“Oh, I know that!” She forced a high, weird laugh. “I guess I just hoped we’d get a chance to work together. Despite what your father thought.”
“I always hoped—” And then I stopped, pressing my mouth shut. I’d never told Rachel about my plans to become an artist. After the way it had gone with the counselors, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“Hoped what?”
“I thought maybe I could be an artisan. A portrait artist,” I finally concluded. Rachel’s eyebrows lifted.
“A portrait artist? Since when did you care about art?”
“I care!”
But Rachel just gave a sort of vague shake of her head. “Terra, I’ve never known you to care about anything.”
Her words sank into me like a stone. I guess I shouldn’t have been mad. It was true, wasn’t it? I spent most of my time rolling my eyes at other people’s passions, not talking about my own. But still, a small spark of defensiveness lit up inside me. I found myself rising to my feet. My hands bumbled blindly through my bag, shoving aside the torn papers and notebooks until I found my sketchbook, the old familiar pages rough and curled. I thrust it at her. My heart sounded in my ears. But as she thumbed through it, something changed. Rachel’s mouth fell gently open.
“Oh, Terra!” she breathed. “These are . . . well, they’re not perfect. But they’re good.”
I felt the heat rise to my face. “Um,” was all I managed to say.
But Rachel hardly noticed my stammered answer. Instead the corner of her mouth edged up, revealing a dimple. “But you know, Terra, if you didn’t want to be a botanist, maybe you should have drawn something besides trees.”
Rachel’s dark eyes seemed to dance as she watched me.
“I couldn’t draw anything else,” I protested. “Abba hated how I wasted all my time drawing. I had to go outside where he wouldn’t catch me. . . .”
“And draw flowers and plants and vines,” she said. I sighed, clutching the book to my chest.
“I guess it’s my fault, then.” I tried to sound lighthearted about the whole thing, but I’m not sure Rachel bought it. She knew me too well for that. “I showed the counselors my sketchbook. They must have thought I was saying I wanted to work with plants.”
“There are worse things that could happen.”
“Like what?” I demanded. “I don’t know the first thing about botany.”
“Oh, I don’t know. They could have made you work in a shop.”
The heat returned, this time spreading over my neck and ears. “I’m—I’m sorry, Rachel,” I stammered.
But Rachel only let out a laugh. “I was only kidding!” she said. I studied her face. From the crinkles around her eyes, I could tell that the laughter was genuine. So I laughed too.
“I’ll miss you, you know,” she said to me.
“What do you mean? I’ll be around.”
But Rachel looked at me meaningfully, and I knew it was the truth. Our lives were about to change. I wouldn’t sit with her in school every day, whispering, sharing laughter.
I reached out my hand, offering it to her. She took my pinkie in hers. That was our secret signal, the one we had always made to each other when we’d sat side by side in school. When something funny happened, or strange, or sad, we always reached down and linked pinkies. It was our way of saying, I’m here and I see it too. It was something we’d done since we were small, and though perhaps we should have long since outgrown it, we hadn’t, not yet. I savored the warm, familiar pressure of her hand.
“I’ll miss you too,” I said at last, and meant it.
4
When I got home that night, a lumpy package was waiting for me on our doorstep. I prodded it with the toe of my boot. It bore the seal of the High Council—gold wax with a circular imprint that I think was supposed to be a pomegranate—and my name in neat calligraphy. I hefted it into my arms and dumped it on the galley table, tearing away the brown paper as Pepper circled my ankles and whined.
The package was filled with unbleached cloth—rough linen that wasn’t quite funerary white but still depressed me. I lifted the first length of it and held the long lab coat against me. I might be tall, but the sleeves still trailed over my arms. I wondered who it had belonged to before they’d given it to me. Clearly, it was recycled. It definitely hadn’t been cut to my measurements, and the pale color would do my equally pale complexion few favors.
But it was definitely mine. My name was even stitched onto the breast in blue thread. Terra Fineberg, it read, Specialist. I ran my fingers over the embroidery. Then I reached out and touched the rank cord on the shoulder. The braid was the color of bluebells, just like the one on my father’s coat. But the braided threads were much newer, not dingy and dirt darkened like his. I touched it tentatively, slipping my finger into the loop at the top.
This means something, I told myself. This means you’re a citizen, almost an adult. But I didn’t feel it. In fact, I didn’t feel much of anything. With a grimace I thrust the coat down at the table and went to the icebox to fetch Pepper his dinner.
I scraped the leftover meat and bonemeal into his bowl, then watched for a moment as he pawed at it before diving in. As he licked the bowl clean, I went to the sink, where the tower of crusty dishes had been waiting since the night before. I switched the sink on. The pipes clattered and rang before a murky stream of brown water trickled out. I pulled up my sleeves and went to work, scrubbing the old dented pots and nicked china, letting the rhythm of the water wash over me.
I didn’t hear my father come in. His footsteps were lost beneath the steady drone of tap water and my own tuneless whistling. But I heard the windows rattle when he slammed the door shut, and I jumped, splashing water over the floor. I waited for him to say something about his visit to the hatchery, to comment on how big his granddaughter was growing and what a wonderful father Ronen would be. But he didn’t. He only went to one of our cupboards, uncorked a cloudy bottle of wine, and took a long draw from it. As he passed, I got a nice whiff of him—that sour smell of alcohol and sweat. Drunk already.
“You’re wasting the water,” he said, reaching past me to turn it off. I held my hands tight at the edge of the sink, not wanting to let his skin brush mine. On nights like these I never knew if I could trust him. His broad, age-spotted fingers had backhanded me one too many times.
“Sorry,” I murmured. He gave a grunted response, then crossed the galley and collapsed at the table. For a moment he just sat there, shoulders slumped, turning the bottle in his hands. But then he spotted the pile of flaxen cloth.
“What’s this?”
I put the last dish on the rack, fumbled through the greasy water for the drain stopper, then turned, bracing myself.
“My uniforms,” I said.
He put the bottle down on the table. His fingers skidded across its splintered surface, finally grasping one of the coats by the sleeve and pulling it toward him.
“Specialist,” he said, flatly at first. But then his hand alighted on the cord, and I saw something unfamiliar dance across his mouth. A smile.
“Terra,” he said. He rose to his feet, still clutching the coat in his hands. Then he crossed the galley and crushed me in a hug. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I held them high between our bodies, shielding myself even as my face was pressed against the brass buttons of his coat.