by Malinda Lo
“We don’t trust them,” Reese burst out. “But what choice do we have? We don’t know how to use this adaptation, and we need to learn how to use it. Otherwise, it’s going to drive us crazy.”
Lovick nodded. “We can also help you.”
“How?” David asked. “You just said you didn’t know about this adaptation until yesterday. How can you do anything?”
“We are not powerless,” Lovick answered smoothly. “We have decades of our own research into the Imria that we can draw from. But what I am offering you is more than mere training. You should continue with that, because it gives you the chance to use your access to the Imria to help your fellow humans. We only ask that you share the knowledge you gain from them with us.”
“You want us to become spies for you?” Reese asked. The room was warm, and as she gave the guard a surreptitious glance, she felt a bit claustrophobic.
“Spy is not the right word,” Lovick objected. “The two of you have become very important to us.”
“To CASS,” Reese clarified.
“To humanity,” Lovick said. “You are our bridge to the Imria. You are the only ones who can show us what their sharing of consciousness really means. Is it truly a positive thing? Because it could have serious, dire consequences when it comes to security and intelligence. They may have a special word for it—”
“Susum’urda,” Reese said.
“Yes. Do you know what it sounds like to me? Mind reading. Consider what it could mean for an entire race to have the ability to read our minds. Consider your own lives, your families, your nation. You are the only humans who can also do this. Where do your loyalties lie? With your fellow humans, or with these extraterrestrial visitors who have lied to us for nearly seven decades about who they are?”
“What do you want us to do?” Reese asked.
“We want you to proceed with your training. Once you’ve begun your lessons with the Imria, you can then transmit that information to us.” He gestured to Hernandez. “Alex Hernandez will be your contact. Beginning on Monday, he’ll be teaching at your high school.”
“You’ll be able to come to me with your updates at any time,” Hernandez said.
“What is your decision?” Lovick asked.
Reese met Lovick’s sharp gaze, and she swallowed. She didn’t like him, and she didn’t trust him. If only she could touch him, then she would know what he was thinking. It was the first time she had ever thought to use her new ability that way—to purposefully violate another person’s mind—and the nerves in her fingertips tingled. She knew it was wrong, but she was so tempted to do it. It would answer so many questions.
“You can’t just ask us to decide like that,” David said, startling Reese. “Can you at least give us a minute to talk about it? Alone?”
“Of course.” Lovick gestured toward the door to the shop. “You’re welcome to step outside to confer. We’ll be waiting here.”
Reese got up and followed David through the curtained doorway. He looked at her and held out his hand. She took it while they moved into the narrow space behind the cash register. We don’t even have the option to say no, Reese thought. If Hernandez is going to be teaching at our school, he’ll be watching us.
Then we have to agree, David told her. At least for now, until we know exactly what our adaptation is about. We don’t have to tell them everything that we learn.
You want to lie to them?
His forehead glistened with a light sheen of sweat. Everybody’s lying, he thought, and now she knew that the frustration she had felt came from him. We might as well lie too.
Then we go with it, she thought. For now.
For now.
They returned to the back room, where Lovick and Hernandez were still seated. The gravity of what she and David were about to do began to hit home, and she rubbed her damp palms against her jean skirt. They didn’t trust the Imria, but they certainly didn’t trust Charles Lovick and his Corporation for American Security and Sovereignty either. They were on their own. “Okay,” she said. She glanced at David.
He nodded. “We’ll do it.”
CHAPTER 13
The guard was still blocking the exit when Reese and David emerged from the back office and headed for the door. She was so caught up in thinking over what had just happened and how she and David were going to manage to lie to both the Imria and CASS that she barely noticed that the guard didn’t move as they approached. Then he reached out and grabbed her arm.
“Hey!” she cried. His grip was tight on her, and something cold and dark seeped through his fingers into her body. She froze. He was so strong—exactly like that soldier who had manhandled her at Blue Base right before she’d had the medical exam.
This man wasn’t looking at her at all. His eyes were focused on the rear of the shop, and Reese heard Lovick call out, “They’re finished. You can let them go.”
The man released her and she fell back, bumping against David. He sensed her sudden disquiet and took her hand. What happened?
The guard opened the door and she plunged out into the cool evening air, her mind whirling as she plowed up the sidewalk, dragging David with her. That guy was like the soldiers at Blue Base.
She sensed that he wasn’t entirely surprised. I knew there was something off about them, he told her.
She barely noticed the chilly mist on the skin of her legs as they walked through Chinatown, hand in hand. She was consumed with the realization that Lovick had Blue Base–made guards acting on his orders. She and David could try to manipulate Lovick and CASS, but the two of them were thoroughly outgunned. How the hell are we going to pull this off? she wondered.
“We’re here,” David said, pulling her to a halt in front of a restaurant. His face was pale, and he glanced behind her down the street. She didn’t have to turn around to know that he had seen the men in black’s sedan. We’ll figure it out, he told her. One thing at a time.
He opened the door to the restaurant, and she followed him inside. It smelled of chili peppers and garlic, and scrolls of Chinese characters hung on the walls. The hostess asked David something in Chinese, and after he responded, she showed them to a table midway down the rectangular room, dropping off two thick menus.
