The Unquiet by Mikaela Everett Read Free Book Online Page B

thinks nobody notices.”
    â€œEverybody is afraid,” I say. I am surprised to find myself defending Jenny.
    â€œSee, but that’s not a good enough reason. The exam is the scariest thing that has ever happened to us. It’s fine to be scared, but then we’re supposed to get over it. We’re supposed to think that after training with one another for eight years, there’s a reasonable chance we’ll make it. Panicking isn’t going to solve anything.”
    â€œIs that why you’ve chewed your fingernails raw?” I ask her.
    She tucks her hands into the pockets of her coat. “Is that why you were going to let Ezra choke you to death before Gray rescued you?” she asks me.
    I don’t answer.
    Alex is gone. This is what we really want to say. Want to talk about. But we can’t.
    I know she is thinking the same thing I am. Alex’s being gone somehow makes the possibility of our death tomorrow that much realer.
    Edith sighs and shakes her head as if she’s trying to clear it. Her voice is lighter when she speaks. “We’re rich, you know?” she says. “In this other life we’re going to. On our Earth we were living on the streets when they found us. Our parents were gone, and Gray was good at figuring out who we could steal from without getting caught. We lived beside garbage cans, slept in alleys, that sort of thing. We had to roast rats once for breakfast, and now we’re here. And apparently we’re going to be rich with two parents in some giant house in the city.”
    â€œIs that good?” I ask.
    â€œI don’t know,” she says. “I guess we’ll find out.”
    My own family consists of two grandparents and a sister and orchards in the countryside near Paris. We have no parents, my alternate and I. I suppose we have this one thing in common: that we were not meant to be loved in that way by those people.
    I say nothing. Edith moves on.
    â€œOn the radio they’re saying alternate is a vulgar term now. That we’re duplicates, not alternates. Like what a thing is called is more dangerous than what that thing can do to you.”
    I suck on Gray’s cigarette and wait for the real thing Iknow she wants to say. The thing I was waiting for Gray to say. The reason I am out here to begin with, because I could read it on him when we were fighting earlier in the training room. We might not be close anymore, but I can read it on Edith now. After a while I do not think it is coming, and I have almost decided to go back to the training room and practice for tomorrow, to forget them, all of them, completely. Then Edith puts the bottle down and runs her fingers through her hair. She does not look at me.
    â€œHe doesn’t think they did it,” she says after a moment, staring down at the ground. I don’t ask what she means, I am too frightened to, but she elaborates anyway. “He doesn’t think they killed themselves, not like that. He says they had ideas of how to be, outside of here. That they might even have made it.”
    I rub my hands together because they’re suddenly too cold. Because the wind is singing a crueler song than even I can bear. And then she makes it worse. Presses her lips right against my ear, where there is no risk of being overheard. “He thinks Madame did it to them because she found out,” she says.

Chapter 8
    W e are always waiting our turn. Waking up in the morning and then lining up to use the single bathroom. Some of us go outside to brush our teeth because the line is so long. Some of us sneak out a piece of toast when no one is looking, just so we do not have to wait for breakfast also. This morning I fill up the kettle and set it on the stove.
    I practiced my knife skills until I was exhausted last night, and now I pick up my book and keep reading from where I left off to tune out the noise. One girl is running around the living room half naked, iron in