Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill
The strain has become unbearable. I nibble on the edges of a SleepSound tablet every so often to smooth away the paralyzing fear. I don’t have enough time to fix it. The sand in the hourglass has almost completely run out.
I don’t have enough time.
The thought is with me all day. I want to stand on my desk and scream at the top of my lungs, Let me out, let me out, let me out. But I don’t. I try to act normal. Not enough time.
The Inheritants haven’t been here in five days. Before, that wouldn’t have seemed so long. Time was the one unlimited resource we had left in this world.
But now all I can think is that it’s five days of wasted opportunity. Five days where I could have made things better with Darwin but I didn’t. Five days where every time the door of a classroom opens my spine wrenches upright, a mixture of disappointment and relief when it’s not him, when it’s never him.
Until, at last, it is.
“Please, girls, settle down . . .” chastity-bernadette says as a noisy flurry of excitement runs through the room. My heart thuds painfully in my chest.
He’s cut his hair.
“What happened to Darwin’s hand?” I overhear jessie whisper to liz, but her head is blocking my view. I shift in my seat so I can see properly. His left hand is in a cast, very white against his tanned arm. I wrap my feet around the legs of my chair to anchor me, to stop myself from running over to check if he’s okay.
The class drags on. The Inheritants have taken their seats in the last row of the classroom as chastity-bernadette leads us in a never-ending question-and-answer session. What would you do if you failed to produce sons? Throw myself on the pyre before my Termination Date so my husband can marry someone better. What would you do if a man asked you for sex when you were feeling unwell? Always be willing. What would you do if a man asked you to perform a sexual act you felt uncomfortable with? Always be willing.
I answer the questions as I think a companion would. I would be willing, but I presume he would have a concubine to satisfy those needs. chastity-bernadette frowns, but she can’t chastise me as I haven’t broken any rules. megan has taught me well. Is Darwin looking at me? What does he think of my answers?
“Well done, girls.” The chastity gives a huge sigh of relief when we finish. “Now, there are only ten days until your Ceremony.”
Really? We had no idea.
She presses a small button on her eFone and a loud buzzing sound is set off, the glass containers we use for Comparison Studies instantly lighting up like two caged stars on either side of her desk.
“It’s time for your final physical examination. I will call you up in pairs. Enter into the boxes, one girl per box. Please strip to your underwear before you do so,” she says. “The first time I sound the buzzer, you turn around. At the second buzz, please leave the box and get dressed again.”
I notice terror ripple across isabel’s face before the cloud descends again, her eyes misty, like condensation building up on a window pane. What do I have to do to get some of her meds? She raises her hand wearily.
“isabel, I forgot about you,” chastity-bernadette says contritely. “You may be excused.”
isabel gets to her feet and shuffles out of the room. No one else seems to notice. Am I going crazy? Is she an apparition that only I can see?
“Let’s begin.”
Please let me be paired with someone worse than me. christy would be good—she’s still about five pounds over target. I’d look okay next to christy.
Pair after pair of eves go into the translucent boxes, magnified fotos of their bodies projected onto the main board, side by side for easier comparison. We must be inspected for flaws before purchase.
All the eves have turned to look at me. Did I say that out loud?
“freida! I’ve called your name three times now!” chastity-bernadette says.
“Sorry,” I mumble. It’s only when I’ve reached the front of the classroom that I see who I have been paired with.
“May the best girl win!” megan says, taffeta prom dress already pooled around her ankles. I can’t help staring as her perfect body is revealed on the big screen behind us. Her tiny waist curves into fuller hips, pert breasts straining at the black lace of her bra. It’s risqué underwear, considering how prim her outfit choices have become recently. Pure on the outside, naughty on the inside. Perfect companion material. Why didn’t I think of that?
“freida!” chastity-bernadette snaps.
I struggle to unzip the acid-lemon strapless dress, my hands shaking. Kicking it off, I step into the box, rows of faces staring back at me, analyzing my body, comparing every inch of it to megan’s. The back row is tapping furiously on their ePads. Except Darwin. He’s slouching in his chair, head tucked into his chest.
The buzzer sounds loudly. megan and I turn to face the wall. Through the glass panes I can see us on the board, projected eight feet high. We are a perfect contrast, megan’s pale skin in black silk, my brown body in cream lace. I squeeze my eyes shut but the images are burned into my eyelids. They will haunt my dreams.
The buzzer sounds again and I scramble out of the box and grab my dress to cover myself.
“Do you have all the notes that you require?” chastity-bernadette asks. The Inheritants mumble that they do. “Wonderful. Now, girls, this will be your last visit from the Inheritants until next week,” she says, forgetting that we’re not supposed to know their visitation timetable. “Next Friday will be your last Interaction before the Ceremony the following Monday.” She clucks in disbelief. “It seems to come faster and faster every year!”
It’s just another year to her, just another Ceremony.
“We don’t have time for the full Heavenly Seventy today, I’m afraid. We have rather run over schedule.” She’s getting a bit flustered. “Will twenty minutes suffice?”
