Only Ever Yours (4 page)

isabel’s face is still missing from the ranking tables, but for some reason I can’t explain I still don’t say anything to her about it.

“Are you all right, isabel?” I ask instead as we trudge back to the classroom for Organized Recreation. She nods wearily and we fall into our now familiar pit of silence. I look at where megan is sitting, the twins, cara, gisele and daria taking up the rest of the row. Some of the lower-ranked girls are sitting on the floor, congregating at her feet like she’s a deity, screaming with laughter. It used to be isabel at the center of everything, me by her side, made safe by her affection. cara catches me staring.

“What do you think, freida?” She smiles, trying to include me.

“Sorry, cara, I didn’t hear what you said.”

“I said—”

“Look!” megan cries, shoving an eFone blaring the Dome Dudes’ latest music video in cara’s face, and I’m left on the outside once more. I want to go over, to reclaim my position, but I feel shackled to isabel. I look at her, slumped in the seat beside me, seemingly unconcerned
by the fact that her belly is folding into rolls of fat beneath her thin vest top. My skin itches with irritation at the sight.

“Alphabetical order,” chastity-anne orders, materializing out of thin air. “It’s time.”

We have Organized Recreation daily and it’s always the final class of the day. It was devised to combat female hysteria syndrome: any hysterical, overemotional girl behavior is deliberately induced in a controlled environment until the urges dissipate. We need extra sessions on the weekends or during the summer holidays, whenever we have more opportunity to infect each other.

We line up and approach the desk to collect our meds from the chastity. The doors of the two glass boxes on either side of the desk swish open, allowing one girl in at a time before disappearing into the ground. I hold my breath as the doors close after me. What will happen if chastity-anne programs the elevator incorrectly and it goes too far?

“Are you crying, #630?”

“No, chastity-ruth.”

“Good. Because you know what we do to girls who break the rules, don’t you? We send them Underground. Do you want to go Underground, #630?”

The elevator opens into the Organized Recreation Space. It looks like an empty swimming pool lined with numerous pipes snaking their way Underground. Thirty individual
glass coffins are lined up in five rows, six in each row. I climb into the box with my design number on it, picked out in baby-pink sequins. The glass door shuts and I wait anxiously for the other boxes to fill so that we can begin. chastity-anne nods and I swallow my meds.

Hush. Hush. A shiver begins at my feet, swelling, spiraling up and down the core of my body. A beat pulses through the box, a melody throbbing in my ears, in my mind, in my heart. My spine undulates until I am boneless. A wave of rapture surges and I am engulfed by it. I am free. I am free of all this. My mind tears for a second and I fall back into the room, the edges of my anxiety sharpening again. I can see the lid of the glass box, can see the road map of ducts and wires crawling over the ceiling, can see the other girls staring out with sightless eyes. The mist chokes me again, smothering me until I feel nothing, nothing at all.

The bell rings and we are switched off simultaneously, the doors springing open. I climb out, my legs wobbly. My mind is wired but lethargy is sucking at my body, the two parts of me cracking apart.

The others look similarly exhausted. We half smile at each other as we shuffle back to the dorms, but we avoid conversation of any kind. I throw myself on my bed, praying for sleep, but I know it’s useless. Turning on my side, I press my fingertips into the glass wall, watching that girl in the mirror. Her features float off her face, swimming in the air before rearranging themselves in the strangest way. Her eyes are too big, black in her pallid skin. Her lips are
bloodless, gloopy bits of dried spit forming in the cracks, her jaw jutting out.

The emptiness in my body is vast, wide open spaces with nothing to hold on to.

I won’t remember any of this tomorrow.

We are wound up and wound down, like mechanical dolls. They turn the lamps on, they turn the lamps off. And another day is done.

“I wish I could just stop time until I’m ready,” I told isabel some night last year when neither of us could sleep. We sat on the floor in her cubicle, our backs against the mirrored wall, legs stretched out in front us, and I tried not to compare the size of my thigh gap with hers. “Do you ever feel like that?”

