Da’ard pills are hard to come by in the orphanage. The nuns seem to think painkillers are a waste on kids who are causing most of the pain in the first place. Enduring pain builds character, as Sister Lei might say. In my experience, pain mostly builds my bad temper and lands me extra chores.
Fortunately, Tai-ge slipped me some last year when I broke my arm. It was his fault anyway. He was the one who wanted a look at the First Circle passing judgment on some chemical bomb tactics the Reds formulated. Just to get a look at them, he said. They were holding the meeting in the People’s Garden on the Second side of the City Center, where anyone could look if they were motivated enough. We see their faces plastered all over the evening announcements and their names polka-dotting the medical research triumphs passed out at least once a week, but the men themselves tend to stay up on the Steppe where test tubes and elevated conversation are a bit more easily come by. Instead of a good look at the men, I got a good look at the ground when Tai-ge accidentally broke the branch above me and knocked me out of the tree we were hiding in. To this day, whenever we manage to eat together alone, I steal all his white rice, saying he doesn’t need the extra weight.
At least I fell outside the People’s Garden wall, out of sight. Can’t think about what the Circle would have made of the Fourth traitor caught spying on them.
Actually, I do know.
In any case, with the leftover Da’ard pills the pain will be manageable, if not completely gone.
I swig the last of my water to wash the pills down and wait for them to take effect. After a few minutes, I twist experimentally and am rewarded with a dull ache instead of lancing pain.
Stealing a coat and boots from the girls who sleep next door, I prepare to go outside. A heavy winter cap with a brim, buttons done up to my chin, an extra set of stars secure on my shoulder so no one will think I’m trying to hide if they catch me. The ones I wore the night of the bombing must be at the bottom of the river with my coat and boots. The pins are supposed to be worn proudly, a marker for our irreplaceable responsibilities, each of us equal, though our tasks are different.
Something makes me stop. I go back to my chest, push the old clothes aside, and pull out a box. Tai-ge made it for me for my fifteenth birthday. There’s a trick to opening it—all the pieces have to slide into place in the correct order before it will open. An ideal hiding place for something I’m not supposed to have. Inside is another gift from Tai-ge from long ago, his name carved deep into the handle in awkward, childish characters. A knife.
Not that I’m going to be fighting anyone. Or even that I could. It just seems right to take it with me, as if bringing Tai-ge’s name along will somehow protect me.
The room across the hall has a window grown over with vines, which should have made it impossible to climb through. Those of us who have been here long enough know how to get it open and outside without disturbing the vines, letting ourselves down into a back alley behind the orphanage with no one to sound the alarm that an infected orphan is letting him or herself out.
Peishan and I used to go to the market when we were supposed to be meditating on the Chairman’s words, though neither of us ever had ration papers to spend. It was nice to feel as if the long, ugly, straight lines of my schedule couldn’t strangle me for the ten minutes I was outside with no one watching me.
I should be able to climb down, eavesdrop until I find out what’s going on, then be back in my room before anyone notices.
The climbing part shoots pain through my rib cage even with the Da’ard, and I’m relieved when my borrowed boots find the dirty paving stones. I cringe as the kitchen door, the only door that opens into the alley, creaks. One of the cooks throws some trash out into the alley, the bag falling open to deposit an apple core and some fish bones at my feet. The cook who threw the bag doesn’t bother to look out, or he would have seen me, paralyzed and attempting to hide behind the vines’ empty skeleton base. Fear curdles through me as I wait for a moment, wondering if the cook will come out to shove the bag through the gate at the back of the alley for the trash collectors to pick up, but he doesn’t.
I keep low as I creep around the corner to the front of the orphanage, hoping no one will notice a little Fourth bobbing about in the bushes. I don’t think the headsman would be called for my climbing out of my room, but it might depend on who catches me, and Outside patrollers don’t have a reputation of being merciful. I duck behind a particularly large bush, hoping I can get close enough to the soldiers to hear if they’re talking. Most of them are hanging around the entrance, waiting for something.
“Do you know when?” one of them asks.
“Awaiting orders. Just like you,” another snaps. “We’re just supposed to keep her contained until all of the evidence can be gathered.”
Evidence? Of what? Are they talking about me? I wait, hoping one of them will randomly decide to run through all the details of the situation, but of course none of the soldiers oblige. They just stand there, watching the street with bored expressions and blowing smoke at one another from their army-issue cigarettes. After a moment, one comes to lean against the orphanage wall, uncomfortably close to my hiding place.
What would happen if I just asked them what is going on? I didn’t do anything wrong. Even if the City did give me four stars for my mother’s crimes, the First Circle and Comrade Hong couldn’t have made something up completely out of the wind and sky.
Could they?
Maybe a couple of jokes could make the soldiers forget they’re standing next to an orphanage riddled with SS. Maybe they won’t notice my mother’s face or my traitor brand. I haven’t been around Outside patrols much, but I bet they need a laugh more than most. Maybe they’ve been fighting Kamari soldiers long enough that one teenage girl with a birthmark won’t be scary anymore.
Of course, all of those “maybes” are quite unlikely. And the idea of approaching an Outside patroller makes me shiver inside my thick wool coat. Every one of those men has seen death. Every one of them has caused it, then walked away to smoke a cigarette.
More soldiers walk up from the opposite direction, putting my hiding place at risk. I slide back between the buildings, only to hear their gruff voices following me, as if they’re coming to check the alleyway. Not enough time to climb up the vines, so I squeeze the rest of the way down the alley to the gate where the cooks leave the trash.
There’s a solid wooden gate blocking the back of the alley, a flap at the bottom only big enough for trash bags to be shoved through for pickup. The trash gets carted off to the wall and thrown over. Outsiders, you’re welcome.
My nose wrinkles at the stench of rotting vegetables as I crouch down and look at the flap. It’s small and coated in stickiness. But if I’m caught outside my room, will whatever Tai-ge was so worried about happen?
The footsteps echo off the brick of the alleyway as I jam myself under the flap, my shoulders scraping against the sides. I have to turn cockeyed for my hips to fit, barely sliding through as the footsteps draw near. I huddle in the mounds of trash with my back against the gate, knees drawn up to my nose. Waiting for them to stick a hand through the flap and grab me.
“Thought for sure I heard something back here.” The gate jiggles against my back as one of the soldiers gives it a kick, the flap swinging with the motion.
“Just rats probably. Don’t think I could fit more than my arm through that flap. Keeps hungry kids from trying to sneak into the kitchens, I guess. Have to be a pretty small kid to fit under there.”
Or a young lady very motivated not to die under the Arch.