I Am Margaret by Corinna Turner Page B

it out at between 604 and 730 days, depending on how soon we were taken once we’d all reached Prime Condition. No , a maximum of 727 days, now, somewhat less than two years. Apparently a normal person our age—i.e. someone who’d just passed their Sorting—could look forward to 37,230 more days of this life. So not much difference there. Not .
    On the plus side, everyone’d settled down in the dorm well enough. Some people had bookReaders or board games, and looking at each other’s things and clothes was a popular pastime—and chatting, of course.
    I glanced down at the empty bottom bunk, where Harriet, Annie, Caroline and Sarah were busy laying out my long skirts for inspection. Polly’s chest was empty now. The morning after she’d been taken, some guards had come for her things. Her poor parents. Polly’d obviously been a preKnown, but still. To open the door the very day after their daughter had been taken away and be presented with her effects and her brain’s ashes… I offered up a prayer for them and tried to put it from my mind.
    “I love your skirts, Margo,” said Annie. “Where do you find them?”
    “She makes most of them,” put in Caroline. “Just how she wants them.”
    “ They’re so impractical,” snorted Jane, from a few bunks along.
    “ I do have other clothes,” I said, as patiently as I could. Now, Margo, if you’d been waiting for that ring on the doorbell your whole life, you might be rather prickly too, hmm?
    “I was always surprised you didn’t show off your legs a bit, though,” said Harriet. “If I had Bane Marsden following me around, I’d have made sure to show my legs off! Don’t you think he’d have liked to see them?”
    “ I’m sure he would, but I don’t think whether he’d like to see them matters a monkey’s tail”
    “But…” protested Harriet, wide-eyed, “the way Sue always showed off her legs—and the legs she’s got!”
    “The legs she’s got!” sighed Caroline enviously.
    “…weren’t you worried she might steal Bane away from you?”
    I couldn’t contain a snort myself at that.
    “Trust me, if I thought the only reason Bane spent time with me was because he thought my legs were better than Sue’s, I’d have helped him on his way to her with a boot up his behind a long time ago!”
    Harriet giggled.
    “You’re funny, Margo.”
    “She doesn’t mean funny ha ha, I bet,” put in Jane acidly, but I ignored her without a great deal of effort.
    I’d finished helping the last stragglers adjust their exercise sacks, as we termed them, and now found myself dwelling on Bane at all hours of the day and night. Such introspection left me feeling far more unhappy than when I began, so regretfully I’d begun to ration my ‘Bane-time’.
    But the talk of Bane sent my thoughts drifting back to our first kiss, in the schoolyard. Our only kiss, alas. I’d waited so long for that one and would wait as long again for another, except I didn’t have that long available. That kiss… I wouldn’t swap it for another six months of life, yet… it made things so much harder. It made me want him so much, his lips, his presence, all of him… I wanted to see him again, desperately…
    Yet… don’t you dare get yourself killed, Bane, don’t you dare get yourself killed because of me!
    Whoops, thinking about Bane out of Bane-time—my heart was aching almost unbearably. Right, time to finish my letter. Taking it out of the top of my chest, I slid off the bunk and went to sit at one of the tables. Letters were posted on Tuesdays and Fridays, and it was Tuesday tomorrow. My first letter. I wanted it to be right.
    Most of it was devoted to a description of the place and our routine, an honest one, ‘cause my parents would really want to know, but as amusing as I could make it. I’d written a few lines about each of my new friends as well, but I didn’t mention Polly. Hopefully they’d let Bane read it, though Bane I’d have liked to talk to about