Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill
“Can I have that?” freja asks at lunchtime, pointing at the untouched bowl of ice-kream.
“Why didn’t you get your own?” gisele snaps, pulling her tray away from freja.
“I don’t eat dessert,” freja replies proudly, squeezing her shoulder blades toward her chest and watching in the mirror as her collarbones pop out. “Hey!” she protests as gisele throws the bowl in the garbage.
“It would be wasted on you,” gisele mutters. “All you’re going to do is spit it out anyway.”
Every morning we are awoken by a new announcement blasting through the dormitories.
Nine days until the Ceremony.
Eight days until the Ceremony.
I don’t have enough time.
We are woken by the lamps. We sit together at mealtimes. We pretend to listen in class. We look the same, as if we are going through the motions of our usual lives, but if you peer closely you can see the signs. There are no requests to VideoChat. MyFace has gone silent. cara ate an entire slice of Death by Chocco at lunch the other day and megan didn’t even comment. Her eyes slipped over the gooey mess, clouded by visions of her future glory. All charades of friendship or alliances are forgotten. We have battened down the hatches as we wait out the storm, waiting to see who will survive.
Six days until the Ceremony.
I cannot breathe with the fear. I’ve lost him. I’ve lost him. I need to make it better. I need to make him forgive me. chastity-bernadette said they would be here on Friday. Three days. I have to wait another three days until I can see him and make him understand. He has to understand. I have to make him understand.
Every morning I break open the silver-handled drawers of my dressing table, counting my stock before distilling my meds into the silver locket. I can’t stop touching it. The heavy metal between my fingers comforts me. I like knowing the option is there, if I need it. I don’t take too much. I’m not messy. Some of the other eves might look at me a little sharply when a faint slur coats my words at times, but no one says anything. No one wants to get involved.
“Are you awake?”
chastity-magdalena’s voice fills my cubicle, interrupting an empty daydream, my mind wiped clear by the quarter I dropped an hour ago.
“Don’t you ever knock?” I mumble into my pillow.
“Get up.” She sits beside me, grabbing my shoulders and yanks me up to sitting. “What have you taken?”
“Nothing,” I lie, licking my lips groggily.
She starts rummaging through my bedside locker and underneath my bed. I fall back onto the mattress, but she grabs me again, rolling me off the bed, ignoring my moan as I hit the ground. She shakes out my blanket and throws the pillow at me before searching the rest of my cubicle. She stops in front of my wardrobe.
“There’s no point,” I say. “The scanner will reject your body chemistry.”
A guttural sigh emerges from the depths of her stomach. I crawl back onto the bed, pulling the blanket around me, wanting the softness to devour me.
“You have to stop this, freida.” I wish she would go. Her voice is eating away at my blanket of drowsiness. “I want to help you.”
“Do you?” I unroll a corner of the blanket to peek my head out.
“Of course.”
“Can you sneak Darwin in? I need to talk to him. If I could talk to him, then everything will be okay.”
“I can’t do that,” she says, dashing my last hope, as I guess I knew she would.
“Then go away.” I pull the blanket over my head again.
“freida, it’s normal for a teenage girl to form these attachments, project feelings onto an Inheritant they don’t really know.”
I fight with the blanket to sit upright, my blood on fire.
“How dare you? You don’t know anything!” She stands very still, my screams bouncing off her.
“I know Darwin better than anyone. I know everything about him.” I want her to accept it, to understand that Darwin and I are meant to be together. “I know all this stuff about him, about his parents. Stuff that he hasn’t told anyone else. He trusts me.”
“What are his parents’ names?” she asks, arms crossed against her chest.
“I . . . I . . . That doesn’t mean anything. I know the important stuff. I know . . .” I trail off. What was I saying? What was I talking about again? “If only I could talk to him . . .” I say again. “If I could talk to him, it would all be fine. Do you think that you could sneak him in? Do you think that you could do that for me?”
“I just told you I can’t do that,” she answers. “Two minutes ago.”
I can’t remember. My mind has holes in it.
“It’s not us, you know. We’re fine. We get along really well. You should see us together. We get along so well. He thinks I’m beautiful.” She looks doubtful. “What, you don’t think that someone could think that I’m beautiful? Because it’s true. We are great together. If you had seen us together . . . Could you maybe . . . If we could just get away . . . his dad . . . Could you maybe sneak him . . .” I keep trailing off, forgetting what I wanted to say in midsentence.
“This isn’t the first time someone has been disappointed with how the Interactions went,” she says, so quietly I almost don’t hear her.
“Oh, what? Like you?” I laugh harshly. “Am I supposed to care about what happened to some chastity a hundred years ago?”
“Darwin is a nice boy, but—”
“But what?” I interrupt, daring her to say it. She thinks he is too good for me. She doesn’t think he would ever choose someone like me to be his companion.
“We are who we are. Sometimes, no matter how much someone might want to, they can’t escape that.” She has such a look of pity on her face that I feel ashamed to see it. How have I been reduced so low that a chastity feels sorry for me?
“Get away from me.”