“How much more time do we need?” a male voice yells out.
“Quite.” The chastity’s skin is blotchy with embarrassment. “Let’s begin. Darwin. Please select your eve for today’s task.”
My heart starts thumping against my ribcage, my mouth drying up. The room expands and contracts like an accordion, voices veering wildly between whispers and shrieks and back again.
“megan,” he says, his voice so familiar yet so distant, and she gets to her feet gracefully.
“Sorry, freida,” she says to me, her hand skimming my shoulder. “Can I get past you?”
I turn my legs to the side and cara does the same to allow her through. Darwin takes her hand, leading her toward the cupboard.
“What happened your arm?” I hear her coo.
“It was my own fault,” he says, and the door closes behind them.
I focus on my breathing, trying to ignore the others staring at me while the other Inheritants pick their now familiar partners: miranda . . . rosie . . . karlie . . . until there is only one Inheritant left. Socrates stomps down the steps to the front of the classroom, turning to face us, scratching his ginger hair.
“Well . . .” he begins, and heidi, his usual choice, rises from her seat, “I choose freida.”
He disappears around the back of the bleacher seating, and heidi hunches back down, playing with her bangs self-consciously.
“Ow!”
“I’m so sorry,” heidi says as I trip over her extended leg on my way down the steps. “It was an accident.”
The door of the cupboard closes behind us. It’s identical to Darwin’s cupboard, made out of mirrors, but the images reflected back to me are all wrong—Socrates’s skinny legs, his flushed skin, his hair standing on end. I hold a hand up in greeting, and he pounces, mashing his face against mine. It’s so sudden that my mouth is still clenched shut and he has to shove his tongue through my tight lips, spittle trickling onto my chin.
I pull away, resisting the urge to wipe my mouth. He kisses my neck, moving his way down to the top of my dress. I am going to be sick. I’m about to tell him to stop when he wraps his hand around my jaw, pu
“You’re beautiful,” he says. “Your body is amazing.”
I take the hit, feeling it soar through my bloodstream.
“Really? Do you really think so?”
“Yeah, sure.” He grips my shoulder with his left hand, pinning me against the wall, and starts kicking off his sneakers, untying his belt one-handed. His jeans fall around his ankles.
“Wait,” I say. “Wait.”
He kisses me again, filling my mouth with his stale breath. His hand snakes down in between us and he tears at my dress, pulling it and my bra down.
“No, please.” I’m pleading now. “I don’t know if . . .”
He doesn’t seem to hear me, pushing himself nearer and nearer to the center of me.
“No can mean yes,” he murmurs against my skin. “You’ll like it.”
“Don’t.” I stumble, digging into his foot with a needle-sharp heel, and he yelps in pain. “Sorry, I’m so sorry.” I babble, wrenching my dress back on.
Socrates is hopping up and down, his jeans gathered around his ankles fettering him as he bends down to hold his wounded foot in his hands. I stand as still as possible, playing dead. Please don’t. The possibility of what could happen shatters inside me. Please don’t do this to me.
“I’m sorry.” I hold out my hand to stop him from coming closer. “I don’t want to . . .” I quickly change tactics as he looks insulted. “I mean, of course I want to, but I just can’t. I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t move closer, thankfully, turning his back on me to fix his clothes in the mirror. He looks at me again, rolling his eyes in disgust. He doesn’t like me now. How did megan do it that first week? She didn’t have sex with Albert, but he still likes her; I’ve seen them chatting since. Why do I always get it wrong?
“What’s the difference between me and Darwin?” he asks furiously, trying to smooth his messed-up hair.
“I didn’t have sex with Darwin either.”
“That’s not what I heard,” he snorts, blood rushing back into his pale face with fury.
“What do you mean by—”
“Anyway—” he cuts across me and I swallow my question and the implications of what he said—“you’re wasting your time there, little eve.” He looks me up and down, lingering on every inch of my body. “You’re not what the Judge will want for Darwin.”
He sits on the ground, immediately engrossed in the eFone he has fished out of his pocket, and I become invisible to him. My feet are rooted to the floor. I lean against the wall, watching the opposite mirror as my thighs slowly ooze out beneath my dress, splayed against the glass behind me, getting fatter and fatter and fatter. I’m disgusting. I’m not what the Judge will want for Darwin. I’m not what anyone would want.
The bell rings and the trapdoor springs open. He scrambles to his feet but I can’t move. Maybe if I just hide in here no one will ever know.
“Darwin, dude, why did you choose that bitch every week?” I hear Socrates say. “Frigid freida.”
The Inheritants burst into raucous laughter, some of the eves tittering too.
It’s my own fault.
Darwin’s words echo in my ears, like a mantra.
Chapter 26
I wait until I’ve heard the last of the stilettos clacking on the tiled floor outside before I fall out of the cupboard. Impossibly, the room is the same, the tiered rows of seats, the ten upright wooden cupboards surrounding them like a moat. I take off my heels and run as fast as I can. My feet skim across the chessboard, the chipped yellow paint on my toenails a fluorescent blur.
