Perfect Ruin

“Wait!” I run after her.

She’s quick, but so am I, and I catch up to her on the sidewalk outside the theater, where she has come to a stop. She doesn’t seem out of breath, and I’m trying to figure out why she stopped, but then I follow her gaze to the building at the end of the block, engulfed in flames.

She looks at me, and her eyes are full of so much pain that it astounds me. They’re the same as the murdered girl’s eyes, and yet different somehow.

“It’s only going to get worse,” she says.

That’s the jumper’s code, if Lex’s similar outlook is any indication.

A patrolman is running from the theater, shouting for us to get back inside. She doesn’t move, though, and I grab her arm and pull her along. She doesn’t resist, but she watches the flames over her shoulder. It was one of Internment’s oldest buildings, back when they were still made of wood as opposed to stone. Over the centuries it has been everything from a prison, back when those still existed, to a recycling plant. In my lifetime it has been only a flower shop. Alice has taken me there dozens of times.

It’s only a few paces back to the theater, but before we’ve reached the doors, the sky has changed. Ash is heavy on the air and it’s as though something has covered the sun. Even the patrolman has stopped to watch. Sirens begin as distant warnings, but soon they’re screaming as the emergency vehicles rush toward the flames.

The girl’s arm is still in my grip and she lets me bring her inside, but then she twists away, presses her hands to the glass doors and watches.

The lobby is crowded now, everyone rushing to windows, calling out the names of their friends. “Are you here with anyone?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be practicing my music.”

“Come on, then,” I say. “You can come with me. I’m going to find my friends and make sure they’re okay.”

“I don’t know you,” she says.

“Morgan Stockhour,” I say. “There, now you do.”

The room has gotten very loud around us. A woman screams.

The girl looks up at me, hesitating. Some pink glitter has clumped in her eyelashes.

“I’m Amy,” she says.

“Morgan!” Somewhere in the melee, Pen raises her gloved arm. She twists away from Thomas, fighting him and shouldering her way to me. She crashes into me, squeezing me so hard that my feet almost come away from the floor. “What’s happening? They stopped the play, and …”

She sees the smoke through the glass doors for the first time. Her mouth is open and breathless. She pales.

“The flower shop caught fire,” I say, though the words don’t do justice to what I just saw. I should be panicking like everyone around me. I should be frightened. But I feel the same as I did after watching the broadcast, like none of it is real.

“Your parents will be worried,” I tell Amy.

“They won’t notice I’m gone.” She seems like the type who can slip in and out of a place unnoticed, which is likely how she snuck into this theater without formal attire.

Basil wraps his arm around my waist from behind. Thomas does the same to Pen, and for once she seems grateful that he’s there to hold her. Amy stands between us, and we all watch the clouds and the sun get swallowed whole.

It feels like hours before the flames are extinguished. Patrolmen fill the lobby, escorting us from the building to the shuttle in droves. Pen lets Thomas hold on to her, and Basil hasn’t taken his arm from me since we were reunited. Amy walks a pace ahead of me, tugging at the ring on the chain around her neck.

“Where do you live?” Basil asks her as the five of us cram onto a shuttle bench meant to hold four.

“Section three,” she says.

“I’m in two,” he says. “But it’s a short walk back for me. I’ll see you home.”

“You don’t have to,” she says. “I’m old enough to take care of myself.”

“Yes, right, okay, we’re all old enough,” Pen snaps. “But in case you haven’t noticed, Internment has kind of gone into a complete state of lunacy.”

“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.