She looked up at his face and of all things, he was smiling at her. A big smile that made no sense with anything.
"It's okay, Drake. She's all right," Riley said.
The mute was still smiling at her. "I know, Riley. I know she is." And he wrapped her in a hug, and let her sob into his uniform, and sob she did for a very long time until she could breathe again without it hurting so much, and until she could look at Riley again without feeling like she was going to burst into flames, and that took the longest time of all.
11
Broken
Riley, March 29, 2236, Compound Loft
He misjudged this little girl, misjudged everything. Looking at her crying in front of him like that, sad for what she unknowingly did, he couldn't hurt her. She seemed to want him to, waiting, not running. She could have run. He'd have let her, too. It wasn't her fault that he didn't tell her anything, the not knowing. And when Drake came, the last thing he thought she'd do was give herself up like that, trying to save him, a Zoriner with too many secrets. It didn't make sense for her to do that for him. It was all kinds of brave and stupid, and these wives-in-the-making weren't supposed to be either. They would never need to be either, yet here it was.
He walked over to Drake when the girl stopped her sobbing. "There is more light in the back of the den here. We all need to talk." He had to know about Ella. If Drake had seen her. If she knew he was here. If she was safe. He had to know at least that much. Drake sat down on the floor and still looked almost as tall as the girl did standing up. He must have seemed so scary to her when she walked up to him like that, giving herself up, pleading for him. The girl stood off to the side, quiet now, waiting, tiny hands making tiny fists at her sides. Still scared then or worried. That he could understand, at least.
"I asked her to not go looking for you, Riley, told her I would do it for her, the looking. She knows. She knows she can't come looking for you, not with the slave band on. But I didn't think you'd be back here so soon, so soon after," Drake looked down, embarrassed. After a beat, "I'll find a way to tell her that you’re safe. She felt you were here, after the girl, sorry, after Amelia went to her for the meds, she felt you were here and hurt. I'll find her for you, Riley. I just have to be smart about it. They said they might take her band off in three days, five at the most. She could come see you then." Drake’s comm beeped.
He looked at the screen and got up. Riley nodded, and he was gone, taking the smell of sage with him. The girl stood where she was, looking at the floor. She seemed so breakable.
"I know you didn't mean to do it, Amelia. I'm not angry at you." He tried, really tried to make his voice soft, Ella-soft.
The girl didn't move, and there were streaks on her face, salt water. He couldn't take much more of this, the crying.
He walked over and gently put his arm around her and walked her to the bed, sitting her down, like a child. She put her wet face in her hands, and he knew he had to tell her, tell her everything he knew or thought he knew. He couldn't keep anything more from her. So he did.
He told her about Waller, and growing up there, and Brody, and embarrassingly, about hating Brody because of the dragonfly, and their little shack of a house, and Mother's not-garden garden with mint and rosemary and other things, and he knew that she'd understand now why he didn't want her to light that candle, and maybe she wouldn't feel so bad about that. And he told her about that last walk home, and Samson not being there, and about feeling stupid for not noticing his collar on the floor, and about how Samson never barked, and the walk back from the warehouse, and how he hoped that it wasn't true, and then how he knew that it was, and it almost killed him to tell her that part, the part where he knew all he had left was Ella and he didn't even have her.
And about the years that passed with the woman, with Janet, who was good to him. And Janet telling him that he didn't do it to his parents and to Samson, that it wasn't about him writing the words on the fence. That it was his mother who wrote those words on the door to let Janet and the rest of them know what happened. And how for a little while after Janet told him that, he could almost breathe again and almost care about his bugs and Brody, and that he tried to, he really did, but he couldn't.
And he told her about Drake who tried to look in on him, Drake who has always been in love with Ella, and how everybody but Ella knew it, but Drake never told anybody. Drake who buried his Samson. But he couldn't care about Drake then either, not him, not anyone, not even Brody. He just needed to find Ella again.
He told her, too, about that night when he broke in here, and what Hassinger did to him. He rushed through that, not wanting to tell her about how she smiled at him, how he knew that she wanted to hurt him, that she enjoyed hurting him. And he didn't tell her that Drake was there that night because he didn't want her to think that he could have helped him because he always knew he couldn't have. He didn't want her to think that way about Drake. He wanted her to think of him as Drake who buried his dog, so he wouldn't have to see him with a hole in his chest.
And finally, he told her that he wished at first she didn't find him that morning, that he didn't know what to do with her then, and that he was so tired of all the thinking, and all the looking for Ella, and all the not knowing for so long that he really didn't care if she shot him, but that he didn't think she was the kind who could shoot someone. And then he was done with all the telling, not feeling any kind of relief from it, just sadness.
She hadn't moved through it at all, her head still in her hands. He put his hand on the top of her head, and she flinched, and he felt that she would need time to think through it all, to make sense of it, make sense of him. He walked to the window and stood there, watching the empty lawn and Drake's tower, and the impossibly tall tree behind the wall.
He waited for all the things he just said to her to empty out of his head so he could think the way he needed to again; waited for her to stop the crying or the thinking that she was doing back there on the bed. And when he couldn't wait anymore, he turned around looking for her, but she was gone. The wisp of a girl was gone.
