them since you were a few months old. They bonded with your neural network long ago. They’re part of you now, and couldn’t cause irritation.” But even though I douse them with drops, they stay red and irritated. Sometimes my vision even goes blurry for a few seconds.
The weird illusion with my imaginary roots must just be a trick of light and shadow, I think. But it has given me an idea. Why do an exotic color when I can do something more natural looking? The effect will be just as striking because it is so different. So even though I can almost hear Pearl’s disapproval in my ear, I start running the color wand over my fair hair.
I like the result.
A few more touches—a matte rosy earth tone on my lips, a fine line of gold painted along my upper lashes—and I’m satisfied.
Yes, this is me. At last.
I should go straight to Pearl, but instead I go in search of Lark. I have to ask one of the servants where her dorm in. Turns out she got squeezed into a makeshift space that used to be the common room of three other girls who share a suite. They apparently aren’t ready to give up their space without a fight. There’s Lark’s bed and desk shoved against the far wall, but the usual sofas, cushions, datablocks, strewed clothes, and food wrappers are still dominating the room. The other residents are sprawled around, taking up space deliberately so Lark can’t have any.
She’s sitting on her bed, ignored, perched on a corner with her chin resting on her tucked-up knees, curled as if she, too, wants to take up as little space as possible. At first she doesn’t see me, and I watch the strange way she stares at nothing so intensely. I didn’t think she was much when I first saw her, because she doesn’t have Pearl’s flashy beauty. No, Lark’s beauty is more subtle, a beauty of line, of expression. Without any makeup or extravagant clothes, with only the curve of her lip, the shadow on her cheek, she achieves something that surpasses even Pearl. It is something simple and sublime.
Even those twin frown lines creased between her eyebrows look pretty. No one else at Oaks has them. No one ever worries about anything very important, for very long.
Finally she sees me, and her face lights up, instantly incandescent. “Your hair!” she gasps, clearly delighted, and I smile, hugely, unthinkingly, as if her approval was my only goal. “I love it, Ro! It’s so exactly you.”
She smiles at me, and I want to do things for her, help her, save her.
“You!” I snap, whirling around to face her roommates. “Get up and move those pillows out of here. And you, throw that junk away. This is Lark’s room now.” It is thrilling to use my power. I am an extension of Pearl, and even though they make surly faces they know better than to disobey me. Reluctantly, they get up and start clearing the room.
“Ro, you don’t have to . . . ,” Lark begins, but I shush her.
“I know I don’t have to,” I say loftily. “I never do anything I don’t want to do.” I wave my hands in a hurry up gesture to the girls, and they scurry.
“They’re sheep,” I say as they leave. “Have you read about sheep in Eco-history class? Passive herd animals that brainlessly follow their leader. I’m just making sure they remember I’m their leader.” Well, vice leader, after Pearl.
Lark cocks her head at me in a piquantly birdlike movement. “But . . . wouldn’t that make you just another sheep?” she asks. Pearl would take offense. Pearl would decide to destroy her then and there (if she hadn’t already). I stop and think.
“We’re all sheep,” I say, at last admitting something to her I would never say to another person at Oaks. “We all want a path to follow. Oaks people just have a higher path. If we have to be shepherd, might as well be the lead sheep.”
Lark bites her lip for a second. “But what if you could be the sheepdog?”
“The what?”
“The one outside the sheep, guiding them. The one who steers them away from dangers.”
“The one who does their thinking for them?” I ask.
“Maybe. Until the sheep remember that they can think for themselves.”
A moment of silence hangs between us. Finally, when it becomes awkward and uncomfortable, I force a laugh and say, “Come on, get dressed. Let’s go out.”
“I am dressed,” she says. “This is what I’m wearing.” She’s wearing a simple yellow dress that leaves her arms bare, and woven tan sandals.
I shrug, feeling the old cruelty creep back. “Whatever. No one will be looking at you anyway.” I hate myself as I walk away. She still follows.
Though as it turns out I’m right, because when I bring her to Pearl’s bedroom Pearl ignores her like she doesn’t exist and says, “Yarrow, great Earth, what have you done to your hair? It’s so . . . so dark and dull!” She tosses her own hair as if some shade of silvery white is the only acceptable color.
“Yeah, Yarrow, what were you thinking?” Lynx begins, then her hand involuntarily goes to her own brown locks. She bleached her hair to match Pearl’s once, but Pearl made her change it back.
“I don’t know,” I say, going to one of Pearl’s many mirrors to check it out again. “I think it looks interesting. Different.”
“Sure, if you call boring different,” Pearl says. “Go change it back. This party we’re going to tonight is special.”
“Special how?” I ask, still looking at my hair. I push it away from my face, twine the blunt edges around my fingers to soften them. “You mean, security is actually going to let us into this one?”
