CHAPTER 1

The afternoon before I die.

Hand on my heart, hand on my stupid heart, I do try to be good.

Girls aren’t supposed to know things. Prophet Nigel says we’re made for being mothers, not for filling our heads with questions, or even worse, with answers. I’m pretty sure he’d pull us out of school and marry us off before we turned eighteen if he wasn’t so scared of the government finding out. But right now, I’m the girl the whole class is staring at, their mouths swung open so I can see their peggy little teeth. I swear this is even worse than the time I brought a box full of baby cockroaches for show and tell – I was seven, and wanted to teach everyone about insect life cycles.

Em, what were you thinking?

I wasn’t thinking, obviously. Not then, and not today, either. I’d been gazing out the window of this big old ugly barn we call a classroom, searching for shapes in the clotted-cream clouds while the teacher went on and on about how biology is actually all a big conspiracy theory. And then, when he asked when insects were created, I just word-vomited facts.

I don’t know what came over me.

‘So you’re saying, Emily Woodward, that a dragonfly is 300 million years old? As you know, that’s impossible, because as the Prophet Nigel unequivocally teaches, the world is just seven hundred years old.’

Brother Elias, our teacher, slams his ruler against my desk and my shoulders shoot up protectively. I look up at Prophet Nigel, smiling beatifically down upon us from the portrait at the front of the class, all long grey hair and beige robes. I hadn’t meant to speak up. It’s a sin to contradict what Prophet Nigel says. Questioning anything at all, really, is a sin, so I try not to. Well, not out loud, anyway. But, hand on heart, I can’t help the questions that sneak into my thoughts. No wonder question marks are shaped like fishing hooks, all looped and sharp and pointy. My brain feels all cut up from the stupid questioning words that try to catch me out – the whys and the hows. They won’t ever leave me alone.

‘Emily can stay on earth with her precious cockroaches and bugs and whatever. I’ll laugh and wave when the spaceship comes to take me to heaven.’

That’s Jeremiah, who’s currently throwing a spitball my way. Honestly, he looks like someone took his face and pinched it so tightly it stayed that way, with his tiny mouth and his too-close-together eyes. He hates me because I used to beat him in our school spelling bees, back before I realised that playing dumb was smarter.

Xanthe Green turns from her seat, front and centre in the first row, and throws me a strange look. If I didn’t know better I’d describe it as a flash of curiosity, but we’ve known each other all sixteen years of our lives, so I do know better. Almost immediately, her blue eyes resumetheir glacial gaze. She leans over to her best friend, Pearl, and whispers, loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘Was that Em who spoke up? Silent Emily? Oh my gosh, I had, like, seriously forgotten what she even sounded like.’

The whole class laughs, and my cheeks flame.

Of course they laugh. I’ve barely talked in years, and I’mso nondescript I’m practically invisible. Xanthe Green, on the other hand, is so beautiful in that golden, fine-featured, fairy kind of way, you can’t help but sit up and take notice of everything she says. But you know how in some storiesthe fairy just throws curses on princesses for no reason? Yeah. Xanthe has those vibes. However, she knows how tosuck up to whoever’s in power, so the grown-ups love her.

Brother Elias lets them mock me, because a girl who answers questions in class deserves to be mocked. And a girl who parrots the science stuff? Well, only Townies believe in science, and everyone knows that Townies don’t have souls.

Not the way we do.