Her voice sharpened. “Do you know how much I’ve tried to move on? To pretend like I have a normal life? I got a job I didn’t need just so I’d have something to do with myself all day; I got pregnant two years before the Hope Act said I had to. I’m even weeding this stupid garden because . . . because that’s what people used to do, before the Break. I’ve done everything I could, I’ve even avoided my own sisters—”

“What happened?” Marcus demanded. “What was so bad?”

“It started with breakfast,” said Ariel, looking down at the floor. “Nandita would get up early and make us tea—chamomile and peppermint and things like that. She was an herbalist, obviously, so she had all kinds of stuff in the house, and in her hothouse out back. Some we could touch, like the chamomile, but some were in these little glass droppers, with numbers on the sides like specimen jars, and those we couldn’t touch. I didn’t think anything about it at the time—we got in trouble just for playing in the hothouse, so it didn’t seem out of place—but one morning I got up early and came down to help with the tea, and she was putting whatever was in the droppers into it. I wouldn’t have thought anything about it, but when I asked what she was doing, she looked guilty—as guilty as I’ve ever looked getting caught doing something I shouldn’t. She played it off, just a new flavoring or something, but I couldn’t forget that look. I snuck down again the next day to look again, and she was doing the same thing again, with different droppers this time, keeping notes on a clipboard. She did it almost every day, but I stopped drinking the tea.”

“Did you ever see the clipboard?”

“Once, when I snuck into the hothouse, but I think she knew I’d done it, because I could never find it again. It wasn’t just notes on the tea, it was notes about us—how fast we were growing, how healthy we were, our eyesight and hearing and things like that. She always had us play games, like coordination games and memory games, and after I saw that clipboard I couldn’t even play those anymore. She wasn’t playing with her daughters, she was testing us.”

“Maybe she was just . . . keeping track,” said Marcus. “I don’t actually know how a concerned parent is supposed to act, maybe that’s normal.”