Page 47 of Poster Girl

The silver locket dangling from Knox’s bracelet hits the edge of the table. Knox catches Sonya looking at it.

“You don’t really ask questions, do you?” she says.

“I was raised not to be nosy.”

Knox sighs, and props her elbows up on the table to open the locket. Inside is a picture of a young man. He has Knox’s upturned lip, her high cheekbones.

“Twin brother,” she says. “Dead now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not, but that’s fine, I’m not sorry for you either.” Knox smirks. “My parents were Delegation loyalists, but not important ones. They obeyed, obeyed, obeyed. Mark didn’t much like that. Mark wasalso an idiot, had no idea how to cover his tracks.” She rolls her eyes. “So when the Delegation busted up the little resistance movement he joined, they not only locked him up, but they completely devastated my parents’ DesCoin stores. They were destitute. Almost starved, ostracized from the community, lost their house, the whole thing.”

Her bitterness is so potent Sonya can almost taste it at the back of her tongue.

“But we’re all even now. Delegation cut out our eyes, and we cut out yours. That’s how it works, right?”

Sonya doesn’t remember the speech the Triumvirate gave the day she was locked in the Aperture. The representatives were different then, just interim leaders, and she thinks they must have said something about making things even. But when she tries to think of those days, they evade her. She remembers that she had no desire to be in the world outside, that she felt like the cat in the hypothetical box, both alive and dead—or perhaps neither. And it was easier to be that way in the Aperture, where no one would be opening the box to force an outcome through observation.

She’s still not sure she wants anything different. But she has to find Grace Ward.

“What, nothing?” Knox says. “You’re not going to tell me how unfair it all is, how you didn’t do anything wrong?”

Sammy comes by with a tray in hand. He sets a mug of black coffee in front of Knox, and the hot chocolate and grilled cheese in front of Sonya. Knox’s gaze is fixed on her, waiting.

“Why should I?” Sonya says. “You clearly have both parts of this little play memorized.”

The smell of the grilled cheese makes her mouth water. Her father used to make them on Saturdays. He always made sure the cheese spilled over into the pan so it would crisp against the bread. He wore her mother’s floral apron when he did it, to protect his clothes from the splatter, and he whistled, even though whistling meant two lost DesCoin. He knew how to make the sound flutter.

She bites into it, and closes her eyes. She wishes she knew how to whistle.

Sonya tries not to rush through it, tries to savor it, but now that she’s started, it’s impossible to stop. She licks her fingertips, one by one, and if she hadn’t been with Knox, she would have licked the plate. She feels warm and sated.

Knox watches her with a knitted brow, like she’s trying to solve an equation.

“Let’s go over the plan again,” Knox says. “You’ll be meeting a woman named Eleanor, an Analog Army lieutenant, at a nightclub—”

“For some reason,” Sonya says. She holds the mug in both hands, letting it warm her fingers.

“The reason is that a nightclub is loud and chaotic, easier to go unnoticed. I sent the request for the meeting through one of my unsavory contacts, whose name is...?”

“Bob, who used to smuggle bits of tech from other districts when the Delegation was in power,” Sonya says. “And I want to speak to a grown man who calls himself Myth, which is utterly ridiculous—”

“I wouldn’t give that commentary in the moment.”

“Obviously,” Sonya says. “I tell Eleanor that I’m only going to talk to Myth about what I want, and no one else. And I argue with her until she agrees to arrange a meeting.”

Knox has already finished her coffee. She runs a finger around the rim.

“She might use a device called a Veil. It’ll make it so you can’t see her face. More tech from the people who supposedly hate tech.” Knox snorts a little. “And listen...”

She leans forward over the table.

“You need to act like someone who is completely harmless,” Knox says, and for once, there is no mischief in her eyes. “That is very important. Smiling, wide-eyed innocence, Kantor. That’s what’s going to get you what you want.”

“You spend half your time calling me ‘princess,’ I’m not sure what’s wrong with the way I usually act.”

“You’re like . . . a piece of paper,” Knox says, shrugging. “Looks blank and pale and boring, but if you handle it wrong, it’ll cut the shitout of you. It’ll make them suspicious if they notice it—so don’t let them notice it.”

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