At my cubicle, I reach for the handle of the door tucked into the top of the door frame, trying to tug it down to close off the outside, but it’s stuck, rusted from lack of use. I’m sick of being in this School. I’m sick of being in this body. I’m sick of being me. Every toxic feeling I’ve ever had seems to explode inside me, like a million different voices screaming to be heard at once, and I throw myself onto the bed, biting the pillow to muzzle them. Crying is ugly, the chastities yelled when as children we fell and scraped our knees. Crying makes your skin blotchy. No man wants a girl who cries. You must be happy and lighthearted at all times. So I don’t cry. I am torn apart with not crying.
Socrates is accustomed to heidi. She probably had sex with him within the first five seconds of meeting him. heidi is just a stupid slut. At least I’m not a slut.
I dig my ePad out from underneath my pillow.
“Hello?” she answers in a bored tone.
“Hi, megan.”
“freeds?” She peers at the screen. “Is that you? I can’t see anything.”
“The camera is broken.” I lie. I don’t want her to see my face, mottled from the effort of not crying.
“I hope they can afford to fix that.” She’s reapplied her makeup by hand, her eyes dark with kohl, her full lips tinted pale pink for a change. “It’s not like you can depend on isabel to get you a new one this time.”
“Did you do anything with him?”
“With who? Oh. Darwin is it? Let’s just say we didn’t do much talking.” She touches her throat delicately. “I guess things didn’t go well with Socrates. I heard what he said about you as he left.”
“And I heard you laughing.”
“I would never do that,” she cries. “We’re best friends.”
“Are we?”
“Tell me what happened,” she persists, ignoring my question.
“I just didn’t—”
“Don’t you like him?”
“No,” I say bluntly, forgetting myself.
“So, you think you’re too good for him?”
“No . . . I . . .” I stutter. “Darwin is mine.”
“He was supposed to be mine in the first place.”
“The rankings are meaningless now.”
She raises an eyebrow at me. We both know the rankings matter. They have been our benchmark the whole way through School. It’s how we measure ourselves, how we know how much we’re worth. They matter.
“I couldn’t help it if he kept choosing me!” I say, sitting up and shifting the ePad onto my lap.
“And I couldn’t help it that he chose me today.”
“He only asked you to make me jealous,” I mutter under my breath.
“Oh, freida. How presumptuous.”
“He told me he doesn’t even like you.” I want her to feel as bad as I do.
“Who cares? You think I care? All that matters is that he chooses me. All that matters is that I win.”
“What about love?” I say, starting to bite my nails, peeling off neon polish with my teeth. “Darwin will want someone who is in love with him.”
“I thought you said you’re not in love with him?”
“I’m not.” Love makes you weak. I cannot afford to be weak. “But I . . .”
“You what?” she asks, staring into the camera, handing me the rope to hang myself.
“I thought you said we were best friends,” I finish uncertainly. “I believed you.”
“No, you didn’t,” she says with a hard little laugh. “You think I don’t know how you feel about me? What you’ve said about me behind my back? You’re as bad as she is, with all her fancy things that no one else could have. She thought she was so special. She was too good for everyone else. Never wanted to hang out with anyone else but you, of all people.” She spits out the words, coated in vitriol. “And now look at her. Perfect isabel, with her perfect blond hair and her perfect rankings. Just another casualty, another one who couldn’t hack the pace.” She curls her lip in disgust at me. “And you’re as bad. isabel got sick of you, and now Darwin has too. Maybe isabel and you can become chastities. You can live here, together forever, never needing anyone else to play with, never letting anyone else join in.”
She catches sight of herself in her video-feed, her face contorted with fury. Wiping spittle from the sides of her mouth, she reaches behind her to grab her lip gloss and reapplies it.
Chapter 27
“There is a world outside of the School, you know.” Darwin had jokingly chided me for my lack of curiosity. He was right, of course, but sometimes it feels impossible that anything exists outside of this glass dome. It feels as if this is all that exists or ever will exist.
We eves in final year were designed on the same day. We were hatched together and we have lived as we will die, our bones touching. Yet it has only been these last few days that I have felt like I am suffocating with our togetherness. All I want is to be alone, to stay in my room and pretend time is standing still, but I can’t. I can’t escape from it. When daria passes me a hula-hoop during PE I wonder if she is thinking “frigid freida.” When megan smiles in my direction, paranoia gnaws at me that somehow she has been in contact with Darwin, that he has promised to make her his companion.
And she will have all the power. And I will be alone.
I am losing. I am losing him. I have lost him already. What happened during his last visit is a tapeworm, eating all my good memories, leaving me consumed by doubt.
The tapes play on. Socrates’s voice when he said I wasn’t good enough for Darwin. The moment where I told megan his secrets, selling him out for popularity. I imagine myself spinning out of my body and melting into his so I can see the scene as he might have. Through his eyes, megan gleams with beauty and I am a shadow, whispering wickedness.
Although I doubt any of the others can be as frightened as I am, there are signs of frayed nerves. Tension is crackling between us.