Scarecrow

She came back on a Tuesday.

Liam told me. He came into the barracks after breakfast, out of breath, with toast in one hand and his boots unlaced, and said, ”She’s back,” before he was all the way through the door.

I didn’t ask who.

”She was at breakfast,” said Liam. ”Late. Right at the end. With one of the General’s aides, the tall one with the ears. He walked her to the door of the mess and saluted her and went. And she got a tray and sat at our table on her own and ate porridge.” He sat down on his bed. ”She didn’t say anything. To anyone. Sera said morning and she said morning, and that was it. She ate all her porridge. And then she went.”

”Where?”

”Cell biology. Ten o’clock. Third lecture hall.” Liam looked at me. ”Same as you.”

I looked at the dusk on my bed.

I’d been wearing them all week. In the corridors. On the range. In the kit room, so Pryce didn’t have to drop her slate again. Not in the mess, not with Squad Eight, not at the fern at five. Mother’s rule. Wear them for anybody who can’t manage. Take them off for the people who love you.

And I didn’t know which one she was.

That was the problem. I’d lain awake half the night with it. I didn’t know which one Luna Windsor was. I didn’t know whether she could manage. I didn’t know whether she’d come back from a week on the hundred-and-fortieth floor with her father, in the room with the long table and the map of Avalon on the wall, and be the other kind of still. The cold kind. The kind she’d been on the first day, on field one, in the rain.

He made my heart slow so I’d be steady. He made my face still so nobody could read it.

I picked up the dusk.

I didn’t put them on. I just held them. In my hand. All the way down the corridor to the third lecture hall.

The corridor outside the lecture hall was full.

It always was, at ten to ten. Forty cadets from four squads, waiting for Doctor Aske to come and unlock the door, leaning on the walls, talking, comparing notes they hadn’t done, eating the last of their breakfast out of their pockets.

They made room for me.

Of course they did. I came round the corner and the talking went down, the way it did now, not all the way, just down, like a lamp being turned low. And the cadets nearest me moved. Not much. A step. Two steps. Enough to make a space by the wall, by the door, where I could stand on my own.

I stood there.

I held the dusk in my hand, behind my back, and looked at the floor.

And then, from the other end of the corridor, from the way that led up to the lifts and the offices and the hundred-and-fortieth floor, I heard footsteps.

I knew them. I’d have known them anywhere. Light and quick and very even, every step exactly the same length as the last, like somebody walking a line nobody else could see.

The corridor went quiet.

All the way quiet, this time. Not for me. For her. Forty cadets, who’d all heard by now that Luna Windsor had been at the controls in the training hall, that it was Luna Windsor who’d said everything, and that the Scarecrow had done it and gone down bleeding, and that Luna Windsor had been upstairs with the General for a week since, and nobody knew what about.

And who all wanted to see what she’d do.

She came round the corner with her books under her arm.

The cell biology book. Her notebook. A pencil behind her ear, which she never had, which meant she’d been writing something on the way down and hadn’t finished. Black uniform. Hair tied back, very tight. Very straight. The way she always was.

She looked thinner.

I saw it. I couldn’t help it. A week. Not much. But a little. Under the eyes. At the wrists. As if she hadn’t been sleeping, or hadn’t been eating, or had been sitting in a room with a long table being asked questions for a long time.

She saw me.

She didn’t stop. She didn’t slow down. She came on down the corridor, through the space everyone had left, in a straight line. Toward me. Toward the wall by the door where I was standing on my own.

The cadets on either side of the corridor stepped back a little further.

And Luna Windsor stopped in front of me, an arm’s length away, and bent down, and put her books on the floor.

I want to explain about the books.

Luna never put her books on the floor. Not ever. Not in six months. Not in the reading room, not in the mess, not on the gallery in the rain. She had a rule about it. She’d told me once, when I’d put the immunology book down on the tiles to do up my boot. She’d picked it up and handed it back to me and said, books don’t go on floors, Lucas, it’s disrespectful. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like it was a law.

She put them on the floor.

