“Well,” Merri Lee said after a moment. “Your hair is a solid black now. Not even a stray orange tip anywhere. And on the bright side, your hair will be easy to care for this summer.”
Meg hesitantly brushed a hand over her head. Different. Everything would feel different; all her routines would need to be adjusted.
“What?” Merri Lee asked. “You’ve got a look on your face like you just realized something.”
“I’m not sure. I need to use the bathroom.”
“Do you have a spare pad of paper? I’ll pick up a notebook at the Three Ps later that we’ll keep in here for our notes.”
“That drawer.” Meg pointed. “I have an extra pad that fits the clipboard I use for deliveries.”
She went into the bathroom, keeping her eyes focused below the level of the mirror. She studied her hands, the familiar shape. The familiar scars. Then she rested her fingers against her face and looked in the mirror. Fair skin with a hint of rose in the cheeks. Gray eyes. Black hair, eyebrows, eyelashes.
Today this is my face. This is the face Simon recognizes as Meg.
She lowered her hands. No panic this time.
She couldn’t recall any training images of a person being surprised by having a haircut. Now she had the image of her own face in the mirror, shocked and unprepared for the physical alteration. And she had Merri Lee’s story of a similar action that had shaken a person’s sense of herself.
As Meg left the bathroom, she glanced at the under-the-counter fridge and realized she hadn’t had lunch yet. If Merri Lee hadn’t eaten either, maybe they could call Hot Crust and have a pizza delivered. Pizza was comfort food, wasn’t it?
She crossed the threshold, glanced around, and froze. “No.” She rushed to the CD player on the counter, knocking Merri Lee aside, and moved the stack of CDs from the left side of the player to the right.
Merri Lee took a step back. “Gods above and below, Meg! What’s wrong with you?”
Meg pressed her hands on the stack of CDs. “You can’t move these.”
“I was just making a little room on the counter!”
“You can’t change the constant things!” Meg screamed.
Merri Lee stared for a long moment. Then she stepped forward and placed her hand over Meg’s. “Calm down. The CDs are back where they belong. Breathe, Meg. Just breathe.”
Breathe. She could breathe. Simple. Routine.
“Will you be okay if I go into the back room and get us some water?” Merri Lee asked.
Meg nodded.
Merri Lee hurried out of the room, then hurried back in carrying a bottle of water and two glasses. After pouring the water, she handed a glass to Meg. They drank, avoiding eye contact, staying silent.
“Okay,” Merri Lee said. “I guess it’s time to ask some questions. You’ve been here four and a half months. Things change in this office every day, and you haven’t freaked out until now. Was the haircut the trigger? The one thing too many? If you can’t tolerate things changing, how have you survived? How do you survive? We need to figure this out.”
“It’s just a bad day,” Meg protested weakly.
“Yeah, a bad day and the shock of the haircut. Emotional overload. I understand that, Meg. I do. Just like I understand experiencing information overload, when you just can’t take in anything else. I even understand being a bit obsessive-compulsive about your things. But you pushed me aside and screamed at me. Which I guess is better than breaking down, because at least you’re still interacting with me. And that’s the point. You’ve done so much, and so much has happened to you in the past few months, and today—today—you reached your limit. But Simon said those other girls are breaking down every day, and they’ve been out of the compound less than a month. What about other girls who want to leave, who want to live outside and are faced with trying to cope?”
“I don’t know how to help them.” Tears stung Meg’s eyes.
“Yes, you do, but what you did to help yourself you did instinctively. Now Meg, the Trailblazer, has to figure out what she did so that we can tell the other girls.”
Brushing away the tears, Meg took another sip of water.
“The constant things can’t change,” Merri Lee prompted. “What makes something a constant thing?” She studied the stack of CDs. “Always five? But not the same five? And always to the right side of the player?”
“Yes.” Meg looked around the room. “I expect things to change in the sorting room because that’s what happens here. That is the function of the room. Things go in and out, but the room stays the same. The table is always in the same place. So is the telephone and the CD player. The pigeonholes in the back wall don’t move.”
“What about when you’re at home?”
“I have a routine. I follow the routine, just like I follow the roads in the Courtyard when I’m making deliveries.”
“And when the routine is disrupted? Like the times when our Quiet Mind class was canceled?”
“I feel . . . uneasy . . . until I decide what to do instead.”
“Constant versus change. A limited tolerance for change within the constants. And feeling stressed when routines are disrupted.”
Meg recalled images of expressions and decided fear was closest to what she saw on Merri’s face. “You know something.”
“I don’t know anything yet. We need to get Mr. Wolfgard’s permission to do a few experiments before I’ll feel easy about telling someone else what I’m thinking. But if I’m right about why the blood prophets on Great Island are having breakdowns, all the cassandra sangue who left captivity are in serious trouble.”
CHAPTER 4
Thaisday, Maius 10
Taking a seat at the low table in the Business Association’s room, Simon studied the index cards Merri Lee had created from the visions Meg had seen, then handed them to Elliot, the only other person in the meeting who hadn’t already seen them.
Girls and silver razors and roadkill. Why were the girls on the roads alone?
All right, Meg had traveled alone from the Midwest all the way to Lakeside, but she’d traveled by train and bus. She hadn’t been walking beside a road where she might get hit by a car and be left to die like a raccoon or deer.
But she had walked the streets in Lakeside part of the time. At night. In a snowstorm. By herself.
Even puppies weren’t that dumb or that foolishly brave.
Meg wasn’t usually dumb or foolish. But she had been desperate when she ran away from the Controller, and other girls could be as desperate to get away. And yet . . .
“This feels wrong,” Simon said. “Even if the humans are angry with us for making them say where the blood prophets are being kept, why would they let girls they considered valuable just wander off? That feels wrong.”
“You think Meg made a mistake?” Henry asked.
“No.” But maybe we did. We don’t think like humans, so maybe we made the mistake. “Meg saw this as something we need to deal with, but the only cassandra sangue within reach of Lakeside are Meg and the girls living on Great Island. None of them are in danger of being roadkill.”
“Meg and those girls aren’t in danger,” Vlad agreed. “But we received the warning, so we’re the ones who can send the warning to the rest of the terra indigene. I sent out an alarm to the Sanguinati. They’re already searching for any girls who appear lost or abandoned. And they’re looking for any females lying next to a road or in a ditch. I also talked to Jenni Crowgard. She’s asking all the Crowgard to search for blood prophets—and Starr and Crystal flew out to tell the regular crows. They’ll spread the word among their own kind and will tell the Crowgard if they notice anything new in their territories.”