Page 5 of Poster Girl

“That’s quite a dress, Ms. Kantor,” Douglas says to her. The last time she saw him, he was thinning on top, but his head is shaved now, his beard coming in thick. “Pilfer that from a widow?”

“No.”

“Only joking,” he says.

“I realize that.”

“Okay.” Douglas makes a face at Renee. “Tough crowd.”

“Don’t you know? Poster Girl’s a fucking killjoy now,” Marie says. She walks up to the table, sticks her fingers in the can of peaches. She’s wearing a dress, too, made of a shirt and a skirt stitched together at the waist. On her wrist is a blurry tattoo of a sun. “Building 4 is where fun goes to die. Sometimes literally.”

“Marie,” Kevin says, in a hushed voice. “Don’t—”

“Yes, I’m so sorry to be missing out on all the fun in Building 3,” Sonya says. “That early morning calisthenics club you started sounds like a riot.”

Marie’s lips pucker, but Renee laughs.

Nicole looks up, then points overhead as an airplane passes over the Aperture. Everyone stops to watch it. It’s a rare enough event that even those who don’t care about leaving the Aperture make a note of it. Evidence of other sectors, other worlds beyond their own. Travel between sectors was almost unheard of under the Delegation, and it doesn’t seem to be that much more common under the Triumvirate.

“Are you patrolling tomorrow?” Winnie asks Douglas. Her eyes are soft with concern. “I thought I saw your name on the volunteer list.”

“Wouldn’t want to miss all the excitement,” Douglas says.

“Hopefully there isn’t any excitement at all,” Winnie says. “I don’t like you boys having to take on that responsibility.”

“Nonintervention policy,” Douglas says with a shrug. “Guards’re here to keep us in, not keep us well-behaved.”

“It almost seems like they want us to eat each other alive in here.”

“Better that than the alternative,” Sonya says, a little too loudly. Everyone looks at her, and she straightens. “I don’t think I wantthemto be the ones who decide what ‘well-behaved’ looks like, do you?”

Some in the Aperture still trust their old regime, the Delegation, to be the arbiter of good. Some don’t bother with “good” at all. But regardless, their unspoken agreement is not to place any trust in the outside government, in the Triumvirate. No one who keeps them locked up here, who participated in the execution of so many of their loved ones, could be capable of goodness. Even when Sonya had no interest in following Delegation rules, she still hated the Triumvirate—the supposed righteous who killed her family, her friends, Aaron.

“Well.” Winnie sniffs. “I suppose not.”

Wind blows through the courtyard. The sky darkens, and the lights twinkle overhead. Sonya sneaks another peach, and asks Sylvia about her bad knee, and tells Douglas how to troubleshoot his broken box fan. Nicole drifts from person to person, and tells them about her new, government-assigned identity, and all the things she’s planning to do in her first week outside. She won’t be living nearby; she’ll take the train to Portland, start over with a new name. Buy a pint of milk and sit near the bank of the river and drink every last drop. Go out dancing. Walk around all night, just to do it, just because she can.

At one point, Renee nudges Sonya with an elbow.

“A bunch of us are going to the roof for a cigarette. Want to come?” she says.

“I’m going to turn in early,” Sonya says.

Renee shrugs and joins the others. Sylvia and Karen are leaving. The candles have all burned out. Nicole’s cheeks shine with tears. Sonya hugs her again.

“I can’t believe they won’t let you out,” Nicole says, her breath hot and fierce against Sonya’s ear.

Sonya holds Nicole at arm’s length and thinks this is a good way to remember her: dimly lit, hair tousled by the wind, eyes wet, angry on a friend’s behalf.

“I’ll miss you,” she says.

Nicole gives her the peach syrup to drink. She sips it as she walks back to Building 4 slowly, savoring.

She wakes that night to a sharp, loud sound, like the crack of a whip. She sits up in bed, and by the glow of her Insight she can see that the trunk she drags across the doorjamb—the only “lock” she has been able to manage—is still in place.

Barefoot, she walks to the windows and pulls back the tapestry that covers them. The street below is empty. The wind blows a newspaper across the crumbling sidewalk. The metal shade covers the windows of the corner store like a closed eyelid.

She thinks of the video her father showed her when she was a child, beaming it from his Insight to hers. Footage from a smoky street embroiled in conflict. Cars parked askew, streetlights tipped over. And coming from every direction, the deep, sharp sound of gunshots.

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