Very carefully. The cell biology book flat. The notebook on top of it. The pencil on top of that, lined up straight with the edge.

Then she straightened up.

And she reached up, with both hands, and took my face.

Her hands were cold.

Not freezing. Not the way they’d been in the training hall, on the concrete, with the blood. Just cold. The way they always were. The way you’d expect them to be, if you’d known her for six months and stood next to her in the rain.

She held my face still. One hand either side. Her thumbs on my cheekbones, just under my eyes. Not hard. But firm. The way Mother used to hold the twins’ faces still when she was getting jam off them.

”Hold still,” said Luna.

I held still.

And she looked into my eyes.

I’d made a decision.

I want that on the record. I’d made it in the night, lying awake, with Toby breathing in the next bed. I’d made it walking down the corridor with the dusk in my hand behind my back. And I’d made it again, just then, when she put the books down.

I wasn’t going to look at her heart.

I could have. It would have been easy. Easier than easy. It was a page now. Everything was. Every person in that corridor, every heart, every wire, every little bright point, all of it open and waiting, all the time, whether I wanted it or not. I’d been reading hearts all week. Mallory’s. Pryce’s. Two hundred in the mess. I hadn’t been able to stop.

But I could choose where to look. Okafor had asked me, in the infirmary: Can you stop? And I’d said not all the way. But I’d found, that week, that I could do one thing. I could look at the surface. Only the surface. The way Risa had made me, in the corridor by the fern, months ago. Watch the spark, not the hand. I could hold my eyes on the outside of things, and let the rest be there, faint, like stars in the daytime, without reading it.

It was hard. It was like holding your breath.

I held it.

I looked at Luna Windsor’s face. Just her face. Her pale eyes. The faint line between her eyebrows. The little bit of frost that had come up at the corner of her mouth, the way it did when she was concentrating. A loose bit of hair by her ear that had got out of the tie.

Just that. Just the outside. Just what anybody would see.

Because if she flinched, I wanted to find out the way everybody else did. With my eyes. Not with my page. Not by reading it inside her before her face had decided what to do.

And if she didn’t flinch, I wanted to find that out the ordinary way too.

She looked for a long time.

I counted. Of course I did. I always count.

Ten seconds. Her eyes going from my left eye to my right eye and back. Slowly. Carefully. The way she read a page of the cell biology book. The way she read my notebook upside down across the table at night.

Twenty seconds. Her thumbs very still on my cheekbones. The corridor completely silent. Forty cadets not breathing.

Thirty. Somebody’s stomach rumbled, down by the far wall, very loudly, and nobody laughed.

Forty. I could see myself in her eyes. Very small. Two of me. And in each one, two black spots where my eyes were, looking back. And in those, if I’d looked close enough, two very small Lunas. And so on. Down and down. Like the notebooks. Like the little bright points.

Fifty. The frost at the corner of her mouth was spreading. Just slightly. A fine white line along her lower lip.

Her face didn’t move.

Not the cold kind of not moving. I knew that kind. I’d seen it on field one. I’d seen it at the gala, at the high table, next to her father. This wasn’t that. This was the other kind. The kind I’d seen on the gallery, in the rain, the second before she made it snow. The kind where everything was happening, all at once, very far inside, and she was holding her face still so she could watch it happen.

Sixty.

Sixty-one.

She let go of my face.

She bent down, and picked up her books. The cell biology book. The notebook. The pencil. She put the pencil back behind her ear.

She straightened up, and looked at me once more. Just once. Quickly.

”Fine,” said Luna Windsor.

And she turned round, and walked to the door of the lecture hall, which Doctor Aske had unlocked at some point in the last minute without any of us noticing, and was standing in with his keys in his hand and his mouth slightly open.

”Good morning, Doctor Aske,” said Luna, and went in.

The corridor breathed out.

All of it. All forty. In one long ragged rush, like the corridor after Seraphina, like a field after the wind’s gone through.

And then everyone started talking at once.