And the sadness came back then, the kind that he couldn't make sense of it. Sadness for this little girl knowing all that she knew about him now, and about the world outside these walls, knowing too much of everything for someone like her. And sadness for her not being here, for her maybe not ever being here again. He walked over to the bed and fumbled through the medkit for the little white pills, the half dozen of them in a little bag she left for him, shook three pills onto the palm of his hand, and swallowed them. He needed this, his first dreamless sleep in years.
He woke up to soft jabber of female voices. Amelia's was one, the other he didn't know, but it wasn't Ella's. Of course, it wasn't Ella's, you moron. She didn't have a voice now. He knew that. He listened for words, phrases, but they were too far from him and too quiet, not wanting to wake him. He got up and walked toward the sound of it, and the sound stopped.
A girl who looked very much like Amelia was staring at him, open-mouthed, not even trying to hide it. Same light eyes, same hair, but there was something strange in that look, defiance maybe. That was different then. They weren't so identical after all.
He let her stare. "See anything you like?" He sounded like a jerk, but he couldn’t help it. This girl staring at him like that was unnerving.
She closed her mouth. "Sorry... ummm, I didn't mean to... make you uncomfortable. I'm Laurel. Ams brought me."
So Amelia had a nickname. Ams. He liked it on her. It fit.
"And you’re Riley .... Ams told me everything about you; well, not everything I'm sure, but how you fell in here, and she helped you, and then some of the other stuff too, about Samson, she told me that, and some other things. She needed to tell somebody, I think. She wasn't trying to hurt you by telling me. Please don't be angry at her. I won't tell any of it to anyone, I won't." She was still looking at him, but almost timidly. Something about him was scaring her, making her uneasy, too uneasy to sto
p talking. "I know about Drake too, and how he is a non-mute mute. I told Ams that I've met one of them before, Kaia, her name was. She was nice to me. She saved me from the purple caterpillars"—she blushed at that, embarrassed—”sorry... It doesn't matter about the caterpillars. But I liked her. She had a nice smile. And then she told me to get out of here, to run, because she thought I would ask too many questions and something bad would happen to me, so I didn't ask anybody anything for a long time. But they took her away from here anyway, Kaia...." Finally out of breath, she shut up. He didn't want her to start again, either.
"What do you want?" He did try to think of a nicer way of saying it, but it just came out this way. He looked at Amelia. Ams... The cute nickname sounded nice in his head.
"Laurel wants to run away before the Selection. She'd been wanting to for years, only she never told me about that, about any of it, not even Kaia, or her sneaking sage for Drake's tea for all these years. But that doesn't matter. She wants to not be whatever it is that they are trying to make us be, and she thought that maybe she could go with you when you were ready to run when you got Ella back. She wanted me to talk to you, so I brought her."
He didn't know what to do with this, didn't see this coming at all. He felt bad enough for putting one of them in danger. He couldn't afford to do this. "No." He shook his head and walked away from them, back to the den, standing with his back to them, waiting for the footsteps to the door.
"Riley, but you have to. You just have to. She is brave, braver than I. She won't give you any trouble. You have to take her with you...."
He could tell she was standing right behind him, could feel her breath on his back, tickling his scars. And then he knew that he wanted it to be this girl who didn't think herself brave enough to go with him, not the one he didn't know or trust yet. He wanted it to be Ams. "And you?" He turned around, looking at her. "Would you run? Or do you want to be what they’re making you?" He was being harsh, but he couldn't help himself. She had to have thought about it, maybe not for very long, but she had to have thought about it enough to know if she wanted to run or not and she clearly didn’t.
He did something unforgivable then. He knew it too while doing it. He stepped up to her and wrapped his hands around her tiny wrists, looking right into her eyes. "If I agreed to take your friend with me but you had to come too, would you run?" He watched her eyes get larger, processing it, thinking if he really meant it, could really mean it. He didn't look away.
She nodded finally, one tiny nod. "Yes, if that was the only way you'd do it, I would," she said quietly, and she ran out of the room to wherever Laurel was waiting for her, and he knew he'd lost her.
He knew now, too, what all the sadness was when she ran out of the loft earlier, after all the telling; that he got used to her little footsteps, and her breathing, and those liquid gray eyes of hers, and that at that moment when he thought she was gone, for knowing too much, he felt the worst kind of alone he'd felt in years.
And now he hurt her, this girl who was nothing but good to him, because he was too much of a coward to tell her about not wanting her gone anymore, and because she brought Laurel, and he didn't want to tell her with someone else there. He had to fix this somehow, had to find a way to tell her that he'd take her friend. She didn't have to come if she didn't want to. He had to do that before he lost her for good before she thought of him in that way he didn't want her to think about Drake. But he couldn't go chasing after her through the compound, so he would have to wait for someone to come, her, or Laurel, or Drake, and he didn't know how long that would take. That look of surprise and then coldness in her eyes.
