Page 6 of Poster Girl

He sat next to her on the couch as she played it again and again with the implant.This is what the world was like,he said,before the Delegation.Showing her cost him two hundred DesCoin—children weren’t supposed to watch that sort of thing. But the sacrifice was worth it to him, to answer her questions.

The moon is high and waxing, almost full. Another month behind her. Time keeps marching forward.

She goes back to sleep.

At first, when someone died in the Aperture, they were like bees absconding from the hive, leaving wax and honey—no one else took what they left behind. But soon the rules of propriety shifted out of necessity. Now when someone dies, everyone in the building swarms the space and picks at their possessions until only the graying honeycomb is left. Whenever Sonya needs a new part, she consults the building map by the south stairwell, where the empty apartments are marked with red Xs, to decide which apartment to check for remnants.

This one—apartment 2C, formerly Mr. Nadir’s—smells like cooking smoke and cat. There are no cats in the Aperture, so it must be a scent Mr. Nadir brought with him. She’s been here before. A few times, she came to fix his overhead lights—his wiring had always been faulty. Once, she came for dinner. And another time, after he died, she came to take his little refrigerator, dragging it up four flights of stairs by herself.

His stove is broken, but the burners, four cold coils of metal, still work. She removes one and tucks it into the bag at her side, then wanders into his bathroom. No one cleaned it after his death, so there are still toothpaste flecks dried up in the sink and fingerprint smudges on the mirror. She leans in close to see one—a thumbprint, maybe, with whorls and ridges unique to him.

Then she goes downstairs, to the courtyard, to meet Charlotte.

Today Charlotte is not in gingham but brown linen, cinched at the waist. The sky is clear, the air still holding on to a little of summer’s warmth. Charlotte sweeps her long braid over one shoulder and smiles at Sonya.

“Good morning,” she says. “How did you sleep?”

“Good morning,” Sonya says. “Did you hear that noise last night?”

“I did,” Charlotte says, and they start walking toward the tunnel together. “I’m not sure what reason they have to be setting off fireworks at this time of year, but you’d think they would be decent enough not to do it at night.”

“It didn’t sound like a firework to me,” Sonya says.

“What else could it have been?”

Sonya shakes her head. “I don’t know. Something else.”

“Well, who knows what they have out there now,” Charlotte says.

Out of habit, Sonya looks up to David’s name as she passes through the tunnel. It was the fourth name she etched in brick in the Aperture, but her family’s names are in the tunnel that leads to Building 2, where she used to live, so she never sees them.August Kantor. Julia Kantor. Susanna Kantor.All dead and gone.

“Graham worked in the Delegation morgue,” Charlotte says. “He was a manager, actually—that little friend of yours, Marie, she worked for him. He was always a bit... odd. Even when we were children.”

“You’re not close?” Sonya says.

“Not particularly,” Charlotte says. “That must sound terrible. I know I’m lucky to have him here at all.”

Sometimes Sonya wonders what it would have been like to have her sister here with her, in the Aperture. Susanna was four years Sonya’s senior, and she lived her life as if Sonya wasn’t in it, an only child who just happened to have a sibling. It was more careless disregard than malice. Susanna didn’t need anyone. Of all the qualities Sonya envied her sister for, she longed for that one the most.

As Sonya and Charlotte cross Green Street, Sonya looks toward the entrance to the Aperture. The gate is where the place gets its name. When it opens, interlocking plates pull away from a central point, and the effect is like a pupil dilating in the dark.

Standing right in front of that pupil now are Nicole and Winnie, embracing. Nicole’s bag is at her feet. The guard at the gate, a sturdy man in a gray uniform, waits a few feet away for them to let each other go.

Nicole wipes her face, picks up her bag, and offers her mother a wave. She walks through the center of the gate, and the pupil contracts behind her. Winnie holds a hand over her mouth to muffle a sob.

Charlotte meets Sonya’s eyes.

“Let’s give her some privacy,” she says, and Sonya turns away.

She has watched three friends walk through that gate: Ashley, Shona, and Nicole. Ashley and Shona were both fourteen when they were locked in the Aperture—shortly after it was formed, just after the uprising, a decade ago. They were from Portland, so she had never met them before, and she didn’t befriend them until they were older, old enough to move out of their parents’ Aperture apartments and into Building 2. She doesn’t know what their first years there were like; she never asked. A person has to be careful what questions they ask here. Everyone’s pasts are pockmarked with tragedy.

Now Sonya can add another one to her list: she’s the youngest person left in the Aperture.

They pass through the tunnel and into Building 1’s courtyard. Shehasn’t been to Building 1 often in the years she’s been in here. Building 3’s residents live in a state of denial, but Building 1’s are in a state of acceptance. Of surrender. It’s the part of the Aperture that feels the most like a prison.

She crushes overgrown weeds, now sagging under their own weight, to make it to the door. It squeals when Charlotte opens it. They walk in silence up to the third floor, where the hallway smells like cigarettes. There are trash bags piled up against one person’s door, collapsed cardboard boxes against another’s. The carpet is fraying on one side, pulling away from the baseboards.

Charlotte knocks on Apartment 3B. Somewhere, someone is yelling. Someone else is listening to morose guitar.

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