The Cage

by Megan Shepherd

  Lucky crackled the knuckles in his left hand. “The Mosca cut off fingers, not the Kindred.”

  “They’re all part of the same system! The Kindred protect us only as long as we obey them.”

  She moved closer, brushing his leather jacket, catching a trace of his fresh soap smell that reminded her of home. Home. Maybe at this moment Charlie was pulling his Jeep into the driveway, and Sadie was running out to meet him.

  “I can’t take it, Lucky. I’m going crazy.” At Bay Pines she’d checked off the days on a calendar, but she had no boxes to check now. No end date. Just the seashells, but there was an endless ocean of them. Would she keep collecting them until they filled the house, spilling out the windows into the marigolds? For months? Years? She curled up tight, wishing she could disappear into herself. She needed help. She needed a way home.

  She needed a sign that there was hope.

  A soft, familiar plink sounded on the black window behind them. Cora lifted her head. When dusk had rolled in, clouds had come too.

  A drop of rain fell on her bare toes.

  She stared at the patch of water, dumbfounded. Every day in the cage had been identical. Sunny skies without a trace of clouds. It rained in the jungle, and it snowed in the forest, but always on a predictable schedule, and never in the town. Now the rain started softly, a few errant drops at a time. The clouds grew heavier, making the day darker. It had been so long since Cora had felt a drenching rain that she’d forgotten the way it smelled. So earthy.

  Nok shrieked with delight, jumping up and down and clapping, her mood flipping on a dime, as though the fight had never happened. She took Mali’s hands, swinging her around, trying to make her dance, but Mali just pitched her head toward the sky in distrust. The rain grew. Big fat drops formed rivulets and streams and rivers on the black windows. Rolf was trying to trace them with his finger, but there were too many.

  “Why?” Cora turned to Lucky, rubbing her throbbing temples that were soaked with rain. “Why are they doing this? What do they hope to gain by changing things?”

  “You’re tired, Cora. You haven’t slept.”

  “You know I didn’t take everyone’s food, right?”

  A slight pause. “Sure.”

  Water flowed down his handsome face like tears, finding the valleys of his eyes, dripping off his jaw. Even if she hadn’t known him at home, and even though the Kindred had dressed him in a stranger’s clothes, she recognized sincerity in his face.

  “They want to see what we’ll do.” She twisted her head toward all the watching windows. “They’re standing there now, watching us. You see them, right? The shadows?”

  “Sure. I see them.” But his eyes stayed locked to hers. He tucked a wet strand of her hair gently behind her ear. “Do you trust me?” There was a strange hitch to his voice.

  Her headache reverberated in her skull, louder and louder, but she nodded.

  “Then come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  28

  Cora

  LUCKY LED HER ACROSS the grass toward the weeping cherry tree that burst with thousands of blooms. “I found this place the first day, when you vanished.”

  Cora could barely hear him over the falling rain. He parted the weeping branches and she ducked inside, flinching as a skeletal branch grazed her arm. But the tree gave them shelter, and the smell was soft and perfumed, and it slowly untangled the tension from her muscles, knot by knot, until she could breathe. The ground was carpeted in velvety pink petals. With the dome of flowers around them, it looked otherworldly.

  She hugged her arms tighter over her wet sundress. “It’s beautiful, Lucky. But it doesn’t help us.”

  “It isn’t about that.” He wiped the rain from the planes of his face. “It’s the black windows. They can’t see us here.”

  She blinked as it slowly sank in. The branches formed a perfect dome that hid them from prying Kindred eyes. For the first time in fifteen days, she wasn’t being watched. Her throbbing headache lessened. She turned in a circle as mist caught in her hair like fairy-tale dust. She felt a million miles away from the half-mad dancing in the rain, and the broken croquet mallet, and the fact that their lives had been stolen. There was only the beating of her heart beneath her dress, and Lucky’s warm hand taking hold of hers, and a thousand feelings of relief.

  For once, it felt like home.

  A petal landed on his shoulder. She brushed it off. He was so solid beneath her fingers. Real. On impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and breathed in the smell of rain in his tangled dark hair.

  “You have no idea how badly I needed this.” She could feel his pounding heart between two layers of ribs and skin and cotton. Her heart responded. She coiled her fingers in his jacket, wanting him even closer. She didn’t want to think about the Kindred. Or the missing food. Or the others.

  She tilted her chin toward his. In the desert, they’d almost kissed. It would have been a mistake there, with the Kindred watching. They would have been doing exactly what the Warden wanted.

  But there was no one watching now.

  She pressed her lips to his. A hundred sensations overtook her. Her heart fluttered and spun like the petals falling around them. He pulled back in surprise. For a few breaths his eyes searched hers, water dripping from his dark hair, and she almost thought she’d made a mistake.

  He let out a ragged breath.

  Then he kissed her back, harder, his hands threading through her wet hair, pulling in a way that drove her mad. She matched his fervor. No thinking. Letting her heart overpower her head. Shedding all those days her father had told her to smile through pain. There were no black windows watching them. No Cassian was watching them. No other captives were shooting her sharp words and dangerous looks. An urgency swelled in her chest.

