With each breath he draws, I can hear his heart. It sounds so strong, so full, and I press deeper against him. Hoping that if I hold him tight enough I can keep the infection from spreading.
He turns and faces me, puts a hand on my cheek, his thumb tracing the path of my tears. I reach up on my tiptoes, try to press my lips to his mouth, but he twists his head so that I kiss his jaw, his muscles tense and hard.
He steps away from me then, back to the window, and I stand in the darkness. A dull light flashes against the space between us and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s the lighthouse in the distance. For a brief moment I wonder if my mother is still there staring at the Forest and if she misses me.
When the light hits again I see the stains on Catcher’s shirt. The rips from where it was torn in his fight with Mellie.
“Come home, Catcher,” I tell him.
“I can’t,” he says, his hands gripping the rotted frame of the window. “I’m infected.”
I step forward. “How do you know? Maybe it was a scratch, maybe she didn’t really bite you.” I realize as I’m saying the words how hard I’ve been hoping they’re true. That I’ve come all this way with the hope that what I saw last night was wrong. That Cira is right and that Catcher isn’t infected.
But the longer the silence stretches between us, the more desperate my hope becomes. “Tell me you’re okay,” I say frantically. I want to beat my fists against his chest until he tells me what I want to hear but instead I just dig my nails into my palms.
“I’m infected, Gabrielle.” His voice is scratchy and low, defeated.
“But how can you know?” I plead. I shake my head, words tumbling out. “You’re not. You can’t be. I can’t—”
“I can feel it.” He turns back toward me, his eyes hollow and lost in his face. I swallow, remembering the Mudo on the beach. How can the man in front of me turn into that? He’s so strong. So warm. So alive.
And then I realize that the heat of his skin is fever due to the infection. That it’s burning through him even as I stand here and stare at him. Eventually, just like everyone else who’s infected, it will kill him.
I think about my mother telling me how she’s seen people she loved turn Mudo. How she’s been there at the end. To me it was just another story, another tale of her life in the Forest. I never truly understood what she was telling me. Never realized what it meant, what she must have endured.
I didn’t think it would be this hard to face Catcher. But now I stand here and stare at him and understand why my mother made herself forget. I understand how much easier it would have been to stay in the town, forget about the Barrier and Catcher and how he makes me feel.
And then I remember again that she’s not my mother, and the room starts to swirl around me. There are no sacred memories. Catcher steps forward, his hand out to me. “Are you okay?” he asks, and I grab on to him.
I don’t want things to have changed so much. I want to go back to last night, when I only worried about how to kiss Catcher, when my mother was still my mother, when the world finally seemed to be opening up and when life hadn’t spun so out of control.
“How’s Cira?” he asks me. His shoulders are stiff as he waits for my response. I hesitate. “Please tell me she’s all right. That she wasn’t …” He doesn’t finish the question but we both know what he’s asking.
“No,” I tell him, looking at my fingers, at the window, anywhere but in his eyes. “She wasn’t hurt. She’s back at the village.” I swallow before saying, “She’s okay.”
Relief washes over him, his body sagging against the wall.
“Please come home,” I beg him. A feeling wells inside me, pushing against my skin. If I can bring him home, if I can make him better, then we can figure out a way to erase the past day. We can figure out a way to go back to last night, to play it out differently.
This time as we faced each other on top of the Barrier we could choose differently. I could give in to my fear and take his hand and pull him back down toward Vista. We could both be safe. And then we’d never have ended up here, never have been confronted by this moment.
But of course, that wouldn’t change the fact that my mother isn’t my real mother. It wouldn’t change that I’m not really her daughter. That I don’t know who I am anymore. Even if last night had never happened, I’d still be lost.
“I can’t come home,” he says, almost like a moan, his mouth against my hair.
“Please,” I whisper. Everything inside me screams, desperately wanting things to be different.
I can feel the way his body shudders under mine. The way his chest heaves. I can feel him sobbing in my arms.
“I’m scared, Gabry.”
My chest aches. I think about him finding his way out here after last night. Stumbling through the darkness, terrified and bleeding. Of him spending the day here, tracking the sun across the sky through the empty window. Burning up with fever. Alone. Terrified. I wonder what I would do if it were me instead of him. How I would spend my last days, knowing what comes next.
“I’ll stay here with you,” I tell him. “I won’t leave until …” I can’t finish the sentence.
“You’ll get in too much trouble.” Every one of his tears scorches as it falls against me.
I think of Cira, of the others in the cage in the square, and I wonder if I should tell Catcher about them or if it will only add to his anguish. There’s nothing he can do for her, nothing either of us can do.
“You have to go home,” he says. “Your mother will worry otherwise and she might call out the Militia,” he adds.
I feel the anger from before seeping through me. I still don’t know if I can face her. Too many questions swirl and crash inside me. Did my real mother wonder why I never came home as a child? Could she still be out there in the Forest, looking for me? Wondering about me?
He steps away from me, the lighthouse beam pulsing between us, ticking away the time he has left.
He’s right—if I don’t go home my mother will send them out after me. I’ll be in as much or more trouble than Cira and the others. “I’ll come tomorrow night,” I tell him. “You’ll still be here tomorrow.” I mean for it to be a statement rather than a plea, but still I stand frozen, waiting for his answer.
He hesitates. “I should have a few days,” he says cautiously. “It wasn’t a bad bite”
I cringe at the word—the stark reminder of his infection. I look around at the empty room. I don’t want to leave him. Don’t want the night to be over. Don’t want to face what the next days will bring.
“You should go,” he says. “And you shouldn’t come back. What if …” He swallows and his voice cracks as he continues. “What if I’ve already turned and I attack you?” He reaches out a hand, drawing his thumb down my throat. “I don’t want … I can’t hurt you.”
