Hunter stands. “I’ve got other things to do, Eve,” he mutters. “Have a ball in Compound Ten.”
I push what happened with Jules to the back of my mind—Wren, too. Then I jump to my feet. I’m not joking about going tonight, and I’m not bluffing. This is the last time I will see my best friend, and I’m not leaving him on these terms.
Quickly, I block his path.
“Do you mind?” he asks.
“I do.”
“Eve, move.”
“No. You can’t leave like this. You owe me a proper goodbye.”
He crosses his arms. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“Come on, Hunter. That’s not what I mean. It’s just—I can’t have you mad at me, I just can’t. You’re my oldest friend, and I love you to pieces, and I can’t leave on these terms.”
“So don’t leave, then.”
I tuck my hair behind my ears and look him in the eye. “I’m going, Hunter. I’ve already made my decision. All I need is for you—my best friend—to give me your blessing. Please. I need it.” There is something wet on my cheek, and when I wipe at it, I realize I’m crying.
He just laughs. “If anything, the past two months have shown me that I’m not that important to you after all.”
“What does that even mean? Of course you’re important to me. You’re everything to me.” I grab him by the shoulders, and tears fall quickly now. I feel desperate, suddenly. As if his blessing will make everything in my life okay again, if I can just manage to secure it. “Please, Hunter. Please try to understand. Please know you’re everything to me.”
His arms wrap around mine. He says in a low voice, “Everything? So what about him?”
“Him?” I stare into eyes so familiar that I recognize every speck. I stare into them and try to understand.
“You know who I’m talking about.”
Wren.
My head is shaking. My pulse is unsteady. Words form on my tongue, but they are jumbled and uncertain. Hunter is everything to me. Hunter is everything to me.
It is his blessing I need.
But no…Hunter is a friend. He is more than that—he is family. There is too much on the line. And there is too little time; I am leaving soon—that much I know. That much I must remember.
So I take a step back, and our arms uncurl. I take another step, and they fall to our sides. “What does he have to do with anything?” I hear a voice say. I know it is mine, but still it sounds foreign.
His expression sours. But just as quickly as his anger came, it disappears again. His voice is restrained. “It doesn’t matter. Not now. You want to leave so badly, good riddance.” He pushes past me, and my insides turn to acid.
I will not get his blessing.
But he stops at the door. “Only one thing,” he says. “Compound members aren’t allowed to come and go as they choose, Eve, and you may know where the tunnel out of here is, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting through it. So maybe I’ll see you around tomorrow, maybe I won’t.”
“Nothing’s stopping me, Hunter,” I say in a voice muffled by tears. But it’s no matter; already he has slammed the door, and another relationship lies bloodied at my feet.
…
I spend the rest of the afternoon retrieving the gun from the storeroom and passing time with Maggie and Emerald. Though the mood is heavy, we do our best to keep the conversation light. Don’t worry about Hunter, they assure me. Or Jules. Instead they indulge me, like good friends would. Together we brainstorm all the great things awaiting in Compound Ten—unlimited croissants, cells built aboveground, music—and despite the silliness of it, it makes me more excited to go. It is an adventure, just as Maggie said, and what is life if not a great adventure?
My time in Compound Eleven has been the opposite of a great adventure, and now is the time to right that wrong. My pulse is quick as I collect myself, as I prepare to slip downstairs and never see these hallways again.
That is the good news.
The bad news is that my hand shakes as I run a brush through my hair. The bad news is that my pulse isn’t simply quick; it ticks so furiously that a light sheen covers my skin and I am faintly nauseous. I am wracked with nerves and guilt and sorrow. Part of me doesn’t want to go; it wants those old feelings again. The ones I get with my friends, or when my mother is lucid, or before Wren and I broke up.
I stare at myself in the mirror and breathe. I am strong. And I deserve more than Eleven.
That is when I hear something at the door, something I haven’t heard before. Scraping, the sound of metal, a thud. But then it is gone and there is nothing but silence. I turn back to the mirror.
No bruises today. Just a plain face, one free of violence. That is what the surface says, anyway. It almost looks foreign, that smooth skin the same color. I want to examine it further, but instead I look again at the door.
Someone was out there. But who? And why?
I shake my head. I know where my brain is going, and I am desperate to stop it. Maybe it was Hunter, ready to make amends. Or maybe it was him.