“No,” she said, and I felt illogically betrayed. I pulled away from her a little, loneliness burying itself deep within me. She shifted closer, refusing to allow me to sulk. “Don’t worry about the future,” she said. “Things are only going to get better. I promise.”

She promised me.

The dorms are hazy with steam tonight. It’s crawling into my mouth, gathering in the back of my throat.

I need to breathe.

I pause by isabel’s room on my way out of the dorms, see her platinum hair spilling over the pillows. It’s been a long time since she has come into my room at night.

I follow the floor tiles, black to white, black to white, until I reach the cloisters, walking the long nave with its curved window frames on either wall, each one sealed up to block out the dead outside. The windows are covered with giant paintings, seven on each side, all depicting images from life before us. The Empire State Building, the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall of China, the pyramids, the Coliseum, the Taj Mahal. I imagine them now, baking like clay in the blistering heat. Or maybe they’re swimming underneath the Great Ocean, only fish bones left to keep them company.

The others think it’s weird that I love watching the Nature Channel to see what the world was like before us. They don’t understand why I would want to know about the life cycle of frogs or watch the sea roaring, throwing its spittle onto thousands of grains of sand. Fields of corn waving in the breeze, mountains capped in glittering ice, millions and millions of people living in the big cities, all performing their part in an intricate dance, weaving in and around each other unthinkingly.

The only nature they show us in class is in the authorized
Destruction
series. The ice melting, the seas reconciling their
differences and drowning the doomed low-lying countries, never to be seen again. There was relief at first, the hope that they had found an organic solution to the population crisis, but that soon turned to fear. The remaining people moving inward and inward and inward, until the Zones were formed to protect the remaining few from the scalding sun and the rising waters. The Noah Project. Two by two the humans entered, all marching forward to create a new world. They got rid of anything we would not need, like animals, and organized religion. They got rid of anything that would weigh us down.

I reach the giant wooden doors guarding the entrance, each one engraved with the white, red, and black triangles of the triquetra. I twist the brass handle to release them, my sweating hands slipping, leaving a mucus-like residue behind. The gates stand sentinel next, rusty metal arches reaching into spikes, waiting for intruders that will never come.

In the garden I walk along the circular concrete path looping our living quarters, stepping off the path into the grass, the synthetic blades scratching my bare feet as I weave my way around the army of trees. Each one is positioned at an equal distance from the next, their plastic limbs extending into painted leaves embellished with crystals, stuffed birds glued on like feathered tumors. I think of the videos on the Nature Channel of the vast orchards in Old England, the gnarled branches heavy with natural food. They must be dead now, those trees, like everything else. Rotted away, decaying like female babies in the uterus. Decomposing from the inside out.

“You are fortunate,” chastity-ruth told us as we were formally inducted into the School in 4th year. I still remember how strange the new clothes felt, how heavy my lips were with the coating of unfamiliar lipstick. We were in the Hall, watching as she gave her speech on the stage, our bodies so little they were nearly consumed by the cushioned velvet seats.

“Fortunate,” she repeated sternly. I pulled down the cropped T-shirt with glittery lips embroidered on it, the gap between it and the new denim hot pants too bare for comfort. Her lip turned up into a snarl when she saw me fidgeting, her eyes fierce, and I felt afraid for the first time. And then she showed us the video. The infamous “girl Graves,” thousands of unwanted daughters disposed of in an ever-expanding hole, their heads crushing against each other like broken china dolls. Drugstores with shelves upon shelves stacked with gender-specific fertility drugs, as easy to buy as chewing gum. And the body learned. It learned that a female baby was an invader, come to steal her mother’s beauty. A female baby was dangerous.

“There was concern of course,” chastity-ruth told us, her serene voice at odds with the horror of her words, “when years passed in the Zones and no female babies were born. Soon there was only a handful of the original women left, all past childbearing age, and the threat of extinction seemed far too certain. Genetic Engineers were forced to
create
women to ensure the survival of the human race. And since they had the opportunity, it would have been foolish
not to make necessary improvements in the new women, the eves.” She coughed delicately. “And the Schools were formed to house them.”

