If I’m going to run to find Ky, it has to be soon.

Indie, one of the other girls in my cabin, pushes past me on her way to the sink. “Did you leave any hot water for the rest of us?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. She mutters something under her breath as she turns on the water and picks up the soap. A few girls stand in line behind her. Others sit expectantly on the edges of the bunks that line the room.

It’s the seventh day, the day the messages come.

Carefully, I untie the small sack from my belt. We each have one of these little bags and we are supposed to carry them with us at all times. The bag is full of messages; like most of the other girls, I keep the papers until they can’t be read anymore. They are like the fragile petals of the newroses Xander gave me when I left the Borough, which I have also saved.

I look at the old messages while I wait. The other girls do the same.

It doesn’t take long before the papers yellow around the edges and turn to decay — the words meant to be consumed and let go. My last message from Bram tells me that he works hard in the fields and is an exemplary student at school, never late to class, and it makes me laugh because I know he’s stretching the truth on that last count at least. Bram’s words also make tears come to my eyes — he says he viewed Grandfather’s microcard, the one from the gold box at the Final Banquet.

The historian reads a summary of Grand father’s life, and at the very end is a list of Grand father’s favorite memories, Bram writes. He had one for each of us. His favorite of me was when I said my first word and it was “more.” His favorite of you was what he called “the red garden day.”