“There is not a difference.”
“Grace.” She puts a hand to her chest like I’ve wounded her. “I let Jericho pull strings so I could have my own quarters, and you’re going to stand there and tell me the paint doesn’t matter?”
“I didn’t say it doesn’t matter. I said I can’t see the difference.”
“That’s ayouproblem.”
I laugh, and it comes out easier than I expect, like something in my chest unlocks for a second. It’s the first real laugh I’ve had in days. Kaylin holds the two greens up to the window light, squinting between them with a focus she never gives anything else, and for a moment I let myself just be a girl in a friend’s room looking at paint.
The door’s already open when Nadia leans into it, two mugs in her hands. “Someone said there’s a paint emergency.”
“There is absolutely a paint emergency.” Kaylin waves her in. “Tell her there’s a difference.”
Nadia sets the cups down, takes both chips, holds them at arm’s length, and tips her head.
“This one.” She points to the one on the left without hesitating. “That one’s going to look gray by lamplight.”
“See.” Kaylin turns to me, triumphant. “She gets it.”
“I withhold my opinion,” I say.
Nadia grins and hands me one of the mugs without being asked. Tea, not coffee. I don’t remember telling her that.
“I like how you do that,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Do what?”
“Notice people.” I feel a little shy saying it.
She shrugs like it’s nothing, which is somehow worse, because it means it costs her nothing to see people, and I’ve spent too long learning it isn’t supposed to be that easy.
Kaylin’s back to the chips, holding a third up beside the first two, muttering about undertones. I sip the tea and let the two of them argue color theory, and for a few minutes I forget to keep track of my own face.
That’s when I feel it. Three short pulses against my ankle, through the boot.
My stomach drops before my brain catches up to why.
It’s the middle of the afternoon. They don’t call in the afternoon. Months of this, and the calls have always come atnight, when the compound’s quiet and there’s a reason for me to be alone. Never now. Never with people three feet away.
“You okay?” Kaylin’s looking at me over the paint chips.
“Yeah. I just remembered I told Ember I’d pick up her new notepads on the stationery run today. I totally forgot.”
“She can’t survive an afternoon without a notepad?” Kaylin says.
“She’s got a meeting with Iris and Kieran later, and you know how intense they get. She’ll need to take notes.” It’s a bad lie and I know it the second it’s out of my mouth, but Kaylin’s already turned back to Nadia, asking her opinion on a fourth chip, and neither of them is looking at me anymore.
I don’t run. I make myself walk, unhurried, down the hall and around the corner to the stairwell nobody uses because it only goes up to a locked mechanical floor. I’ve sat on these steps before. Nobody’s ever caught me here.
I pull the phone from my boot with hands that aren’t quite steady and put it to my ear.
“Why are you calling now?” I keep my voice low. “It’s the middle of the day. If someone hears me—”
“No one’s going to hear you.” The voice again. Always a woman. Calm in a way that never once matches the situation. “We need to talk about something, and it can’t wait for tonight.”
“That’s not how this works. We agreed—”
“We’re changing how this works.” Flat. Final. Not unkind, which is somehow worse than if it were. “We’d like to go over everything you’ve provided so far. In person.”
