“There is definitely something wrong with you if you think that I would sear my own skin with a burning-hot iron without an anesthetic,” I say a little more loudly than I mean to, but she is making me so angry. We both look at the teenager, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off his phone.
“There’s just nobody who can back up your story,” she says. “Your family and Mr. Berry were all taken out of the room for the fifth brand. Nobody was in the viewing room. There’s nothing about it in the reports.”
She really doesn’t know about Carrick or Mr. Berry, and I’m sure Funar wouldn’t have told anybody that they managed to rush into the room and witness it all, seeing as it was his mistake.
“Have you talked to the guards?” I ask.
“No. But I’ve read the reports. The guards write them.”
“Yes. But did you speak to them?”
“No.”
“Interesting.” I finish the last of my coffee and stand up feeling more confident but hoping more than anything that I won’t bump into Crevan again. It’s clear that I’m putty in his hands now. “I have to get home, or my mom will be worried. You should talk to the guards. They might tell you something different. Tina, June, Bark, Funar, and Tony. You should ask for them at the front desk.”
She scrambles for a pen and writes those names down. The speed of her reaction reveals her desperation for the truth. If I can’t find them, she can do the work for me, though it doesn’t mean I can trust her to write the truth if she learns it.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I say. I put on my cap, adjust my F sleeve, and go back out into the world. I leave three voice mail messages on Mr. Berry’s phone, urgently asking him to call me.
There’s one more place I want to visit before I get home.
Part of the Flawed rules is that the Flawed aren’t allowed to be buried with their families; there’s a graveyard especially for them. The idea is that you can’t force the regular moral and ethically abiding people of society to be buried in the ground for all time alongside the Flawed. I go to the only Flawed graveyard in the city, which is surrounded by bright red railings.
There is a list of occupants at the graveyard office along with a log of their misdemeanors, part of the philosophy of being branded Flawed. Even in death, there is no escaping it. I don’t need to go to the desk to search through the logbook. It’s easy to find Clayton Byrne’s grave site. It looks like that of a celebrated martyr. There are dozens of fresh flowers and sweet-scented candles decorating one side of his grave, out of respect for a man who died so tragically. His grave site has become a place for the Flawed to come to, with hope that he is the symbol of change, that his situation will bring light to their plight. I know this because I read the dozens of notes and cards that have been left behind. Others who visit are those who feel his death is a symbol that we are all truly doomed, that there is no hope. This comes in the form of the black roses and black candles that line the other side of the grave. I look at the color and I look at the darkness, the hope and the despair, and I don’t know which side I fall on.
I sit by his grave and light candles; one black, one white. And I cry, for his loss and for mine.
THIRTY-NINE
I OPEN THE front door of my home, and the media look at me in shock. One photographer actually freezes with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. It is the first time since the bus that I have left from my own front door, having always arrived by car and driven directly into the garage. Even after my solo visit to Clayton’s grave, I’d called Mom to pick me up. After being beside herself with worry and anger, she was understanding when she collected me at the graveyard, knowing it was a good step for me to make in my life. I still will do anything to avoid the scrum outside our house. Driving into the garage doesn’t stop the barrage of lenses against the window, but at least it stops the men with cameras trying to aim their lenses up my skirt as I get out of the car, which they have been doing with Mom and Juniper. The prospect of exposed leg or parting thighs is too exciting and appealing for them to miss.