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“She’s covered with bruises and cuts! Her whole stomach, and her arms, too! What have they been—”
“Get out of my room!”
Eden shrieks and I hear footsteps tumbling over each other, then the door slams and Fia’s breathing is heavy.
“What was she talking about?”
“Nothing. Eden’s an idiot. I hate her.”
“She was not talking about nothing!” I stand, reaching out for Fia. She always comes when I reach out for her. But my hands meet only air. She’s staying away from my hands.
She’s never stayed away from my hands before.
“Are you really covered with bruises and cuts?” It comes out a whisper. I shuffle forward, and finally I connect with her. She doesn’t move. I pull the blanket away and tenderly reach for her stomach. It’s smooth. I trace my fingers along and she hisses a sharp breath, and there, under my fingers, on her ribs, the rough ridge of a cut. There, higher, another one. I pull her arm to me, she’s been wearing long sleeves all the time—why hadn’t I noticed that? A long cut down her forearm, another on her shoulder.
“How did this happen?”
“Training,” she says, and her voice has no life.
“What kind of training?”
“Lately it’s been knife fighting.”
“They have you learning knife fighting? I thought you were in a gymnastics and self-defense class!”
“They take it very seriously here, apparently.”
I’m squeezing her arm, maybe I’m hurting her, but I can’t let go, I can’t let go because then I can’t see her at all. She sighs.
“They’re training me to fight. The knives are new. Before it was just hand-to-hand.”
“Like karate?” Karate would be okay. Kids take karate all the time. Not with knives, though.
“Like street fighting. They have real knives. I have a plastic one. I don’t get to stop until I’ve delivered an incapacitating blow. Doesn’t matter how many times I get cut.”
“No.”
“It’s okay, Annie. I don’t get cut much anymore. These are old. They’re almost all healed. And I’m getting very, very good.” Her voice sounds like the knives I can see sliding across her skin, through her skin, her pretty, pale skin, pale like the sand on the beach where I saw her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I back up, pulling her with me, until my legs hit my bed and I can sink down. My fingers trace and trace and trace the lines on her arms.
“It’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal! It’s a huge deal. I can’t believe they’re letting you do this! I’m going to tell Clarice. I’ll complain. This is insane. They have to stop. Is Ms. Robertson behind it? I’ll have her fired!”
“Okay,” she says, and I can tell from the sound of her voice that her head is turned away from me and toward the window. “You talk to Clarice. I’m sure that’ll fix it.”
“Did you tell them you don’t want to do it?”
Her arm moves up as she shrugs. “Yeah. They said it wasn’t optional. Could come in handy someday. They always blabber on about how they tailor our educations to what we’ll need. Maybe I’ll need to be good in a knife fight.”
“You are never going to be in a knife fight,” I say. My head is spinning. I don’t know what’s going on or why she hid this from me. But I’ll tell Clarice, and Clarice will make sure whoever is responsible for this is in serious trouble.
I clutch Fia’s hand, feeling the sand beneath my toes. I thought today would be magical, but as I match up what I saw with what I feel and hear and smell, I just keep seeing the expression on Fia’s face from the vision.
She wasn’t happy.
Nothing about her was happy. I remember my parents’ faces, I remember what happy looks like, of course I do. The dozen other girls shout and laugh around us; I hear a few running through the shallow waves even though it’s far too cold to get in.
