Page 66 of Poster Girl

“If she hadn’t found it yet, they would have disabled the leech, and then there would be no time pressure,” he says. “It has to be something shealready found.”

Sonya frowns.

“She had the UIAs,” she says. “I got her the name associated with Grace Ward’s Insight yesterday. She told me once I did that, she could find her. You think someone killed Emily Knox over a missing girl?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I know John Clark came by my office to ask me to let this go. I know Grace Ward is being held against her will. And now the only person who was able to help us find her is dead, and no one is claiming responsibility.”

He sounds tense, almost excited. But Sonya feels heavy. Deflated.

“Someone wanted to stop me,” she says, “and they’ve succeeded. You realize that, right? There’s nowhere for me to go from here.”

“There has to be,” he says. “You can’t give up now, Sonya.”

“Why not?”

“Yourfreedom.”

“Fuck my freedom, Sasha!” she snaps. “What am I supposed to do out there? I don’t have any family, or friends. I don’t have any skills. I don’t have any dreams. I’m just wearing away at the time I have left, wondering why I didn’t swallow that Sol ten years ago.”

His face contorts.

“If that’s really how you feel, why did you ever agree to do this?” he says, quietly. “I keep wondering.”

“That...” She closes her eyes. “Is none of your business.”

“Fine.” He stands, and moves toward the door. Stops, looks back. “You just called me Sasha, you know.”

She does know. She can still feel the name in her mouth, the wrong shape. The name she called him as a child, because it was what her mother called him. Back before Sonya hated him.

He hesitates with his hand on the door frame, then turns around, and touches her shoulder, gently, where it joins with her neck. She looks up at him.

“I’m glad you’re still alive,” he says. “If that counts for anything.”

He leaves. She puts her hand on her neck, where his fingers touched bare skin.

Without Nikhil to remind her, Sonya forgot that today is the anniversary of the uprising. She remembers in the late afternoon, when someone in the city beyond the Aperture sets off fireworks. She pulls back the tapestry in her apartment to look at them. Sprays of blue and green and purple dot the sky above the buildings in the distance. Outside, this is a holiday. The day the people triumphed over the Delegation, at last, and freed themselves from the tyranny of the Insight.

Inside the Aperture, it’s not a holiday.

She puts on her warmest sweater and her coat, grabs her flashlight, and makes her way downstairs. The widows are meeting in the courtyard. Mrs. Pritchard wears her pearls. She only has them in the Aperture because she was wearing them when the uprising arrested her and her husband. She could have sold them to a guard, gotten herself some luxuries—a down comforter, a rug, a refrigerator—but she refused. Sonya respects her for it.

Sonya greets the widows and walks through the tunnel. She pauses at David’s name and turns on her flashlight to see it, carved in neat uppercase. Then she keeps walking, crossing Gray Street and walking straight into the tunnel that leads to Building 2. She hasn’t been there in years. She ignores Gabe and Seby, sharing a lighter in the courtyard, and points the flashlight up at her family’s names.

Julia Kantor

August Kantor

Susanna Kantor

She tries to remember their faces, but they’re just smears in her memory. She doesn’t have any pictures of them, just the vivid memory of them slumped over at the table, glassy-eyed, as Sonya sat frozen, pill in hand. She assumes the uprising cremated their bodies along with all the others, and discarded the ashes . . . somewhere. Some people in the Aperture treat these names like grave sites, they come here and talk tothe dead. David always said that was stupid, they were just names on a fucking wall.

She turns off the flashlight, and walks down Gray Street. The others have gathered where Gray Street and Green Street cross. Instead of the market, there’s a line of four people standing in the exact center, papers in hand. A representative for each building, to read the names of the family members who died in the uprising. Sonya forgot to submit hers, this year, but Nikhil won’t forget.

She stands in the crowd. The first year in the Aperture, they did this ceremony with candles, but candles are a precious commodity now. Flashlights, however, are something everyone has access to. They’re part of the first aid and safety kits the Triumvirate issues to the Aperture every year. Someone at the front of the crowd bangs a pot with a spoon to get everyone to quiet down, and silence moves through the crowd fast. Everyone turns off their flashlights, leaving the Aperture in total darkness. Sonya holds her flashlight at her sternum, like a vigil candle, her thumb poised over the button.

In years past, people gave speeches. Four years ago, someone decided to read a poem—that was a nightmare. But this year no one seems inclined. The representative from Building 1—Kathleen—just starts reading from her list of names. As she says the first one, “Michael Andrews,” a flashlight goes on in their midst, a woman buried in the Building 1 section of the crowd. More lights go on in that section as Kathleen continues.

Fireworks go off in the city,poppoppop.Sonya hears distant singing. Her feet go numb as she waits through the names for Buildings 1 and 2 and 3. She flexes her hands around the flashlight. Nikhil begins his list, his voice deep enough to carry. He doesn’t forget her family. “August, Julia, and Susanna Kantor,” he says, and Sonya turns on her flashlight, sending the beam up to the indifferent sky.

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