He walked over to the shelf and lit the candle, the unmistakable smell of rosemary making him hurt in all the raw places. Mom's-rare-smiles-places, softness-in-his-hands-Samson-places, Ella-still-full-of-voice-places, the pipe-smoke-through-the-unfixable-bit-places, Brody-places, the girl's-hurt-liquid-eyes-places. He sat there inhaling it, hurting, punishing himself for the girl, for Ams, hoping someday she'd forgive him.
12
The Journal
Laurel, April 2, 2236, Compound Loft
This was day four of Riley not talking to her, waiting for Ams, but she wouldn't come. Laurel tried to make her come, she really did. She could see the light in his eyes when he'd first see her in the loft go out when he knew it was just her. Ams wouldn't tell her what he did that was so bad that she didn't want to see him anymore. Not unless she had to, she said. That didn't make any kind of sense. Nobody had to see anybody they didn't want to see.
She took the food up to the boy every day and put the HealX on his scars, and he let her do all of those things without saying anything. It made her feel like she was intruding into something terrible, this silence. She'd tell him things, just to make enough noise to not feel the sadness on him. He never asked her anything or even acknowledged that he'd heard what she said, but she couldn't help it. She had to at least talk, when she was with him, whether he heard her or not, or she'd go crazy.
She told him about the twenty-six boys waiting in some other huge, half-empty compound, the boys with the implants, but nobody knew if their implants had all the same stuff in them that the girls' did. Nobody ever told them that. Nobody ever told them much here. There didn't seem to be much need for any kind of explaining to anyone practically born knowing everything they'd ever need to know, only she knew that it didn't work that way after she met Kaia, and maybe even before that.
She told him how she hated when she didn't know something but learned early on not to ask anyone because all they ever said was that it would come to them when they needed it, not when they thought they needed it, and that knowing things they didn't need to know yet would just make them unhappy, and that was one of the problems with the world the way that it was.
Mostly, she told him about Ams, and how she knew about her marks, even though she never told her, but that it didn't matter to her that she wasn't completely pure, and she didn't think this pure thing made any kind of sense anyway because it would just make it really easy for everyone to get lost with everyone looking so alike all the time.
And today, she told him that Ams never believed that memory in her implant about what happened to her family. That she remembered something else, something the implant wasn't telling her, and how Hassinger told her that she was too little to remember anything, but Ams always thought she did, just not enough of it to know for sure, to draw the whole picture, and how she still kept looking for the missing bits.
She told him Ams' whole memory, feeling only a little guilty for doing it: "She remembered lying on top of her dog, Blanche, and pulling on his ears, because she thought he liked when she did that, and these people came in with lots of guns and pointed all their guns at her parents, and they were shouting at her parents that she doesn't remember what exactly, because she didn't know what any of it meant, and then one of the men picked her up off of Blanche and just took her out of there, away from everybody. And then she was here. She remembers that, Riley, all of that. She can't remember what her parents' faces looked like. Or anybody's faces, just Blanche, and how he smelled, and how he'd always tickle her with his nose, and it would make her laugh. She remembers laughing."
The boy was staring at her. "I have to see her, Laurel. Today, right now, I need to see her. She'll never have to talk to me again, you can promise her that. I don't care what else you tell her. Lie to her if you have to. Please." He turned away again, in that way he had, hands always behind his back, fingers locked inside fists, nothing moving on him at all.
Laurel ran down the back stairs to the library, because that's where she left her. Ams was sitting by the tiny window in an old chair with soft handles on it, not reading, not doing anything at all.
"You have to go see him, Ams, you have to. Whatever it was that happened, you don't have to tell me. And you won't have to talk to him ever again, he promised he wouldn't make you talk to him again if you don't want to. We’re leaving tomorrow anyway, so yo
u'll probably never have to see him again, but please, go talk to him. I think he knows something he needs you to know, for you, not him. I can feel it, that it's something to do with you, your family maybe." Ams would take the bait. That was the one thing that would always work on Ams, and she felt every kind of wrong for doing this to her friend. "I'm going to the room. I need to clean up, and finish packing if Stella isn't back yet...."
She turned to go, but Ams was right behind her, grabbing her arm. "If I have to talk to him, you are coming." And that was that.
Ams raced up the stairs, too fast for her to have been able to keep up just a week ago, but all these days of running up there had helped get her in shape. Good, she thought. She'd need it if their running away actually included any running. The boy was by that window he always stood at. He turned around on hearing them, and walked up to Ams, ignoring that Laurel was there at all. She took a few steps back and slid down the wall to the floor, trying to make herself blend into the shadows. She was intruding, and it felt wrong, but Ams dragged her here, so she would stay.
"Talk. Laurel said you had something you need to talk about. So talk." It sounded so cold and harsh, not at all Ams-like. Laurel felt bad for the boy.
"You don't need to run, Amelia. That's part of what I needed to tell you, for days now, ever since I saw you last. I'll take Laurel. I'll do my best to keep her safe out there. You don't need to come." He said it all so softly, she barely heard him, and then she knew what it was, the thing he did to Ams that made her not want to talk to him anymore.
And she was suddenly angry, angry that Ams didn't tell her that she agreed to this without her knowing; that she did something Laurel would never ask of her, couldn't ever ask of her, or anyone, and mostly, angry at this boy.
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 9