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Thankfully, Basil is an excellent conversationalist, and he and Tho about last week’s squares tournament and some apparent controversy about a referee’s call on a blunder

Pen pushes her vegetables around with her fork

"You should try to eat," I say

"I will if you will"

Weour bites

After lunch, we drop our utensils, trays, and uneaten food into the respective recycling and compost tubes and we move in four different directions to our next classes The paper intrain is less so to cheer o to the theater; one of his favorite books has just been adapted into a play

I rest my head on his shoulder His collarbone presses into my cheek, and I breathe in the sharp linen of his unifor faintly spicy-sweet Up until last year, he s at all

"You don’t have to walk ht after mine, and if he walks me inside, he’ll have to walk a section over to his apartins to slow

"You’ll be safer on the train," I say "It’d make me feel a lot better Please"

"Don’t worry I’ll protect her," Pen says, tugging me to my feet after the train’s final jolt

"Come by tomorrow afternoon," I tell him "We’ll see the play if you want"

We step off the train and Pen checks her reflection in her atch "You’re lucky, you know," she says "You aren’t doomed to marry a complete ass"

The patrolh

"Maybe Tho envious of Basil would defeat the purpose of arranged betrothals "Plenty of couples argue"

"I’ll never fancy him," she says "He has a face like coh "No he doesn’t"

"He does Which is why I intend to never enter the queue I couldn’t inflict such awful cheekbones on future generations, even if there’s a chance our children could look like iven so children, but randchild Lex and Alice will never be eligible now that he’s disabled, but they applied for it six years ago when they were needs

Because of Internnancies until there has been a sufficient a wait--years--which is why so many couples enter the queue while they’re still university students My parents reentered the day my brother was born, and it was more than seven years before they were allowed to have nant out of turn It wasn’t intentional; she’d been neglectful with her pill She pleaded with the decisionhimself, but she was years froive her child to the next eligible couple, as a last-ditch effort to let her child be born, but of course that isn’t allowed--giving away a child could lead to resenterous There’s a story in The History of Intern about a woman who decided she’d rather s to someone else Pen knows it better than I do She has the history bookfor her cause, Alice was forced to have a termination procedure She came home from the hospital with darkness under her eyes, and she retreated immediately to bed, where she stayed for days Her skin and even her hair seemed to have lost their color

It took her a very long tiain I would follow her around the apart her to takeon shuttles and while she was cooking dinner

Lex won’t have anything to do with phar medicine, he used to help manufacture the elixirs that precede the ters

Pen is stillabout the queue "You do have nice eyes," she tells h, is it? Well, still, Basil isn’t unattractive"

We’re standing in front of her apartment door now

"You should co Tho one of her headaches, she’ll want me out of the apartment anyway See you later"

Inon the couch, curled in Lex’s blanket There’s a hot plate waiting in the stove for ry I work onand it doesn’t take long for o upstairs

As always, there are signs of life in Lex and Alice’s apart on the kitchen table in ihtbulb

"Morgan’s here now," Lex says before I’ve even stepped into the apart to fall and break your face"