I speak without thinking, and the look of sudden malice I catch over my shoulder in Pearl’s reflected face feels like a slap. She has herself under control by the time I turn away from the mirror, but I can see the aggressive tension in her narrowed eyes. What I said was perilously close to criticism. Which is itself dangerously close to a challenge.
She decides to let it go, for now, though no doubt
I’ll pay in some way later. “Hello . . . what was your name again? Lake?”
“Lark,” she tries to say, but Pearl talks right over her.
“I’m so glad you’re not one of those girls who doesn’t follow tradition. Do you know, there are actually some newcomers who refuse to hand over their credit chips? Can you imagine? When the tradition goes all the way back to the founding of Oaks.” She holds out her hand, and for a baffled moment Lark extends hers as if to shake it. Pearl wiggles her fingers dismissively. “Your credit chip. Hand it over.”
“Why?” I ask, for Lark.
Pearl manages to roll her eyes and flash me a warning look at the same time. “Duh, stupid. You know that new students always treat whoever takes them out on their first night. It’s tradition.” She stands up very straight, prim and proper. “And where would we be without tradition?”
So that’s her scheme for the night, I think. She wants to fleece Lark of as much money as she can, knowing full well that her parents probably only just make enough money to afford Oaks. And Pearl really knows how to run up a tab. Private room, top shelf drinks, exotic entertainment—all charged to Lark. She’ll run through her funds in minutes, charge the rest to her credit, and her parents will have to pay for it all. They’ll probably be so mad they take her out of Oaks as soon as the bill comes.
It’s a clever scheme, if Lark is weak enough to hand over her credit chip.
She does.
My hand twitches out to stop her, but then I think . . . no. Remember Cinnamon. Remember all the horrible things Pearl has done to people, all the truly terrible torments she could dream up. Making Lark spend all of her money is relatively tame by comparison.
So with Pearl watching narrowly for my reaction, I decide to go along with it and pull my hand back. “Yeah, that’s tradition. What can you do?” I shrug.
I’ll pay for it all, I promise silently. My family has more than enough money to cover without flinching whatever damage Pearl can do tonight. It is nothing to a family like mine. Pearl will think she’s won. Won’t she be surprised when Lark is still here at Oaks.
Pearl grins like a satisfied cat, and says to me again, “Go change your hair so we can get out of here.”
“No,” I say.
“What?” It’s like she genuinely doesn’t understand me. I can tell the sudden disconnect between expectations and reality has jarred her. It’s funny, really, though I keep a straight face.
“I like it this way,” I say blandly. “I’m keeping it.”
Pearl opens her mouth, then abruptly snaps it shut. It would be beneath her dignity to argue with me. But she’ll remember.
“Let’s go,” she says brightly, pocketing Lark’s credit chip. “This is going to be a night we’ll never forget.”
PEARL IS RIGHT, we have no trouble getting in. One look at her, and we’re waved past scarlet ropes and escorted to the elevator by an adorable roller-skating girl dressed as a chipmunk. The host, it turns out, is a family friend, the fabulously wealthy playboy son of one of Pearl’s family’s closest associates. Who cares that they made their money in the last twenty years by shady deals and black marketeering? Their money has been made legitimate by its sheer size. Petty criminals go to jail. Gargantuan criminals move to the inner circles. Especially when they know how to spend all that money with style.
The elevator rises to the penthouse ballroom, and we step out into a giddy maelstrom of light and sound.
Pearl claps her hands. “A carnival!” she cries. If it had been for the populace, in the street, she would have turned her nose up at it. But since it has been assembled at fabulous expense for one night only for the privileged few, she is enchanted.
Frankly, so am I.
I’ve never been to a real carnival before, but this one has everything I could imagine. But bigger! Brighter! Louder!
My eyes are drawn immediately upward. The ceilings are arched and high, painted with frescoes that could stand alone in their beauty if they weren’t overshadowed tonight by everything else going on. Drilled into these masterpieces are bolts and guy wires supporting a trapeze.
I feel Lark touch my arm. “Are they really wearing nothing but sequins?” she asks as the acrobatic pair swing and flip and grasp each other. It’s not just a gymnastic performance, but a sensual one, too. When the muscular man catches his partner, she twines around him provocatively as they swing, clasping him around the waist with her legs, arching her back in simulated (or perhaps not) ecstasy. Across another part of the ceiling a man dressed as a fox, all in russet fur with pointed ears, steps his sprightly way across a high wire, his fuzzy paws mincing.
“What happens if they fall?” Lark asks.