“Why didn’t they give the girl babies to the companions to raise as their own?”

She stared at me after I said this, identifying me as trouble. “Who would have wanted you?” she said. “Who would want you until you could be of some use?”

I didn’t understand what she meant by “of use,” not then. isabel slipped her hand into mine, anchoring me. And I knew she could protect me.

I blink twice, my vision blurring. Pushing my way through the tinselly plants, I arrive at the outer limits of our world, my hands reaching out to meet the shell that keeps us all in here, safe from the wastelands. It has been tinted an inky black tonight, twinkling flakes precisely penciled in, a huge white moon drawn like an unblinking eye. I get as close as I can, flattening my body against the glass, feeling its solid resistance meeting me. I can see nothing beyond this, everything swallowed up by the night.

“What are you doing?”

I flinch, my right knee screaming as it hits the sky. She looks perplexed, her hands folded across her chest. Her black robes are strange against the colors of the garden, the light from the moon surrounding her bald head like a halo.

“You scared me,” I say, and I sit heavily on the lime-green lawn, squashing some poppy flowers as I do.
chastity-magdalena comes closer, arranging her robes around her as she sits next to me. Her skin is still smooth, with only the beginning of faint lines forming around her copper-colored eyes. She’s the youngest chastity, but still old—in her midthirties, I think.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She hesitantly pats my shoulder and we both flinch. The chastities never touch us. “Is this to do with the Ceremony, freida? It’s okay if it is. It’s normal to feel apprehensive.”

I’m not sure if that is the reason. I don’t know what this thing is, twisting in my gut, thirsting for something I can’t name, but I nod my head. It’s easier.

“What third do you want to be chosen for?”

“I want to be a companion.”

“Not a concubine?” she asks, her cheeks coloring at the word.

“If that is the third the Inheritants think I’m best suited to, then of course,” I say, although I would rather die than become a concubine.

“No interest in joining the chastities?”

As if anyone would want to become a chastity, faced with a lifetime of caring for newer, more nubile students as you grow old and decrepit, without the luxury of a Termination Date appointed to preserve your beauty. My eyes are drawn to the laughter lines scoring into her skin. I imagine her at forty, at fifty, at
sixty
, and I shiver.

“I didn’t think I would be a chastity, at first,” she says, oblivious to my thoughts. “But, well . . .” she looks sad for a moment. “Anyway I liked spending time with the
younger children, and I, well, I didn’t think I would be able to fulfill the duties of the other thirds so it was for the best, in the end.”

We both look away, the suggestion of sex looming between us. “I felt safe in the School,” she adds hurriedly. “It’s peaceful here.”

“That’s what isabel said. Maybe she’ll join agyness,” I joke. “Imagine! Two chastities in one year. I bet that has never happened before.”

“Oh, isabel will never be a chastity. There are much greater things in store for her,” she says, her voice oddly sad.

But you thought it was an option for me? Why aren’t there “much greater things” in store for me? Why does everyone always think isabel is so much better than me?

I touch the poppies at my feet, rubbing the fabric petals between my fingers. In the center of each flower is a miniature mirror, big enough to hold your eye if you lean in close. I crush it, the cloth tears easily, the glass bud shattering, breaking my reflection.

“Time for bed, freida.”

We walk in silence back to the dorms. The others are still sleeping deeply, my absence unnoticed.

“May you get what you wish, freida,” she whispers as I lie down on my bed, turning in the doorway as she leaves. “May you be the mother of a hundred Sons.”