  He turned his head away. “Wait. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  She shook her head. “Whatever it is, I don’t care.” She pulled his shirt tighter, drawing him closer. All she could think about were his eyes in the rose-colored light and his arms around her. She’d had so little practice with this sort of thing, and her hand drifted to rub against her bottom lip. His face darkened like he wanted nothing more than to kiss her again.

  “I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since you fell out of that tree,” he said. “But there’s something you don’t know.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder, breathing in his scent, tugging at his leather jacket like she was afraid he would dissolve in the rain.

  “Cora. It’s about your father.”

  She let him go abruptly. It was strange to hear someone else speak about her life at home. It made it all suddenly real again. Her father. Charlie. Her mother watching Planet of the Apes on the sofa. Sadie barking at squirrels. “My father?” She shook her head in confusion. “What does he have to do with anything?”

  Rain still dripped from Lucky’s hair.

  “He has to do with everything between you and me.” Alarm started to beat in time with Cora’s heart, and she steadied herself against the tree trunk as he continued. “I told you I lived in Virginia for a while. I didn’t tell you when. I moved away two years ago. April third.”

  “April third?” She pressed a hand to her aching head, trying to think past the fog. That date was stamped on her parole papers. The day she was admitted to Bay Pines.

  He kept his eyes on the ground. “I should have told you that first day, but I just . . . didn’t. I had seen you in the newspapers, and on TV. I knew that your father was a senator and your mother used to be an actress.”

  He knew?

  She pressed her hand harder against her head, trying to ease the throbbing that cut like a knife. “No—don’t apologize,” she stammered. “I worried that someone would remember the news, but the others all live overseas, so it seem
ed unlikely. I should have told you about the conviction, but I thought you’d think of me differently. I promise you, I didn’t do it.”

  He didn’t even blink at her words. “I know you didn’t kill that woman, Cora. I know who your father is because I met with his men three times after the accident. I collected checks from them. They were paying me to keep quiet about what I saw that night.”

  The aching in her head vanished. The sound of the rain faded, and the smell of the cherry blossoms. Slowly, her hand dropped. “What do you mean?”

  “The night of the accident. Your father’s political fund-raiser. He’d had too much to drink. The car was swerving all over the bridge. All I could make out was your dress—green silk—as you were yelling for him to stop. The headlights were so bright. And then the car went over.”

  Dimly she realized that the rain had stopped outside, but it didn’t matter. “How could you have seen that?”

  A second passed, a second she knew would change everything. “I was in the other car,” he said. “The one your father crashed into before he swerved off the bridge. I was in the passenger seat.” His voice broke. “The woman who died was my mother.”

  Dread filled Cora the same way water had filled her father’s car that night: rushing in too fast to stop. She had been accused of a woman’s murder. Involuntary manslaughter. The woman’s name had been Maria Flores, and her teenage son had been with her, though Cora had been so occupied trying to help her father get control of the car she hadn’t seen either of their faces through the windshield.

  Luciano—that had been the son’s name. Luciano Flores.

  “Call me Lucky,” he had said.

  She doubled over, struggling to breathe. “Your mother? My dad killed your mom? You said she died when you were a little boy!”

  “I . . . lied. I didn’t want you to know.”

  Her body started to rack uncontrollably. Not just a nameless face anymore. Not just a grave with plastic flowers she had visited once, secretly, at night. She’d tried so hard not to think about that woman or the son she left behind. Smile, her father had said, even when you’re hurtingi

  What a fool she had been. She should have never listened to her father, when he told her to push aside her true feelings. Why had she taken advice from a man who’d had too much to drink and killed someone?

  “God, Lucky. I’m so sorry.”

  Lucky was by her side in a second, his arms around her. “No. If anything, I’m the guilty one.” He flexed his hand, the one that was always giving him trouble. “I . . . I tried to kill him at first. My dad kept a gun in case of intruders. But his men stopped me, and offered me money instead if I corroborated some story he’d come up with, saying you were behind the wheel. He said you wouldn’t go to prison. He said you’d get off on parole. I didn’t care—I had no idea who you were. I figured his daughter was just as bad as him. So when the police questioned me, I told them it was you driving. They asked how I was sure, and I told them with your long hair and blue eyes, that you were a hard girl not to look at.” He shook his head. “I took his money and got on a plane to Montana. I knew if I stayed in Virginia, I’d change my mind. I’d drink too much one day. I’d kill him.” He paced beneath the tree. He kept wiping at his face, even though the rain had long since dried. “I let him get away with it.”

  She closed her eyes. The memory of water choked her. Her father had jerked the wheel so hard it sent them careening into the river. The impact had stunned her. It hadn’t been until water poured in, and her father had shaken her awake, than they’d both managed to flee the drowning car, swim to shore, and wait shivering for an ambulance.

  “He said a drunk-driving conviction would have ended his career and put him in jail for decades,” Lucky continued. “But you hadn’t had a sip to drink. He said you could claim it was an accident; that you’d just gotten your license and there was a glare on the windshield on a rainy night. Involuntary manslaughter. He said you wouldn’t get more than community service.”

