“We’re not like them,” Tom said. “You should see my roommate’s file. Scared of everything. Social anxiety, test anxiety—total basket case.”
“We need them.” I could feel it again, the ache in my chest where something was missing. Sharper with every word.
“Like we needfood,” he said.
“Without ordinaries, there is no us.”
Thomas, always respectful, was trying to understand. He glanced up at my shorn scalp again. The spiky growth of hair, the half-hidden staples. (Sometimes I could taste them, like coins on my tongue.)
“Aunt Jessica,” he said. “What happened to you in New York?”
My brain snagged. Orrin had called me Aunt Jessica too—I’d been blooded again. In that small room.
But something bigger had happened in New York.
“Oh,” Tom said. “You haven’t been debriefed yet, have you? I shouldn’t be asking. And you haven’t eaten anything.”
I regarded the apples and sandwiches. Crunchy, sweet tartness? Or chewy, salty meat?
“But there’s a photo of you…” Thomas began.
Xavier Lindqvist opened the door. He was holding a bouquet of rosebuds.
“Flowers?” Tom asked, his sardonic tone exactly like Sebastian’s. “Blackflowers?”
“They’re a deep burgundy when the bud opens. Much like my heart.”
“Hearts are all the same color,” I said.
Tom groaned. “How did you get in?”
“Through the door.”
“It’s after hours,” Tom said. “Only family allowed.”
“The staff must think I look like a Morton.” Xavier helped himself to a bacon sandwich and sat on the other side of my bed.
His eyes were also where they should be. His skin was his own. My brainwassettling—except for this strange need to convince Thomas that ordinaries were important.
“Short hair becomes you,” Xavier said gallantly. “The nose too.”
“And the staples in my head?”
“You just need matching earrings. I’ll see what I can find.”
“You don’t look like a Morton at all!” Tom said to Xavier. They both wore cotton T-shirts and beaten-up jeans. But it wasn’t the clothes that made them the same, it was their legacy certainty. We are better than you. We belong in every room.
“Tom wants to know,” I said, “which classes to take.”
“Wise to ask your elders, young Thomas.”
Tom scowled.
“Archery, because your form is terrible. Latin, because it’s a key to many languages, like this one. Mandarin, because it’s ancient, yet widelyspoken. Legacy Chemistry, for the hottest professors, the quietest poisons, the loudest bombs. Avoid Accounting, forensic or otherwise. Though, as a Morton, how could you resist?”
“We’re not all—” Tom began.
“I miss Ms. Delicato,” I said.