January

Six months until the Ceremony

I loved Fridays as a child. I remember being obsessed with these ancient picture books we had in our dorm, which we were only allowed to look at on weekends. I spent hours constructing detailed plans to make sure I got my hands on them before the others. Not that they ever wanted them anyway, preferring the interactive ePad games. Every Friday evening I would sneak into one of the blocked-up window frames in the cloisters, leaning against a painting of sea cliffs or the pyramids, pretending the windows were merely closed, that I could look out if I chose to. That the world outside still existed. While the other girls were playing Be a Stylist and Plan a Party! on their ePads, I was poring over fotos
of princess sparkles, a skinny lady with big breasts, long legs and blond hair. She had a pink car and a pink house and there were little pink buttons on the page you could press to make her speak in an Americas-Zone accent.
Pink’s my favorite color. You’re my best friend. Math is hard. Wanna go shopping?
Then I made the mistake of asking one of the chastities what math was and they confiscated the books. Weekends were never the same after that. All we seem to do is burn through the hours between Organized Recreation sessions as fast as we can, listening to celebrity gossip on Artificial.com or updating our MyFace photos, trying to forget about what happened in that Friday’s Comparison Studies class.

“#755 and #734, please leave your desks and come to the front of the room.”

The rest of us exhale in relief as the chosen two walk to the front of the room as if their feet are made of lead. They step into the glass boxes flanking the chastity’s desk, and magnified fotos of the two girls are projected, side by side, onto the mirror-board behind them, each image eight feet tall. Within seconds they appear on our desktops. cara’s image is on the left, her dirty-blond hair skimming past her elbows, full eyebrows framing sky-blue eyes. naomi is on the right, cheekbones contouring her dark skin, her black haircut in thick bangs, drawing attention to her eyes, cat green and almond-shaped like mine.

“So, girls, let us begin,” chastity-ruth says, walking up and down the center steps dividing the rows of seating. “At the end of each section, I will ask you to record your
VoiceNotes. Please make these comments as detailed and thorough as you can, to help #755 and #734 to explore their weaknesses. Remember, your voices will be disguised to maintain anonymity, so you may speak freely.”

“Your skin is too dark, naomi,” I hear someone say. “I think that you should ask about some lightening cream.”

“cara, your hair color washes out your skin tone,” someone else whispers. “I think you should ask about a tanning cream.”

We have undertaken this task every Friday since our first Comparison Studies class in 4th year; two different victims each time. I always start off wanting to be kind, but somehow, once I start speaking too, I can’t stop. I guess it does sort of make me feel better, at the time, a faint feeling of superiority swelling inside me like a balloon, but afterward my tongue feels bitter, like a hole has burned through it.

“What did you say about her?” I asked isabel when we were in 14th year, watching agyness’s eyes turn glassy with unshed tears, wondering if my comments had been the cause. “Did you say anything about her being flat-chested?”

I willed her to agree, to collude with me, to follow me down into this dark rabbit hole.

“No.” isabel’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I never say anything like that. I usually just recommend they get their hair trimmed.”

In that moment I loved her for her basic decency. And I hated her too. Because once again, without even trying, she was better than I was.

naomi and cara take their seats, shoving their earbuds in. We are all the same when it’s our turn. Maybe we hope this time it’ll be different, that this time everyone will agree that we’re beautiful. Or maybe not. Maybe on some level it’s actually okay when the distorted voices whisper in our ears, telling us we’re ugly, we’re vile, and everyone knows it. We may be perfectly designed, but really our eyes are too close together and our thighs are too big.

cara’s face is ashen. What was it I said about her? I’m sorry. I’m always sorry.

“As you know, girls, there is always room for Improvement. With every year since your design date, you are getting older, losing your bloom, depreciating in value. Standards, girls! Standards must be upheld. I’m sure #755 and #734 are grateful.”

I look at cara again, holding her face together in a smile. She doesn’t look very grateful.

“An easy way to ensure equality of standards is to create consistency,” chastity-ruth continues, pointing at the board behind her. It’s still split in half but with two new images. On the left there is a foto of a woman from before us, and on the right a foto of liu.

“This woman from Old Japan is the prototype for #783. All variations have been regulated.”

