Pure by Julianna Baggott

Author:Julianna Baggott
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2012-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

LYDA

FINGERS

LYDA IS AT THE SMALL RECTANGULAR WINDOW, looking out. What else is there to do? Sit on her sitting mat? It’s a mix of every color, a hideous mishmash. She’s hidden it under her covers because she can’t stand to stare at it.

The fake window shimmering on the wall is filled with late-afternoon light. It flickers as if leaves are creating a dappled effect. Is it the same projected window in every cell? There’s something about the window that makes her feel deeply manipulated. Cut off from any real bearings, it seems as if the asylum now controls the sun itself. And even within the Dome, they rely on the sun as a true measure of day and night. Without it, she feels even more lost and alone.

Lyda’s room sits at the end of the hall. She has a view of the rectangular windows in the doors on either side of the hallway. All of the windows are empty now. Some of the girls may be in therapy sessions. There is a communal meal that some of them are escorted to. Others are on their beds or pacing or thinking about their own projected windows.

But then someone appears, down the row of windows. The redhead. Her face is soft and pale. Her eyebrows are so fair that they’re barely there. It gives her a blank expression. She stares at Lyda with her eyes full of worry, that same, strange expectant look she had in the craft room.

Lyda feels guilty now for having told her to shut up. The girl was only humming, only trying to pass the time. What was so wrong with that? She decides to make amends and raises her hand to the window, waves.

The redhead lifts her hand too, but then presses the fingers of that hand to the glass. Starting with her pinky, she lifts and presses each finger, one at a time, in a row, to a rhythm. She’s crazy, Lyda thinks, but since there’s nothing else to look at she keeps watching. Pinky, ring, pause. Middle, index. Pause. Then quickly, thumb, pinky, ring. Middle, index, pause. Thumb, pinky, pause. Then quickly again, ring, middle, index, thumb, pinky. Then in threes, ring, middle, index, pause, thumb, pinky, ring, pause, middle, index, thumb, pause, pinky. This is when Lyda realizes that it’s a song. But it isn’t that she’s playing the notes on a piano, only the rhythm of the song.

And Lyda knows what song it is. That horrible, awful, stick-in-your-head-and-drive-you-insane “Twinkle, Twinkle.” Disgusted, she rolls away from the window and, with her back to the wall, slides to the floor.

What if this is her life forever? What if relocation orders never come? She looks up at the fake window. Has it turned to dusk? Will she one day know the most minute shifts of fake sun, from morning to night?

She crawls to her mattress and pulls the sitting mat out from under her covers. She rips the plastic strips apart. She’ll redo them. She’ll make something pretty.

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