“It’s because I care about you—”
“Stop caring. You’re not my mother. You’re no one’s mother.” I bury myself under the covers, my breath coming hot and fast. The sheets are sucking in like a plastic bag over my face and I come up for air, gasping. isabel has taken the chastity’s place, standing by the door in a shapeless gray sweater over leggings.
“What do you want?” I bark at her, catching a glimpse of myself in the wall. My hair is matted, teeth bared in a snarl. I hug a pillow lengthways along my body, hiding my ugliness behind it.
“Are you here to talk to me as well?” I shout from behind my shield. “Are you here to warn me too?”
“What would be the point?” she says. “What’s the point of any of this?”
Chapter 28
Just another night, I try to tell myself. The same Messages playing as every Thursday that came before it. Except it’s not just another Thursday night. It’s the last Thursday. The last Thursday in this bed, in this School.
“jessie, please share that SleepSound with liz. They are quite strong the first time you take them.”
chastity-anne is whispering, but my ears perk up at the word “SleepSound,” like hearing your name mentioned across a noisy room. She’s patrolling the dorms tonight, handing out meds like sweeties, making sure that everyone will look rested for our final meeting with the Inheritants tomorrow.
I took the last three capsules christy gave me earlier, but they must have been defective (stupid Euro-Zone and their stupid faulty drugs) because I’ve been lying on my bed for hours, staring at myself in my ceiling, incubated in that pause between waking and dreams. A shadow floats past my room.
“chastity-anne.”
She stops abruptly, walking back toward me, her finger held up to her mouth to hush me. She points back into my cubicle and we go in together, the room seeming too small for both of us.
“I can’t sleep,” I say, scratching my arms brutally.
“I can see that.”
“I need more SleepSound.”
“I prescribed you a capsule earlier. I saw you taking it.”
“It must have been defective because I haven’t slept at all,” I say, lifting my chin defiantly.
“It wasn’t defective.” She turns to leave, and without thinking I grab her hand to stop her and she gasps.
“I’m sorry.” I’m too tired to be shocked. “But I need more SleepSound.”
“I’ve prescribed you the maximum dose. I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she says, rubbing her skin as if I had poured acid on it.
“This is an emergency!” I say. She stops in the doorway and looks me up and down. I shift from one foot to the other, pulling at my black silk teddy.
“You look very thin. I wonder if I should lower your dosage of kcal blockers.”
“No!”
I can’t lose my supply of blockers. Without them I’d have nothing to trade with christy.
“My weight is fine. You’ve seen the reports,” I say, thinking of the two liters of water I drank before my weigh-in.
“True,” she replies, her forehead wrinkling in confusion. “Maybe it’s the light in here.”
Then she’s gone, taking the precious meds with her. She is doing this on purpose. She and chastity-ruth want me to look terrible so I ruin my chances with Darwin. I want to run after her and tackle her to the ground. I want to pound her bald head on the floor until I hear it crack open beneath my fingers, seeing her blood smear on the black-and-white tiles.
I sit on my hands and watch myself in the mirrored walls, at this face that is so familiar yet which never feels as if it belongs to me. It is the property of the School, of the Zone, of my future Husband. This face is my worth, my value. This face is all that I have to offer and it isn’t even mine.
I watch myself for hours. I watch myself until this face becomes meaningless.
Three days until the Ceremony
At breakfast, everyone is gleaming. Teeth have been freshly whitened, skin steamed, hair styled. There is a conspicuous lack of clothing, even on the girls who want to be companions. Everyone is taking this final opportunity to show off their assets.
“I can’t believe you went for another bikini wax with chastity-hope. That’s every day this week!” daria says to gisele.
“I had to,” gisele answers, plumping her breasts up in a gold sequined minidress. “I don’t want there to be a scrap of hair anywhere.”
The dining room is oddly quiet. You can hear the metallic scrape of utensils against china as we ladle up cereal and dribble it back into the bowl.
It’s weird to think of the people that exist outside of this room. All the people in the Euro-Zone who don’t have sons as Inheritants this year are probably oblivious. They are going about their business, unaware that the biggest moment in our lives is approaching like a speeding train. Unaware that I’m standing on the train tracks, my foot trapped in a steel tie. And what about the girls in the other years, contentedly eating their breakfast? Are they thinking of us? Wishing us luck?
There is a sheen of sweat on cara’s brow and she dabs at it nervously with a napkin, looking around in case anyone else has noticed. And there is isabel, alone, sucking her protein shake through a straw. Her hair is falling loosely around her shoulders, a nude chiffon T-shirt dress hugging her slight frame. chastity-ruth watches her carefully from her perch, cooing, “I hope your breakfast is all right, isabel?” isabel merely nods, her eyes dropping to her lap, picking at loose fibers in her dress.
She is shining with indifference. I want her drugs the same way I used to want her beauty.
At least my dress is beautiful. It is intricate gold lace, overlaid with gold beading, and I chose rectangular earrings made of gold-plated glass and a wafer-thin gold cuff, cut so finely that it resembles snowflakes. It scratches at my skin like itchy wool, searching for someone who is more worthy of its perfection.
I am tired. I am so very tired.
The bell rings. The younger eves leave, their eyes wide with envy. I wish I could offer to trade places, buy myself more time.