I would never say this aloud, but I sometimes think the modifications have left liu’s features almost bland, so diluted that they are almost interchangeable with mine, or megan’s, or naomi’s. All that is different is our skin tone and hair color. But at least we still have some diversity,
however marginal. It’s rumored that nowadays only blond, blue-eyed girls are designed in the Afrika- and Chindia-Zones, their past literally whitewashed.

“As you can see, girls, the contrast between women today and the women before is vast.” More and more images emerge of the women before as chastity-ruth continues her lecture. “Please note the lack of symmetry in the face, the bulbous noses, the dilated pores over the forehead and chin. Undesigned, natural women.”

The screen updates with new horrors and I feel as if I might vomit. I have to close my eyes when she starts presenting examples of the obesity epidemic. I can only endure so much.

“There were theories before us that obesity had roots in emotional or psychological problems.” There is something excited about her, her shoulders tense with expectation, her fists clenching. “This is nonsense. It is
laziness
that causes fat. Laziness and greed. And it will be your downfall if you allow it. But you won’t let it, will you?”

“No.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

“WILL YOU?”

“NO,” we scream, whipped into a frenzy.

“But one of you has.” Her voice drops to a whisper. We look at each other, searching for the culprit. Who? Who is it?
isabel
. It has to be isabel.

“Look in the box!” liu yells, pointing at a figure ascending slowly into the glass box on the left of the chastity’s
desk, emerging through the trapdoors from the Organized Recreation Space. It’s christy. My heart is thumping so loudly in my ears I can’t hear chastity-ruth, I can’t hear the other girls. All I know is that she’s standing there, ready to be crucified for her sins. “This is going to look amazing on MyFace,” megan says, pointing her fone at christy.

“Step forward, #727.”

The glass doors part. She stands before us.

“Remove your bathrobe.”

There’s silence. christy unties the white toweling robe and lets it fall to the ground. She’s wearing pink lace underwear, small lumps of flesh spilling over the underwear, the inner edges of her thighs close to touching.

“#727 has been
lazy
. She has been lazy and she has been greedy. She deserves to be punished. Don’t you agree?”

Flashes from digi-cams and eFones are exploding like flares. My hands are clammy, fear crawling up my spine bone by bone, unfurling in my throat.

“Don’t you agree, girls?” A note of warning has entered her voice.

“Yes, chastity-ruth.”

“I can’t hear you. Does #727 deserve to be punished?”

“YES, chastity-ruth.” We have to give her what she wants. We will give her whatever she wants.

She reaches into the pocket of her robe and retrieves a marker, someone behind me gasping at the rare sight of a writing implement. Wielding it like a blade, she walks around christy, once, twice, three times, before cutting into christy’s fair skin, drawing vivid red circles on her body.

“What is #727, girls? What is she?”

We don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know.

“She’s fat, girls. She’s fat and disgusting. Say it with me. She’s fat. Fat. Fat.”

Some of the girls sing with her, more and more people joining in until it seems the ceiling may shatter with voices. It looks like a lightning storm now, camera flash after flash bursting through the room.

My eyes drift from christy’s thighs to isabel’s, and I can’t help but measure the difference. It should be isabel up there instead of christy. I look up and isabel is staring at me, understanding shimmering between us. She knows what I am thinking. I’m sorry, I tell her with my eyes. I’m so sorry. She looks away. She doesn’t care what I think anymore.

“Fat. Fat. Fat.”

Amid the hysterical chanting, chastity-ruth holds her hands together, as if she’s praying for inspiration. Her robes swish on the ground as she squats beside me. “Fat. Fat. Fat,” she whispers in my ear. My heart feels too big for my body and I look at her in panic, her washed-out gray eyes burning into mine. She can see into my soul, just like isabel can. She can see, and she hates me too.

She bangs her fist on my desk so hard that the screen flickers and dies, a large crack splintering the middle. Her odor is invading my nostrils, the unfamiliar smell of the marker pen mixing with a sour hint of sweat.

I look at my broken desk, my reflection warping, split into two halves, both sides of my lips mouthing the word.