I didn’t hear any of it. I stood by the wall with the dusk in my hand behind my back and my face still cold in two places, where her hands had been, and didn’t hear anything at all.

Liam was beside me. I don’t know when he’d got there.

”That’s it?” said Liam. In a sort of strangled whisper. ”Fine? A whole minute. A whole minute in front of everyone, holding your face, and she says fine?”

”Sixty-one seconds,” I said.

”You counted?”

”I always count.”

Liam stared at me. Then at the door of the lecture hall. Then at me again.

”She put her books on the floor,” he said, with something like horror. ”Luna Windsor. On the floor. I’ve seen her pick up a book off a chair because the chair was dusty.”

”I know.”

”Mate,” said Liam slowly. ”Mate. I don’t think you understand what just—”

”I know,” I said.

On my other side, Toby was looking at the door too. He didn’t say anything. But he was smiling. Not a big smile. Toby didn’t do big smiles. Just the corner of his mouth, very slightly, the way it had at the gala, when Liam worked out what had happened on the balcony.

He bumped my shoulder with his. Once. Very gently.

Then he went into the lecture hall.

It was the best thing anyone said to me that month.

I’ve thought about why. A lot. Since. In the reading room, and on the gallery, and on a great many other nights a long way from the cave, under a great many other skies.

Liam had said I looked like a beetle. That was kind. It was a joke, and jokes are a way of saying you’re still the same to me. Garnet had said they were pretty. That was the kindest thing. But Garnet was nine, and my sister, and thought everything I did was pretty, including the moon.

Mother had said take them off for the people who love you. That was the truest thing. But it was a rule. It was for me to do.

Seraphina had been angry for me. That was brave.

But Luna had looked.

That was the thing. In front of forty people. For sixty-one seconds. Not a glance, the way the girl with the spoon had glanced, and then looked at her tray. Not a long careful look from the other side of a bench, the way Pryce had looked. Not a look through a screen.

She’d put her books on the floor and taken my face in her hands, so I couldn’t look away, so she couldn’t look away, and looked right into the thing that made two hundred cadets go quiet. For a whole minute. Until she was finished. Until she’d seen whatever there was to see.

And then she’d said fine.

Not they’re pretty. Not you look like your father. Not it doesn’t matter. Those were all things you said about something that might matter. Things you said to make somebody feel better about something.

Fine was what you said about something that didn’t need anything said about it.

Fine meant: I’ve looked. It’s you. Go to class.

I didn’t see her alone until that night.

In the reading room. At our table at the back, under the one lamp, which she’d turned right down. She’d done it before I got there. I noticed that. She was sitting with the cell biology book open in front of her, and her notebook, and the pencil, very straight.

She didn’t look up when I sat down.

I didn’t have the dusk on. I’d put them in my pocket in the corridor and they’d stayed there all day.

We read for a long time without saying anything. That was normal. That was most nights. The lamp, and the pages, and the sound of other people at other tables, very far off.

Then she said, without looking up:

”He showed me the film.”

I waited.

”From the gallery. They had a camera on the hall. They always do, for the live-fire.” She turned a page she hadn’t read. ”He had it on the screen in his office. On the long wall. And he made me watch it with him. Frame by frame.” Her voice was very level. ”Every frame. Forty minutes for nine seconds. Him stopping it, and going back, and stopping it again. There. There. What did you know, at this point? What did you know he would do? What did you think would happen to him, when you said everything?”

I didn’t say anything.

”For a week,” said Luna. ”Every day. Different questions. The same nine seconds.”

”I’m sorry.”

”Don’t be. It was my order.” She looked up then. At me. Across the table. At my eyes, in the low light. Not long. Not like the corridor. Just looking. ”I knew. When I said it. I didn’t know about this,” and she moved her hand, very slightly, toward my face, and stopped. ”But I knew it would cost you something. I could see it on you. For five weeks. And I said it anyway.”

”There were sixty-one people in that hall.”

”I know how many there were.” She looked back at her book. ”I asked Okafor how many we were expected to bring back. On the first day. Before I said yes.” A pause. ”Sixty-one. And one with black eyes.”

