Page 36 of Poster Girl

“He warned me about you, you know,” she says. “Said you might be a little insensitive. Still stuck in an old pattern.”

Sonya sets her jaw. She wraps her hands around the warm mug.

“If Sam wasn’t planned,” Sonya says, “and having him was dangerous for both of you—I just don’t understand.”

Cara touches her hands to her stomach, still staring out the window.

“Like I said, I didn’t want to,” Cara says, firmly. “I was . . .happy.I was scared, but I was happy. That should be enough, shouldn’t it?” She meets Sonya’s eyes. “Aren’t you a second child, Ms. Kantor?”

“Yes,” Sonya says.

“Your parents wanted you, too, didn’t they? They dreamed about you, and planned for you, and imagined what you might be like.” Cara’s skin is freckled, even her eyelids. She closes them now, for a moment. “I did that, too. In the days after I figured out I was pregnant, I thought about all the things he could be, and Iwanted him.The difference is that nobody told me I was worthy of him.”

Sonya thinks of the petition her parents showed her, the one asking for permission for her to exist. The one with all their credentials—justifying their desire, arguing for it. A promise that her life would be worth something. And now... the most she’s accomplished in her life is a few crops of tomatoes, a mended radio, and a refusal to die. There’s no way to guarantee a worthwhile life.

Cara moves on: “So I stopped going to the doctor. But we couldn’t start spending DesCoin on supplies—our daughter, she was four, she didn’t need diapers or any of that stuff—so for a while we were just confused, but then my mom said there was a whole currency for people who couldn’t spend DesCoin freely.”

“What was it?”

“Mustard.” Cara laughs, a little too loud. “All luxury nonperishables, you could sell them back to retailers, and buying and selling them was DesCoin-neutral. So if we bought mustard or... jars of pickles, or whatever, we could go to the black market to swap them for the stuff we needed. The other parents would bring their extra supplies to the market and trade them for mustard, then they could sell the mustard back and get DesCoin. It was a network—everyone working in small enough quantities that the Delegation didn’t notice. And even if they did notice, were they really going to investigate a bunch of mustard?”

Sonya sits still, the cup of tea steaming in front of her. The Wards’ purchase records had luxury nonperishables in them—jellies and jams, mustard, jars of cornichons and pickled onions.

“That’s how we got diapers for a while,” Cara says. “Sounds stupid now.”

“Not really,” Sonya says. “Is that how you bought an Insight for Sam?”

“Oh, we never got an Insight for him,” Cara says. “That’s how they found us. Someone told us if we stayed blindfolded when we were with him, we would be okay—but they were wrong.” She flinches a little and sips her tea. “I heard that there was somebody working in the Insight office who would mark new Insights as faulty and sell them to people like us—we never got the DesCoin together for that, though.”

Sonya sips her tea, too. It tastes like smoke and seaweed. She wants to ask for sugar, but she doesn’t.

“The people who adopted him,” she says, and she feels like someone walking across a newly frozen puddle, hoping the ice will hold. “They got him an Insight? Through the usual means?”

Cara nods, and stares at the light in Sonya’s right eye.

“The earliest they’ll remove Insights now is ten,” she says. “He’d just had the surgery when we got him back. His adoptive mother—the parents split after the uprising, how ironic—she saved up a long time to get it taken out. Seemed strange to me that she was so determined. The system was good to her, wasn’t it?”

“So you met her,” Sonya says. “Did she ever say how she was chosen?”

Cara shrugs.

“They submitted an application for adoption,” she says. “She had some medical issue, she couldn’t get pregnant. They got approved, and one day they were informed that the Delegation had a child for them.” She shrugs again, too fast, compulsive. “She isn’t a bad person. She was good to him. We have monthly visits, you know. So he can still see her.”

Sonya can tell it costs her something to admit the woman who raised her son—the woman who stole his first steps, first laughs, first scraped elbows, all his beginnings—is not a villain. She can’t quite imagine it. The feeling of being a parent is alien to her.

“I can tell he misses her, though,” she says. “Even though he doesn’t say so. But then, he doesn’t say much of anything, really.”

She sips her tea.

“How did Alexander find him?” Sonya says, quiet again.

“He matched up adoption records with the date Sam was taken,” she says. “That wasn’t the name we gave him—we called him Andrew—but he was raised as Sam so it seemed easier to... Anyway, in our case, there was only one couple that adopted around the same time that he was taken, so it was easy enough. It’s not like we recognized him.” She laughs, and it’s so bitter Sonya has to look away. “Maybe he looks like us, and maybe he doesn’t. He looked like her, too. His mom. Close enough for her to pretend, if she wanted.”

The boy in the yard has set the stick down now, and is walking across the yard, his hands in his pockets.

Deep lines frame Cara’s mouth when she frowns.

“What’s it been like, having him home?” Sonya asks.

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