Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill Read Free Book Online

must be dead now, those trees, like everything else. Rotted away, decaying like female babies in the uterus. Decomposing from the inside out.
    “You are fortunate,” chastity-ruth told us as we were formally inducted into the School in 4th year. I still remember how strange the new clothes felt, how heavy my lips were with the coating of unfamiliar lipstick. We were in the Hall, watching as she gave her speech on the stage, our bodies so little they were nearly consumed by the cushioned velvet seats.
    “Fortunate,” she repeated sternly. I pulled down the cropped T-shirt with glittery lips embroidered on it, the gap between it and the new denim hot pants too bare for comfort. Her lip turned up into a snarl when she saw me fidgeting, her eyes fierce, and I felt afraid for the first time. And then she showed us the video. The infamous “girl Graves,” thousands of unwanted daughters disposed of in an ever-expanding hole, their heads crushing against each other like broken china dolls. Drugstores with shelves upon shelves stacked with gender-specific fertility drugs, as easy to buy as chewing gum. And the body learned. It learned that a female baby was an invader, come to steal her mother’s beauty. A female baby was dangerous.
    “There was concern of course,” chastity-ruth told us, her serene voice at odds with the horror of her words, “when years passed in the Zones and no female babies were born. Soon there was only a handful of the original women left, all past childbearing age, and the threat of extinction seemed far too certain. Genetic Engineers were forced to create women to ensure the survival of the human race. And since they had the opportunity, it would have been foolishnot to make necessary improvements in the new women, the eves.” She coughed delicately. “And the Schools were formed to house them.”
    “Why didn’t they give the girl babies to the companions to raise as their own?”
    She stared at me after I said this, identifying me as trouble. “Who would have wanted you?” she said. “Who would want you until you could be of some use?”
    I didn’t understand what she meant by “of use,” not then. isabel slipped her hand into mine, anchoring me. And I knew she could protect me.
    I blink twice, my vision blurring. Pushing my way through the tinselly plants, I arrive at the outer limits of our world, my hands reaching out to meet the shell that keeps us all in here, safe from the wastelands. It has been tinted an inky black tonight, twinkling flakes precisely penciled in, a huge white moon drawn like an unblinking eye. I get as close as I can, flattening my body against the glass, feeling its solid resistance meeting me. I can see nothing beyond this, everything swallowed up by the night.
    “What are you doing?”
    I flinch, my right knee screaming as it hits the sky. She looks perplexed, her hands folded across her chest. Her black robes are strange against the colors of the garden, the light from the moon surrounding her bald head like a halo.
    “You scared me,” I say, and I sit heavily on the lime-green lawn, squashing some poppy flowers as I do.chastity-magdalena comes closer, arranging her robes around her as she sits next to me. Her skin is still smooth, with only the beginning of faint lines forming around her copper-colored eyes. She’s the youngest chastity, but still old—in her midthirties, I think.
    “Do you want to talk about it?” She hesitantly pats my shoulder and we both flinch. The chastities never touch us. “Is this to do with the Ceremony, freida? It’s okay if it is. It’s normal to feel apprehensive.”
    I’m not sure if that is the reason. I don’t know what this thing is, twisting in my gut, thirsting for something I can’t name, but I nod my head. It’s easier.
    “What third do you want to be chosen for?”
    “I want to be a companion.”
    “Not a concubine?” she asks, her cheeks coloring at the word.
    “If that is the third the Inheritants