Burn (Pure #3)(11)

He sits down and leans over to her, whispering, “I told them to let you go home. You’ve been through too many of these. Seriously, you should take off if you want to.”

She touches his knee. “You both need me here,” she says, indicating Partridge and her mother.

“Actually, I’m fine.” He glances around for another seat nearby, but they’re all taken.

“Your father would have wanted it this way.” She smiles sadly.

This is the part that’s confusing. Iralene knows that he killed his father. She was the one who delivered the poisonous pill to him. So why would she think he’d be moved to do things the way his father would have wanted?

“I wish Glassings was invited,” he says.

His name startles her. She whispers, “I heard he stopped showing up for classes. His office is cleared out too.”

“How do you know that? Who told you?”

“I do have some friends, Partridge. Your father made sure that there’s a handful of academy girls who know me well enough. I have to have someone to ask to be my bridesmaids!”

“Bridesmaids? Iralene, you know that—”

“I didn’t say I was marrying you. Did I?” She touches her hair to make sure it’s perfectly straight.

He unbuttons his suit jacket. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“Glassings will come through when you need him. No matter where he’s run off to.”

“I hope,” Partridge says. But it makes him nervous that Glassings is gone. There’s nowhere to run off to inside the Dome. Nowhere at all.

Someone reaches forward from the row behind him and gives his shoulder a squeeze. Partridge turns and sees one of his father’s fellow architects of the Dome from ages ago, Walton Egert. Partridge’s father and the other architects called him Gertie. He says, “Stand strong, Partridge. You hear? Stand strong, sonny.”

Partridge looks over his shoulder and says, “Thanks, Gertie. Thanks so much.” He’d never have been allowed to call Walton Egert by his nickname if his father were alive. It’s a power play—Partridge’s way of saying, I’m senior to you now. So why don’t you back off on the condescension.

Gertie gets it. He says, “Of course. You’re welcome,” and sits back in his seat stiffly, looking side to side to see who else heard it. A few people did, and they look away so as not to add to his embarrassment. It dawns on Partridge at this moment that he’s going to have to do that same move a thousand times in so many different ways.

Important people walk to the podium and speak about his father’s dedication, intelligence, and foresight, but mainly about how indebted they are to him for saving their lives. The speeches made during these services always make Partridge uncomfortable, and tonight is no exception.

One of his father’s advisers leans into the mic, saying, “Willux saved each and every one of us from death, from mutilation. We don’t have to live among those wretches: murderers, rapists, monsters—all of them! We were chosen. Let us be worthy of that choice forever.” And then he raises his hand and points at Partridge. “We have a new leader now. Willux’s only surviving son. Lead us,” he says to Partridge. “Lead and protect us. You are here for us in this turbulent time of sadness and grief, during this time of change. Thank you for rising up and taking your father’s place.”

Everyone in the room turns and looks at Partridge. The cameramen point the cameras at his face. He feels flushed and yet cold inside. His face is frozen. His eyes move from one camera to the next. Iralene elbows him gently. He nods and gestures back at the man at the podium. The cameras pivot away from him again, and only then can he breathe.

Partridge tells himself that all he has to do is get up after Foresteed’s talk and say his lines: I’m here to represent my family. My father is dead. And now is a time for healing. Thank you for coming, and I hope we can all move into the future with confidence and hope. Those are the only things that he and Hoppes could agree on. It’s as far as Partridge could take it. This is almost over, he tells himself. He hears Gertie’s voice in his head—Stand strong, sonny—which only churns his stomach.

Foresteed takes the mic. He’s saying what he always says: “Ellery Willux was the foremost intellectual of his generation. A man of science, of vision, of innovation…” His voice is perfectly modulated. His eyes tear up on cue, but his jaw is bravely jutted. His voice is edged with enough emotion at one point that Partridge wonders if the guy really loved his father. Willux was charismatic—even when he was the mastermind behind the scenes before the Detonations. How else could he have amassed such unchecked power?

He can still hear Foresteed saying, “Your father wasn’t just the biggest mass murderer in history. He was the most successful…” Is that what some of these people are worshipping here?

Foresteed’s eyes roam the crowd as he speaks and then lock on Partridge. “May we never forget what he’s done for us, and may we carry his legacy into the future.”

Partridge’s back prickles with sweat. He doesn’t want his father’s legacy carried into the future.

And now it’s Partridge’s turn at the mic as if he’s the man to carry his legacy into the future, and supposedly he is.

Partridge stands and walks along the row of blown-up photographs, which start during his father’s days as a cadet in the Best and the Brightest, when he founded the Seven, fell in love with Partridge’s mother, and might have started to go a little crazy—perhaps showing just the first few signs of mania, narcissism, and maybe some good old-fashioned paranoia. They move on to photos of him as a lead engineer of the Dome, standing beside more than one president, and, more recently, photos of him inside of the Dome, giving speeches, standing in front of the most recent elite corps of Special Forces.