Spare and Found Parts (5 page)

Nell tossed the box onto her bed and grabbed the hand from her pillow. She sat at her desk and set the hand in front of her. Kodak nestled around her ankles.

She looked at the hand and lifted her pencil to the enormous thin sheet of paper spread out on her workspace and began very slowly to draw. When she was done outlining the angle of each finger, the silent intonation of its gesture, she moved up to a wrist, a forearm, an elbow; before she fully realized it, she had almost turned it into a whole person.

A kind person. A person who spoke softly and made her laugh and liked her just the way she was, who didn't ask her questions she couldn't answer.

Hours melted away as she drew, and the cogs in her head turned and the cogs in her heart turned. This
person on the butcher paper developed into a boy with a soft face, and he sprawled out, limb to limb. He took up nearly all of her desk. The ticking in her chest was almost inaudible, a soft, steady peace.

She glanced up at the clock on her wall, and the clock in her chest shot straight up in volume. It was almost four. She'd spent the whole day drawing. She'd done
nothing,
and Ruby would be there soon. If only the peace that came from putting pencil to paper were enough for the rest of the world. For Nan.

Nell begrudgingly stood up to get changed. She looked down at her desk, the new landscape of an imaginary boy with a tender face and no spare parts. As a last detail she drew the line, the line that separated the hand from the body. There. Perfect.

“I
t'll bring out the flecks of gold in your iris,” Ruby said to Nell.

She held Nell's face with one hand and, with the other, very carefully painted a slick of toxic bright purple eyeliner onto the lid of her left eye, biting her tongue in concentration. The two girls sat cross-legged on the kitchen table, facing each other. A small mountain of black hair sat at the base of a tall broom in the corner. Ruby had given Julian a quick once-over with her miracle scissors and had transformed him from Mad Scientist back into a clean-cut Marvelous Doctor. The speed and understanding she had for shape and something more elusive than that—style—were utterly beyond Nell. Julian had remarked that Ruby's taste should be her contribution, and Ruby wholeheartedly agreed.

“I'd paint this town all over, Dr. Crane,” she'd said, perfecting the hairline at the back of his neck, blade dangerously close to skin. “You just give me time.”

Nell was always a great appreciator of Ruby's gift, but at present, with a long, thin brush flying this way and that around her eye sockets, she wished she could appreciate it with a little more distance.

Ruby added a flourish here and there, then paused to admire her work. “There. Perfect.”

“Mhm,” managed Nell, in something resembling agreement. Her eyes were brown; she was fairly sure there wasn't any gold in there, but she wasn't going to argue with a girl holding a paintbrush at extremely close proximity to her eyeball. Ruby's forehead was wrinkled in concentration. She'd been twenty minutes doing Nell's makeup because “You can't go out with those big messy black eyes on you; you look like you haven't slept in ten years. Just for once step into the night; don't be hiding.”

Ruby smelled like oranges. Her face was flawless; her eyepatch for tonight, a muted black velvet. Her other eye was surrounded by a cloud of gold powder, and her lashes extended long and doll-like. She'd painted up her clusters of freckles to accent them: they popped. Her mouth pouted in focus, a pink that was gold when the light caught it.

Ruby perceived beauty in almost everything and with a few subtle but confident touches could turn anything around. Even Nell. Ruby painted Nell's face regularly; neither could irritate the other when they were quiet like this. Nell tried to enjoy this closeness, to push down the dread of spending the evening in the Bayou.

When Ruby was done, she beamed with pride and said, “There we go. Human after all,” and Nell stuck out her tongue. Ruby flashed her a mirror. Nell's reflection looked, unsurprisingly, just like Nell, only Nell with big violet halos around her eyes and some dotted freckles to match Ruby's. The dark moons usually under her eyes were invisible. Her mouth was glossed subtly. Fine, Nell thought. That's fine.

“It's wonderful,” she said, mustering enough enthusiasm so Ruby believed her.

As the girls gathered their things to leave, Ruby bopped about in excitement. Nell should have found it contagious, but she couldn't feel a thing other than the heavy sludge of dread. She scooped Kodak up in her arms as they walked out the front door and down the porch steps to their bikes. Ruby gave her a disapproving look, an I-cannot-believe-you're-bringing-an-animal-to-the-bar look but managed to not chide her. Not this early in the night.

Past Ruby's home, a cozy bungalow with a thatched
roof, the district was barren of buildings or life. That was why the twins had chosen the guts of the parkland for their speakeasy, though most young patrons' routes barely touched the long and winding journey Ruby and Nell cycled to get there.

