“Clearly you talked to him about it.”
I stare at him, exasperated, but then his hand slips into mine, and I feel its warmth, its familiarity, and the guilt for keeping so much from him lately is almost overwhelming. Then Emerald is there, and her eyes are wild, her gaze raking over my wounds but not taking anything in. She sits beside Maggie and drops her head into her hands. The rest of us exchange looks.
“Emerald?” I try. “Is everything okay?”
She shakes her head back and forth, then sits up straight. Her hands fall away from her face, and she stares at me. “Bruno’s dead.”
Maggie gasps, but I am still. I don’t move; I don’t even breathe. “How?”
“Fight in the Bowl,” and on the last word her voice breaks and she chokes back a sob. She isn’t a crier, Emerald. She wouldn’t want to cry in front of us; I know that. So I give her a minute to pull herself together and use the time to do the same for myself.
Bruno. Dead.
“He was fighting a Green Circuit pro,” Emerald says once her voice is steady. “They were fighting—it was an awesome fight, and then Bruno was falling, and—and—the guy, the Green Circuit guy, he kicked him in the head. Mid-fall. Broke his neck.” She is breathing deeply, and one hand snatches at her mouth. “He landed on the floor and didn’t get back up.”
My head is shaking. The surge of emotion that wants to escape is mounting. It can’t be. Bruno can’t be dead.
When I finally speak, my voice is hoarse. “When did it happen?”
“The fight was yesterday. He passed away this morning.” Her eyes are red-rimmed like she hasn’t slept. “I’ve been in the nurse’s station ever since. Me and Erick and Anil. I tried to track you down, but I couldn’t find you.”
“Oh.” More guilt, always guilt. “I was…occupied.”
“Yeah, by the looks of things, you haven’t fared much better than Bruno.”
My voice is barely even a whisper. “At least I’m alive.”
But she isn’t listening; she is rubbing her hands up and down her face. “It could have been you or me, Eve. It could have been one of us in the ring—it was just a regular fight.”
I swallow; I push the emotions down deep. “It’s dangerous, what we do. We always knew that.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see it. It was so quick. One second he’s strong and putting up a killer match, you know? And the next, bam. Gone. Forever.” Her eyes reach mine, and they look broken. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“Do what?”
“Go pro.”
“Emerald, you love fighting. And trust me,” I add, gesturing toward my face, “your life can be over just as quickly outside the ring as in.”
She frowns at me, then nods. “Maybe you’re right.”
Maggie slings an arm around her back. “Hunter and I are heading on a factory tour after breakfast. You should come. You know, get your mind off things.”
“Which factory,” Emerald asks, but her voice is flat. Distant.
“Clothes, isn’t it, Hunter?”
He nods. “Garments, I think they called it.”
“Right. We’re going on the garments tour. It could be interesting.”
Emerald doesn’t reply; her gaze is fixated on her lap and many miles away.
Maggie looks at me. “Eve, are you in?”
I shake my head. An automatic no.
Her eyes narrow. “You’ve been on one tour.”
“You’re counting?” I make a face.
“Someone has to.”
“Look, I don’t exactly feel up for a tour today, okay? I’ll go on more of them soon. There are still a few weeks until we have to decide—that’s plenty of time.”
She nods. “I guess you plan on going pro anyways, right? Or does this”—she glances at Emerald—“change things for you, too?”
Wren is perfectly still next to me. I just shrug. “Time will tell.”
…
After breakfast, it is just Wren and me, and I do my best not to think about the last time we saw each other. We’d had a fight—a small one, sure. But I was also reminded of who he is. What he is. A Preme, the son of one of Eleven’s leaders, a woman I instinctively know can’t be trusted. Does it make me trust Wren less, by extension?
It’s hard not to let it. Plus, there were her words—odd ones—and the presumption that he was responsible for all my bruises…
Maybe I should have gone on the job tour after all. The others are headed there now, Emerald included. There is no use in mourning the dead for long in Compound Eleven. There are no funerals like tradition dictated before civilization moved underground. Already his body will be disposed of. I know she won’t be able to think of anything else, though. It is all I can do not to think of him, too. Of our last conversation.
He invited me onto the team, and for a moment I actually considered it. For a moment, I actually considered staying in Compound Eleven.
“What are you doing now?” Wren asks as we head for the elevators.
“I don’t know. Polishing my steel.”
He smirks. “Funny. Want company?”
I look at him out of the corner of my eye. “What, at my place?”
His gaze meets mine but only for a second. “Sounds like maybe you could use the distraction.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
“Eve?”
“What.”
“You’re still incredibly hard to talk to.”
We board the elevator only after my eyes sweep the small space for Daniel or Landry. I turn to him. “Whatever. You coming down or not?”
His thumb jams the button for the second floor.
“Did you know Bruno well?” he asks once we disembark. I lead him through the Lower Mean crowd in the direction of my cell. My eyes are peeled for Daniel and Landry, but only because I can’t stop them from searching. It is a weak thing to do, a scared one. But still I look.