  Sitting on the bank, shivering in each other’s arms, still reeling from the crash, they hadn’t known the judge would make an example out of her.

  Lucky said, “At the time, I was angry. I wasn’t thinking straight. It wasn’t until after the trial that it started eating away at me. Had I sent an innocent girl to prison? You were always in the newspapers, looking so angelic, and I started to realize that it wasn’t your fault you were related to him. He’d played you just like he’d played me.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what he offered you. I hope it was more than I got.”

  She leaned against the tree trunk, feeling her head pulsing. She hadn’t told anyone the truth of what had happened that night. Not her mother. Not even Charlie. And now this boy who she’d only known a few weeks, who she’d just had her lips all over, knew her secrets.

  “The Kindred must have known,” she said. “It can’t be a coincidence that they would put us together.”

  “Maybe they put us together because of this. So that I could make up for what happened. I didn’t know what to think when I saw you standing on that beach. I thought it was some kind of punishment for my sins. Then I got to know you. You weren’t anything like your dad. You were his victim. And my victim. And dammit—you were pretty. Even more pretty in person than on TV. You do this thing sometimes where you run your fingernails over your lips when you’re thinking, and you have no idea how much that killed me. How much I wanted to kiss you.” He paused. “I wanted to make it up to you. I’ve been trying. I had your back when they accused you of stealing food. I’ve run mazes and swung from trees because you asked me to. I nearly ripped Leon’s face off because he insulted you.”

  She stared at him in a mixture of fascination and horror. The mazes? The fight with Leon? He took a step toward her, but she pulled back, wishing the shade didn’t hide his eyes. In a certain light they were the color of coffee, but now they looked black.

  “We came up with the escape plan together, Lucky. You didn’t just do it for me.”

  A petal fluttered down to his shoulder. He didn’t bother to brush it off. Cora just stared at that petal, wishing he would speak, wishing he would say he believed in their plan.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice was so quiet it almost sounded like a stranger’s. “You wanted to go home so badly that you thought some sharpened sticks were going to get us out of here. But Rolf was right. We’d never have escaped from them. I went along with your plan because I wanted to make you happy. I still do—”

  He reached for her, but she jerked away. The petals underfoot felt slick now. Sticky. The branches tangled in her hair like they were trying to trap her. She shoved them away. “You were pretending you wanted to go home?”

  A shaft of light broke through the flowers to land on his face. His eyes were still coffee brown, not black. “Of course I wanted to go home—especially the first few days. I just never believed we actually could. I couldn’t bear to tell you how I felt. It would have broken your heart.”

  “And now you suddenly decide to confess everything? Why, because the rain made you feel nostalgic?”

  “Because we’re running out of time. Twenty-one days is coming fast. We’re going to have to . . . sleep together. And before that, I wanted you to know the truth.”

  “Oh, thanks!” Her voice was laced with venom. “So I not only have to sleep with a guy I barely know, but he also happens to be the one who sent me to juvenile detention.”

  “Dammit.” He was fighting not to raise his voice. “You think I want it to be like this? I want to be back home with an old man and his chickens. I want to visit my mom’s grave one more time. I want to meet you there, back home, and I want to show you the sky in Montana, teach you the constellations. But this is our home now. The others already know it. It’s time we grow up and admit it too.” He stopped abruptly. His words echoed in the quiet space beneath the tree. His eyes had gone dark again. Night must have fallen outside, or else the world only felt darker. “At least we care a
bout each other. And I do care, Cora. I don’t think I’ve ever cared about a person more in my entire life.”

  He reached for her, but she jerked back.

  “Tell me one thing. Do you believe that I didn’t steal the food?”

  He was quiet, his eyes shadowed in black. “If you did, I don’t care. I’m on your side.”

  Cora pulled back, ripping the fabric that bound them. Her plan seemed so childish now, using sharpened toys as weapons and fighting their way out—to what? How did she ever think she could make her way home, when she didn’t even know where she was? And yet a force within her came screaming back up.

  She wasn’t ready to give in.

  She stumbled away from him, tearing through the branches that pulled at her like a thousand clutching fingers. Lucky called for her, but she kept running, faster than she ever had, tearing past Nok and Mali, who were dancing in the rain, past Rolf, who was plucking unsuccessfully at the guitar

  Not even Lucky was on her side anymore.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  29

  Leon

  NIGHT FELL ALL AT once. The rain stopped abruptly, lingering in puddles on the boardwalk. Leon crouched behind a bush and spied on the cherry tree. He’d seen Lucky and Cora disappear beneath its branches, and he could guess what was going on in there. Another couple forming according to those dots on their necks. First Nok and Rolf. Now Cora and Lucky. Didn’t any of them have an ounce of self-restraint?

  “Animals,” he grunted. He stood up and sauntered back toward town. The lights were off in the shops and the house—the others must have gone to bed. The rain had soaked his clothes, but he’d long ago stopped caring. His dress shirt was worn and stained, rolled to his elbows and undone at the neck. The suit pants were caked in mud from crawling through the jungle. He climbed the stairs to the diner and tugged at the door—his stomach howled for food—but it was locked.