I climbed a few meters more, and was at the peak of one of the many rocky hills surrounding Birchton and Radiata. In front of me, swept with moonlight, were the craggy mountains we would have to climb over to get to Birchton and further below, the sleeping town lay nestled into the side of a cliff. Each ring shone softly.

Rosa’s hand slipped from my heart to my palm. Her thin fingers threaded through mine. Not that way, she used to say. She hated holding hands like this; she always said my fingers were too large and forced hers apart painfully. Like this, she would say, placing her palm against mine. I sat down and shook it off. The feeling that she was here with me, that she was actually a ghost, was not true. It couldn’t be.

“I won’t give up,” I whispered to the air.

The tower lights of the compounds glimmered like weak candles. We weren’t far. I narrowed my eyes, imagining the walls exploding, people running through the gap. I would focus on that. Destruction. It matched my insides well.

I sat there for an hour. Breathing. Thinking. Remembering. Trying to suppress her and revive her at the same time. I looked to the sky, knowing she was probably boxed in. White, swirling flakes streamed towards my eyes.

Snow.

ROSA

In sleep, I can have him. In the back of my mind, in the pretty little corners he opened up, he’s waiting. I want to retreat to those corners forever.

If I could live there, I would.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Gunshots clipped the air and shredded the curtains, tearing them into strips that dripped with blood. My blood. Wet and flapping against an open window. The streaks horrific, murderous.

“Bang!” One frustrated noise.

I pulled my knees to my chest, curling into a ball like a centipede tapped on its back, covering my head with my ineffectual fingers.

Bullets tear through everything, and when it’s close enough, so does a knife.

I pulled in tighter; harboring my scar like it was precious. The movement caused satin to glide underneath and over my skin, and I shot up like a catapult. My dream receded. Reality cupped my chin and squeezed my jaw violently. It drew my face this way and that, stretching my eyes wide. Look. Look where you are. My dazed brain swept the room. Luxurious reds crept up the walls interspersed with strips of gold. The large bed was covered in a quilt spotted with pinwheel shapes, swirling and sucking me into its center. I leaned my head in and out as my eyes stared at the middle of the gold wheel until I felt dizzy. Shuffling back, I leaned against the wall. It was as soft as a satin ribbon. Rich honey timber glossed the corners in the forms of beautiful furniture. If I wasn’t so scared, I could appreciate it. If I wasn’t so disgusted with the opulence these people surrounded themselves with, maybe I could relax. My eyes followed the gold stripes up to the ceiling and found the black camera screwed to the wall. I felt like waving, but I was trying to suppress my normal wonts and behavior.

I scratched at my neck, feeling my skin raised and itchy at my collar. My fingers grasped and yanked at the strangulating neck of my shirt.

What was I wearing?

I bounded from the bed and looked down in horror at my clothing. My black, soldier’s jacket had been replaced by a grey, knee-length skirt. My skin prickled beneath a high-necked, synthetic pink shirt and pink cardigan with tiny, pearlescent beads around the collar. Cracking my neck, I shuddered at the continuing weirdness. I would have been upset that someone dressed me, but I know I would have got myself in more trouble if Red had presented me with this outfit and forced me to put it on. I could just imagine the tug-of-war and grinned at my imagined victory. Pulling at the hem of the skirt, I wiggled in the cut-your-circulation-off stockings. No. They were coming off. I leaned down and unrolled them so my legs could receive their blood supply.

A bang on the door startled me.

“Miss Rosa?” A young, questioning voice.

Quickly shimmying out of the stockings, I put on the black shoes shining like pools of motor oil that were placed neatly by the bed. I was completely confused.

Gold-stemmed lamps rose from two identical bedside tables, the green glass shades painful to look at. I touched one tentatively, my finger bouncing off its surface. It was warm but didn’t burn me. The colors were torture. Deep, forest green, gold. I felt like smashing it and holding it to my heart at the same time. I imagined Joseph’s eyes blinking at me, him shaking his head with amusement at my strangeness, and it was all I could do not to sink to the floor, to allow myself to drown in the blood-colored carpet. To think maybe I would have been better off dead than here.

I undid a few buttons on my shirt so I could breathe and waited for the guard to barge in. I waited, but he kept knocking until I said, “Yes. Come in.”

The door clicked open and I remained still on the edge of the bed, trying not to slide right off. I stared at the lamp for longer than I should have. Joseph’s face, his smile… It was all running away from me, running out like the last, fresh spring in summer.

My shaky hands ran through my hair to tuck it behind my ear, but I came up short. She cut my hair? I pulled the strands through my fingers in front of my eyes, light honey-brown strands of hair! I cursed just as the guard stepped into the room. The look of surprise was quite evident on his face. I was sure I looked ridiculous.

I swore again, he stiffened, and I clapped my mouth shut. I needed to remember my promise—that I would live. So I sat neatly on the edge of the bed, looking up him expectantly, like a child ready to learn. I was never that child. I was the child wiggling impatiently on the rug until I’d nearly worn a hole in it. I was the child that asked too many of the wrong questions and never had any of the right answers. I chewed on my lip when the guard approached, wondering what they were going to do next. They’d changed my appearance. The next thing to change would not be so easy…

His hair was my color, my new color, and it swept across his face like someone had smacked his forehead with a large paintbrush. He swept it over his brow and blinked at me with strange, blue eyes. We stared at each other for a while, his hands moving unconsciously from front to back like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. I got impatient and sighed. “What do you want?” I asked.

He snapped out of it and moved towards me, which caused me to brace myself in defense. One arm crossed over my chest, the other slipping on the bedspread as my body leaned backwards. He noticed my fear and stopped, again playing with his hands. It was strange for a guard to register anyone else’s emotions. I waited for his hand to reach out and smack me. He stood with one hand below his ribs and the other behind his back like he might take a bow. I quirked an eyebrow.

“Superior Grant has ordered me to escort you to the dining room,” he announced as he offered me his elbow.

I snorted. “Escort?”

He nodded, his hair falling in his eyes. Smoothing it over, he parted his legs slightly and waited. Voices echoed in my head and reminded me why I had to do as he asked. Because my arms felt heavy with the weight of a child who was no longer there. The ache of missing my child was the claw of a hammer, bluntly, blatantly tugging at my heart. I warned myself, Just do as you’re told. For him, for both of them.

I rose and walked past the guard, ignoring the elbow I suppose I was expected to lace my arm through. In my mind, escort didn’t need to mean touching. As I passed the young guard, who still had a pimple or two along his jaw, reminding me he was probably my age or younger, I anticipated his hand clamping over my arm and leaned away. He let me through, and I think he smiled. I grimaced as I tramped forward. He followed close behind me.