Page 77 of A Better World

Josie pulled the covers over her head and began to cry. “I don’t want things! I’m surrounded by things!”

“I’m sick of things, too,” Linda said. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

Josie stayed hidden. Her voice was low and furious. “You say all the right things but you don’t do anything. Get out.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Linda asked.

Josie didn’t answer. Linda’s instincts told her to stay. To figure this out. But Josie seemed so hurt and angry. What was the point?

“What do you think happens at the Winter Festival?” Linda asked one night, after she and Russell had gotten into bed. He was reading a screen, its light shedding a purple hue.

“They kill a bird, don’t they? Or something. These people make full-time work out of some dumb hobbies.” Except for his hands, which were knotted in fists, he affected poised calm.

“I’m freaked out about it,” she said. “In a couple of weeks, we’re spending three days and two nights trapped in a tunnel with these people.”

“From what I hear, it’s nothing serious. Parson’ll make a speech and everyone’ll get drunk. And some of ’em screw around with the wrong people. It’s three days and two nights and communal sleeping. That’s the secret of the PV Winter Festival. Everyone screws around.”

“What if they put kids down in the Labyrinth, and leave them there? Like, the kids have to find their own way out? And maybe, sometimes, they get lost.” She thought of Percy, the soccer dad who had lost his kid.

He reached over, turned out his bedside light. “I doubt that’s it. But even if it is something they do, if they try that on our kids we’ll tell them they’re out of luck. We’re not playing.”

A few days later, Linda took Josie to the therapist, only Josie wouldn’t go alone. So, they sat together in the office. Josie wouldn’t answer any questions, and Linda didn’t think talking on her behalf was a great start to open communication, so they mostly sat quietly, memorizing the painting of a ship at sea.

“Do you feel like a ship at sea?” the therapist asked.

“No. I feel like a person in a room,” Josie answered. While the therapist wrote this comment down, Linda hid a grin.

On the ride home, Josie reached out, touched Linda’s shoulder. “Want to talk now?” Linda asked.

“Nope.” But her expression was more alert, her eyes less dead. It seemed, in the ways blood flows through the smallest capillaries, like movement.

The itch, the scratch, the waiting, the not knowing. Right before the New Year, Linda called Rachel and asked if they could meet.Come over whenever. I’m taking a sick day, Rachel texted back.

The town was in full lights. A collection of carved wooden mythological birds, the white caladrius at center, filled the bandstand atCaladrius Park. Snow stuck now, packing down after weeks of storms. The temperature had turned from brisk to icy.

When Linda rang, Rachel swung the door open and walked back inside the house. There was luggage by the door—Rachel was always either just home, or just on her way out.

“Come in,” she called from behind, and Linda followed her to the sitting room, which was decorated similarly to most of the other PV parlors. Upon the table was a ream of curled ribbon candy, which appeared never to have been touched. The couches were deep and soft. When she’d first come to this town, she’d thought rooms like this, and in her own home, were unique. But she’d learned that except for Daniella’s flourishes, most everything was the same. The quality differed according to A, B, or C class, but she had ornamental ribbon candy in her house, too.

“Kai home?” Linda asked.

Rachel leaned her head back, closed her eyes. Her every movement seemed to cause her pain, as if her joints were grinding against glass.

“What about your housekeeper?”

“Oh, who knows,” Rachel said. “She hates me. Does yours hate you?”

It seemed unfair to cast judgment on the person who cleaned your toilet. Esperanza was allowed to feel however she wanted. But she’d tried to talk to Esperanza at least twenty times and been shot down on every occasion. “Yeah. She hates me. Why does yours hate you?”

Rachel lifted her mug. Sipped. Linda got a whiff. It smelled like coconut rum. “I could be her, and she could be me. I’m supposed to know better, but I don’t.”

“Know better about what? I mean, I offer clothes, I offer food. I don’t have money. What else can I do?”

Rachel chirped with amusement. “Youreallydon’t know better. They get checked at the border. They’re not allowed to bring anything in or out. Black market. We could use them as mules, side hustle enough to buy a compound.”

Linda let go of a long breath. “She could have told me that. I feel like a jerk.”

Rachel finished the contents of her mug. Laid her head back again.Sick day, Linda realized, meantbender day. She was back to her habit. “So, why are you here?”

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