Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(68)

“What?” I ask, confused.

“Up early to study for tomorrow’s test, or out late from last night’s party?”

“I . . .” I gulp. “Early?”

“Right,” she drawls. “Don’t worry, none of the parents talk to me, and I’m sure yours are no different. I won’t be blabbing to them. Was it a good party?” I can’t think of an answer, and she laughs, standing aside to motion me in. “Get your story straight before you try it on your parents.”

When I’m inside, I feel a heavy pressure pushing against my eyes. I’m going to cry. I can’t cry ever again. If I do, I’ll never stop.

It’s just . . . I know I don’t have a lot of experience. Maybe every house feels like this. But Lark’s place is somehow so obviously a home. There’s a warmth, a smell of last night’s cooking. There’s a feel to it that I can’t define. An aura of love, of safety, of family.

“It’s not much,” Lark’s mom begins, almost apologetically.

“It’s . . . it’s perfect,” I say, so ardently that she laughs.

“Let me see if Lark is awake. She probably is, just like her namesake. I feel like she never slept for the first three years of her life. Up with the larks. Lark!” she shouts. “Your friend is here!”

I flinch at the sudden volume of her voice. “Won’t you wake her dad?”

“No, he’s night manager at Water Reclamation. Water flows by sun and moon, he always says.” She rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning, thinking about her husband. I bet they love each other, and get silly together. I bet they’re completely and totally happy. I’d like to see them together.

Lark comes out, looking fresh-faced and awake. The only sign of her ordeal is the fact that she’s wearing long sleeves. I know they hide the bruises she received during her capture and interrogation.

“I forgot we were going to . . .”

“Study,” I fill in, and then before she can accidentally introduce me by my old name, I hold out my hand to her mom and say, “I’m Yarrow.”

“River,” she replies.

“I can call you by your first name?” I ask, surprised. I’ve been tutored in politeness, for the day I would finally be out in the world, and I wasn’t expecting to be so informal.

She gives a little shrug. “Outer circle folk like us don’t tend to be sticklers for the rules.” There’s a note of defiance in her voice. She wants to remind me that she and Lark aren’t privileged inner circle people.

It makes me wonder again why there are poor and rich, why there are inner and outer circles, why some have everything they could want and more, and some are literally starving. Eden isn’t just supposed to be a shelter against the dead world, a place of survival and hibernation. It should be a utopia. There’s no reason for inequality.

But Lark drags me away to her room and that conundrum slips away.

The second the door closes behind us, she has her arms around me, her head resting between my neck and shoulder. “I remember,” she says. “They said I wouldn’t, and it was all a bit blurry for a while, but when it wore off I remembered everything.” She turns her head, pressing her lips to my throat. “You were so brave. So strong. You saved my life.”

She pulls back, looks into my eyes, and gasps.

“Your eyes! They . . .”

She doesn’t say any more, but I can see disappointment in her face. Was I just something exotic to her, a strange-eyed second child? Even though she lived in the inner circles she mingled with the poor, the Bestial, the odd . . . Was I just another oddity on her list? A way for her to feel special?

Now that I can pass as a first child, am I just like everyone else?

Lark seems to sense my mood. “I have just the thing to cheer you up. So you lost a little color in your eyes. We’ll just have to give you more color somewhere else!”

She sits me down on her bed and takes a contraption out of a small chest.

“I used to change my hair color all the time. Now I’m pretty set on this shade.” She twirls a lock of her lilac hair. “But sometimes I put a streak in for something different.” She sits me down on the floor, and perches on her bed, a knee on each side of my shoulders, my hair in easy reach. “Now, do you want to pick for yourself, or do you trust me?”

I stiffen. Stop asking me that, I think. But once her hands start to caress my hair I lean back into her and relax. She takes this as assent. “Ultramarine, I think, with a bit of turquoise and jade. Nothing overwhelming, and mostly underneath. I want your natural dark hair to dominate.” She strokes the machine along strands of my hair, combing it out with her fingers. I wish this could last forever, me with my head on her lap, safe under her care. But nothing lasts.

“There!” she says finally, and jumps up to bring me a hand mirror. At first I hardly notice any difference. “Shake your head,” she instructs me. I do, and the colors suddenly emerge, vivid streaks in my dark hair.

“I love it,” I say honestly. But my gaze keps being drawn back to my dull, flat, lifeless eyes. The hair can’t make up for that. But I don’t want to say that to Lark after she’s been so kind.

She must be looking at my eyes, too, though, because as she looks at my reflection from over my shoulder she asks, “How did you get them?”