Free Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano Page B

“She’s Daphne’s sister. She may be a little girl, but she’s got a lot of demons. It’s best if you let her alone.”
    I’ve heard that saying used to describe my brother. “A lot of demons.” That’s what my father said while we all kept vigil at Lex’s bedside in the hospital. I didn’t know what he meant. But now I’m thinking of Amy Leander, and what it must have been like to learn her sister wouldn’t be coming home. It was the most awful thing I could imagine, watching my brother fight to breathe in that sterile room. But at least he
was
breathing.
    Alice starts talking about frivolous things—greenhouse vegetation and silver earrings in jewelry shop windows that she thinks will make my eyes sparkle—and I play along, but she isn’t fooling me. There’s something happening to Internment. That’s as certain as Daphne Leander is dead.

8
    Every star has been set in the sky. We mistakenly think they were put there for us.
    —“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten
    B ASIL THROWS A STONE INTO THE LAKE, trying to make it skip.
    “Like this,” I say, pitching the stone into the water at an angle. It hits the surface and promptly sinks. Basil tries not to laugh.
    “Well, I was good at it when I was little, anyway.” I fall back into the grass and watch a cloud that’s sloping over the atmosphere.
    “Our engineers spend so much time studying the ground,” Basil says, settling beside me. “Ever think about what’s above us?”
    “The tributary,” I say. “The god of the sky.”
    “But those are intangible,” Basil says. “Spiritual. What I mean is, what if there’s more land up there? What if there are people living on the stars?”
    “I’ve never thought about that,” I say, and suddenly I feel overwhelmed by how much there is to know, and how much I will never live to figure out.
    In the distance, there are patrolmen sitting in the gazebo, trying not to seem as though they are watching. I can no longer tell if they’re trying to protect us, or if they’re suspicious of us.
    Basil tilts his head against mine. From a distance, we’re just another young couple lazing about in the park after class.
    “You aren’t crazy,” he says.
    “What?”
    “I’ve known you all your life, and you’ve always tried to hide the parts of yourself that you think are wrong. But nothing is wrong with you.”
    Those may be the best words he’s ever said to me. I mutter “Thank you” but it doesn’t feel adequate.
    I don’t tell him about the card Ms. Harlan gave me, and I don’t tell him that I’m beginning to think I need her help.
    Don’t focus on the edge,
I tell myself. Stay inside the tracks. Stay in this little place where awful things happen, but where beauty hides in beams of sunlight, in the green grass and the gentle lapping of the lake forming and destroying watery shapes. Ignore the men in uniforms that stand at length, sullying the image. They’ll be gone soon. Everything will go back to normal.
    On Friday, Lex doesn’t go to his jumper group. Instead, there’s a cavalcade of footsteps above our common room, rattling the hanging light.
    It sounds as though they’re having a party upstairs, but that can’t be right. Lex would never allow something like that. I’d like to ask my mother about it, but she’s asleep, which is something that happens more and more lately with the prescription she’s taking. I don’t tell Lex; he’s opposed to all the pharmaceuticals, even the mildest ones. But she’ll often be asleep when I get home, and then late into the night, I’ll hear my bedroom door creaking open as she checks in to be sure I’m safe. I pretend to be asleep when this happens. I have to seem unburdened. After all that has happened with Lex, I can’t give my parents cause to worry about me.
    When I can take the stomping no more, I head upstairs and knock on the door. Alice opens it just as far as the chain latch will allow. She never uses the chain