But it’s not her standing there, filling out the doorframe.
It’s Tildon.
THREE
SAM
SOMETHING’S WRONG.
Lucas has stopped pacing, slowing turning himself inside out with each stride, but the agitation that electrifies the air has billowed out to become something far more dangerous. The temperature in the room ramps up, until I’m sure it’s not just the heat coming back on through the overhead vents. I strain against the side of the cage, trying to see, fighting the urge to kick and kick and kick until I smash it into pieces. I want out.
The door shuts again, muffling the wind’s howling.
“Dismissed.”
One word. A bolt of dread shoots through my heart. Stops it dead in my chest.
I press my back against the far corner of the crate. There’s a lock between us. A cage. I’m safe in the cage.
Unless he has a key.
Would they have given him a key?
Could he have taken it from Olsen? Where was she? Why didn’t she—
His boots squish as the water leaves them. He takes three short steps forward, but I still can’t see him or Lucas. I press a hand to my face, my back alive with throbbing pain, my head still aching from the White Noise. My throat burns with the things I should have said to him in the few minutes we had.
Don’t do it, I think. Lucas, it’s not worth it.
He has to get out of here. He has to find Mia. I don’t know what these Reds are supposed to be, what role they’re meant to serve here, but I can guess insubordination is not going to play well with any of the PSFs.
Lucas’s heart is too soft for this place. He has the most beautiful mind of anyone I’ve ever known. I shouldn’t have let him...I shouldn’t have talked to him. The realization is like swallowing boiling water. I got so wrapped up in him and the feeling of having him close again. He’s different, in so many ways. His voice is deeper but still has the usual hint of a smile in it, no matter how much it’s dimmed. And where he used to be short, skinnier than me, Lucas has shot up to his dad’s height and he’s filled out. They have shaped him into someone who fills a room just by standing in it.
I don’t know how he’s doing it, how he’s strong enough to bury his heart that deep inside him, the surface never once betraying how he feels. It’s only because I knew him—know him—so well that I see the pain that’s in his eyes and I can recognize it for what it is. How long has it been since he’s been able to even talk about his parents? How did he survive all of these years, locked inside of his own head?
This morning I’d felt the power boiling under his skin, and I’d just assumed that his heart had hardened over the years as much as mine. It’s not true at all. He is still good, sweet Lucas. I know how deeply he feels everything, and I can’t imagine the inhuman strength it’s taken to be able to move on from losing two of the people he loved most in the world when just the thought of their loss has actually shattered my heart. When we were kids, he was the crier. Things didn’t upset him, they devastated him, and it just made me want to fight every single kid who gave him trouble for it.
He can hide it from them, but he can’t hide it from me.
“Dumb or just deaf?” Tildon snorts. “Get out.”
I hear a step, and then another, lighter step that mirrors it. Something clicks—the baton coming off its hook. I recognize the sound now. It’s a bruise on my memory, one that’ll never fully heal.
Someone is breathing hard, and it’s not me. I don’t think it’s Lucas, either.
“There are plenty of cages here. Are you looking to join the little princess? You’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?”
Lucas says nothing. Tildon does nothing. I can hear him squeezing the baton in his fist, but he doesn’t hit Lucas. I try to imagine what he must look like, facing a Red, knowing what he’d done to torment the Reds in the past, knowing that some of them must remember it.
Go, Lucas! My mind is screaming the words. If only I could see his face. He would know it’s okay to go. He can’t stay here for me. It’s not worth it.
Lucas takes a halting step toward the door as Tildon walks around him, careful to keep an arm’s length of distance between them. Suddenly it’s needles and knives pumping through my veins, not blood. Tildon’s boots are the first thing I see, his mud-splattered boots. I can’t breathe. I realize it suddenly, the truth sinking deep inside of me. This is never going to be over. This is my life now, until the camp controllers step in and move him again, make him another girl’s problem. I hate that the thought actually gives me relief. I hate how selfish I have to be just to survive.
He crouches down, tapping the lock with his baton. I do feel like an animal then. Caught in a trap, waiting for the knife. “Hi, sweetie. We didn’t finish our conversation earlier.”
I won’t look at him. I won’t. I can feel his eyes rake over me, the way my wet sweats cling to me, the tangled mess that is my hair. I wish Olsen had just cut it all off before she left. I see what she does, now, the intensity of his gaze as it locks on the place where strands of my hair brush my collarbone.
Tildon tugs on the lock to test it, laughs at the way I cringe as he drags his baton over the front of the crate, up and down, his eyes never once leaving me. I want to crawl out of my skin and disappear in the shadows. I want to dissolve the way Ruby did. I can’t be here anymore. I can’t.
The entire cage shifts as the baton smashes against it. I’m rattled from the top of my head to my feet so hard I bite my tongue and the taste of blood explodes in my mouth. Tildon laughs again as I cover my face with my arms. The thin metal has warped where he struck it. The gap between the bars has expanded, bent and twisting inward unnaturally. He wedges the baton into the bottom corner of the door and starts to bend that, too, pulling the corner toward him, creating a hole large enough to stick a hand through. I twist around again, tucking my legs up against my chest, my left side against the back of the cage to avoid his touch.