”Why did he want to know?” I said, after a while. ”What you thought would happen.”

Luna was quiet for a long time.

”He wanted to know if I’d be frightened,” she said finally. ”Of you. Now. Afterward.” She closed the book. ”He asked me that every day too. At the end. After the film. Will you be frightened of him, Luna? When you see him?” She folded her hands on the cover. ”He said if I was frightened, I’d be no use. That you’d see it. That you’d know. And that whoever you listen to has to be the one person in the dome who isn’t.”

I didn’t say anything.

”So that was the other thing he wanted,” said Luna. ”To find out whether I was still useful.”

”What did you tell him?”

”Nothing.” She looked at me. ”I told him I didn’t know. Because I didn’t. I hadn’t seen them. I wasn’t going to see them for the first time on his wall, on his screen, with him watching my face to see what it did.” The frost came up, faintly, along the edge of the table under her hands. ”I wasn’t going to give him that.”

She looked at me across the table.

”I wanted to see them for the first time in front of you,” said Luna Windsor. ”Not him. You.”

The lamp hummed.

I didn’t say anything for a long time. I didn’t know what to say. I don’t think there was anything.

Then Luna said, in a different voice. Smaller. Almost careful.

”Did you look?”

”At what?”

”At my heart. In the corridor.” She was looking at her hands. ”You can, now. Can’t you. All the time. Without falling. Risa says you can see the whole of a spark now, in one go.” A pause. ”You could have seen whether I was frightened before my face decided anything. You’d have known in the first second.”

”I didn’t look.”

She looked up.

”I didn’t look,” I said again. ”I held it. On the outside. Just your face.” I turned the pencil over on the table. ”I wanted to find out the way everybody else does.”

Luna was very still.

”Why?” she said.

”Because if you’d been frightened,” I said, ”I didn’t want to know it before you’d had a chance to decide not to be.”

Luna Windsor looked at me across the table for a long time.

I didn’t look at her heart then either.

”Eighty,” she said.

I didn’t understand.

”In the corridor.” She opened the book again. She found her page. She didn’t look at me. ”Risa felt it from the other side of the door. She told me at lunch. She came and sat at our table and said it, quite loudly, in front of Seraphina, and then got up and went back to Squad Six before I could freeze her.” The frost along the edge of the table was spreading, very slowly, in little white ferns. ”Eighty. For the whole minute. And it’s never been anything but fifty-two.”

I didn’t say anything.

”It wasn’t frightened,” said Luna, to the cell biology book. ”Before you ask. I know what frightened feels like. I’ve had it on the gallery. It wasn’t that.”

”What was it?”

Luna turned a page.

”Write it down if you like,” she said. ”Eighty. Under whatever you’re writing tonight.” She picked up her pencil. ”I’m not going to tell you what it was. You can work it out. You’re supposed to be clever.”

And she went back to her book, very straight, with her face perfectly still, and the frost creeping across the table toward my side in slow white ferns, and the lamp humming.

And she didn’t say anything else for the rest of the evening.

I didn’t write eighty.

I thought about it. I sat on my bed in the dark with notebook fifteen open on my knees and the pencil in my hand for a long time, thinking about it.

But some things you don’t write down. Father had taught me that too. Not everything goes in the notebook. Some things you just keep.

So I turned to the back. To the list. The one I’d made on Thursday.

Liam. Toby. Risa. Sera. Okafor. Odell. Mrs. Gant (two pieces).

Seven.

Luna?

I rubbed out the question mark. Very carefully, with the end of the pencil, until there was nothing left of it but a faint gray smudge.

Luna.

Eight.

And then, under it, because I couldn’t help it, because it was true, and because it was the best thing anyone had said to me all month:

”Fine.”

I put the notebook under my pillow.

And I lay in the dark, with my face still cold in two places, where it had stopped being cold hours ago, and listened to Toby breathing, and Liam muttering in his sleep about books on floors.

And I didn’t wish I could see less.

Not even a little.