“Bruno? Yeah. Same team and everything.”
“Fighting for sport is rough. Dangerous.”
“Yeah. We covered that at the breakfast table.”
“Still want to do it?”
“It was a freak accident, Wren.”
“That’s not why I’m asking, Eve.”
I look over my shoulder at him as we shove through the main corridor. His mouth is pressed into a thin line.
“Come on,” he says eventually. “You’ve been to hell and back. Maybe put your feet up for a bit.”
“And get soft? The only reason I survived what happened the other night is precisely because I fight for sport. Because I’m good at it, because I’m strong.”
“True, but since you are hell-bent on leaving the compound soon, why not enjoy your time? Unless, of course, you like to fight.”
“Can we talk about something else, please? I really don’t want to think about Bruno right now, or the Bowl, or fighting in general.”
“How about this. Any chance you’d recognize your attackers if they walked in front of you right now?”
My eyes widen; they search the faces around me, panic playing at my stomach. But they are nowhere to be seen. Besides, Wren has no idea who it was. How could he? Get a grip, Eve; it was just a question.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe. But what are the chances?” I look at him and drag the corner of my mouth into a half smile. “Right?”
“You’re sure you didn’t see who it was? Because—”
“I told you,” I snap. “I didn’t see them. It was dark. I was panicking. Okay? Can you just leave it?”
His face hardens, but he says nothing more until we turn off the main corridor to where the crowds are thinner. He exhales. “Back to your plan to leave the compound. How do you expect to do that, again?”
I glance at him. “Why?”
“Who are you more worried about—him or me?”
“Well, he travels with his own entourage of armed guards, so you do the math.”
I shove him. “You can relax. My plan is far less glamorous.”
“So what is it?”
“I lifted a gun from a guard, that’s all. It’s hidden in the storeroom as we speak.” I say it plainly, yet the words are touched with pride.
“You think you’re going to shoot your way out of the Oracle?” He shakes his head. “It’s bulletproof glass, Eve, three inches thick. Compound security was a priority when it was being built, for obvious reasons. Do you really think our forefathers constructed it with ordinary materials?” He must see the horrified look on my face, because he adds: “Impressive work, though. I can’t imagine guards give up their weapons very easily. And stashing it someplace outside your cell—also notable. Every bit as calculated as I would have expected from you, to be honest.”
I am barely listening. Too much rushing in my ears. Too many specks blurring my vision.
The glass is too thick. Bulletproof. Bulletproof.
My plan won’t work. My ticket to freedom, gone. Just like that. The field of hollyhock, the oasis, Jack—all of it seems to flicker and fade, just beyond my fingertips…
Relax, Eve. I say it again and again until the tears that prickle behind my eyes dry up. There are other ways out. I will find another way out; of course I will. That paradise will be mine. I will reunite with Jack there. I will.
I will, I will, I will.
“I wish I could say that I feel badly for prolonging your stay down here, but…” He clips me along the arm.
I force a smile in return. “No prolonging,” I say weakly. “I’ll figure out something.”
We walk the next two hallways in silence. It hurts, this revelation. Definitely, it hurts. I feel it in my stomach and my chest and my head. Yet it doesn’t gut me as deeply as it should. In another week or two, if I don’t find another way out, maybe it will. But right now my senses are too dulled—all of them. Crushed already, I can be pulverized no more.
Near to my corridor, Wren notices the black paint spelling out Fuck the Premes. He stares at it and runs his tongue along his teeth. “No wonder you wanted to keep things between us quiet,” he says heavily. “It puts you in danger. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I snort. “If you think I’m scared about that, Preme, you don’t know me.”
“Be serious, Eve.”
“I am serious. Besides, you don’t exactly look like a Preme, so long as you keep your hands in your pockets. What’s the difference?”
“But if certain people knew…”
“Yeah,” I am forced to agree. “If certain people knew.”
In my corridor, the lightbulbs are almost all burned out—two have died since I left for breakfast—and so it is dark, but it doesn’t bother me quite like before. Maybe it is because I am distracted by devastating news and brutal disappointment, or because Wren is here, but I don’t think so. I think the lemon juice has spilled on my fear of the dark.
“Does someone fix these?” he asks as his eyes comb the ceiling. His arm reaches up and touches a lightless gray bulb outside my cell.
“Eventually.”
“I can see why you love it down here.”
“Yeah, well, wait until you see in there.” I look at him pointedly under the glare of the neon light, then swing my door open. “After you.”
Probably it is the first time he has ever seen a Lower Mean cell. His eyes sweep over the small space and quickly latch on to the piece of embroidery hanging on the wall above the bed, my only decoration. My cheeks burn as he stares at the image, as he sees my mother’s signature. Silently he moves to the other side of the room, only a couple of steps away, and his fingers graze the objects on my desk: a ball, a book lent to me by Hunter.
He picks up a piece of paper and reads it aloud: “Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“It’s a quote. From an author. A long time ago.” I shrug. “I copied it from a book upstairs.”
