Page 2 of Poster Girl

“Is it market day already?” she asks. “I keep losing track.”

Despite kneeling in the dirt, Mrs. Pritchard looks perfect, her shirt free of creases and tucked into a pair of trousers. She has altered clothes for Sonya before, after Lainey Newman died and her things were redistributed within the Aperture.

“Good morning,” Nikhil returns.

“Good morning,” Sonya says. “Yes, Nikhil wants a broken radio, for some reason.”

“A broken radio that Sonya will fix,” Nikhil says.

“I don’t know the first thing about radios.”

“You’ll work it out. You always do.”

Mrs. Pritchard makes a strained sound behind pressed lips, and then says, “Those tomatoes are more valuable than a radio. What could you possibly want to hear from—” She gestures toward the outer wall of the Aperture. “Out there?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he says. “I suppose I’ll find out when I get a radio.”

She changes the subject. “Have you spoken with Building 1 about assigning patrols for the visitation?”

“Anna assures me they’re handling it.”

“Because we can’t have anotherincidentlike the one from three years ago.”

“Of course not.”

“We can’t have them thinking we’re a bunch of wild animals—”

Three years ago, when the three leaders of the governmentout therevisited the Aperture, several drunk residents of Building 2 threw bottles at them. For weeks afterward, deliveries to the Aperture were halted. Some people went without food. It’s in everyone’s best interest to keep the peace when outsiders visit—but with the guards’ policy of nonintervention, it’s the prisoners’ job to police themselves.

“Mary,” Sonya says. “Please, don’t let us interrupt your work.”

She smiles. Mrs. Pritchard sniffs, and picks up her makeshift trowel.

Sonya and Nikhil continue along.

They walk through the brick tunnel that leads them across the alley. There are names etched into the bricks, which Sonya runs her fingers over as she walks. There are no graves for the people they’ve lost; the names are all they have. The floor of the tunnel is covered in candle wax, remnants of mourners. She has often thought that the wax should be scraped off the ground and melted into new candles, but shedoesn’t do it. They’re all used to practicality swallowing sentimentality in the Aperture, but these walls are untouchable.

“Thank you for that,” Nikhil says. “She’s been pestering me about that for weeks.”

“It’s always something. Last week she was mad about the trash bags piling up next to the dumpster. As if any of us have control over how often trash is collected here.”

Before she exits the tunnel, Sonya reaches up to find the name she carved there herself, standing on a rickety stool with the head of a screwdriver in her fist.David.Her fingertips come away gritty.

There are two streets in the Aperture: Green Street and Gray Street, named for the colors of the Delegation. They divide the Aperture into quadrants, and in each quadrant is an identical apartment building. Theirs is Building 4, and it’s full of widows, widowers, and Sonya.

The market is at the center of the Aperture, where the two streets cross. Sonya remembers what real markets looked like, rows of wooden stalls with canvas tops to protect against the weather. Here, everyone brings what they have to trade, and some lay their goods out on blankets, while others walk around making offers. Almost everything is junk, but junk can be useful, a bundle of spoons turning into a trowel, a rickety table becoming a garden bed.

She hasn’t forgotten the feeling of fine things. The cold slide of silk on her bare arms. The snap of new shoes on wooden floors. Her fingernails pinching a crease into wrapping paper at Christmas. Her mother always bought gold and green.

As it turns out, time does not dull every edge.

She pulls closer to Nikhil as they pass a group of men closer to her age. She knows all their names—Logan, and Gabe, and Seby, and Dylan—and it’s for that reason that she pretends she doesn’t see them. They are a sprawling group, one leaning against Building 2, one in the middle of the street, one perched on the curb, one with a hand on the light pole.

“Postergirl,” Logan sings, as he turns around the pole, held up by his fingertips.

Even before she was in the Aperture, people called her that. Theyused to do it because they recognized her face but didn’t know her name. It used to feel like a compliment, when she was sixteen and finally stepping out of her older sister’s shadow. It’s not a compliment anymore.

“Can’t pretend not to know us in the Aperture, Sonya. Only so many fish in this fucking fishbowl,” Gabe says, as he sidles up next to her. He slides his arm across Sonya’s shoulders. “Why don’t you hang out with us anymore?”

---