Page 1 of Poster Girl

One

When she thinks of the time before, she thinks of the photo shoot. The woman who applied Sonya’s makeup smelled of lilies of the valley and hair spray. When she leaned close to dust Sonya’s cheeks with blush, or to cover up a blemish with a fingertip dotted beige, Sonya stared at the freckles on her collarbone. When she finished, the woman slicked her hands with oil and ran them through Sonya’s hair to make it sleek.

Then she held up a mirror for Sonya to see herself, and Sonya’s eyes went first to the woman’s face, half-hidden by glass. Then, to the pale halo of her Insight, a circle of light around her right iris. It brightened in recognition of Sonya’s own Insight.

Now, a decade later, she tries to remember what her reflection looked like in that moment, but all she can see is the final product: the poster. On it, her young face gazes out at an unseen horizon. One of the slogans of the Delegation embraces her from above:

What’s Right

And below:

Is Right.

She remembers the camera flash, the photographer’s hand as he reached to the side to show her where to look, the gentle piano musicthat played in the background. The feeling of being right at the heart of something.

She pinches a cherry tomato from the stem and drops it in the basket with the others.

“Yellow leaves means too much water,” Nikhil says. He frowns at the book in his lap. “Wait—or too little. Well, which is it?”

Sonya kneels on the grit of Building 4’s roof, surrounded by plant beds. Nikhil built them. Every time someone in the building died, he took the worst of their furniture and pried it apart, saving nails and screws and salvaging what he could of the wood. As a result, the beds are a patchwork of wood colors and textures, here a strip of polished mahogany, there a piece of unvarnished oak.

Beyond the roof is the city. She doesn’t pay attention to it. It may as well be the backdrop of a school play, painted on a sheet.

“I told you, that book is useless,” she says. “Trial and error is the only way to really learn anything, with plants.”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

This is the last harvest of the year. Soon they will clear the beds of dead plants and cover them with tarps to protect the soil. They will move all the tools into the shed to keep them dry and carry the pots of mint down to Sonya’s apartment so they can chew the leaves all winter. In January, after months of eating from cans, they will be desperate to taste something green.

He closes the book. Sonya picks up the basket.

“We’d better go,” she says. “Or everything good will be gone.”

It’s Saturday. Market day.

“I’ve been eyeballing that broken radio for two months, and no one has shown an interest. It’ll keep.”

“You never know. Remember that time I waffled about that old sweater for three weeks and lost it at the last second to Mr. Nadir?”

“You did get it, in the end.”

“Because Mr. Nadirdied.”

Nikhil winks. “Every end is a new beginning.”

Together they walk to the top of the staircase. They go at Nikhil’s pace—his knees are not what they used to be, and it’s a long descent to the courtyard. She takes a tomato from the basket and holds it to her nose.

She never gardened as a child. She learned everything she knows now through failure—and boredom. But she still associates the sweet, dusty smell with summer, and so she remembers the haze of heat above the sidewalk, and the tension in badminton racquet strings, and the purple-red of her mother’s sangria, an infrequent indulgence.

“Don’t eat our product,” Nikhil says.

“Wasn’t going to.”

They reach the bottom of the stairs and walk across the courtyard. It’s green and unkempt, the trees straining at the building that contains them, scratching the windows of those lucky enough to have a view. Sonya is jealous of the ones who do. They can pretend. The others, like Sonya, whose windows look out at the city beyond the Aperture, confront the fact that they’re imprisoned daily. Three stories below Sonya’s window is a coil of barbed wire. Across the way is a collapsing corner store offering five minutes with a pair of binoculars for a nominal fee. She tied a sheet across her windows ten years ago and hasn’t drawn it back since.

On her knees at the edge of the garden path is Mrs. Pritchard, her graying hair in a chignon. She’s digging a dandelion out by the root using a shovel made of a few kitchen spoons tied together. Her hands are bare and her wedding band still gleams on her finger, though Mr. Pritchard was executed a long time ago. She sits back on her heels.

“Good morning,” she says. The Insight in her right eye brightens as she makes eye contact with Sonya, and again when she looks at Nikhil. It’s a reminder that even though the Delegation has fallen, someone could still be watching them.

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