“Do you believe it? That death is beautiful?”
“I read once that there’s no such thing. Death. That it’s a change of worlds, nothing more.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I think I did,” I say.
He nods and then sits on the bed with his hands running down his face. It looks as though he has accepted my cell for all it is, and with no snide comments or pitying glances. Something else seems to be on his mind.
“So. I guess we should talk about yesterday morning with my wonderful mother. I know you have a lot on your plate right now and—”
He’s right; I do. Too much. Too much sorrow that could overwhelm me at any second if I am not careful. I don’t want to think about any of it. I don’t want to think about our fight or his Preme mother. Maybe I do need a distraction… My eyes drink in his thick, olive-coated forearms and the muscles rippling under his black shirt. I see his mouth, wide and kind, just as I saw it all that time ago. My sheets and bedspread are white; it makes him stand out all the more, and suddenly I can’t look at anything else.
“Take your shirt off,” I interrupt.
He looks up at me. “What?”
“I want to kiss you, and I’d rather do it when you don’t have your shirt on.”
“Uh. Okay? I actually thought you’d want some sort of explanation for what my mother—”
“Wren. Your shirt.”
“You’re serious?”
“I am.”
He grips the bottom of his black T-shirt and pulls it over his head in one motion. Immediately, I sit down on top of him. “Much better,” I mumble. Then I kiss him, and the cloud of darkness over my head retreats just a little. One hand runs down his taut chest, and my pulse quickens because I have never touched a boy like this. The cloud retreats a little more.
But his head pulls back, and he sighs. “I know she was rude to you, but I didn’t think you would care about that. It’s the other stuff. All the stuff about me being violent that you must—”
My fingers fist in his soft hair, and I kiss him again, stopping the words in his mouth. But once again, he pulls away. “Eve, this is important.”
“Not to me.”
“Is anything important to you?”
I shrug. “Kissing you. Kissing you is very important to me.”
His eyes are hard, and it looks like he might get angry, but then he smiles. He laughs. “You are incredibly strange.” His hands wrap around my waist, and his fingers snake under my shirt. “So, are we still taking things slow?”
I want to say no. But then I remember Addison, and a ball of lead forms in my stomach. I feel Daniel and Landry on top of me, and the ball grows heavier. I nod.
“Hmm. It just seems so unfair, though, that if we’re going to make out, I have to be undressed and you don’t.”
I crinkle my eyes.
“Come on,” he says, and he lies down on the bed and pulls me with him. Just as I was surprised by his strength in the Bowl all that time ago, I am surprised again by how easily he can move me.
“It’s not unfair. Because, you know. You look like that,” I say from beside him, and my fingers swirl over his stomach, over the alternating muscle and depression, muscle and depression. My pulse is dangerously quick.
“Like what?” he asks, and his eyebrows are pulled together.
“You know.” I kiss him lightly on the chest. “Perfect.”
<
br /> Now he grins. “Perfect? Wow, I think that’s the first nice thing you’ve ever said to me.” He pulls me close, and his lips are on mine, and his hand rides up my back, under my shirt. It makes a shiver run the length of my spine.
“I don’t think you have any idea how perfect you are, Eve.”
“Come on. Don’t do that to me.”
“Do what?”
“Bullshit me.”
He is kissing me and laughing at the same time. “See? I told you that you had no idea. It’s fine. I kind of like it that way.”
I am smiling, too, and somehow, even with my plan to escape now blown apart, even with a black-and-blue face and a darkened heart, I feel happy, maybe even desirable. I kiss him harder now and grip his shoulders tightly. He pulls himself around so that he is lying on top of me.
I swallow. It shouldn’t remind me of them. It shouldn’t. I am strong, and what happened the other night with Daniel and Landry wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t. I can do this.
Wren’s hand runs down my body, and my heart beats harder, but now I can’t tell if it’s with desire or dread. As his fingers near the waistband of my pants, I know the answer. My eyes snap open, and my hands push hard against his chest.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” I blink back tears before they emerge. “It’s nothing.”
He is watching me, and his eyes are dark and thoughtful, an impossible combination.
“It’s nothing,” I repeat. But still my hands don’t move from their spot against his chest.
Finally, he nods. He moves sideways so he is beside me. His lips graze my forehead. “It’s okay, Eve.”
“It’s not okay.”
“Does it have to do with—”
“Yes.”
He runs a hand over his face. “Look, I get it. It would be weird if it didn’t have any impact on you, okay? I know you’re made of steel and everything…” His eyes narrow, and his lips curl up at the corners. “But I think somewhere deep down in there you’re actually, I don’t know…human?”
I grasp his hand in mine, and it feels safe and secure. “Yeah. Too human.”
“I don’t think so.” His face is serious. “You’re the toughest person I’ve ever met, but you’re good, too. You’re hard and soft. I didn’t really think a person could be both things at once.”
Escaping Eleven (Eleven Trilogy) Page 21