I don’t have enough time.
“Go to class,” chastity-ruth says. She signals to isabel that she may stay where she is, and isabel flops in her chair, like a marionette that has had its strings cut. When did she become separate to us? I know if I follow the trail into the past that I will find the signs, the markers that led her away from me. But I cannot summon the energy. I’m so full to the brim with my own fear that I don’t have any room for anyone else.
I pass christy on the way out and we swap our treasures seamlessly, the routine perfected by now. I finger the precious meds. Just a quarter. Just to relax me.
I can’t. I need to be in control. This is my last chance. I insert the tablet into the locket around my neck.
“This is it.” megan spins on her mary-jane shoes once she’s arrived at the door to the classroom. The others jostle to get as near to the front as possible, but I hang back, hiding behind agyness. I want to be the last to talk with Darwin so that the room will be relatively empty for our Interaction. I can pretend that we have some privacy.
“This is it,” she says again. “This is the last time we’re going to see them before the Ceremony on Monday. Are you ready?”
A few of the girls murmur, “Yes,” nervously peeking through the narrow glass pane in the door.
“I said, are you ready?” She places her hands on her hips. In her tight cream sweater and pink gingham miniskirt, she resembles a demented cheerleader from the time before us.
“Yes.” I echo my sisters. If only I could throw them all on the pyre. I would watch happily as they turned to ashes until I was the only one left. Surely then I would be good enough.
She opens the door to the classroom, progressing from desk to desk in the circular room, a simpering smile on her face. As she leaves the classroom she brushes against me as I wait for my first Interaction to begin. I raise my arm to my nose, sniffing the smear of vanilla sweetness she has left on my skin. One by one the others finish too and join her outside the classroom, loudly comparing notes on how they think this final test went. I’m so tired.
“Girls!” chastity-magdalena storms out to confront them. “Have some respect for the other eves still completing their Interactions. Go to the next class immediately. chastity-ruth is expecting you for the final session of Heavenly Seventy.”
At the mention of chastity-ruth they scurry away, and chastity-magdalena returns to her seat at the front of the classroom.
The bell rings and I sit at Socrates’s desk. He fishes his eFone from his pocket and I can only watch as he squints at the screen, canned laughter from some Americas sitcom spitting out of it. chastity-magdalena weaves around the desks, smiling at Darwin as she passes, much to the chagrin of alessandra, sitting across from him, her elbows clenched together to boost her cleavage.
I continue on. George and Sigmund and Albert tell me how excited they are about the Ceremony, and can I believe it’s only three days away now? I nod and smile, but tiredness has swallowed my voice. My body sways, sleep calling me for a split second before I jerk upright again.
I am so aware of his presence. Every time he moves, I move too, as if he has a leash around my throat. Does he feel it too? He must. This kind of physical attraction has to be rare. I don’t feel it with any of the other Inheritants. How could he feel it with anyone besides me?
Because they’re prettier than me. Because they’re better than me.
Fewer and fewer people are in the room, each Inheritant leaving after their Interaction with me. With each stilted conversation, I realize how little I know the others. I have invested everything in Darwin. He is my only hope. I am getting nearer to him now, nearer and nearer.
“That’s a good point,” I hear him say to agyness.
I want to think of a good point as well, a way to explain why I told megan about the aberrants, but my mind is filled with cotton wool. I lick my lips, trying to excavate moisture from somewhere, but my mouth is bleached dry.
The bell rings.
“Good luck on Monday,” he says as he marches out the door, agyness gliding behind him until Darwin, chastity-magdalena and I are the only ones left. Up close he looks tired too, dark circles ringing his clear blue eyes. He hasn’t shaved, his usual stubble now the beginnings of a scruffy beard. His injured hand is still in a cast, resting heavily on the table.
“You cut your hair.”
“Over a week ago.” He shrugs, leaning back in his chair and stretching out, his body forming a hard, straight line.
I preferred it longer, when I could run my fingers through the curls. It’s too neat now, the hairs almost standing vertically on his head. It’s at odds with his disheveled appearance, the wrinkled navy-and-blue striped sweater and jeans.
“Darwin, we have to talk about what happened.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he says, slouching so low in his seat I’m afraid he’s going to slip under the desk and make a run for it.
“Are you sure? Because you seem distant.”
“Distant?” He imbues the word with as much ridicule as possible. “How do I seem distant?”
Of course as soon as he asks me, I can’t think of a good example.
“I don’t know,” I say, struggling to explain myself. “You seem a little cold.”
“Cold?” He laughs. “Do you want me to ask them to turn up the heating?”
“Of course not. It’s just, it’s just that you picked megan for—”
“I didn’t realize I had to explain my decisions to you,” he cuts across me. “I thought it was my choice.”
“Of course it is! I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Good.”
But I can’t leave it like this. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” My voice nearly breaks with the weight of trying to make him understand.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, kicking his heel off the leg of his chair.
“Don’t say it doesn’t matter. It does.” My voice is rising. The room takes on a menacing aspect, the lights dimming, shadows furling around us. A sudden coldness comes over me, sucking at me. “I should never have broken my promise to you.”