CHAPTER 1 - THE ILLUSION OF PERFECTION

Alex had been at the window since before the light shifted, which was earlier than he needed to be awake and later than he had actually slept.

Serenity Lane came to life the same way it always did. The Hendersons’ sprinklers woke up at six-fifteen. Mr. Okafor never failed to walk his retriever. And the milk cart was unhurried, as usual. Alex had watched this sequence so many times he could run it in his head with his eyes closed, which sometimes he did. This morning, he kept his eyes open and still felt like he was running it in his head.

He turned from the window. The wooden eagle lay on its side on his dresser, the mended wing pointing to the ceiling. He did not pick it up.

•  

Eleanor was arranging fruit slices on a tray when Alex came downstairs. She worked from the outside in, arranging them in circles.

“Big day,” she said.

“The Celebration,” he said. He poured coffee.

“The whole town will be there,” she said it the way she said most things about Comfortville. As though the size of the agreement was the point of it.

Jonathan had his tablet, the Daily Digest open. The Digest was curated each night. By morning, it contained nothing that had not been reviewed. Alex had known this for years. He had not thought to call it anything until recently.

“You ready?” Jonathan asked.

“Sure.”

•  

Alex had learned Comfortville’s history in little increments. It was like a puzzle, each piece shaped to fit smoothly. Dr. Evelyn Comfort had founded the town fifty years ago, designed it from the center out. Comfort Hall sat firmly in the middle of the city, with Services situated around it. The next concentric ring consisted of commercial buildings. Then residences came next, four rings of them, each ring larger and more comfortable than the one before. The Whitmans were in the fourth ring.

The theory, as Alex had heard repeatedly in every civic class, was that by making comfort visible and measurable, and by giving people a clear path to more of it, you could remove the restlessness that made people unhappy. Alex could follow the logic. What he had been noticing lately, and trying not to think about, was what the logic needed to stand on.

•  

The plaza was already crowded when the Whitmans arrived. People arranged themselves by ring the way they always did at public gatherings, without appearing to notice they were doing it. Inner rings to the back, outer rings forward. Everyone in the right clothes. Everyone wearing the expression that Comfortville produced and rewarded.

Mayor Bliss perched on the steps of Comfort Hall. Silver-haired; every gesture placed where it needed to be. Alex had watched her do this at every Celebration since he was seven. She was very good at it. He was not sure when he had started thinking of it as a skill rather than a quality.

The speech began. Alex knew the speech. Everyone did. The founding, the gratitude, the principles, yada-yada-yada…

He had said those words every year and believed them, or nearly enough. This year, they moved through him and left nothing behind.

The principles were on the wall of every classroom he had ever sat in. He could write them without thinking: “Comfort is the highest goal.” He had written that one on more tests than he could count. “Security is the foundation of happiness.” The third one: “Uniformity breeds harmony.” He always stumbled slightly on the fourth and fifth when writing fast. “The known is always preferable to the unknown.” “Contentment is a choice.”

Standing in the plaza, he thought: a choice. As though the alternative was available.

The pitch of Mayor Bliss’s voice climbed sharply. “We must stay watchful. The forces of chaos are ever-present. We must guard against the temptation of the unknown, the false promises of challenge and change.”

The crowd nodded and waved in agreement. Alex did not.

He was watching his parents when he noticed the girl.

•  

She was at the crowd’s edge, near the east arcade. Not quite inside the gathering, and not quite outside it. Her brown hair was loosely kept. But that was not the thing. The thing was what she was doing with her face, which was nothing. She was not nodding with Mayor Bliss. She was not performing any of the expressions that the moment required. She was watching the crowd the way you watch something you have not decided about yet.

She turned and looked directly at him.

He looked away.

•  

After the ceremony, the crowd moved toward the fair. Jonathan and Eleanor went with it, the way they moved through Comfortville generally, without breaking stride.

“Coming?” Eleanor asked.

The girl was still at the arcade entrance, watching him.

“I’ll catch up. Just need a minute.”

Eleanor’s expression shifted slightly. “Should we call Dr. Patel? If you’re—”

“I’m fine. Just thinking.”

He watched them go. Then he walked across the plaza.

She waited until he was close.

“Do you ever wonder,” she said, “about what’s on the other side of the wall?”

Alex thought about how to answer. He had gotten very good at not answering honestly, which was different from lying. Comfortville did not require lying. It only required not saying the thing directly.

“Sometimes,” he said.

“I’ve watched you at the last three assemblies. You say the words, and then you look around. Like you’re checking.”

He said nothing.

“I’m Sophia. Langley. Inner ring.”

“Alex Whitman.”

“I know who you are.”

•  

She took him through back streets he had never been down, though he had lived in Comfortville for a decade. They did not talk. He did not have language yet for what this was or where it was going, and she did not seem to need him to.

The wall was taller up close than it appeared from anywhere inside town. He had seen it from a distance his whole life without ever standing next to it. There were seams where the panels joined, a watermark from an old rain season running most of the length. He put his hand flat against it.

Cold. Even with the sun on it.

“I’ve been here four times,” Sophia said. “I’ve never gone over.”

“What stops you?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Not fear exactly. More like . . . I wanted to know if someone else was seeing it before I did anything about it.”

Behind them, the fair was running, the music audible, the slogans cycling through their second repetition. Alex knew how the grounds were laid out. He knew which stalls his parents would stop at, what they would eat, what they would say about it. He had done this every year.

“What do you think is out there?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Sophia said. “That’s the part that matters.”

He looked up at the top of the wall. Back at her. She was watching him the same way she had watched him from across the plaza. Direct. Not filling the space between them.

He had not told anyone about the eagle in years. His father’s voice, the storm, what it meant to open your wings rather than land. He did not tell her now. But he stood there thinking about it, with the fair fading behind them and the wall cold under his hand.

“I’m not ready to go over,” he said.

“Neither am I.” She paused. “Not yet.”

He understood the difference between those two sentences.

They stayed a while longer. The plaza music changed. Different melody, same tempo.

He stayed where he was.