We Set the Dark on Fire Read online

  She took a single step toward the officer, who was twice her width and half again as tall.

  The room was too bright, every sound too loud. The windowless cell that had haunted her childhood nightmares swam to life behind her eyelids whenever she blinked. Once her papers were proven false, they would assume she had let the protesters in. They would think she was here to spy, to help the rebels, when all she wanted was to keep her head down. Be a good Primera. Make her parents proud.

  If she could have, she would have whispered to the goddess of duty, to ask her to show the way, but there was no time, and too many eyes were on her now.

  Tears began to threaten. She could not let them fall.

  She moved ever so slightly forward.

  “Señorita?” the officer said, an edge in his voice that hadn’t been there the first time. “This way, please.”

  There was noise in the room, of course there was—other names were being called, other girls interviewed. Segundas were complaining about the late hour, and the dark circles they’d have beneath their eyes come morning. But Dani felt as though she was the only one moving, the only one anyone could see. Her heartbeat was audible to everyone, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

  The officer stepped forward, taking her elbow, steering her toward the classrooms in the back. But he stopped when her knees locked. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.

  “Señorita?” came another voice, a kinder voice. “Are you feeling alright?”

  Dani turned toward him, feeling like a fish washed up on the beach. He was in uniform, like the others, but he was slighter, younger, his eyes bright and curious.

  “Who are you?” growled Dani’s would-be captor.

  “Medic,” said the younger man, gesturing to the band around his left sleeve. White with a red cross. Dani’s breath came easier for a moment, though she couldn’t have said why.

  “I need her in the back for questioning,” said the officer, tugging on Dani’s unresponsive arm. “We have half the list to get through still, and those girls in the front are giving me a headache.”

  Under normal circumstances, Dani would have smiled.

  “I understand, sir,” said the medic. “But my orders are to care for any student experiencing shock after the riot. These aren’t common rabble, you know. Their fathers write angry letters when their precious daughters faint.”

  A staring contest ensued, and Dani swayed again for effect. If they took her to recover from shock, maybe she would get a second chance to run. “I don’t feel so well,” she said in the smallest voice she could fake. Primeras used whatever resources they had at hand.

  One hand flew to her stomach, the other to her mouth.

  The enormous officer stepped away in disgust. “Take her,” he said, shoving Dani toward the medic. “But she better be back in this room in ten minutes.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the boy, managing a clumsy salute as he shouldered Dani’s weight.

  He smelled like cinnamon and warm earth. A familiar smell. A comforting one.

  “Right this way,” he said with a smile, and Dani followed, a tiny flame of hope alive in her chest. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  “Let’s find somewhere you can relax,” the medic said, mostly to himself, trying several doorknobs before settling on one.

  “This is a—” Dani began, but he silenced her with a look, ushering her into a supply closet full of empty candle glasses and brooms. Goose bumps rippled up and down Dani’s spine.

  “Nice performance back there,” said the boy, closing the door behind him. “Even I almost believed you.” His face transformed in the dark of the closet. From stoic and soldierly, he was suddenly foxlike, all sharp angles and mischief.

  “I don’t know what you—” Dani began.

  “Save it,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”

  And with that, he took Dani’s papers, the hard-won key to her whole life, and tore them cleanly in half.

  2

  Analysis and logic are a Primera’s greatest tools, irrationality her greatest enemy. There is no room for emotion in her decision-making.

  —Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition

  THE MEDIC-WHO-WAS-NOT-A-MEDIC stood still, gauging Dani’s reaction.

  On the outside, she was frozen, but inside her, whole cities were being razed to the ground. Explosions were shaking the walls of her stomach. People were screaming in her throat.

  “Let me explain,” he said, looking almost sheepish.

  “You . . . ,” Dani spluttered. “I . . .”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “It better not be,” Dani replied, finally finding her voice. What had she learned every day in this place, if not how to handle herself in any circumstance? Dani pushed every feather of panic deep into herself and summoned all the authority she had. “Because you are clearly not military,” she said. “Now, you have about ten seconds before I start screaming that there’s an intruder here holding me against my will.”

  She expected an instant reaction, and she was disappointed. The boy’s smirk only grew more pronounced. “Oh?” he asked. “And what will you do when they come?” He tapped his chin in mock thoughtfulness. “Sure, they won’t be thrilled with me, but I’m sure they’ll at least investigate my claims before hauling me off.”

  Dani felt her expression hardening. She let it. She did not scream.

  “You know, the claims about the star Primera student with forged papers?” He brandished the shabby things at her, the tear down the center adding insult to injury. “The one who was about to be placed with a seriously decorated government family?” He shook his head sadly. “I don’t imagine they’ll be very happy with you at all.”

  “Who are you?” Dani asked through gritted teeth. “And why are you trying to ruin my life?”

  “Relax,” the boy said, rolling his eyes. “These things were useless the moment you walked through the oratory doors. The new verification system would have proven they were fakes in about a second.” He paused, like he was waiting for her to ask. “It’s a pen,” he continued when she didn’t. “On the special stationery the government issues ID papers with, it turns blue. On the peasant stuff, red. Pretty genius, really. So simple. It reacts to a fiber used in the printing process that—”

  “Who are you?” Dani growled again, interrupting. She hardly cared about the particulars of paper fiber when she was one misstep from handcuffs and a prison transport.