The Phoenix Parklands held acres and acres of wet, overgrown greenery. These swamps had thickened and the ferns grown tall when the temperatures rose during the Turn. Once Black Water City and the country surrounding it had been cold and rainy, but now it was a hot, dense place. It was said that the same sickness that had poisoned the inhabitants had bled out into the atmosphere. This year the hot season had lasted too long; the air around them needed to break. It ached with humidity. The time was coming. The girls' ride through the parklands was tense in the hot, new dark of evening.

Before the Turn there had been a zoo in the parklands. There had been other buildings, too, but concrete falls and wood rots. The animals, however, remained. Even though Nell and Ruby had never seen much more than a tall stray stag or heard more than some rustling or growling from the thickets, they knew there were bigger things lurking. Animals they weren't sure they had the right names for. Animals they had half-whispered histories for. The girls were quiet and respectful when they passed through these less charted lands.
They made this journey twice a week in the dark. Nell lately had been making it alone after she could slip out of the Bayou unnoticed. The dark wilderness of the park held a strange comfort for her.

The light from the Bayou appeared in the distance like a flicker at first, but it rose into a bright candle of gaiety the nearer and nearer they pulled. It was a low, old building that had been dressed up in finery and brazen electric lights like a delighted great-aunt at a wedding party. The building had a whole generator of its very own, hard won and, through favors owed and favors done, carefully hidden. The Fox twins, Antoinette and Tomas, had been orphaned by the epidemic. They'd spent their childhood in the city orphanage and apprenticed in the production line at the Tea Factory, but as soon as they were old enough, they had set off into the world.

And eventually, in the dank tangle of the parklands, they'd opened the Bayou. A shred of real happiness in the city again. It changed everything for the young survivors of the epidemic, gave them something to look forward to. The parents and elders in the community steered clear, far too jaded to dance and sing. Two other watering holes opened up in its wake: quieter, more austere venues. This place, however, gave the young a chance to feel young.

The doors had first swung open on the party five years ago, to the night.

The Fox twins, green eyed and blond, had truly contributed something.

Nell hated them. Or something like hated them, something she was too ashamed to call jealousy.

As the girls approached the building, Nell's stomach dropped with dread, heavier than usual. She didn't want to go in. She wanted to go home and draw the hand and its person some more. The ticking in her chest had escalated without her noticing, but now it was all she could hear against the night air, over the hot breeze as she cycled.

Here was the thing about bad feelings: they arrived for a reason, and some people felt them more intensely than others. Some people trusted them; others didn't. Nell, unfortunately, was acutely aware of the things her body did and what they meant, and she knew the tightness in her abdomen only meant trouble. Rising panic. It meant, “Go home now, Nell.”

They passed the lanky iron gate that would have been imposing if not for the strings of tiny white electric lights. They locked up their bikes along with all the others on the rails set up specially for that purpose. The garden was chaotic and colorful, full of flowers and plants in big terra-cotta pots. The Bayou itself
lay before them, thrumming with life, stretching so far back into the knotted throngs of trees that it was impossible to see how big it really was in the dark of the fresh night.

Nell scooped Kodak, docile and wide eyed, out of her basket and placed him on her shoulders. He made a rumbling sound that wasn't quite a purr, and she was comforted, if only a little. He was well used to this.

“You're ticking fierce loud, Nell. Can you”—Ruby hesitated—“can you get it to shush? A little bit?” Everything in her face was: “Please don't make a show of me.”

Nell just stared at her friend, the bad feeling in her gut growing, the ticking spitefully rising in volume.

“No?” Ruby asked. “Really?”

“You know I can't do anything about it.” Nell's words were all teeth.

“Okay. Right, well, maybe the music will drown it out.” Ruby knew she couldn't backtrack so just flashed Nell an apologetic smile as they walked toward the door. Every muscle in Nell's body and the steel in her chest told her to turn around and leave. Instead, she followed the shorter girl to the closed door.

Ruby knocked confidently, and a slat briskly opened before them, revealing a pair of arched brows and brightly painted eyes.

“Password?” asked a throaty voice.

“FridayFriday12345ExclamationPoint,” Ruby recited cheerfully.

The door swung open, the music from indoors now fully audible and bright and infectious. Nell felt sick.

“Ruby Underwood and Nellie Crane, sure, it's only great to see you!” gushed the tall young woman, hair curled high on her head, decked out like a carnival in bright colors and sequins. Her smile was huge, and her eyes sparkled.