“You won’t,” I murmur, placing my hand over his, holding it against my cheek.
“This isn’t the way it was supposed to be,” he says, his voice breaking. “I had plans ….” He squeezes his eyes shut, his entire face collapsing and body shuddering. “Last night, that was what my life was supposed to be. It’s supposed to be you.” He brushes his fingertips along my temple.
His words cut into me, his desires and dreams mingling with my own, throwing at me everything I’ve lost. Everything that will never be mine.
“Are you telling me I can’t come back?” I ask him. As much as I desperately want him to say no, a part of me that’s weak and scared wants him to tell me yes, to relieve me of my burden and terror of this place and what he’ll become. What if I’m not strong enough? What if I fail him?
“It’s not safe,” he whispers.
“I don’t care,” I tell him. And suddenly I realize that it’s true. Strength and purpose and desire bloom inside me, soaring through my veins.
We stare at each other, not knowing how to leave it. And then he reaches out and pulls me to him again, kissing my eyes, my cheeks, my jaw—everywhere but my lips. Then he drops my hands and goes back to the window.
“Be careful,” he tells me. The muscles in his shoulders ripple as he digs his fingers into the wood of the sill.
I open my mouth. I want to tell him something, something he can hold on to when he’s scared. I want to tell him that I think I might love him. I want to fill the room with the hope that maybe love can make it okay. But everything is so trapped inside.
Instead I turn and feel my way down the dark cramped stairs and out into the street, everything blurred with loss and pain falling on me, dragging me down.
When I look back at the building the gaping windows are silent and dark. I want to see Catcher standing and watching. I need a memory to hold on to other than the fading feel of his heat against my skin, the absence of his hand on my cheek.
I squeeze my fingers around the knife Elias gave me and start down the street, trying not to cry. I’m just heading toward the amusement park and the wink of the lighthouse beyond when a figure falls into step beside me.
Chapter 12
He’s going to turn, Gabry,” Elias says. “There’s nothing you can do about it”
I clench my teeth and keep walking. I want to tell him to shut up. I want to scream at him and tell him that he can’t understand what he’s saying and how much his words hurt me. I want to beat on his chest until he realizes that he’s wrong, even though we both know he’s not.
“What are you doing here?” I ask instead.
He puts a hand on my arm, stopping me, and I pull out of his reach, frowning. I want to remember the feel of Catcher’s warmth, want to remember his scent. Not this boy’s.
“If he turns I’m going to have to kill him.” He says the words plainly, without malice, but they cut me nonetheless.
I slap him. Before I can stop myself I feel the sting of his skin under my fingers. He just stands there, half his face now red in the moonlight.
I clamp my hand over my mouth, my eyes wide, unable to believe what I’ve done. I swing around and keep walking, trying to control my anger and sorrow, trying hard to ignore the reality of our situation. After a moment he catches up with me. I start to climb over a tall pile of rubble when I hear him sigh behind me. “I’m sorry,” he says, and I stop, my foot twisted between two rocks and my hands clenching the edge of a fallen wall.
Slowly I let go, sliding to the ground and kicking at the debris pile in frustration. I want to keep falling; I want to slip through the pavement and into the earth and sleep forever as if none of this has ever happened. I want the pain and fear to end.
But I don’t want to accept this boy’s apology. It’s as if accepting his words means accepting the truth: that Catcher has little time before he’s gone.
“You have to understand, it’s not safe for him out there. For any of us. If he turns and there aren’t enough other Unconsecrated around him in the ruins …” His words trail into the darkness.
“Then what?” I ask him, putting my hands on my hips, digging my fingers into the soft flesh until I feel bone.
He stares at me, his eyebrows drawn together, his lips tight. “You know what happens when an Infected turns and there aren’t enough other Unconsecrated around,” he says as if it hurts him to force me to remember.
I close my eyes, thinking of the Breaker last night and of Mellie. How they’d run so fast, been so out of control. Suddenly I see Catcher the same way and I shake my head to clear the image. I don’t want to talk about Catcher, about his infection, anymore.
“Who are you?” I ask him. “Why are you out here alone in the ruins? You said you were looking for someone.”
His fingers clench into fists and he starts to turn away from me. He stares back into the city and then looks at me again and his shoulders seem to fall a little. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, his voice sounding old and worn. “I’m not sure I’ll ever find her.”
I rise to my feet and step closer. I want to comfort him. I want to find something to say that will give him some hope because I need to believe that hope can still exist. But I can’t force the words from my mouth. Too much has happened in the past day to make me question the role of dreams in this world.
I turn away from him and watch the lighthouse blink in the night. I should be there, tucked in bed and safe. I should’ve never left. I start picking my way up the rubble pile toward home again.
“You don’t want to go that way,” he says. “The men from your town are still patrolling.”
“I thought they’d given up,” I say. Exhaustion eats through my bones. “Then I’ll have to figure out a way to get to my boat.”
He shakes his head and says, “There are still Unconsecrated on that stretch of the beach.”
I slump onto the rocks at my feet and drop my head into my hands, my limbs heavy and worn out. I’m trapped. In the morning my mother will realize, if she hasn’t yet, that I’m not coming home and eventually they’ll start searching. If they find me out here I’ll be sent to the Recruiters with the others.
When I raise my head Elias is still there. He takes a long breath and then holds out a hand. “If I get you home you can’t come back,” he says, pulling me to my feet.
“Fine,” I tell him, not ready to think about tomorrow so soon. He holds my gaze a moment. “It’s too dangerous, Gabrielle,” he says. His hand lingers along my wrist, so light and soft that I can’t tell the difference between the hot night air and the warmth of his flesh.