There are no safety lines, no nets. The performers could die. So could whoever they land on. No one seems to think about this though. It’s all part of the fun. Even I forget an instant later, my eye caught by a towering man on stilts. He wears horns, and his face is painted in a grotesque leer. He reaches up menacingly for the aerial performers, but they swing high above even his lofty grasp. Instead he reaches down for the little people below him, making them giggle and squeal as they knock each other down to evade him.
Pearl sails away from us toward the mirrored back of the huge ballroom, and her minions follow in her wake. Of course she doesn’t care about Lark anymore, not directly. She has her credit chip and, as she believes, the key to her ruin. So she is going to enjoy herself.
Well then, so will I. With Lark.
With Lark beside me, my jaded eyes see all this luxury as if for the first time. The nature themes that are always so popular in Eden have been taken to expensive extremes here. I point out a girl in a fish motif. It is almost impossible to tell where her skin ends and her gown begins. Her flesh is covered in orange and gold crystals that mimic a koi’s scales glittering in a sunlit pond. Somewhere around her midsection a luxurious silken material hugs her body and then swirls out in a trailing fishtail skirt.
“And there!” Lark says, drawing my attention to a man all in green, whose impeccably tailored suit suggests a slim, lithe frog. “He even brought his own lily pad!” And an underling, modestly dressed, to relocate it every time the wealthy young man wants to stand somewhere else.
Other people didn’t bother with nature motifs. They just wanted to look as rich as possible. There is only a small supply of real jewels and gold in Eden, only what the initial survivors had with them, and by then of course most of them had nothing left at all. My practiced eye tells me that a good portion of those treasures are at this party tonight. Alongside them are artificial jewels, almost as expensive, even more beautiful. The entire room looks cut and faceted by a master jeweler to enhance its brilliance.
Without Pearl nearby, I feel suddenly free. No one to please. No one to judge me. No, that’s not true. Lark is judging me, I can tell from the searching way she always looks at me. But I’m not afraid of her judgment. I feel like I want her to find out everything about me. Things even I don’t know.
And I want to please her. I want Lark to have a fabulous night. I want her to see what money and friends and power can do. Taking her hand, I pull her into the swirl of people. “Let’s dance!” I call out above the music and laughter. We become part of the carnival madness. In her simple yellow dress she looks like a meadow flower in the middle of strange orchids, but somehow this makes her seem all the more lovely.
I dance with a bare-chested boy in leather pants—but not too close because he has spikes sticking out of most parts of his body. “Is he supposed to be a cactus?” Lark asks with a giggle when I whirl away from him. Together, we dance with a young man in clown makeup, his huge painted-on frown weirdly twisted by the exuberant smile on his real lips.
All of a sudden, the music cuts off and the room goes black. Balloons start to drift down from the vaulted ceiling. No, not balloons—bubbles. Blown from some strange material, the perfect orb
s glow with swirling mother-of-pearl light. I reach up to touch one, and the second my finger makes contact it explodes in an opalescent powder. I can’t help breathing some in. I don’t know what it is, but people around me are eagerly popping the orbs, opening their mouths greedily to eat or inhale the glimmering dust. An easy sensation settles over me. Nothing too strong, just as if the weight of a few small woes has been lifted. It’s a drug of some sort, but very mild. It makes the dark, the crowds, more comfortable.
Lark reaches her hand across the darkness to grasp mine just as a light appears at the far end of the room. A man dressed in deep violet steps up on a dais.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” he begins, and is met with polite titters. He owns the top two floors of this building, his home below and the ballroom above. They are easily among the most expensive properties in Eden.
“I have a few surprises for you tonight, my friends.” On cue, the lights start to twinkle like rainbow stars, making the colors dance around us. They reflect off what I suddenly realize is a wall of mirrors. No, a mirror maze. I see the crowd reflected a hundredfold.
Colored spotlights wink on around the room, each lighting up a new treat that suddenly emerges from behind curtains or false walls. The stilt walkers and aerialists were just the beginning. The partyers oohh and aahh as he reveals a tunnel of love, a psychedelic bounce house, clear balls in which people can run and tumble and bounce into each other. I can see Pearl exclaim and clap her hands along with the rest. And yet I know for a fact that if she saw those things in a street carnival she’d mock them mercilessly, call them pathetic amusements of the masses. But because a rich man is putting it on for other rich people, she eats it up. They all do.
“But that’s not all!” he says, as a row of purple lights along the wall makes an arrow shape to point to a gilded door. “Go through that door and you’ll find Eden’s very first roller coaster, designed from pre-fail blueprints. It starts on the roof and spirals all around the building. You can’t imagine what a fuss my downstairs neighbors kicked up about that!” Those would be the slightly less rich millionaires. “But I smoothed it all over somehow.” He throws back his head and laughs. “Now go and enjoy yourselves. And remember to vote for yours truly in the next election for circle governor!”
Elites of Eden Page 6
