Page 26 of Poster Girl

The sound cuts off. Sonya releases the earpieces, but doesn’t take them off.

“Rose Parker ran an article after you were released from the Aperture. About you, about what you’re doing,” Alexander says. “She thought it might help you. Apparently she was right.”

Sonya shakes her head.

“That’s Grace? She called herself Alice,” she says.

“As in Wonderland,” he replies. “The Wards used to call her their Alice. You know—down the rabbit hole.” His mouth twists. “Because she lived in a secret room in their house.”

She removes the headphones and folds them in half again, but doesn’t hand them back to him. She hears that croaky voice again, the voice of a girl who suddenly sounds like a woman and isn’t used to it—Grace Ward would be about thirteen, all sprouted now, with skinny legs and spiderwebs of stretch marks on her thighs and a halting, unsteady walk.

“She’s somewhere in the reach of theChronicle,” Sonya says.

“TheChronicledistributes to the entire megalopolis,” he says. “Doesn’t exactly narrow things down.”

“The point is, she’s alive,” Sonya says, and she reaches for the silver device still clasped in his hand, ignoring the prickle of strangeness as she touches him—this man she wishes were dead, this man she told so in no uncertain terms—“I need to take this with me.”

“Take it where?” he says. “You’re not going to see Emily Knox—”

“Why not? Maybe there’s some way to find out where this message came from—”

“Like I said, she’s acriminal—”

“And what am I, exactly?”

She tries, again, to take the device from Alexander. He holds on to it.

“Ten years hanging around with some Delegation lowlifes and you think you’re tough now?” he says. “Emily Knox has spent time in an actual prison. The list of crimes she’s suspected of could fill an encyclopedia.”

“Oh, so you have a better idea?”

“You could talk to the Wards.”

“The Wards are a nice, wholesome family with a welcome mat and a swing set,” she says. “They’re not going to know any more than they needed to know to keep their daughter hidden.”

He frowns at her.

“Like you know them all of a sudden?” he says. “You haven’t even walked past their apartment. How do you know?”

“I know,” she says. “And I’m going to talk to Emily Knox. Now.”

“Fine, then I’m going with you,” he says, and she gives up, and walks toward the HiTrain.

Six

As they wait for the HiTrain to arrive, Alexander takes a pair of sunglasses from the inside pocket of his coat and offers them to her. They’re too large for her face, but they’re dark enough to disguise her Insight.

The HiTrain coasts into the platform. It’s a newer one than the one she rode to her old neighborhood the day before. The clouds covering the sun are hazy, like smoke swirling across a lit cigarette. In the moment before the glass doors open, she sees her reflection in the train’s chrome-plated side.

Her hair needs a trim. Its color is darker now than it was in the posters, dirty blond, a fringe around her face. Her mouth is drawn into a tight line. She can barely see the light of the Insight through the lenses of the sunglasses.

She only comes up to Alexander’s shoulder. He was an oddity in his family, in more ways than one; Nikhil, Nora, and Aaron were all small, careful, graceful. And then, Alexander—ungainly Alexander, loping like a wolf. Hunched over his desk with a pen between his teeth, his nose inches from the page.

The train car is relatively empty, except for an old lady in orthopedic sneakers with a shopping bag between her feet, and a father humming to the infant child balanced on his hip. They sit across the car from the other passengers, and then across the aisle from each other. Alexander’s knees spread wide when he sits, taking up more space than he needs to. Sonya draws up straight and folds her hands in her lap.

Alexander rolls his eyes a little.

“You do know that there’s no DesCoin anymore, right? You’re not still waiting for the Delegation to come back and tally up all your good manners?”

---