Reese glanced behind herself at the door. The restaurant was about half full of mostly Asian patrons, and the men in black had not followed them in. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and went to the rear of the restaurant where she saw the sign for the restroom. She had to go down a set of narrow stairs to the basement, where she found two toilets. She went into the one marked for women and took off her jacket, hanging it on the half-broken hook screwed into the wall. She unbuttoned her shirt and slid out of it, draping it over her jacket, so that she could remove the wire that was taped onto her skin. It was attached to a slim recording device clipped to the inside of her skirt. She pulled the recorder out and flipped the switch to Off, then wound the wire around the device and tucked it into her jacket’s interior pocket. She put her shirt back on before taking the cell phone out of her skirt pocket to text Julian: I got it.
David looked up from the menu when she returned from the bathroom. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I texted Julian.” It had been his idea to tape the meeting with Lovick—“insurance,” he called it—and Reese had agreed immediately.
David leaned toward her and whispered, “We can’t post that online yet.”
“I know. I’m not going to give it to Julian until the right time comes.”
The waitress returned before she could say anything more. “What would you like?” she asked.
Reese glanced down at the menu. “Um…”
“This is good,” David said, flipping through the multiple pages to the noodle section and pointing out something called double-fried noodles with seafood. “Want to share it?”
“Okay.”
David said something to the waitress in Chinese, and they had a brief discussion before she picked up the menus and left.<
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“What did you order?” Reese asked.
“Spicy jellyfish and soup dumplings.” He poured tea from the stainless steel pot into their two teacups.
She was still agitated from the meeting with Charles Lovick, and her leg bounced beneath the table. She glanced around the restaurant, taking in the glass-topped tables, each setting laid with a single round plate and a pair of chopsticks. A tank full of lobsters glowed near the swinging doors to the kitchen. Her dad always wanted to go out for Chinese when he visited, but they hadn’t had time yet. She wondered how long he would be staying. He had been acting particularly fatherly lately, and it made her suspicious about his motives.
“Is something wrong?” David asked.
“No, sorry.” She took a sip of tea, carefully holding the cup around the rim to avoid burning her fingers. “I was just thinking about my dad, and—we don’t have to talk about it now.”
“We can if you want. What’s going on?”
“My parents are divorced but my dad’s been here since we got back from Nevada. I’m worried about my mom.” She picked up her chopsticks and pulled them out of the paper wrapper, breaking them apart. “Let’s not talk about that. It’ll put me in a bad mood.” She and David had agreed not to discuss Lovick in public, but all she could think about was their meeting. Grasping for a new subject of conversation, she said, “Aren’t we supposed to talk about shallow things like what movie you saw recently or your favorite band?”
David grinned. “Small talk? For a first date?”
Nerves fluttered inside her at the words first date. She began to fold the chopsticks wrapper into an accordion. “Sure,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Small talk. Have you seen any good movies lately?”
His eyebrows rose. “Not really. I’ve been busy. How about you?”
“No. I was in a medically induced coma for a month and then I got abducted by the government. It totally cut into my moviegoing experiences. How about music? What’s your favorite band?”
David laughed. “Did you get these questions from a dating website or something?”
Reese squirmed. “Uh, no. I just thought we should, you know, try to act like normal people or something.” David seemed surprised, and for a long moment of awkward silence they simply looked at each other. She was about to tell him they didn’t have to act normal if he didn’t want to, when he reached across the table and plucked the chopsticks wrapper out of her fingers.
“You should take up origami,” he said.
She blushed as he held up the paper with its tiny, perfect pleats. “It’s my hidden talent.”
“I like the Running Brooks,” he said.
It took her a moment to figure out what he meant. “Oh. You mean the band?”
“Yeah. Theory’s good too; he does this really cool electronic stuff with rap—you have to hear it.” He grinned. “And I like Slick Rice, this Korean American dude who dresses like a giant nerd and raps on YouTube, but his music is awesome.”
“I don’t listen to much rap,” Reese admitted. “It’s usually super sexist and gross.”
“I know. This stuff is different. It’s not like that. It’s political, but it’s fun too. I’ll make you a playlist.”
“Really?” She smiled.
The waitress arrived with the spicy jellyfish, which looked like a pile of translucent beige noodles dressed in chili sauce. Reese was a little dubious about trying it but she didn’t want to seem like a dumb American in front of David, so she quickly took a large bite. The chili burned the back of her throat and her eyes widened in shock.
David laughed. “You like it?”
“It’s different,” she mumbled. It was crunchy and slippery and tasted almost entirely of the spicy, vinegary sauce. She wasn’t sure if she liked it. The soup dumplings were more her style, and she scooped one up with a flat-bottomed spoon. When she bit into it, a savory broth spilled out. “Oh my God, these are so good,” she said, burning her mouth on the crabmeat filling because she didn’t want to wait for it to cool off.
“So what about you?” David said. “What kind of music do you like?”
