“Who’s Eleanor?” her father said, peering over Zada’s shoulder. He slid another pancake, this one a perfect golden brown,onto her plate.
“Some of these aren’t real,” Zada explained. “Or, they aren’t from real people.”
“Really?” he asked. “How can you tell?”
She held up the letter printed on creamy lavender stationery. “Well, ‘Eleanor’ has offered me ten percent off on wedding cakes from Tiers of Bliss.”
“Hang on to that one,” her father said. “Could come in handy for your wedding.”
“Are we picking the cake?” she asked.
“We,” he said grandly, “are picking everything.”
This was news to her. “Do the Arnoths know that?”
“We had a chat earlier this morning,” her father said. “The Arnoths are a busy family. You know how it is. Mr. Arnoth Senior and Mrs. Arnoth have their charitable causes, and Buford can’t get away from his work with the council. They’ve entrusted most of the planning and preparation to us, and they’ll be covering the rest.”
“The rest,” said Zada blankly.
Father coughed. “The cost.”
“Ah.” Zada set aside the letter she’d been holding. Hesitant to spend another family’s money, her parents were about to become consumed with bargain-hunting. “Did you happen to discuss the wedding date?”
“Two months,” her father said with a chuckle. “I’m sorry, Z. I know you wish it was today, but there are a lot of moving parts to consider. That reminds me, would you mind going downtown and visiting a few caterers? They have their prices listed on the feed, but I have a feeling that if you mention your connection to the Arnoths, they might be willing to negotiate.”
“Of course,” said Zada, biting her lip at the prospect of discussing money or demanding special treatment.
Still, maybe getting out of the house would do her some good. Fresh air, and a little distance from her father’s oppressive excitement. She started to set Augusta’s message aside to keep, then remembered that if she was genuinely excited to marry Buford, she would likely hold on to every letter that wasn’t from a corporation pretending to be an old school friend. She piled together all the notes from real people. As she shuffled the letters, the sharp edge of a ballerina-pink sheet of paper sliced a narrow, stinging cut across the pad of her thumb. It was going to ache to hold her bow, but nothing could be done about that. The ad letters went straight into the kitchen disposal unit, the hand-penned cursive congratulations disintegrating in seconds.
Downtown New Ionia was bustling as usual.
The medley of ads playing on a loop, people deep in conversation, and the whoosh of the trains above created a wall of sound so thick that it was almost impossible to hear the series of beeps that warned of a hyper-carriage whipping around a corner. Crossing the street from the train terminal, Zada had to leap back to avoid a nasty collision with a horse.
She righted herself, heart racing. Horses weren’t heavy, of course, but if the thing suffered any damage from knocking into her—a popped socket or even a slight scuff—the repair fees would be charged to her.
Once she made it to the other side of the crosswalk, she took a moment to get her bearings. She’d taken a class aboutthe architecture of the city, the lofty design principles at play. Unfortunately, all she remembered was that the later builders made ingenious use of balconies, both to get the most out of a relatively small amount of real estate and to shade the streets below. Every building bore some kind of late addition jutting out of the second story or higher, in a rainbow of colors and styles. Balconies from opposing streets brushed so close together, their inhabitants sometimes shared their readers.
The city center was only two train transfers away from home, but Zada had never really had any reason to go downtown on her own. Her experience with this bustling, lively place was restricted to Dalrymple Academy’s monthly “city days.” These were days when students were encouraged to “take your learnings out into the wider world,” which Daphne had said was code for “get out of our damn hair already.”
Of course, going downtown meant spending money—money that, as a scholarship student, Zada didn’t have. But her friends always made excuses to pick out something for her.
Augusta would say, “Oh, Z, thanks for helping me with my composition homework. I owe you,” and press a tin of translucent bubble candies into her hand. Or Flora would point to a projection of a concert hall, saying, “I have it on good authority it’s your half birthday, so obviously I’m getting you a ticket to the long-distance symphony.”
Carine, too, would pitch in, appearing at Zada’s side with a tray of flaky croissants. She would reason, “You’ve been studying a lot, and as you know, studying burns calories. You need to fuel up. Have a croissant—it’s an investment in your academic future.” And Zada would laugh at Carine’s dead-serious expression and play along, taking a bite of the extravagantlybuttery pastry. (These days, Zada found that she’d lost her taste for croissants.)
Then there was Daphne. “Zada, these earrings bring out the green in your eyes. I have no choice but to buy them. They’re destined for you. Not giving them to you would be an absolute injustice. Is that what you want me to do? Commit injustice?”
But for the first time in years, Zada wandered through the shopping quadrant alone. She passed the holo-cade, where Carine and Flora struggled to beat each other’s high scores in the augmented playscape, and the noodle stall where her friends had once made her laugh so hard that she’d snorted broth out of her nose. She still had Flora and Augusta, of course, but as she shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun reflecting off shop windows, Zada couldn’t help tabulating exactly how much had changed in her life. How much she’d lost in the span of a few years.
The catering district was two streets over. From here, she could almost smell the delicious pea-protein roasts and pastries, the grilled onions and carrots gathered all the way from the distant hydroponics labs that stood apart from the city’s more fashionable areas. Dad’s pancakes sat heavily in her stomach.
Stopping in to enquire about prices was simple enough. The news of her engagement to someone from the Arnoth family must have spread like wildfire. The caterers and shopkeepers would be expecting her. All she had to do was walk in, compare menus and prices, and head home before lunch. Simple, simple, simple.
Zada crossed the street, dodging another hyper-carriage, and headed in the opposite direction.
Chapter SixIn Which a Door Is Opened
Several streets away from the catering district, near the processing plants where the hydroponic crops were converted to more useable ingredients, a muddy rut stretched out for the length of a block or two.
