Her incriminating ties to the Disappearances are growing harder to dismiss. I flinch every time someone mentions the Harvest Fair. October 29.
Stop being ridiculous, I tell myself. Stop being disloyal. Maybe being born on Disappearance Day isn’t incriminating—?maybe, in fact, it’s the reason why she was able to leave.
Yes, I think, glancing up from the words she’s circled in her Shakespeare book. Maybe that’s all it was. Some supernatural transaction, some magic in the air that made her immune because she was born the same day it happened—?something akin to being struck by lightning.
I scratch out another entry to my growing list. Either way, I don’t want anyone else to know the connection. Mother must have been quiet enough about it growing up that people didn’t know—?no one’s said anything about it yet, and even the entry in the Council book made no mention. I’m certainly not going to call attention to it.
But the realization makes me even more anxious for Disappearance Day to be behind us.
Four more days.
Less than twenty-four hours before Disappearance Day I make my way to the courtyard picnic table where I always meet George for lunch. I pull out my peanut butter sandwich and my copy of Underwoods with the missing cover, when suddenly Beas sits down beside me. “May I join you?” she asks.
“Please.” I nod, and she pulls out her brown lunch bag.
“What are you reading?”
I show her my tattered copy of Robert Louis Stevenson. “Looks well-loved,” she says. She digs into her own bag and retrieves a book by John Greenleaf Whittier.
“I’ve never read that one,” I say. “Want to trade?”
“Sure.” She slides her copy across the table. “It’s fun to know someone who’s keen on the same sorts of things.” The sunlight dapples her face like freckles. “A friend,” she adds.
I bite back a pleased smile as George joins us. “Ladies,” he says, unwrapping his own peanut butter sandwich. He eats it in approximately three swallows.
Beas bites into a jam tart. “You haven’t been wearing that necklace lately,” she says to me. “The pretty glass-looking one.”
“Oh,” I say, my fingers finding the empty space where the stone would normally hang, just between my collarbones. “This sort of odd thing happened, actually.” I tell them about waking up and finding it gone.
A look of horror crosses Beas’s face.
“The Disappearances only happen on Disappearance Day, right?” I’m only half kidding. “Other things don’t randomly go missing in the night?”
“No,” Beas says. “That’s unsettling. Stuff like that never happens here. We don’t even lock our doors most of the time.”
“Who could have taken it?” George asks.
I shrug. I don’t like dwelling on it. It still disturbs me enough to keep my Star close at hand all the time. Most days I keep it wrapped up and tucked in the pockets of my skirts and trousers. Just in case.
And then, from out of nowhere, a ball flies toward George’s face. He gives a little yell and jumps out of the way, but it nails him in the arm hard enough to redden his skin.
“Watch out!” someone calls lazily. “Almost another Mackelroy misfortune.”
There’s a snicker, and then two boys from the crowd at the Tempest race move on into the orchard.
“Hilarious,” George mutters, wrapping up the rest of his lunch. “I should be working on my Variant Innovation, anyway.” He waves at us and ambles away, his shirt untucked, his hair smashed at the back of his head as if he just woke up from a nap.
“Kind of unfortunate for George, isn’t it?” Beas says.
I nod. Not that I want the Catalyst to be tied to George, of course. But it feels treacherously nice, on days like these, to be in the honey warmth of the sun instead of Sterling’s shadow.
“I’m glad I got to meet Thom at the race,” I say. “He seems swell.”
“He is,” Beas agrees.
“But he’s not from here,” I say hesitantly. “So . . . how was he allowed to come?”
Beas laughs. “You’re a real rule follower, aren’t you?”