“Still moonlighting as a bouncer after mornings in the shop, Janey?” Ruby asked, giving the girl a hug. Nell stood stock-still and didn't move.

“Of course I am. Saving up my tokens to get a train ride with all my things way out to start over in the Pasture; got my sights on Tribe City!”

Tribe City, out by the Library Complex out by the ports.

“You are
not
!” exclaimed Ruby. “You're really moving over there? It's still wild out that way. There's only around a hundred people there, and more than half of them librarians!”

“Ah, yeah, but there's rumors of them opening up the ports, you know. Sending boats out. Look, if I volunteer service in the Libraries, wait around long enough, might manage to swipe an early ticket out!”
Janey winked. “Could be a great big beautiful tomorrow out there for me, you know? Could get off this island and out into the world.” She lifted the hem of her blouse slightly to reveal the matte steel square over her left hip. “Sure, it might as well not even be there. Nobody would know if they weren't looking for it, the way the Marvelous Dr. Crane has it done up for me!”

Nell inhaled deeply and turned slightly away.

“You are a scream, Janey. Delighted for you. I wouldn't have the nerve myself to be working in those old stacks of paper; they give me the creeps: all that information, probably covered in code.”

Janey shrugged. “Look, if it gets me nearer the port and away from this kip, I'll be all right to do the time in the silence. Sacrifices have to be made.”

“You're something else, Janey,” Ruby said, while Nell busied herself admiring some unusually fascinating decorations, so she wouldn't tap her foot with impatience.

“Sure, look. One step at a time. C'mere, Nell, your stoat is gorgeous. Oh and, eh”—Janey nudged her—“Oliver Kelly is inside looking for you.”

Nell gave her a tight-lipped smile. Instead of saying, “Don't ever touch me ever again,” she said, “Why is Oliver Kelly looking for me?”

“Oh, he didn't say!” Janey smothered giggles and shot a knowing look to Ruby, who returned it. Nell
knew full well why he was looking for her, and she wasn't in the temper for it at all.

“See you later!” Ruby cooed to Janey, and the girls walked down the winding hallway that led to the ballroom. The place reeked of hops, that warm dinnertime smell that gets all over you and makes you feel as if you've overeaten. It made Nell woozy before she'd even picked up a drink. She'd be drenched with sweat in no time; the purple wings on her eyelids would start running soon, too.

The grand dance floor split open before them, the ballroom a lush, gleaming treasure trove. Tobacco smoke hung in the air like something dangerous, something Nell couldn't handle. The ceilings were high, dazzling with chandeliers made of old bottles. The walls were papered in a close floral pattern, and the floor was covered in a thick red carpet; each footfall landed with a quiet thud on the shag. It was lavish, and week after week this decadence seemed to grow. Every time she walked in there was a new fixture. A mirror with a gilded frame built to look like a whale, above the bar. A set of lights with a rotating filter that changed color every minute: pink, then purple, then yellow, then back to pink again. A set of pink flamingos, poised elegantly by the footlights on the stage. Bunting, miles and miles of it. All gifts, all offerings,
all barters for more jars of that shining white peace or hoppy comfort in a shade of honey.

Nowhere else in the broken-down city looked like this. This was the contribution that mattered most to the apprentices: this place to go to forget.

There must have been two hundred, maybe even three hundred people crowded in there, at the bar and on the dance floor and scattered at the dozens of small circular tables at the edges of the room. Just about all the apprentices who lived in Black Water City. A whole squad from the monument construction. A janky, enthusiastic band of daytime plumbers and bakers and nurses huddled on a small platform stage, pulling old torch songs out of an accordion, a banjo, a fiddle, a bodhran, a double bass, and a heavily beaten piano. The singer was belting something about churches into a handmade microphone system hooked up to an amplifier made of an old crate and some metal scrap. It was tinny and distorted, but it worked. The dance floor oozed with life.

Nell's ticking was so loud that it reverberated through her arms and fingers, out of sync with the music, a misplaced metronome. Ruby was obviously eyeballing the span of the room for faces she knew.

“Do you want to dance with me?” asked Ruby tentatively, knowing the answer, already grateful
for Nell's permission to leave her alone, a grim buoy moored at the bar.

“No. I'm going to sit at the bar for a while, I think. Have a drink. Do you want one?” Nell recited just what she thought Ruby wanted to hear.

“It's fine. I'll grab one once I've got the lay of the land!” Ruby flashed her a grateful smile, kissed her cheek, then disappeared into the throng in what might as well have been a flash of lightning. She wouldn't strike near Nell again that night.