  “Right, of course.” The boy placed the torn papers inside his jacket, sticking out a hand.

  Dani looked at it like it was a venomous snake until he withdrew it.

  “You can call me Sota,” he said. “I’m a member of La Voz, and I’m here to deliver these.” From the same pocket where he’d stuffed Dani’s forged documents came a set of new ones, the paper gleaming blue-white even in the dark closet. She caught a glimpse of her name, printed neatly below Medio’s official seal.

  “Forget it,” she said, crossing her arms. Her palms were sweating against the sleeves of her dress. She could feel her quickening pulse along every inch of her skin. “I’m not taking anything from you.”

  La Voz was a name you whispered. Public enemy number one on the right side of the border wall. They were responsible for the riots Dani had heard about since she could remember. The fires. The dead officers. The violence. Being caught talking to a known member was good for a prison sentence, even if all you did was ask for the time.

  Most people knew to fear the name and everyone who claimed it, but even the rest knew not to accept favors from them.

  “I thought you might say that,” said Sota after a long pause. “But I ask you again: What happens when you leave this closet? Sure, you might get lost in the shuffle tonight, but I happen to know there’s a checkpoint being set up at the entrance to the government complex as we speak.” He stopped here, assessing the storm clouds rolling across Dani’s expression. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s where your future husband resides
?”

  Dani glared at him, but she said nothing.

  “And,” Sota continued, like they were chatting over baskets of fruit in the market and not discussing her inevitable demise, “should you, say, fail to produce your identification documents? That certainly wouldn’t be good, would it? They use a special word for people who try to trick the government, Dani; it starts with a T and it rhymes with . . .”

  “I know what it is,” Dani spat. “What’s your point?”

  “Only that the choice between trusting me and going it alone isn’t much of a choice at all. One of them involves taking these papers and going along on your merry way. The other involves a very small prison cell and the knowledge that everyone you know and love is in danger of joining you there.”

  Trained by her Primera instructors to analyze and see logic in even the most impossible situations, Dani called on every faculty she had been born with, as well as the ones she’d learned on this campus. There had to be another way out. One that didn’t involve dying of exposure in the jungle while fleeing the police or accepting a favor from the least trustworthy group of cutthroats in Medio.

  The seconds ticked away.

  There was no other option.

  “What’s in it for you?” she asked.

  “Why, Daniela, I’m offended.”

  “Come on,” she said, impatient. “I know who La Voz is. You’re a criminal, and you’re not here to be my savior, so what do you want in exchange for those?”

  Sota held out the papers, and much to Dani’s disgust, she took them. “Unlike your friends out there, who are so eager to join the ranks of good little upper-class dolls,” he said, gesturing to the closed closet door, “we’re in the business of helping people. Freeing them. Ask yourself who’s imprisoning those same people. Torturing them. Sending their children over the wall to starve. It’s so easy to join up, so easy to forget the harm being done every day. Even when you’ve seen it firsthand.”

  Dani felt the beginnings of a flush creeping up her chest, and she was glad for the high neck of her Primera dress. It wasn’t her fault people were starving and dying. She didn’t have to feel guilty just because she’d gotten out. She was about to say as much when Sota continued.

  “Think about the crimes your precious government condones, not just the ones they punish. Then you can talk to me about who the real criminals are. If we’re not all free, none of us are free. You remember that.”

  There was fire in his eyes when he spoke, a song in his throat, nearly turning his words hypnotic. There was a small part of Dani that wanted to buy into his logic. But Primeras thought with their heads, not their hearts. This was what these “revolutionaries” did. They made everything emotional. They leaned on pretty words until violence sounded like freedom. Until the extreme seemed justified.

  “Save it,” she finally said, though her voice was rougher than she liked. “I just need to get out of here. I’m doing what I have to do to survive. I’m not signing up to set things on fire.”

  “Whatever you say.” Sota smirked, already turning toward the door. “But you’re already seeing things differently. Your face might hide your feelings, but you can’t hide who you are. Not forever.”

  Dani opened her mouth to protest, but he didn’t give her a chance.

  “I marked you as interviewed on the student manifest,” he said. “You’re safe for tonight. Present these to the officer at tomorrow’s checkpoint and you won’t have any trouble.”

  The door opened, and the sounds of Dani’s world came pouring back in as he disappeared into the crowd.

  No one seemed to notice her walking out of the supply closet, and Dani drew the persona that had gotten her through five years in this place around her like a shawl. She was calm, collected, in control. Her restraint was her strength.

  Students weren’t permitted to leave until everyone had been questioned, and Dani sat alone at the end of a pew toward the back until they were dismissed, just as the moon had begun its slow descent in the sky.

  Back in her room, she should have fallen into bed and slept like the dead, but instead she sat awake, gazing at her new papers in the dim light from a candle.

  They were beautiful. A job like this would run someone thousands of notas in the back-alley places frequented by desperate outer islanders with everything to lose. And that’s if they could find someone good enough to make them without a waiting list a year long.

