Page 23 of Poster Girl

The next day, Renee waits for her at the gate before she leaves. Her hair is piled on top of her head and knotted with a strip of old towel. She still wears the creases of a pillowcase on her cheek.

“Hey,” she says.

“Good morning,” Sonya says. “You all right?”

“Yeah, fine. I was just wondering...” She looks at the gate. “Can you buy things out there?”

“No,” Sonya says. “They’re not giving me a stipend or anything. I’m not even sure what they use for currency now.”

Renee sighs.

“Well, if you find a newspaper lying around,” she says. “Grab it, would you?”

Most of what she knows about Renee, she learned in a haze of cigarette smoke at a party. She worked for the Delegation; she has a little sister outside the Aperture. She always wanted a big wedding in the garden at her parents’ house, and two kids, if she could get a permit for the second. Girls. She wanted girls. She’s always trying to get the Aperture leaders to demand the end of mandatory birth control, and Nikhil says the request always gets tacked on to the bottom of the list. Hard to get people to rally behind birth control, he says, when they still aren’t eating enough.

“Sure,” Sonya says. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

Renee stands back as the gate opens.

There are fewer protesters at the entrance today. They part for Sonyalike water around a stone, but their eyes, following her down the street, are hungry. Once she’s far enough away from the crowd, she puts up her hood to shade the Insight.

She hears scuffling behind her, but when she turns to look, there’s no one.

Pinched between her thumb and forefinger is the card Rose Parker gave her the day before. The address printed at the bottom is a long walk from the Aperture, but Sonya decides not to take the HiTrain. She feels the pebbles poking through the worn soles of her shoes, the grit of the sidewalk. She walks in the street, her hands in her pockets and the misty air wetting her face.

She takes a detour through the park, following the edge of the concrete-lined reservoir, the art museum with the rippling stone face, the angular metalwork on its windows. The grass is unkempt, spilling over onto the sidewalk, and little white flowers are in bloom everywhere—weeds, but still she thinks of pulling them up by their roots so she can plant them in the courtyard. Mrs. Pritchard might not approve.

She hears the scuffling again, and looks over her shoulder. There’s a man walking behind her, his hands in the pockets of his blue jacket, his face turned up to the sky, as if he’s relishing the mist. She walks faster, choosing a path that will take her back to busier streets. Her hand flexes, empty. She didn’t even try to bring her knife out of the Aperture.

Rose Parker’s office is in a small, plain building with a security guard near the elevators and a woman in a prim suit at the reception desk. She holds a book in one hand and an apple in the other, so she turns the pages of the book with sticky fingers. The book is not one Sonya recognizes. Its glossy cover readsThe Artistry of Thieves,and there’s a ship on the cover, drawn cresting green and purple waves.

Sonya takes off her hood just as the woman looks up. The apple falls out of her hand as she takes in Sonya’s face. Before Sonya has to explain herself, someone taps on the glass separating them from the office beyond—Rose Parker, in a blue, geometrically patterned dress. She beckons to Sonya to come in, and neither the receptionist nor the security guard objects as Sonya passes through the doors to the office.

It’s an open space, bright from the windows along each wall, and the lights in the center of the room, which hover together like bubbles at the top of a glass of milk. The sight seems dated to Sonya—that kind of fixture, with free-floating, glowing spheres, was common when she was a child, but in her teenage years it fell out of fashion. Between that and the paper books and the Elicits, she wonders if it’s possible for time to run backward.

She wonders if Alexander is watching her now.

“I’m surprised to see you,” Rose says to her. “I thought you would probably light my business card on fire right after we spoke.”

“I didn’t have matches,” Sonya says, surprising a laugh out of Rose.

“Wow. A joke, from the poster girl.” She touches her chest. “Come on, my desk is over here.”

All the desks are at long tables with low shelves serving as dividers. Most are filled with stacks of paper—old articles, competing newspapers, pamphlets with staples at the corners. At the far end of the room are several wall screens, not unlike the one Sonya saw smashed in her family’s home. They play what appears to be a news feed.

Under the Delegation there was one news feed: Channel 3. Sonya knew the anchors like they were old friends, Elisabeth with the morning report, Abby with the evening, Michael with the weather forecast. On the screens in Rose Parker’s office, there are four different feeds running simultaneously, the faces unfamiliar, the headlines unintelligible:The Analog Army Claims Responsibility for Murder of Tech Magnate. Triumvirate Representative Petra Novak Promises Continued Aid to Victims of Phillips Bombing. Flu Vaccine Delayed Due to Syringe Shortages.They’re headlines for another world.

“So you’ve changed your mind about doing an interview, then?” Rose smiles like she already knows the answer. She drags a metal chair over from one of the other desks and puts it beside her own.

When they sit, their knees almost brush together. Sonya crosses her legs at the ankle and folds her hands in her lap. Rose stares at her like she’s done something strange.

“No,” Sonya says. Scattered across Rose’s desk are scraps of paper with scribbled notes on them.Seemed skittish; follow up with neighboris on the one closest to her, with a box around the wordneighbor.This seems like bullshitis written on another one, with an arrow pointing at something written in shorthand.

“I needed help with something,” Sonya continues.

“So, just to remind you where you and I stand,” Rose says. “You refused to participate in my Children of the Delegation interviews. You refused another interview after I saved you from that crowd. And now you want my help.” She tilts her head, a diamond-shaped earring catching the light. “Why should I give it to you?”

Sonya frowns. “Do you know why I’ve been granted permission to leave the Aperture?” she says.

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