Perfect Ruin. Lauren DeStefano

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      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.”

      “Not coming back wouldn’t be the worst thing,” he says. “For any of us.”

      “None of that talk,” Alice says. “You’re going to scare her.”

      “She should be scared,” Lex says.

      “I’m not,” I say, but I am.

      “Everything is going to be fine,” Alice says. “We’ll know more when the broadcast goes up. And if there is no broadcast, then it can’t be too serious, now, can it?” She’s handing me a cup of tea, ushering Lex and me to the couch.

      Soon, I feel myself falling asleep under the unfinished blanket, as Lex works skillfully at its edges. Some distant part of me understands that there’s cause to worry and that I’m frightened, but it’s safe and warm inside, and Alice is moving about the kitchen, cooking up the smell of something sugary sweet. She asks me a question, something about my hair, and though I don’t hear her I nod assent, and in the next moment she’s peeling off my velvet gloves and gently unclasping the wooden barrettes in my hair.

      When I was small, my brother would let me follow him on the train for entire afternoons without a destination. We would ride until we were hungry or had to find a water room. The train would always be crowded and I’d stay so close to him that I could hear his murmurs as he wrote on scraps of paper. He never spoke to me, always writing or looking at the city passing by. But it didn’t matter. I knew the honor of having been invited. We were two parts of the same set then, our skin as pale as the sunlight that washed over us through the glass, both of us silent and blue-eyed in the bustling crowd. On these trips I began to feel we were the same. I would catch our reflection in the window and fancy myself a perfect miniature version of him.

      The train that circles Internment couldn’t carry him far enough, though. My brother, the peripatetic, the sage, was too restless to stay in one place, but one place is all we’re given. The only one who could quell this restlessness was Alice, always Alice, who swears she was born already in love with him. When she wasn’t allowed to have their child, something fell apart and they lost themselves for a while.

      The train speeds past the apartment, rattling the walls, and I dream that I’m riding it in my theater dress. I’m on my way to meet my betrothed waiting for me on the platform. I dream about the other passengers, and I wonder who’s waiting for them. I wonder what keeps the conductor conscious as he navigates through the night. I dream about the murderer, out there somewhere, and wonder where he is when the train passes him by.

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