Behind me I hear Juniper say, “Good luck today,” to Colleen. It annoys me how easily she does it and then puts on her headphones and ignores everyone.
Art is already at the bus stop waiting for me, as usual, looking delicious, as usual. I leap on him as soon as I get to him.
“Bird.”
“Mouse.”
He kisses me, but I pull away quickly, excited to discuss the news.
“Did you hear about Jimmy Child?”
I expect Art to be elated. Jimmy Child is his hero, and up until a year ago he had his posters plastered all over his walls. Most boys did. Throughout the trial, Art had the opportunity to meet him, though a quick meet and greet in a holding cell before court wasn’t what he’d been dreaming of throughout his boyhood, and he hadn’t wanted to discuss it much.
“Yeah,” he says. “Dad left at the crack of dawn this morning. He wanted to push the verdict through first thing, in time for the morning news.”
I think about how I should have said hello to Colleen; I should have known Bosco wasn’t home to have seen me, he was at court early, and what harm would it have done anyway to simply say hello? I’m angry with myself.
“I can smell your brain burning. You okay?” He sticks his knuckle into my frown and screws it around.
I laugh. “Yeah, I was just thinking. I didn’t know they had secret Naming Days. I thought it was always public. That’s so sneaky.”
“Not as sneaky as you and me,” Art says, fingers creeping up my top.
I laugh and stop his hand from travelling, something suddenly on my mind. I look over at Juniper, who is listening to her music so loudly I can hear every word from here.
I lower my voice. “Do you think Jimmy Child’s wife was put on trial?”
“Serena Child?” he asks, surprised.
“Yeah. When you think about it –” because I have been thinking about it, ever since Juniper said it, and on the walk to the bus stop with my new wobbly legs that haven’t been working since I stood up this morning – “every day it wasn’t about him or about what he’d done, but about how she was so annoying and so fake and such a woman, how could he not cheat?”
Art laughs. “I don’t think that’s exactly what Pia said.” He smiles at me fondly. “‘Reporting live,’” he says, imitating Pia. “‘Isn’t Serena Child such a woman? How could he not cheat?’”
I laugh, realising how stupid it sounds, then turn serious, wanting to be understood. “No, but the way they talked about her looks. The surgery. The clothes. Her past … her cellulite. She’d kissed a girl – so what? Her tan being too orange, her eating disorder when she was fifteen. She went to school with someone who ended up being a bank robber. She never cooked a meal for her husband. He had to keep going to that diner. We learned everything about her. Like she was the one who was Flawed. Not him.”
Art laughs again, enjoying the ridiculousness of what I’m saying, or perhaps the fact that it’s so surprisingly out of character for me to say it at all. “And why would they put her on trial?”
“So he gets away with not being Flawed. People say she wasn’t a good wife, so how could he not have cheated? And the star player is still the star.”
His smile instantly fades, and he looks at me like he doesn’t know me. “Celestine, be careful.”
I shrug like I don’t care, but my heart is pounding from even saying this aloud. “I was just saying.”
Juniper has got to me. I was unsure already, and what she said this morning niggles at me more and has me considering the truth in her words. I can’t stop thinking about it as we wait for the bus. I think about Colleen, on her way to the courthouse to see her mother, her mother who is about to be branded Flawed for travelling to another country to help carry out her own mother’s wishes. Does that really make her Flawed? I’m not ready to park this thought yet. It’s Art, the person I share everything with. Surely I can share one more. He can help sort out these muddled thoughts.
Art reaches for my hand and I feel safe.
“Do you think it’s bad what Angelina did?” I say quietly.
He looks at me.
“Because I’ve been thinking about it. All night. And I don’t think it’s that bad. Not if it’s what her mum wanted. I mean, I can think of worse.”
“Of course there’s worse.”
“So even though there’s worse, everyone gets branded the same?”
“She will only get one brand. On her hand. Some people get two.”
He’s not thinking about this properly. I know he’s not. I know him. His answers are too quick. He is defensive, though I’m not attacking him. This is how it gets when people have discussions about the Flawed. Everyone has such strong opinions it’s almost like it’s personal. Only it’s even more so for Art because his dad is the senior judge of it all – his grandfather was the founding member of the Guild. I was always in awe of them for that. I still am. Aren’t I?
Once on the bus and in our usual seats, I concentrate on the Flawed lady in front of us, in the reserved place that only Flawed people are allowed to occupy. There are two seats for the Flawed on the bus, because rules state that three or more Flawed are not allowed to gather together at any one time. It’s to prevent the riots that broke out when the Flawed punishments were introduced. However, I wonder for the first time why they didn’t just put another two Flawed seats at the back of the bus or somewhere else away from them. Alternate Flawed and regular people’s seats. Very often there are Flawed standing when the bus is filled with empty seats, which has never bothered me in a moral way, but does bother me when I’m getting off the bus and have to squeeze by them. I swear some of them don’t move deliberately, making me squish up against their Flawed bodies to get past. The Flawed seats have bright red fabric and are at the front of the bus, facing all the other passengers so that everybody on the bus can see that they are Flawed. I used to find it uncomfortable when I was a little girl, having to face them throughout the journey, but then, as I got used to it, I stopped seeing them.
I watch the Flawed woman sitting alone on the seat, her armband with the blood-red symbol identifying her.
I see the symbol on her temple, too, and wonder what bad judgement she made to land herself in this predicament. The scar on her temple is certainly not new. It doesn’t have the red-hot, crusted look of newly seared flesh as some Flawed have. She has been Flawed for quite some time, and I wonder if this means she’s worse now, if Flawed get more Flawed with age or if the branding, the acknowledgment of it, stops it from spreading and growing.
She