Less than twenty-four hours before Disappearance Day I make my way to the courtyard picnic table where I always meet George for lunch. I pull out my peanut butter sandwich and my copy of Underwoods with the missing cover, when suddenly Beas sits down beside me. “May I join you?” she asks.
“Please.” I nod, and she pulls out her brown lunch bag.
“What are you reading?”
I show her my tattered copy of Robert Louis Stevenson. “Looks well-loved,” she says. She digs into her own bag and retrieves a book by John Greenleaf Whittier.
“I’ve never read that one,” I say. “Want to trade?”
“Sure.” She slides her copy across the table. “It’s fun to know someone who’s keen on the same sorts of things.” The sunlight dapples her face like freckles. “A friend,” she adds.
I bite back a pleased smile as George joins us. “Ladies,” he says, unwrapping his own peanut butter sandwich. He eats it in approximately three swallows.
Beas bites into a jam tart. “You haven’t been wearing that necklace lately,” she says to me. “The pretty glass-looking one.”
“Oh,” I say, my fingers finding the empty space where the stone would normally hang, just between my collarbones. “This sort of odd thing happened, actually.” I tell them about waking up and finding it gone.
A look of horror crosses Beas’s face.
“The Disappearances only happen on Disappearance Day, right?” I’m only half kidding. “Other things don’t randomly go missing in the night?”
“No,” Beas says. “That’s unsettling. Stuff like that never happens here. We don’t even lock our doors most of the time.”
“Who could have taken it?” George asks.
I shrug. I don’t like dwelling on it. It still disturbs me enough to keep my Star close at hand all the time. Most days I keep it wrapped up and tucked in the pockets of my skirts and trousers. Just in case.
And then, from out of nowhere, a ball flies toward George’s face. He gives a little yell and jumps out of the way, but it nails him in the arm hard enough to redden his skin.
“Watch out!” someone calls lazily. “Almost another Mackelroy misfortune.”
There’s a snicker, and then two boys from the crowd at the Tempest race move on into the orchard.
“Hilarious,” George mutters, wrapping up the rest of his lunch. “I should be working on my Variant Innovation, anyway.” He waves at us and ambles away, his shirt untucked, his hair smashed at the back of his head as if he just woke up from a nap.
“Kind of unfortunate for George, isn’t it?” Beas says.
I nod. Not that I want the Catalyst to be tied to George, of course. But it feels treacherously nice, on days like these, to be in the honey warmth of the sun instead of Sterling’s shadow.
“I’m glad I got to meet Thom at the race,” I say. “He seems swell.”
“He is,” Beas agrees.
“But he’s not from here,” I say hesitantly. “So . . . how was he allowed to come?”
Beas laughs. “You’re a real rule follower, aren’t you?”
“Not always,” I say. “But, I guess, mostly.”
She smiles down at the cellophane she’s unwrapping from another jam tart. “Thom used to live just over the border. He found out about the Disappearances when we were younger, and he never breathed a word about it, even when he moved two towns away. Over the years he’s gained our trust.”
“And also because you’re in love with him.”
“Yes.”
“So there are exceptions.”
“Sometimes.” She takes another bite. “I mean. Look at you.”
“Do you think you’ll end up with him?” I ask, crossing my ankles under the table. “Do you think it’s possible for . . . people from different places to be together?”
She looks at me with a slight frown. Then she sighs. “I don’t know. It gets more complicated every seven years.”
“It’s not so bad here,” I say. “Thom could live here and use the Variants. It’s not that big of a sacrifice.”
“Oh yeah?” she says. “Would you do it? Be willing to forfeit things you don’t even know are going to disappear? We could live through ten, eleven more Disappearances. And maybe when enough gets taken, it adds up to not be worth it.”
I stay silent. “But the Variants. They replace the missing things eventually.”
“There’s no guarantee that Variants will be found for everything that’s going to disappear. Sometimes it takes years. For some things, it could be never.” She pauses. “I don’t want to ask Thom to make that choice.”
“Would you ever consider leaving here for him?”
She laughs a short laugh. Looks down at the napkin crumpled in her hand. “I want to tell you I would. But at least here I get a chance to have some of those things back with the Variants. If I leave, I really lose them.”
I want to argue with her vehemently. To convince her that maybe Thom could be worth it.
“Then we’ll just have to find a way to end the Disappearances, won’t we?” I say lightly.
“Sure,” she says, her mouth turning down into a wry smile. She unwraps her last tart and hands it to me. “I thought that’s why you were here.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
October 29, 1942
Disappearance Day
At half past two on Disappearance Day I pull on my red coat and knock on Miles’s door. He sits cross-legged on the floor, sketching.
“Ready?” I ask.
He’s wearing gloves that are huge on him, loose and bunching around his fingers in drooping folds even as he clutches his Variant pencils.
“Aren’t those a little big for you?” I ask.
“They’re Will’s,” he says. “He gave them to me,” he adds purposefully. I don’t fail to notice the chill in his tone.
“Everything okay?” Things have thawed between us in the wake of the Dream Variant discovery, but now Miles stands and pushes past me without answering.
I sigh. He’s just like Mother, with his impossible moods. Maybe he’s as anxious as everyone else about what the day will bring.
“It’s too depressing to be home tonight,” Mrs. Cliffton says when we climb into the car. She sprinkles Variants over her compact and applies a deep red lipstick. “So with the Harvest Fair, we make it into a celebration. We rise up to meet it.”
Sterling is hosting the fair this year, so we park the car and join the line snaking into the high school. Dr. Cliffton lugs his telescope case, and Will balances Mrs. Cliffton’s platter of cheeses. A large sign with imposing letters hangs on the front door. It says HARVEST FAIR—?TICKETS REQUIRED. STRICTLY ENFORCED. Mrs. Cliffton nudges Will, her hair flaming like cinnamon against the fall sky. Her eyes crinkle. “It’s peppermint air,” she says, inhaling.
We hand over our tickets and enter the long hallway of the school, our footsteps echoing past darkened classrooms, and we leave our coats on a set of empty desks. Mrs. Cliffton’s deep blue dress, belted at the waist, has a full skirt that swishes at her knees. I have on my best dress, short-sleeved and moss-colored, with a high collar that used to perfectly hide Mother’s necklace. I try to fix Miles’s cowlick, but he shoves my hand away and glares at me.