Page 97 of Poster Girl

“Hello.” Alexander’s callused hands close over the back of the bench, beside her. He looks at her—at her wet hair, her soaked wool coat, theyellow pill in her hand. Then he looks out at the water. The only sign of emotion he wears is in his hands, trembling as he lifts them from the bench. He walks around it, and sits beside her.

“Rose Parker came to ask me for your Insight footage,” he says. “She was worried about you. I remembered you saying you wanted to go to the waterfront. Had to rack my brain to remember where they used to sell those sticky buns.”

“It’s the sound,” she says. “I like the sound, here.”

“Right.” He looks at the pill again, chewing the inside of his lip. “You kept it all this time?”

She kept it in her fist, hidden from the peace officers, until they made it back to the city. Then she bent to tie her shoes, and tucked it into the cup of her bra, hoping they wouldn’t find it. But they didn’t seem to care what she wore into the Aperture, what she brought with her. It’s how Mary Pritchard kept her pearls, how Nikhil kept the photograph of Nora, Aaron, and Alexander that lived in his wallet.

All Sonya brought in was her Sol.

“I didn’t know what the uprising would do to me, after they arrested me,” she says. “It seemed like a good idea to have a way out. And then it just kept seeming like a good idea to have a way out.”

“That,” he says, “is a terrifying thing for a girl of seventeen to have to consider.”

She nods.

“So what’s this about?” he says, nodding to her hand. “Shame?”

“I talked to the Wards,” she says, looking across the water at the faint bumps of hills on the horizon, gray and fuzzy from the distance and the cloud layer. “Grace Ward’s mother asked me what I spent my DesCoin on, after getting her daughter killed. You know what it was?” She laughs, and somehow the laugh turns into a sob. “I slept with Aaron. He’d been trying to convince me it was worth it, but I wasn’t willing to do it unless I had an unexpected windfall.” She pushes her free hand through her hair, knots her fingers in the fine strands. “God, it’s so vile. I can’t...” She chokes. “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand what I did to them. I can’t stand to knowwhy.”

She closes both hands into fists, and digs them into her legs.

“I’ll always know what I did, and what came of it,” she says. “I will never be rid of it.”

Alexander lays a hand on her fist, gentle, to get her to relax it. Then he sits forward, resting his elbows on his spread knees, and stares at the ground between his feet.

“You were trying to earn absolution for what you did,” he says. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Well, so was I.”

He’s always moving, Alexander Price, fidgeting with something in his pocket, playing with his food at the dinner table, tossing a coin as he waits for the HiTrain, chewing his fingernails in the middle of conversations. Every memory she has of him, he’s moving. He turns toward her now, lifting his eyes to hers, and he finally goes still.

“I didn’t betray my family,” he says. “I know you think I did, but I didn’t need to—my father surrendered himself right away. And I hadn’t done much for the resistance movement, you know? I had joined up a few months before, but hadn’t made much progress, and during the uprising, I was just terrified it wouldn’t be enough—terrified they would arrest me, too, maybe kill me. I should have hated them, after Mom and Aaron died in the rioting, but I was just afraid of them. So when they asked me where they might find your father...” His throat clicks as he swallows. “I told them. I didn’t think about what would happen to you, or your sister, I just...”

Sonya keeps her eyes steady on his. He shakes his head.

“Ten years later, I found out from a friend that the Triumvirate were evaluating your case—you were right on the line for release,” he says. “They thought it was too much of a risk to release you, you were too well known, too much of a symbol for the Delegation. So I barged into the hearing and I suggested they give you something to do, instead. Some way to earn your way out. I said I had some unresolved matters that might be suitable, and they agreed. I thought—if I can get her out of there, if I can get her freedom, it’ll undo what I did to her.”

He shakes his head.

“It doesn’t,” he says. “I know that. I know there’snothing—”

Sonya reaches out. She sets her hand on his arm, drawing his eyes to hers again.

“Sasha,” she says. “I’ve known this since the Delegation fell.”

His eyes look so dark, in this light. A cold, dark brown turned black by a cloudy day.

“There were only so many people who knew where that cabin was,” she says. “And most of them were dead before the uprising found us. Why do you think I hated you so much when you turned up in my apartment?” She tilts her head a little. “Well, I guess there were a few reasons to choose from.”

“You knew,” he says.

She nods. “I tried to keep hating you. But you were young and scared. I know what it’s like to be young and scared.” She shrugs a little. “You didn’t earn it. At some point—I don’t even remember when—I just... swallowed it.”

She looks out at the water again. It crashes against the embankment wall in an imperfect rhythm.

“I guess,” she says, “I can’t make the Wards swallow it for me.”

“No,” he says, softly. “You can’t. Not even by dying for it.”

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