As they talked, Reese began to relax. She had forgotten what it was like to just hang out with David, without worrying about their bizarre new abilities or how to figure out what it all meant. She liked the way his eyes crinkled up in the corners when he smiled, his mouth curving crookedly. She couldn’t remember if she had watched him this way, back when they were only debate partners. She had probably tried to avoid it, because the longer she watched him, the more the warm little glow inside her heated up. He was cute, yes. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had a great haircut and his blue shirt stretched so enticingly across his chest. But it was the interior Davidness about him—what could not be seen from the outside—that made her want to reach out and touch him. It was the way he laughed at her bad jokes, as if he genuinely thought she was funny; it was the focus of his attention on her, steady and deliberate; it was the fact that he had always been kind to her, even before he knew much about her.
When the noodles arrived, he served her first, cutting into the crispy noodle bed with the spoon and then lifting them onto her plate, adding stir-fried shrimp and squid and snow peas. The noodles were crunchy on the bottom and soft inside, and she decided she didn’t ever want to order Chinese food without David again.
By the time they left the restaurant, she had forgotten all about the men in black who might be following them. He put his arm around her as they walked, and the heat of his body spread like warm honey through her limbs. She liked the rhythm of his paces beside her, the solid confidence in him. He didn’t doubt himself. Even though Reese had always relied on herself and was wary of depending too much on others, she knew she could depend on him. It was a new feeling: a vulnerable one. To her surprise, she kind of liked it.
She took his hand as they rode the elevator up to their parking space in the garage, and in the car, she leaned over and kissed him before he started the engine. He was startled, but then he was kissing her back, his mouth firm as he cupped a hand around her face. She lost her breath. His fingers were in her hair. His consciousness seemed to open before her like a door, and he was full of heat.
“Wait,” he said, and dragged himself away. “We have to go to the party.”
She groaned. “Can’t we skip it?”
He gave a kind of choked laugh, and she almost reached for him again, but he said, “We’ll go to the party. We don’t have to stay for long.”
CHAPTER 14
Reese had grown up in San Francisco surrounded by people of all races, but she had never thought of herself as white until she walked through Eric Chung’s crowded living room. It wasn’t that she thought of herself as not white; she simply never thought about it. She realized that was probably the biggest sign of all that she was white.
David seemed to know everyone. As soon as they entered the house, people began to approach him—boys from the soccer team, girls who seemed to giggle in his presence, people with faces Reese recognized from school but whose names she couldn’t remember. The music was loud but the voices were louder, and though she and David had tried to prepare themselves for the emotional tumult, she found it more difficult than she had expected. Everybody was excited to see David; he was their friend and they welcomed him. They were curious and a little suspicious about Reese; they wanted to know why David had brought her.
She tried to act as if she belonged there, as if it was totally normal for her to show up at a house party with David Li holding her hand. While she had gotten better at blocking the prickly sensation of people looking at her, she hadn’t anticipated feeling out of place for an entirely different reason. She knew that her social circle was a lot smaller than David’s—that was the way she liked it—but until tonight, she never realized how many of his friends were Asian. She was one of only a few non-Asian people at the party, and she stuck out like a sore thumb: white girl walking. It was an unfamiliar discomfort that made her
feel unusually self-conscious.
As she and David left the living room and headed down the hall toward the back of the house, he turned to look at her. You can’t help who you are, he told her. She flushed, and sensed a warm amusement in him. You’re cute when you get embarrassed, he thought.
That made her flush deepen. “Can we get some drinks?” she said out loud.
He smiled. “Sure.”
They went into the kitchen, running into more of David’s friends along the way, and then, finally, he handed her a plastic cup of punch. It tasted like candy: sweet and deadly. She couldn’t taste the alcohol but she was 100 percent certain it was in there. A giant, empty vodka bottle stood on the counter right next to the punch bowl. David tasted his and made a face.
“I shouldn’t drink anyway. I have to drive you home.” He put his cup down and picked up a can of soda instead.
She was about to do the same when a girl entered the kitchen. She had long, glossy black hair and was wearing a black minidress and shiny red heels. She shrieked when she saw David and flung herself at him.
“Oh my God, I saw you on TV!” she cried, her hands digging into his shoulders. She had red nails the same color as her shoes.
“Hey,” David said, pulling away from her gently. “This is Reese. Reese, this is Riley.”
Riley Bennett-Huang was David’s ex-girlfriend. Reese couldn’t remember why David and Riley had broken up, though it had been the talk of the school last year. She stiffened as Riley’s gaze raked over her. “Hi,” Reese said, feeling like a kindergartner in comparison to Riley.
“Hi,” Riley said, and then turned back to David. “So are you okay? I was so worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” David said.
Reese sipped her drink and studied Riley surreptitiously as she flirted with David. Riley, objectively, was gorgeous. That dress and those shoes might look trashy on someone else, but on her they looked sophisticated. Though most of the girls were dressed more casually than Riley, she seemed quite comfortable in her outfit. She had the demeanor of someone who knew when people were looking at her, and she enjoyed it. Watching her leaning into David’s space, though, Reese didn’t think that Riley looked like his type. She was too polished. Too fake. David seemed a little uncomfortable with her, responding to her with one- or two-word answers.