Flawed (5 page)

Art laughs again, enjoying the ridiculousness of what I'm saying, or perhaps the fact that it's so surprisingly out of character for me to say it at all. “And why would they put her on trial?”

“So he gets away with not being Flawed. People say she wasn't a good wife, so how could he not have cheated? And the star player is still the star.”

His smile instantly fades, and he looks at me like he doesn't know me. “Celestine, be careful.”

I shrug like I don't care, but my heart is pounding by even saying this aloud. “I was just
saying
.”

Juniper has gotten to me. I had been unsure already, and what she said this morning niggles at me more and has me considering the truth in her words. I think about Colleen on her way to the courthouse to see her mother, her mother about to be branded Flawed for traveling to another country to help carry out the wishes of her mother. Does that really make her Flawed? I'm not ready to park this thought yet. It's Art, the person I share every thought with. Surely I can share one more. He can help sort out these muddled thoughts.

Art reaches for my hand and I feel safe.

“Do you think it's bad what Angelina did?” I say quietly.

He looks at me.

“Because I've been thinking about it. All night. And I don't think it's
that
bad. Not if it's what her mom wanted. I mean, I can think of worse.”

“Of course there's worse.”

“So even though there's worse, everyone gets branded the same?”

“She will only get one brand. On her hand. Some people get two.”

He's not thinking about this properly. I know he's not. I know him. His answers are too quick. He is defensive, though I'm not attacking him. This is how it gets when people have discussions about the Flawed. Everyone has such strong opinions it's almost like it's personal. Only it's even more so for Art because his dad is the senior judge of it all—his grandfather was the founding member of the Guild. I was always in awe of them for that. I still am. Aren't I?

 

TEN

ONCE ON THE
bus and in our usual seats, I concentrate on the Flawed lady in the seat that only Flawed people are allowed to occupy. There are two seats for the Flawed on the bus, because rules state that three or more Flawed are not allowed to gather together at any one time. It's to prevent the riots that broke out when the Flawed punishments were introduced. However, I wonder for the first time why they didn't just put another two Flawed seats at the back of the bus or somewhere else away from them. Alternate Flawed and regular people's seats. So often there are Flawed standing when the bus is filled with empty seats, which never bothered me before in a moral way, but bothered me when I was getting off the bus and had to squeeze by them. I swear some of them don't move deliberately, making me squish up against their Flawed bodies to get past. The Flawed seats have bright red fabric and are at the front of the bus facing all the other passengers so that everybody on the bus can see that they are Flawed. I used to find it uncomfortable when I was a little girl, having to face them throughout the journey, but then, as I got used to it, I stopped seeing them.

I watch the Flawed woman sitting alone on the seat, her armband with the bloodred symbol identifying her.

I see the symbol on her temple, too, and wonder what bad judgment she made to land herself in this predicament. The scar on her temple is certainly not new. It doesn't have the red-hot, crusted look of newly seared flesh as some Flawed have. She has been Flawed for quite some time, and I wonder if this means she's worse now, if Flawed get more Flawed with age or if the branding, the acknowledgment of it, stops it from spreading and growing. She is texting; and when she rests the phone on her lap, I see the screen photo of her with children. For the first time I wonder what it's like for the Flawed to live life in the same world as everybody else whom they love, but under different rules. It has never occurred to me before. I think of Angelina and her children. Angelina will have job restrictions, curfews, travel restrictions. How can she mother her children if she is living under different rules? What if there is an emergency in the middle of the night? Can she break her curfew to bring her children to the hospital? What if the Tinders go on a family holiday abroad and Angelina can't go? What if Colleen decides to work and live abroad? Her mother won't be able to visit her. Ever. And why have I never thought of these things before?

Because I never cared, that's why. Because if people have done something wrong, then I always thought they deserved their punishment. They're not criminals, but they're just missing being physically behind bars. If Angelina, who I believed could never hurt a fly, can so easily be considered Flawed, then perhaps this woman before me is no worse, either. I have never spoken to one before. It's not that we're not allowed to, it's just that I wouldn't know what to say. I step around them when they're near me, I avoid their eye contact. I suppose I act like they don't exist. They're always in the Flawed section of the supermarket, the one that I pass through aisles to avoid, buying their grains and oats and whatever else they have to eat as part of their basic diet for their basic living. A life with no luxury is the punishment. I never thought it would be such a bad thing; it's not like they're behind bars. But then I never thought of having to live like that when your husband doesn't, or your kids don't, or the rest of society doesn't. And then they're not really allowed to socialize together. No more than with one other at a time. For every two Flawed, there needs to be a regular person just for numbers. I think of a Flawed wedding, a Flawed birthday party, and shudder. I wonder what they even talk about with one another. Do they swap stories of how Flawed they are? Show their brands and laugh with pride, or are they ashamed, as they should be?

I feel Art's lips on my earlobe. “If you don't stop thinking, your head will explode,” he whispers. His breath is hot, and it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I want to stop thinking. I really do, but I can't. For once he doesn't have my full attention. He's trying to bring me back to him, but I can't go there. I'm caught in this thought, in this moment.

The bus stops and a woman with crutches gets on. The driver helps her and guides her to the Flawed seats, which have the most legroom. The seats are deliberately set farther away so people don't have to touch them or bump against them, reinforcing that distinction between us and them. She sits beside the Flawed woman, who smiles at her.