  Dani’s parents had saved every penny until she was four years old to get identification for the three of them. The riots had been getting worse, modern-day politics reinforcing Medio’s mythology until they formed an impenetrable hatred between the island’s two sides.

  She barely remembered the crossing. Her mama wrapping her in a long, woven cloth on her back even though she was much too old to be carried. Her father hushing them when the beams of the guards’ lights passed too close. And then the climb. The darkness. The way her mama’s feet slipped against the stone and her breath whistled through her teeth.

  That was all.

  They had left everything behind. A family, a history, and a home Dani barely remembered. She’d seen the ghosts of that life in her parents’ faces sometimes, passing like shadows, and felt guilty because they’d given it all up for her.

  Dani sniffed as she traced the clean lines of her name on the paper. The town they’d settled in when she was a child had been filled in as her birthplace. Polvo. She’d loved that little town. It was the first home she really remembered. She’d loved the kids, and the noise, and her run-down schoolhouse. Loved the trips with her mama into the small city nearby, where street vendors sold roasted corn on sticks and frozen fruit with chili powder in paper cups.

  But when her parents had come up with the idea to enter her into Primera selection the year she turned twelve, what could Dani really say? They wanted the best for her, they’d said. Wanted her to rise so high that the place she was born could never be a danger to her again. In the face of all that, what did it matter that Dani had loved Polvo? Loved her best friend, Marisol, and the boys across the street who always had a scraggly puppy or two in tow. Loved the idea of growing up to make the little place they called home better, instead of fleeing forever and leaving it to gather dust.

  In Polvo, no one had been confused about who their loyalty was to. Parents worked long hours in desperate conditions; they made sure you had enough to eat even when it meant going without; they scraped and scrounged every day to give you something more than they were allowed, and duty was all they asked for in return.

  And what were Dani’s little loves compared to that? A belly mostly full of food when others went hungry or worse. Shelter, and both of her parents alive, and the chance to be considered for the highest honor a young woman in Medio could dream of.

  What could she possibly give them besides her best?

  It didn’t matter that Dani had dreamed of a little house and a couple of chickens and the chance to learn her mama’s recipes. Of taking care of her parents as they got older. It didn’t matter that she’d wanted Polvo, and the life she had been born for. Because in Medio, safety required power, and to get power you had to move closer to the sun.

  She had done well, she thought, looking around the lavishly appointed room, its white stone, the hand-painted tiles lining the walls. Her closet full of modest dresses, each worth more than her father made in a week back home. The Medio School for Girls had provided it all, confident that Dani would more than make up for it when her new family paid her marriage fee.

  Maybe the girls she went to school with didn’t know what it meant to feel that fierce loyalty to their families. That duty. But she did, and to turn her back on it would mean to let go of the last little piece of Polvo she’d been allowed to keep.

  So tonight, Dani let herself take comfort in her new papers, despite the source. To take comfort in knowing she was that much closer to what her parents wanted for her. Maybe Sota had been telling the truth. Maybe La Voz had helped her beca
use they thought she was one of them. Maybe it had been an intervention by the goddess of luck at her lowest moment.

  Whatever it had been, Dani didn’t intend to waste this chance.

  3

  The graduation ceremony is the culmination of a Primera’s training; a first glimpse of the future she has earned, and the heights to which she will rise.

  —Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition

  ON GRADUATION MORNING, THE SUN rose early just to shine in the windows of Medio’s most celebrated young women on their special day.

  Dani was up earlier, sitting at her desk, reading a letter whose creases had smoothed out with time and handling. The date was five years earlier—the handwriting, her mama’s.

  Dear Daniela, it began. I write you this letter with all the hope a mother can feel, on the first day of the life you deserve. It will seem strange, after the way we’ve lived, but I know you, m’ija. You have a big heart, a strong mind, and you will find a way to make a life you love. No matter how different it is from the one you left.

  Her mama couldn’t say everything, of course. Not in writing. To the students at the Medio School for Girls, Dani was just a girl from somewhere below the capital. Even the ones who knew she was lower class could never know that Dani’s hometown—shameful enough for its proximity to the border wall—wasn’t in fact the place she had been born.

  Her dress for the ceremony was pressed and laid out on the bed, her door open to the sounds of girls preparing for the arrival of their families. Normally, Dani ignored them; she wasn’t here to make friends. Still, on this, the last day of her school career, she watched them a little more closely. She was envious, she realized. Of the excitement. Of the glow in their cheeks.

  Dani felt satisfaction, yes. The solid, warm feeling of a duty accomplished well. But there was no joy in this day for her. No family arrivals. No celebrations.

  In one of her infrequent letters home, Dani had sent two graduation tickets to her own parents, but it had been a formality. Something for her mother to pass around at the well. Dani had, of course, been vetted by the Garcia family. They knew what her papers told them—that she had been born in Polvo, and had risen far above what they’d expected of her here. Not everyone at this level was upper-class legacy, but it certainly didn’t get you anywhere to flaunt your unseemly poverty. Especially in front of the people who’d just paid a small fortune to marry you to their son.