“My mother told me,” I lie.
They ask more questions about the tufali as we get back to sorting eggs. Most of them I can’t answer because my viewing of the creature was so brief. I can still smell its musk, but I don’t mention that: the scent isn’t quite a real scent, hanging in my nose. It’s more like a memory, an impression of the smell. I try to distract myself with the eggs but am hesitant to touch them, and when I look around for the violet egg from earlier, I don’t see it anywhere.
“How are you supposed to tell the marov egg apart from the roigo egg?” Jaquot stands near me studying his chart. “They look exactly the same.”
They don’t look the same at all, not to me, but I don’t say this out loud. I cautiously pick up a pale blue globe, waiting for the tingle in my fingertips, but nothing happens.
“The marov egg has a noticeable texture,” Yaya says. “It also has a faint yellow ring at one end.”
“Oh, I was just joking,” Jaquot says. He wasn’t. Now he’s pointing at another specimen. “They’re actually really easy to tell apart, but what about this one? This isn’t even in the chart.”
He keeps breaking my concentration. I finally turn to look at the egg he’s referring to if it means he’ll shut up.
“I’m sure it is. Let me see.”
Jaquot reaches for the pinkish egg he’s indicating and goes to pick it up, but then he yelps.
“What?” I demand. “What happened?”
“It’s hot!” he says, tucking his slate under his arm and cradling his hand. “White hot.”
Yaya tentatively touches the egg in question with her fingertip. She snatches her hand back.
“It is,” she says, as if even she is shocked that he’s right.
Without thinking, I reach for the egg, ignoring Jaquot’s words of caution. Its shell feels solid and warm in my palm, but not hot. It’s smooth, comforting. A sensation thrums in my fingers as it did in my encounter with the violet egg, but it’s different somehow. Not tingly this time—instead, a feeling of moisture. I rub my fingers together but they’re dry.
“It’s not hot to you?” Yaya says, disbelief tinting her words.
“It’s not in the identification chart,” Jaquot says again, frowning.
“Yeah, it’s definitely hot.” I turn away in case the lie doesn’t look convincing on my face. I ignore Rondo’s pointed gaze and move toward the bins. “I’ll just put it in an empty bin by itself. The whitecoats will know what to do with it.”
We’re silent for a while, the mountain of eggs getting smaller and smaller as we sort them into bins. My mind goes again to the spotted man, and then to my mother’s words in the hallway. The heat of the two eggs can’t be coincidence—do they have a different purpose than hatching offspring? But why doesn’t the heat bother me? I find myself yet again wishing that my grandmother were still alive. I was eleven when she disappeared, but it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve begun to wish I’d asked her more questions.
Alma comes to my side, where I’m collecting three or four roigo eggs.
“Why don’t you tell me anything anymore?” Alma says softly.
There are so many things to hide, I’m not sure which one she might be alluding to, and it’s as if the herd of secrets inside me scatters at the glow of her searchlight, shadowy legs running for cover.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You acted like you’d never had zunile before, or even heard of it.”
“I—what?”
“Zunile,” she says impatiently. “At second meal today none of us had ever seen zunile before and you acted like you hadn’t either.”
She’s talking about food. I’d almost laugh if I weren’t so confused.
“Maybe your parents told you not to tell anyone since it’s new. They were probably still researching it or whatever,” she says, not looking at me. “But you could have told me. Stars, O, you always used to tell me stuff.”
“I’m confused,” I admit.
“While you were walking with Rondo, your mom told me you’re allergic to it,” she whispers sharply. “How would she know you’re allergic if you’ve never eaten it before?”
“She said that?” Why would my mother lie?
“Yes. She made me and Yaya promise to never let you eat it since she won’t always be around. Why did you try eating it today if you’re allergic? You know reactions to new food can be dangerous.”
The lies swim in my throat like myn, growing legs to scale my tongue. The only person who has known the truth lately is Rondo, and standing here in this too-bright room, my best friend looking in my eyes with a dozen unanswered questions, I can’t figure out why. My parents are secret keepers: my mother whispering behind her closed study door, my father and the deep canyon of silence that has settled heavily between us. My mouth is open, ready to continue the lie that my mother has told. But why? If she’s going to tell Yaya and Alma a lie—me being allergic to a plant I’ve never even heard of—then why not at least clue me in, let me know, so that I can corroborate? She truly must think I’m weak, that I can’t handle whatever it is that she knows.
Suddenly all the secrets feel unbearably stupid. My mother trying to keep me out of the internships. The philax. The spotted man. The eggs. The idea of keeping them hidden inside me for another minute makes me tired. So I take a deep breath and I tell Alma the truth.
CHAPTER 11
Three days later, Alma and I are sharing my bedroom, her and the other interns’ things finally packed and moved. I can only imagine Draco and the other irritable drivers complaining about having to transport interns back and forth between compounds while the whitecoats settled who would stay with whom. But now she’s here. Having Alma present to fill the silence of my always empty ’wam is like a stitch across an open wound.
It’s morning, and an engineer is in my room building Alma’s bed. We have nothing else to do—no assigned research from sorting duty—so we stand in the doorway watching. He doesn’t say much as he builds, working from a huge case of white clay he wheeled in, using a handheld flat spade to shape her sleeping platform. It’s above my own, built into the wall like a shelf. The clay dries almost instantly, and watching him work, I realize it must take years of practice to get the process just right. He does it deftly, scooping the clay out of the case and turning swiftly back to my wall to create thick layers that gradually begin to take the shape of my own sleeping platform. I keep expecting to get bored, but we stand there watching until he finishes.
“What about when she moves out?” I ask. “Do I just have two beds now?”
He’s cleaning up, wiping his spade on his apron. He smiles.