The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Six

I carry that spark inside me for the rest of the day, sheltering it, nurturing it, but after dinner, when I go up to my room to feed Boots, I see my face in the mirror again, and the spark snuffs out like a blown candle.

Ever since the attack, ever since it was clear how bad the scarring was, I've been told that I'm ugly, damaged. If the scars were on my body then at least I could cover them, keep them private, but I can't cover up my face. The scars are the first thing anyone sees when they look at me.

When I was with Roan earlier, I had felt this soaring, impossible hope that maybe, just maybe, he could see past my disfigured face, see the person that I am behind the scars.

But how can he do that when I can't even manage it?

I approach the mirror and my reflection blurs as my eyes fill with tears. I touch my scars, running my fingertips over the knotted, twisted lines, and my heart thump, thump, thumps with anger and sadness.

I'm useful to Roan – that's why he's coming back tomorrow. He's not interested in me in any other way.

My chest feels like it's full of thorns, piercing the bird that is my heart, breaking her wings and pinning her down.

Roan isn't going to help me fly away.

No one is.

I almost don't go back the next day.

I'm all tangled up inside, and I don't know how to feel, and part of me thinks that the easiest thing would be to pretend that I never even met Roan. If I never see him again, then maybe I won't have to think too much about everything he's told me. I won't have to restructure the way I look at the world and the CC.

But I can't pretend.

For most of my life, the Trials have represented hope for me – my chance at becoming someone.

Roan has offered me a different kind of hope.

I don't see how he can possibly abolish the CC, no matter how connected his friends are, but . . . I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop imagining the life that I might lead if I was free of this place. I think of the places I could visit, the foods I could eat, the choices I could make. I think of a world in which I'm allowed to have a pet cat, and not one where I have to hide him. I imagine being allowed to choose my own clothes, my own activities, my own books. I think about the films that Priya has described for me over the years, and imagine watching them for myself. I think about buying blue clothes and dressing myself like the sky.

Maybe it's nothing but a fantasy, a silly dream that will never come true, but I can't stop thinking about it.

I can't ignore the urge to see Roan again.

He's waiting for me when I get there, sitting cross-legged on his side of the fence, his head tipped back, eyes closed. His hair blows slightly in the breeze, and for the span of a heartbeat I'm riveted where I am, unable to take my eyes off him.

He is a shaft of sunlight breaking through the darkest part of the forest.

I sit down in front of him, and he opens his eyes, smiling at me.

My tongue turns to dust; I have no idea what to say.

"I brought you something," he says.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small and purple. It makes a small crinkling noise as he pushes it through the chain-link fence.