“I don’t have tells,” Zada protested. Having mentally gone over her packing list twice, she wrestled her ancient suitcase closed. “Do I?”
The hyper-carriage arrived with a chime on Daphne’s SmartGem before Daphne could reply. But after lugging Zada’s suitcase and cello case to the street outside the NuGrow building, and after had Zada squeezed both of her parents goodbye one last time and the two of them had climbed inside the carriage, Daphne took up the thread again.
“It’s terribly obvious when you’re hiding something.” At Zada’s skeptical look, she added, “Here, I’ll prove it. Tell me, what do you think of kissing Buford?”
Zada glanced down at her interlaced fingers. “It’s fine. I’m not—the problem isn’t with him.” Admitting even this much felt shockingly disloyal. It was hard to shake the sense that she was doing something very, very wrong. But a part of her wanted to see how exactly Daphne would react to Buford’s poetry quoting, or the fact that he’d said he felt “steady.” She worried her lip between her teeth.
“There!” said Daphne, leaning forward. “You bite your lip when you’re hiding something. And you don’t make eye contact.You look down at your hands.”
Zada made herself meet Daphne’s gaze. It hadn’t occurred to her that Daphne had been watching her so closely for her weaknesses.
“Kissing Buford is . . . adequate,” Zada said, looking down automatically. Damn.
“Locking lips with your fiancé is adequate,” Daphne repeated. “Careful, I might blush.”
“All right, I have a few tells. What does it matter?” said Zada.
“It’s like you said, absolutely no one can know that we’re looking into your Heartsong match. Once the shine wears off your engagement, people are going to start noticing if you act even a little bit off.” Daphne’s eyes flitted away, focusing on the window to the left. “And if you act off enough, you’ll go straight to Counseling.”
Zada could feel her brow furrow. “You say it like you’re about to summon thunderclaps and storm clouds. What’s so bad about Counseling?”
Daphne glanced sidelong at Zada. “You know what it is, right?”
“It’s the process by which bad thoughts become good thoughts,” Zada recited. “A series of voluntary cognitive adjustments aimed at creating happier and healthier citizens.”
“Right.” Daphne let out a long, slow breath. “Well, that would get you an A in school, but for extra credit, here’s the truth. They’ll access all your thoughts, Zada. They’ll weed through all your most private secrets, and they’ll yank out what they choose. They’ll iron out your mind and leave you like Flora, too blissed out on nothing to tie your own boots.You’ll volunteer every molecule of our plan, and implicate yourself in every piece of mischief we ever ran, and you’ll be overjoyed to do it.”
Zada stared at the floor of the carriage. It was absurd, it was nonsensical—as nonsensical as not loving your handsome, honorable, poetry-quoting Heartsong match, a sly voice in her head whispered. Daphne seemed so certain, and Daphne had never lied to Zada.
“Okay,” said Zada slowly. “Just in case, if they name me for Counseling, I’ll refuse.”
“If they name you for Counseling,” said Daphne, turning to face her again, “it will already be too late. They can call it voluntary all they want, but have you ever actually heard of someone successfully turning it down?”
Well, no. Despite the thick summer haze, Zada shivered. “How do you supposedly know this? Your grandfather?”
“No,” said Daphne. She volunteered nothing more. Her mouth was a thin, tight, line.
“Are you all right,” said Zada in an undertone.
“Ye gods, what a question,” said Daphne with a short, bitter laugh. “Don’t worry, I won’t gum up our plans.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Zada told her, “and I think you know it isn’t what I meant.”
At that, Daphne sobered. She rested her elbow on the lower edge of the window, and rested her head atop that hand, regarding Zada with a distant curiosity.
“I think,” she said, “that my well-being is no longer your concern. You’ve made sure of that.”
“Daphne, it wasn’t that I didn’t care—”
Daphne shook her head. “No. You just didn’t care enough.”The words were short and staccato, achingly precise in a way her speech almost never was. Something about it cracked Zada’s heart open.
“It’s different for scholarship students. If they’d discovered I was involved with even one of your pranks—”
“That didn’t bother you for five years,” said Daphne, voice so low it crackled like a fire, “so whythe absolute helldid you decide, at sixteen—”
“Why do you think?” Zada shot back. “Carine had just—” Too late, she caught herself.
But all Daphne said was, “I know. Poor Carine.”