The other woman throws her such a look of disgust that I'm embarrassed for the Flawed woman, who looks away, hurt visible in her eyes. She senses that I'm looking at her, and our eyes meet for a minuscule moment before I look away, heart pounding from having made contact. I hope no one has seen. I hope it doesn't look like I'm on her side.

“What is going on with you today?” Art asks, a slightly bewildered and amused expression on his face.

“Oh, nothing,” I say, trying to smile. “I'm just perfect. That's all.”

He smiles and rubs the palm of my hand with his thumb, and I melt.

Juniper sits across the aisle from us, her body pushed so far up against the window she couldn't possibly get any farther away from me and Art, or anyone else on the bus for that matter.

I don't know when things became like this between me and Juniper. Photos and stories prove that we were extremely tight as children. Juniper is the big sister by a small amount, but she enjoyed mollycoddling me, taking on the role of nurturing big sister. But when we began junior high, things started to change between us. Though we were in the same year, we were in different classes and made our own friends for the first time, and the divide began. I excelled in school—I adore information and am always hungry to know more. I read books, I watch documentaries, my favorite subject is math, and I hope to study it at the city university when I finish school this year. My aim is to win the Fields Medal, the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, viewed as the greatest honor a mathematician can receive, like a math Nobel Prize. You have to be under forty to win it. I'm seventeen. There's time. Test results so far prove that I'm on course to get into my university program with ease. Juniper isn't the jealous type, but our differences in grades were the first thing to set us apart.

My scores were celebrated; hers weren't. They were never bad; they just weren't perfect. Everybody always wanted her to do better, to be better. And I understand the pressure she was under, but I could have been there to help her, not be the one she eventually blamed.

She thinks I'm a know-it-all, which she has told me plenty of times, and I try not to be one with her. I know I have a habit of correcting people's grammar or recounting dictionary definitions, but that's just me. Doing it does not make me feel I am better than the person I am saying it to. It is just an expression of who I am. I try to ask her questions, the meaning of things, pretend not to know something that I do know, but she finds this patronizing. She's right, but I don't know what else to do. My striving for perfection includes wanting to have the ideal relationship with my sister, like in the movies I see and the books I read, the stories that tell you that sisterhood is the one real true love and relationship you will have in your life.

Juniper is dyslexic. She sees this as another failure, another trait that has let her down, but I can see that it makes her view things in a different way. I'm a problem-solver. I read the signs, the proof that I see before me, and come to a conclusion. Juniper is cleverer than that. She has an alternate way of reading things. She reads people. I don't know how she does it, but she watches and listens and arrives at conclusions I could never imagine, and usually she's right. I look at things straight on; her perspective seems to curve around things, wind and twist, turn things upside down to reach the answer. I have never told her that I think this about her. I tell myself it's because I don't want to come across as patronizing, but really I know it's because I have a jealousy of my own.

I think about what Mom said earlier about Jimmy Child maybe not being the only person to have been found not Flawed.

“Did you know that there might be other people who went through the Flawed court and were found to be not Flawed?” I whisper to Art.

I feel his grip on my hand loosen as he turns to me. He's annoyed I won't let go of this. “No, I didn't know.”

“I think there must be other people found innocent that we don't know about. Has your dad ever said anything?”

“Bloody hell, Celestine, drop it, will you?”

“I'm just asking.”

“You're not really supposed to.”

“Aren't I?”

“Not here, anyway,” he says, looking around nervously.

I go quiet. I can only look ahead at the Flawed woman, head swirling with unfamiliar thoughts. Dangerous thoughts.

 

ELEVEN

AT THE NEXT
stop, the Flawed woman gets off and a rather large lady gets on. She recognizes the woman with the crutches and sits down beside her, and they chat.

At the next stop, an old man gets on the bus, and I almost call out to him. He looks so much like my granddad that I'm convinced it's him, which doesn't make sense because my granddad lives on a farm in the country, but then I see the large
F
symbol on his armband and I shudder, annoyed with myself for ever thinking someone like him could possibly be related to me.

My prejudice strikes me. I had been repulsed by the reaction of the woman with the crutches to the Flawed woman smiling at her, but I hold equal views of my own without ever realizing it.

The man is in his seventies or eighties. I'm not sure. He's
old
, and he is dressed in a smart suit and polished shoes, as if he's on his way to work. From this angle, I can't see any signs of branding, though it could mean it is on his chest, tongue, or foot. He looks respectable, and again I study him, surprised by his appearance. I always thought of the Flawed as less than us, and I can't believe I have admitted that to myself. He is unable to sit, because the two Flawed seats are taken—by two women who are not Flawed but are so busy chatting that they don't notice him. He stands near them, holding on to the pole to stay upright.

I hope they notice him soon. He doesn't look like he will go very far standing.

A few minutes pass. He is still standing. I look around. There are at least a dozen free seats where he could sit, but he is not allowed to. I'm a logical person, and this does not prove logical to me.

I look across at Juniper, who has taken off her headphones and is sitting up, poker straight, alert, and looking at the same situation that I am. Juniper has always been more emotional than I am, and I can see her on the edge of her seat, ready to pounce. Instead of fearing she will do something stupid, for once I am glad she and I feel the same.