Flawed Page 3

  “Hello, mouse. If you’re looking for your cheese, I ate it.”

  “Worms and cheese,” I say, sitting beside him on the blanket. “Yum.”

  We kiss.

  “This is yum,” he murmurs, pulling me closer for another, longer, more passionate kiss.

  I feel there is something different about him tonight. I pull away slowly and study his face, his eyes.

  “How about we make a deal to not talk about any events of tonight?”

  “Good idea.” I sigh. “I have a headache just thinking about it.”

  He kisses my forehead and leaves his lips there. We’re both silent, lost in our thoughts, both obviously thinking about the sights and sounds of Angelina Tinder being dragged away. We can’t stay quiet for long. Art pulls away.

  “My dad tonight…” He trails off, looking out at the tips of roofs and chimneys, and I see his anguish over what happened tonight. Ever since his mom passed away, I’ve seen it as my role to make him feel better, to get rid of the sadness. And despite my conflicted feelings on this evening, I need to pull it together for him.

  “Look, Juniper should not have spoken to him the way she did, but you know what Juniper is like. She needs to learn how to keep her trap shut. She’s just like my granddad.”

  “Juniper was only saying what she thought,” he says to my absolute surprise.

  “She shouldn’t be saying these things to him.”

  He smiles sadly. “Everything is so black and white to you, Celestine. We’re neighbors; we were in your dining room celebrating Earth Day, not his courtroom. And he must have known that was going to happen to Angelina tonight. I mean, why wouldn’t he at least tell her, if not us? They’re friends. At least she could have been ready and not dragged out like that in front of her family, her kids.…”

  I’m surprised to hear this from him. Art has never spoken out about his dad. They’re buddies, a team, the only two left, a connection made stronger after his mom died. They’re survivors, or at least that’s how they act. The two who came out of her loss alive. I can see he is as confused about all this as I am.

  “He was following the rules,” I say simply, and I know it’s not good enough. It doesn’t feel good enough to me, but it’s the truth. “What happened to Angelina was horrible, but I don’t think you can blame your dad for that.”

  “No?” he asks, bitterness in his voice.

  “It’s his job. A Flawed being taken into custody happens almost every day somewhere in this country. Your dad is under pressure to maintain perfection. What would happen if he turned a blind eye to some and not to others?” I ask, airing some of my own thoughts. “I mean, what then? Judge Crevan on trial for being Flawed for missing a Flawed?”

  Art looks at me. “I never thought about it like that.”

  “Well, you should. Because he’s your dad. And he’s powerful. And some people adore him, practically worship him. And that makes it harder for you to have a dad like that, but that’s who you’ve got, and he loves you so much. And he’s one half of what made you, and that makes him a genius.”

  He smiles, takes my face in his hands, makes a disgusted face. “I don’t really want to think of his part in making me, thank you very much.”

  “Gross.” I laugh.

  “Black and white.”

  “All the way.” I smile, but my smile feels a bit wobbly, my footing not as sure as it was before. Convincing Art is easier than convincing myself.

  Art clears his throat. “I wasn’t going to do this until your birthday, but after tonight … I think you deserve it now more than ever.”

  He lifts his left leg and moves it beside me, pulling me in closer to him so that I am trapped between his thighs. Suddenly my uncertainty disappears and I am right where I want to be.

  “I got you this for your eighteenth birthday, but I want to give it to you now to let you know that despite everything else going on in the world, you are the one thing that makes sense to me. You are beautiful.” He runs his finger down my cheek, across my nose, over my lips. “You are clever, you are loyal.” He drops his hand and hands me a small velvet box.

  My hands are shaking so much I’m embarrassed. I open it and lift out the delicate silver chain, so fine I’m afraid I’ll break it. On the end is a symbol.

  “And you are perfect,” he whispers, and it sends a shiver running through me, and my skin breaks out in goose bumps.

  I examine the symbol, unable to believe what I see.

  “I had a man at Highland Castle make it for me specially. You know what it means?”

  I nod. “Circles are regarded as a symbol of perfection. All the radii bear a ratio of one to one to each other, showing there are no partial differences between them. They are proved to be in a state of harmony. Geometric harmony.”

  “Perfection,” he says again, softly. “It’s hard to get one up on the mathematician, you know.” He laughs. “I had to do a lot of research. I think my brain is still sore.”

  I laugh through my growing tears. “Thank you.” My words come out as a whisper. I attempt to wrap it around my wrist, but he stops me.

  “No. Here.” He takes it from my trembling hands, and he uncrosses my ankles delicately. He moves back from me and straightens my leg, sliding my jeans up my leg slowly, his fingers warm on my skin. He fastens the chain around my ankle, and then he moves forward again, closer this time, wrapping my legs around him.

