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minders would talk about it, thinking we were not listening.
    It is one of those things I have been trying to let go of ever since.
    On the day before the testing, the day before we are supposed to leave this place, I am using one of the punching bags in the training room when we hear a scream. It is early morning, the sun just risen, and usually we are either doing chores or about to start our training. Those of us already in the training room rush outside and find some of the girls huddled together by the cottage. “What happened?” I ask, but they are so shaken I can barely get them to speak.
    Finally someone tells us.
    Alex and Margot were found hanging from a tree near the river.
    One of the boys, Alex’s best friend, found them a fewminutes ago, already surrounded by blackbirds. My head shakes automatically in disbelief. I think of Alex as I knew him, trying to kiss me at the river, Margot, trying to get out of basement duty. Why would Alex and Margot be hanging from a tree? I want to ask, but I cannot form the words. I move past the shaken girls instead and walk until I can see what they have seen.
    I stand there next to Madame in shock.
    On the tree they are nothing but broken necks and pale bodies speckled with blood where the birds have pecked. Their eyes are wide, their hair falling over their faces, and I cannot reconcile any of it. I cannot tell myself that it is them I am seeing. My mind spins backward and makes my body retch. Madame wears a grim look and orders all of us back to the cottages, back to our training, as if nothing has happened, as if they were never even here. We follow her orders silently, but we’re all shaking. It’s not supposed to affect us like this.
    The note says that they wanted at least to leave on their own terms, together. Not in a testing room, not because they did not meet the necessary standards. Their hands are tied together by the gray ribbon from Margot’s hair, the same type we all wear in ours.
    I know a boy and a girl who love each other. Who say they can’t help it.
    What heavy lies we must tell to keep the truth from floating away from us.

Chapter 6
    W hat happens next is that I cannot breathe. I lie on the hard floor, held there by a weight pressed against my neck. Nothing I do changes it: no movement, no fight. I imagine that I am turning a terrible color, that all the important events of my life will begin to flash before my eyes as they leak away. The tree from today. I climbed it with Alex and the others one afternoon and broke my arm when a branch snapped. It was possibly the most definitive moment of my childhood.
    I remember Madame shaking her head over me, a half smile, half grimace on her face. I was an example that day, lyingthere, howling. “Why should I help you?” she said for everyone to hear, her voice cold and angry. “Why should I make you feel any better for disobeying me? Do you think the rules are for my amusement, you foolish girl?” But eventually she picked me up and carried me to the room we use as an infirmary. There she cleaned and wrapped my arm, and in my delirious state, I told myself she loved me. That she loved us all in spite of herself. She had to; we’d been with her since we were six or seven years old, all of us. Madame was the only mother most of us remembered. But she made me tear up the drawing I’d made her earlier that afternoon; with her watching, the pieces of charcoal-patterned paper scattered over my infirmary bed.
    Then she removed her glasses and stood at the edge of my pillows. “Look at me,” she said, and I couldn’t. I focused on the mark beneath her chin instead. I could tell I had done something wrong. As it was, I was already trying not to cry, trying not to look at the drawing I’d etched so painstakingly, now nothing.
    â€œLirael,” Madame said, eyes boring into my skin, “never again. Do you understand me? The things you think you know, the