Page 9 (1/2)

This, I suppose, is so I have in common with my new husband Before my brother and I were born, my parents had two children, another set of twins, ere born blind and unable to speak Their limbs were malformed and they didn’t live past five years Genetic abnoriven the perfection of the first generations, but they do happen They’re calledchildren without genetic oddities, though now I have cause to be grateful for unshot to the brain in the back of that van

Rose and I talk about happier things too, like cherry blossoh to tell her aboutmissed the world in its prime As she braids my hair, she tells me that if she could have lived anywhere in the world, she would have chosen India She would have worn saris and positively covered herself in henna, and she would have paraded the streets on an elephant shrouded in jewels

I paint her nails pink, and she arranges novelty jewels on my forehead from a sticker sheet

Then one afternoon, as we’re lying beside each other on the bed, stuffing ourselves with colorful candies, I blurt out, "How can you stand it, Rose?"

She turns her head on the pillow to face ue is deep purple "What?"

"Doesn’t it bother you that he has remarried, while you’re still alive?"

She s, and fiddles with a wrapper "I asked him to I convinced him it will be easier, with neives already in the house" She closes her eyes and yawns "Besides, he was starting to get teased in the social circles Most House Governors have at least three wives, sometih that she laughs a little, sup-presses a cough "But not Linden House to talk hireed to it, as long as he had a choice in the selection He didn’t even have a choice with me"

Her voice is cool, and she is so bizarrely serene It worries me that I’ve becoue reseirl, and I wonder if she has figured out that I’ll never love Linden, especially not in the way she does, and that he’ll never love anyone the way he loves her I wonder if she realizes, despite all her efforts to train me, that I can never take her place

Chapter 6

"I want to play a game," Cecily says

Jenna doesn’t look up fros dangling over the are of those"

"I don’t ," Cecily insists "I ame I know is the one where my brother and I set noise traps in the kitchen and try to survive the night intact And when I was taken by Gatherers, I sort of lost

I’ rooames and a keyboard meant to i at the orange tree blosso birds Roouldn’t even believe them, the life they i, shriveled weeds that grow fro carnations for sale that are aat airl who lived across the alleyway I open e my mind

I don’t want to whisper my secrets into a paper cup to share with my sister wives Really I only have one secret that’s worth anything, and that’s ," I say I can feel Cecily’s indignation without even looking at her

"There has to be so real we could do," she says "There has to be" She paces out of the roo around down the hall

"Poor kid," Jenna says, and rolls her eyes toward me for a moment Then she returns to her book "She doesn’t even understand what kind of place this is"

It happens at noon Gabriel brings my lunch to me in the library--which has become my new favorite place--and stops to look over e

"What are you reading?" he asks

"A history book," I say "This one explorer proved the world was round by asse all the way around it on three boats"

"The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria," he says

"You know about world history?" I ask

"I know about boats," he says, and sits behind e

"This one here is a caravel" He begins describing its structure to

All I truly understand from this is that the style was Spanish But I don’t interrupt him I can see the intensity in his blue eyes, that he’s taken a brief respite fro to Linden’s brides, that he has a passion for so in his shadow in the overstuffed chair, I actually feel a s on