Perfect Ruin

She’s gone for the rest of the period.

At lunch, the cafeteria is subdued. Basil rubs my arm and tells me I should try to eat.

“Pen’s still gone,” I say, twisting my fork. “Could they still be speaking to her?”

“They spoke to me this morning,” Thomas says. “It’s nothing horribly elaborate. They just want to make sure we haven’t gone mad. You haven’t gone mad, have you?”

The sharpness in his eyes frightens me. He realizes this and he softens. “It’s not anything to be concerned about,” he says.

Somehow, this doesn’t feel true. The king is looking for something by sending his specialists out here.

I don’t see Pen again until our last class of the day, which is more of Instructor Newlan’s passion for our little world. It’s torturous not being able to ask her about where she’s been, but she seems intact. She’s taking notes, at least.

Instructor Newlan is talking about section nine’s cow pastures. Or maybe it’s section seven. I can’t concentrate, though I try. I’ve never noticed how wedged together we are, each section like a thin slice of a pie in the window of the bakery. Below us, is the ground just a larger version of what we have up here? Is there a bigger train that goes in a bigger circle? Do the people on the ground also fear stepping over their edge? What if there’s a bigger ground below them? What if everything is floating in the sky?

Maybe I am going mad. Maybe I’m turning into my brother, so hypnotized by the edge that I can’t stop myself from scaling the fence, so frenzied by the idea of the ground that I forget where I belong.

Another student returns from the headmaster’s office, and this time nobody else raises their head to listen for their name. Everyone in this room but me has already been called.

“Hello, Morgan,” the specialist says. She’s tall and wiry and dressed all in gray. “My name is Ms. Harlan. May I call you Morgan?”

Ms., not Mrs. For a woman to be unmarried at her age, it can mean only that her betrothed is no longer living.

“Yes,” I say, mindful of sitting very straight. I fold my hands in my lap, which is something my mother taught me when I was a fidgety child. I’ve always fidgeted too much. I’ve always thought too much. I’m very like my brother that way.

“As you know, we’ve had a couple of tragedies. Did you know Miss Leander?”

“No,” I say. “But I was sorry to hear about what happened.”

I’ve never been in this room. I’ve seen the door in the headmaster’s office and always assumed it was a closet. It’s not much bigger than one; there are only two chairs to fill the space, and the persistent clicking of the specialist’s pen, which ceases only long enough for her to scrawl the odd note.

“It was an especially violent crime,” the specialist says. “It must have scared you to know something like this could happen in your lifetime.”

“Yes,” I say, grossly understating it.

“It must make you feel that Internment is unsafe,” she says.

“Internment is my home,” I say. “I’ve always felt safe here.”

She smiles, but there’s something unsettling about it. She leans forward, resting her arms on her crossed knees. “Morgan, I’d much like to be honest with you. You seem like a bright young lady. May I be honest?”

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.