Rise

four

WHEN I AWOKE, CLARA WAS SITTING ON THE CHAISE IN THE corner, the City paper folded over her lap. She was asleep, leaning up against the pillows Charles always used, her head tilted to one side. I looked down at my arm. A wad of cotton was taped over the inside of my elbow, and a small red dot bloomed in its center. It couldn't have been more than an hour or two since the doctor had taken blood, recorded my pulse, inspected my throat and eyes with the same conical light they'd had at School. I'd insisted I was fine, and I was. The nausea had dissipated. The feeling in my hands had returned. The only remaining symptoms were the empty tensing of my stomach and the faint sour taste on my tongue.

I heard someone rolling a serving cart down the hallway outside, the wheels
"You're up . . ." Clara rubbed her eyes, then glanced at my hand, where my fingers still rested on one of the spines. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing," I said, settling into the cushion beside her. "Trying to distract myself, that's all."

Clara put her hand on my back. "I've never seen you like that," she said. "You scared me."

"I feel better already," I said. "The worst has passed."

She ran her finger over the edge of the cushion, tracing along the thin white piping. "I'm glad. They couldn't reach Charles."

"That doesn't surprise me," I said. "He's at a construction site in the Outlands. He'll be gone until sundown."

Her expression changed. I immediately felt guilty for saying what I had-the subtle acknowledgment that I knew his schedule better than she did. Clara and Charles were the only two teenagers who'd been raised in the Palace, and she'd always harbored feelings for him. She'd made me promise to tell her if he ever spoke of her. "He hasn't said anything yet," I offered, trying to comfort her. "You know, most of the time when we're talking we're fighting. We're not exactly close." I covered her hand with my own and she smiled, a small, pinpoint dimple appearing in her cheek.

"I must seem so foolish to you," she said with a laugh. "I'm carrying on a relationship in my head."

"Not at all."

How many times had I stopped in Califia, imagining Caleb was there beside me while I sat on the rocks, watching the waves lap at the shore? How many times had I let myself believe that he was still here, inside the City, that he'd appear one day, waiting for me by the Palace gardens? I still spoke to him, in the quiet of the suite, still told him I wished to go back to everything before. There were times I had to remind myself that he was gone, that the death report had been filed, that what had happened could never be reversed. Those facts were my only tether to reality.

Before I could say anything more, the door opened, the King pushing into the room without so much as a knock. He did this sometimes, as if to remind me that he owned every part of the Palace. "I heard what happened," he said, turning to me. I sat up straight, as the doctor came in behind him.

"It was nothing," I said, even though I wasn't yet sure. Moss had taken the remnants of breakfast to the Outlands, trying to get answers about what it contained.

"You threw up twice," he said. "You're dehydrated. You could have passed out."

The doctor, a thin, bald man, didn't wear a white coat as the ones at School did. Instead he was dressed in a plain blue shirt and gray slacks, like any other office worker in the City center. I'd been told it was safer this way. Even sixteen years after the plague there were feelings of resentment toward surviving doctors, questions of what they knew and when.

"Your father was concerned. He'd asked if it could be a reemergence of the virus," the doctor said, cupping his hands together. "I assure you it's not."