Fat
.

“That was intense.”

Back in the dorms, cara answers my request to VideoChat almost immediately and we fall into an uneasy silence.

“Intense.”

“But obviously it had to be done. christy should have known better,” she says quickly, paranoia kicking in.

“Obviously.” My own fear beats in my body like a second heart.

cara chews on the ends of her hair, golden strands peeping out of her mouth. “Look, freida, I’ll talk to you later.” Before I say something I regret, her eyes seem to add. I’m about to turn the VoiceChat off when she speaks again, her voice quieter this time.

“Do you think my nose would be better if it was straighter?”

“What are you talking about?”

“In Comparison Studies. Someone said I should get it redesigned when we leave School.”

“No, cara.” Her gorgeous face fills the screen, delicate freckles sprinkled over an adorable nose. “Your nose is perfect.”

She grins and waves goodbye, christy forgotten. I request isabel to VideoChat, staring at her profile foto as the beeping tone stretches out into nothingness.

Maybe she has her ePad on silent.

Maybe she’s taking a nap.

Maybe she hates me
.

The MyFace newsfeed is clogged. I listen to megan’s status, then daria’s, then gisele’s. All are the same, blow-by-blow accounts of what happened in Comparison Studies, accompanied by countless fotos of christy in her underwear. I know I should update my status, put something generic like “Fat women should be made obsolete,” but I don’t have the energy.

“Stream TV.”

The Americas-Zone’s Next Top Concubine
is playing, newly designated concubines participating in tasks to select the one who will be chosen as the American Father’s personal concubine for a year. I watch as one of the finalists bows before the American Father, his hands gripping her curly auburn hair. I think I’ve seen this episode before.

An ad for vaginal bleaching cream.

One for a new laser treatment that promises to remove any unsightly body hair. “If only amber had known about this!” amber, a member of girl band the slutz, has her hand held high, waving to a friend. The camera zooms in, a red arrow pointing out the shadowing of stubble across her armpit.

I keep flicking, allowing the drone of the TV to wash over me, wash away these thoughts.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
.

“Hey, megan,” I say, accepting the VideoChat request.

“Hey, girl. What’s up?” She’s not even pretending to look at me, totally focused on her own video-feed.

“Nothing much. What’s up with you, girl?” Pathetic. I’m better than this in my head.

“Well, obviously I’m in shock after what happened today. It was awful. Poor christy. I feel so bad for her.”

So bad that you took thirty-seven fotos and posted them all on MyFace.

“I would kill myself if I got that fat. I bet no one in the Americas-Zone ever gets fat.”

“Apparently in the Chindia-Zone the eves are so well designed they don’t need kcal blockers at all.” I sigh at the prospect of unlimited access to the Fatgirl buffet, free from shame. “It’s physically impossible for them to go above target weight.”

“Hmm.” It’s funny how she can’t see beyond the Americas. I can understand her wanting to leave the Euro-Zone, with its four thousand inhabitants and increasingly limited budget, but most of the world’s money is in Chindia now. It may have been the Americas who came up with the idea for the Noah Project, but it was the Chindians who funded the development and construction of the Zones. No one else could afford it.

“I wonder why it wasn’t isabel.”

“What do you mean?” I pretend to misunderstand her.

“Come on, freida,” she says, those green eyes boring into mine through the screen. “isabel has gained about three times as much weight as christy. She’s enormous.”

“That’s not very nice.” My guilt that she’s articulating my thoughts is making me defensive. Since when did megan and I agree on anything?

“No need to be cranky. I’m only asking because—”

“Yeah, I know, I’m sure you feel really bad for isabel too,” I say, and her face starts to turn a rather alarming shade of purple. “Sorry.”

I wish I was brave enough to turn off my ePad and let her get back to giving her hair one hundred brushstrokes, or whatever it is she does to make it so shiny. I want my hair to be that shiny. Ugh. Why am I so useless?

“Sorry,” I say again, and she smiles at my apology, tossing ebony waves down her back.