Tai-ge grabs both our jackets from the hooks in the entryway, and before his mother can protest any further, he throws open the front door and drags me down the steps.
“Be quick!” Comrade Hong yells after us. “If you aren’t back in the next ten minutes . . . !” But the rest of whatever she wanted to say is lost as we run through the circular gate that connects the Hong compound to the street, our breath misting out in front of us in the frozen air.
Tai-ge tows me around a corner, but slips on the icy paving stones when I don’t move fast enough, sending me sliding into a patch of early snow. The fall knocks the wind out of me, but I manage to kick his feet out from under him before he’s done laughing. We both lie on the ground for a few minutes, looking up at the stars. It’s a miracle we can even see the first few in the twilight. Smoke from the Third Quarter factories usually keeps the whole City under a cover of smog.
It almost seems impossible that it has been eight years since I stood sullenly outside the Hong’s house, hand still scabbed over from the brand newly burned into my skin. It sort of looks like a star. A melted, ruined star, seared into the flesh between my thumb and forefinger.
The man who gave it to me didn’t say anything. Just unpinned the star from his collar. I sat there watching as he stuck the pin in the fire until the metal glowed red, only a rag protecting his hand from the brutal heat. I closed my eyes before he pressed the pin to the single line that marked me as a First, charring away any evidence that I ever had a place in the City. I don’t remember if it hurt, how it smelled, or whether I said thank you afterward. I only remember the vertigo of my entire world shifting from First to Fourth.
Tai-ge was out on the front steps that day to usher me in before his parents could shoo him away, as if he didn’t care how far my family had fallen. He was the army personified, honored to take part in my reintegration into the politically correct proletariat. But the moment his parents looked away, Tai-ge’s military straight posture relaxed and he shoved a red cellophane–wrapped candy into my sore hands, the same shifty look in his eye as Mother had when she used to make a game of slipping my sister, Aya, and me sweets, seeing how many we could hide before Father noticed.
I close my eyes and shake the thought away before it can burn like molten lead at the back of my mind. No thoughts of Aya tonight.
When I open my eyes, Tai-ge is pointing up at a blinking light as it slowly pulses across the sky. “Satellite or Kamari heli-plane?” he asks me, the lamps hanging over the nearest compound gates casting a golden sheen over his skin.
“Better hope it’s a satellite. A Kamari bombing spree would definitely keep you out here longer than ten minutes, and I don’t think your mother would consider an enemy attack a good enough excuse for your being late.”
“It’s probably just a City patroller.” Tai-ge squints at the sky as if trying to decide.
When Tai-ge stands, he pulls me up with him, brushing at the snow clinging to the dark wool of my coat. My face pinkens as his hand catches on one of my buttons.
“I don’t think you have to worry.” I pretend to look up the street to hide my blush, the mountain pricked yellow and white above us, lights from the First and Second Quarters too dim to wash out our view of the stars. “Even Kamar seems to know that bombs so close to the First Quarter are unacceptable. They keep it to the Thirds and the factories.”
“Where they can destroy our munitions and food. It makes sense.”
“Well, if I were in charge, I’d go straight to the top.” I point up the mountain to the highest lights twinkling in the darkness. “The First Circle all live right in the same neighborhood, don’t they? If you cut the head off, the chicken might flap around for a little bit trying to pretend it’s still alive, but it’ll still lie down dead in the end.”
“Lucky I’m not a First, I guess. Don’t let my parents hear you talking like that, or they’ll be checking your room for knives.”
I close my mouth, wishing it would just cement shut. “You might as well be First, Hong Tai-ge. Or don’t you see the way we all jump when your father barks? Perhaps Reds will move up to the First Quarter, and a new era will begin where Second comes before First.”
Reds. Tai-ge shakes his head at the nickname, looking down at the two lines scored into the skin on the back of his hand that mark him a Second. I’m not the only one who calls Seconds “Reds.” It’s hard not to, with their City-red coats, City-red carpet, and City-red souls.
Tai-ge reaches across to flick some snow from my cheek, snapping my attention away from my thoughts. I can’t help but look at him now, his hand warm against my cold skin. His eyes are so dark the irises look black. He doesn’t move, as if the cold has frozen the two of us together.
But then he blinks, pulling his hand away from me to stick it deep in his jacket pocket. “My father knows his place. He knows mine, too, and often reminds me that it isn’t playing with you in the snow.” He starts down the street without me, but then waits for me to draw even with him, leaving a few feet of space between us.
I run my fingers through my long hair to brush out the last bits of damp clinging to me, trying to shake the hollow feeling that growls deep in my chest as he keeps the appropriate distance between us on our walk. Tai-ge is right to keep his distance. And I should be more careful about keeping mine. I won’t ruin his future. Not on purpose, at least.
We silently turn down the road toward the Aihu River bridge that marks the edge of the Second Quarter, both of us trying to ignore the awkwardness between us. Somewhere up the mountain is a lake that feeds the river, above the First Quarter and the blunt cliffs that edge the whole east side of the City. On the other side of the bridge lies the dividing wall that will forever separate my life from Tai-ge’s. A Third climbs a ladder propped up against the closest bridge support as we walk by, only allowed on this side of the barrier to blow the red paper lanterns strung across the bridge back to life. The lights sparkle in the dark waves of the river and across the sheen of frost coating the bridge.
We stand together, companionably watching puffs of smoke creep toward us from the Third Quarter below. A sigh streams out of me as the last bit of light drains out of the sky. Time to go back or they’ll send out the Watch to find me.
Before I can suggest we move, Tai-ge breaks the silence, pointing to the dedication painted in red and black across the huge wooden supports just in front of the barrier that blocks the Third Quarter off from the river. He points to the characters as he reads, each syllable sharp and clear. “?‘Aihu Bridge, erected Year Four by the Liberation Army. United to stop Sleeping Sickness,’?” he recites, shaking his head. “That was Yuan Zhiwei’s dream, but look at us now, almost a century later. We sit up here with nowhere to hide. Bombs fall on us at least once a month. How much longer before they send their armies up here, do you think? Just cut us all down.”
“Kamar couldn’t walk a whole army up this high on the mountain; that was the point—”
“They were never supposed to find us at all.” Tai-ge stares up at the sky again, as if he’s searching for the blinking light we saw earlier. “Everyone thought we’d be safe, and we were up until . . .” He breaks off when he looks down, and I realize my hands are twined together as if I can hide the brand. “I’m sorry, Sevvy. I didn’t mean to say it like that.”