  He lifts my chin and we are nose-to-nose, the moonlight between us. He tilts his head and kisses me softly, smoothly, sweetly. His lips are succulent, his tongue delicious, and I lift my hands through his hair and am lost in him, in this moment.

  SEVEN

  WHEN I THINK back to that moment, my heart soars as it did then, and everything is heightened, magical, musical, and mystical, almost too good to be true. I could live that moment forever, his lips on mine, our bodies pushed together, both of us hungry for more, our future as wide open as the vista before us, as bright as the moon. It was just us on top of the sleeping world, invincible, untouchable.

  It was the most perfect moment in my life.

  It was the last perfect moment in my life.

  EIGHT

  I WAKE UP, and the first thing I do is slide my leg out from under the duvet to check my ankle. Anklet still there. It was not a dream, not some juicy figment of my imagination that dissolves as soon as I wake. I snuggle down under the covers to relive it in my head and then realize that delaying this morning would delay spending time with Art. He will be waiting for me, as he always is, at the bus stop, where we will go on to school together.

  Despite my joy, my sleep was fitful, with so much to absorb after the Angelina Tinder scene. I feel unsteady on my feet as I get dressed. Something has been shaken, stirred within me. My feeling of security has been tested, and perhaps my trust, though not with Art, whom I trust more than ever. Oddly, I think it is with my own self.

  I don’t need to think when I dress; I never do, not like Juniper, whom I hear swearing and sighing as she pulls yet another outfit over her head in frustration, never happy with how she looks. She gets up a half hour earlier than I do just to get dressed and still ends up being late every morning.

  Most people who don’t know our personalities can’t distinguish between me and Juniper. With a black dad and a white mom, we have inherited Dad’s skin. We also have Dad’s brown eyes, his nose, and his hair coloring. We have Mom’s cheekbones, her long limbs. She tried to get us into modeling when we were younger, and Juniper and I did a few shoots together, but neither of us could stay at it. Me because posing for a camera failed to intellectually stimulate me, Juniper because she was even more awkward and clumsy under people’s gazes.

  When it comes to how we act, how we dress, and everything else about us, though, we couldn’t be further apart.

  I put on a cream linen dress and baby-pink cashmere cardigan, with gold gladiator sandals that spiral up my legs. It’s hot outside, and I always wear pastel colors. Mom likes to buy pa
stels for all the family. She thinks that we look more like a unit when we’re dressed that way. I know of some families who hire stylists to help coordinate not just the clothes but their overall look as a family. None of us wants to look out of place or like we don’t belong, though Juniper often likes to do her own thing, wearing something that’s not a part of our family color palette. We let her do just that—her loss, though Mom worries that it makes us look fragmented. I think the only person who looks fragmented is Juniper.

  As usual, I’m downstairs before my sister. Ewan is at the table eating breakfast. He’s wearing cream linen trousers and a baby-pink T-shirt, and I feel happy we match. A good start to the day.

  Mom is staring at the TV, not moving.

  “Look what I got last night,” I sing.

  No one looks.

  “Yoo-hoo.” I circle my ankle in the air, graceful like a ballerina.

  Ewan finally looks at me, then down at my ankle, which I’m dangling near his face.

  “A bracelet,” he says, bored.

  “No. A bracelet is an ornamental band for the wrist, Ewan. This is an anklet.”

  “Whatever, Thesaurus.” He rolls his eyes and continues watching TV.

  “Art gave it to me,” I sing loudly, floating by Mom to get milk for my cereal from the fridge.

  “Wonderful, sweetheart,” she says robotically, as though she hasn’t heard at all.

  I stop and stare at her. She is completely engrossed in the TV. I finally pay attention and see it’s News 24, and Pia Wang is reporting live from Highland Castle. Pia Wang is the correspondent for the Guild. She covers every case in extreme detail, providing a profile of the Flawed, during the trial and after. It’s never a favorable profile, either. She does a good job of burying whomever she wants, though, to her credit, she’s covering Flawed cases, people who have made bad decisions, so she’s not exactly trying to glamorize them.

  I look out the window. Dad’s car is gone. He must have been alerted to the story and had to take off early. That happens a lot.

  “This case has garnered more attention than any other,” Pia says, her face perfect with peach-blush cheeks. She is wearing peach, and she looks like you could eat her, a perfect china doll. Glossy black hair, a fringe framing her innocent-looking, petite face. So perfect. “Even gaining attention around the rest of the world, which is reflected here in the turnout outside the Guild court in Highland Castle, with record numbers of people turning out to support their soccer hero Jimmy Child, Humming City’s best striker, who has led us to victory so many years. And today he is victorious again, as he left the court only moments ago having been deemed by Judge Crevan and his associates not to be Flawed. I repeat, breaking news to those who have just joined us: Jimmy Child is not Flawed.”

  I gasp.

  “What?” I say. “Has that ever happened before?”

  Mom finally breaks her stare from the TV. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I … maybe once,” she says vaguely.

  “Not a surprising result when a Crevan owns a share in the soccer team,” Juniper says suddenly from behind us. I turn to her.

  Mom’s face looks pained. “Juniper…” she says simply.

  “Damon Crevan. Owns a fifty-five percent stake in Humming City, but I suppose everyone will tell me that’s just coincidence. If you ask me, it was his wife they put on trial,” Juniper says. “And that dirty man got away with it.”

  Nobody disagrees. Jimmy Child’s glamorous wife had been on the front page of every newspaper for the past few weeks as her lifestyle was thrashed out for all to see. Every aspect of her, every inch of her body, was fodder for gossip sites and even news sites.

  “Go to school,” Mom says in a warning tone. “Any more talk like that and they’ll come for you, missy.” She clips Juniper’s nose playfully.

  She was almost right.

  NINE

  WHEN I STEP outside, I see Colleen standing at her family’s car. The front door of her house is open, and she looks like she’s waiting. I guess she won’t be going to school today, probably going to the courthouse to her mom’s trial. My heart beats wildly as I try to figure out what to do. If I say hello, I might get in trouble. Anybody could see me speaking to her from their home, and I could be reported. What if Bosco sees me from one of the windows of his monstrous mansion or as he leaves for work? Saying hi may be seen as disloyalty toward the Guild, as support for Colleen and her mom. Would that be seen as aiding and assisting a Flawed? I don’t want to go to prison. But if I ignore her, it will be rude. It is Colleen’s mother who’s accused of being Flawed, not her. She looks over at me and I can’t do it. I look away quickly.

  Behind me I hear Juniper say “Good luck today” to Colleen. It annoys me how easily she says that and then puts on her headphones and ignores everyone.

  Art is already at the bus stop waiting for me, as usual, looking delicious, as usual. I leap on him as soon as I get to him.

  “Bird.”

  “Mouse.”

  He kisses me, but I pull away quickly, excited to discuss the news.

  “Did you hear about Jimmy Child?” I expect Art to be elated. Jimmy Child is his hero, and up until a year ago he had his posters plastered all over his walls. Most boys did. During the trial, Art had the opportunity to meet him, though a quick meet and greet in a holding cell before court wasn’t what he’d been dreaming of throughout his boyhood, and he hadn’t wanted to discuss it much.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Dad left at the crack of dawn this morning. He wanted to push the verdict through first thing, in time for the morning news.”

  I think about how I should have said hello to Colleen; I should have known Bosco wasn’t home to have seen me—he was at court early—and what harm would it have done anyway to simply say hello? I’m angry with myself.

  “I can smell your brain burning. You okay?” He sticks his knuckle into my frown and screws it around.

  I laugh. “Yeah, I was just thinking. I didn’t know they had secret Naming Days. I thought it was always public. That’s so sneaky.”

  “Not as sneaky as you and me,” Art says, fingers creeping up my cardigan.

  I laugh and stop his hand from traveling, something suddenly on my mind. I look over at Juniper, who is listening to her music so loudly I can hear every word from here.

  I lower my voice. “Do you think Jimmy Child’s wife was put on trial?”

  “Serena Child?” he asks, surprised.

  “Yeah. When you think about it”—because I had been thinking about it, ever since Juniper said it, and on the walk to the bus stop with my new wobbly legs that haven’t been working since I stood up this morning—“every day it wasn’t about him or about what he’d done, but about how she was so annoying and so fake and such a woman, how could he not cheat?”

  Art laughs. “I don’t think that’s exactly what Pia said.” He smiles at me fondly. “‘Reporting live,’” he says, imitating Pia. “‘Isn’t Serena Child such a woman? How could he not cheat?’”

  I laugh, realizing how stupid it sounds, then turn serious, wanting to be understood. “No, but the way they talked about her looks. The surgery. The clothes. Her past … her cellulite. She’d kissed a girl—so what? Her tan being too orange, her eating disorder when she was fifteen. She went to school with someone who ended up being a bank robber. She never cooked a meal for her husband. He had to keep going to that diner. We learned everything about her. Like she was the one who was Flawed. Not him.”

  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 b
y 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.