I can’t help it—my eyes comb the bottom of the doorframe. Nothing, and my stomach drops.
How careless and shallow and weak. What a hopeless romantic I have become. So I slap myself; I force myself to refocus.
Time to go. I have said my goodbyes to my friends as best I can, and I do not plan on extending the same courtesy to my parents. Anger bubbles in my stomach whenever I think of them. No, no—my friends are my family, and I have said a proper goodbye.
I turn to my boots, but before I pull them on, I walk instinctively to the door. No harm in taking a look—it had been an unusual noise, after all.
And then something strange happens.
When I pull at the door, it doesn’t give. My fingers move to the lock; I have locked myself in.
But no, that isn’t it.
I haven’t locked myself in, but…I am locked in.
I yank at the door again. I turn and twist the door handle and pull with all my strength, but the door doesn’t budge. I take a step back and stare at it. My brain seems to move like molasses. I am locked in.
Why am I locked in?
Maybe the lock itself is jammed or malfunctioning. The others will notice; they will come by my cell, knock on the door…unless they think I have already left. What a cruel twist of fate that would be.
Or maybe…maybe I have been locked in by those in charge of Compound Eleven. But surely not. Surely that wouldn’t happen to me. Besides, why would the compound care to lock me in my cell? I haven’t done anything wrong.
But something claws at the back of my brain. My plans to go to Compound Ten are against the rules. Hunter was right—I’m not permitted to come and go as I choose. If the authorities know, I will be locked in here until my punishment is determined.
But they couldn’t possibly know.
I try the door again and rattle the handle until I am out of breath, until sweat beads against my forehead and at the back of my neck. The effort makes me thirsty, so I go to the bathroom and fill a tin cup with water. I swallow it down in one gulp.
They couldn’t know. Of course they couldn’t. It’s a coincidence, the fact that my door is locked just before I am about to escape. Nothing more.
Only I don’t believe in coincidences. I sit on my bed with my back straight and stare at the wall in front of me. I swallow the saliva that pools in my mouth and think. Either my lock is broken or they know.
And if they know, only one of three people could have told them. Maggie, Emerald, or Hunter. Nobody else knew of my plans for tonight.
Deep down, I know which one of the three to blame. But I can’t accept it, and I won’t believe it. I shake my head back and forth and back and forth until the thought is gone.
…
Time has passed, but still I have
n’t moved from my seat on the bed. And so when there comes a knocking and shouting from the other side of the door, I am startled. It takes a moment for my feet to find feeling again, but eventually they rush me to the door, which I pound with the heel of my palm.
“Eve?” Maggie shouts, and I know she must have her lips pressed close, because these doors are thick and sound doesn’t pass easily through.
“Maggie. Help—I can’t get out!” I don’t know if she’ll be able to understand me, but I keep thumping my hand so she knows I’m here.
I can feel her jiggling the doorknob, pulling against it—metal thuds quietly, but still the door doesn’t open.
Useless. I’m locked in. Compound Eleven knows my secret. Security knows, the guards know—whoever needs to know about a possible security breach knows—and now I am locked in. And next I will be punished. A chill runs down my spine at the thought.
I heard once they snipped off a man’s index finger—Sully, in fact—and now both are missing. I heard about a young child forced to clean toilets every day for five long years. I have heard of people sent to live on the floor below, of family and friends being severed, of job opportunities squandered. I have heard so many things over the years, and now they twist around my brain and I can’t hear Maggie anymore—I can’t hear anything anymore. I sit on the floor, and when I come to again, my cell is silent.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I should try to get some sleep.
Certainly there is nothing else to do. My stomach aches with hunger, but I ignore it because that isn’t a problem I can solve right now.
Since I can’t think of a problem I can solve, I take off my white sweatshirt and fold it into a neat square. I place it on my desk. Next, I take off my pants, and I fold these, too. Normally I don’t bother with such rituals, but right now I do these things without thinking. My mother taught me to fold my clothes when I was small; my father enforced it after she left. I haven’t bothered since I moved into my own cell.
The cell I am now a prisoner of.
I slip between the sheets, and they feel cold and unwelcome against my bare skin. I turn out the lamp beside my bed and stare into blackness. It is strange, this feeling, like I’m alive and dead all at once. Hunter’s betrayal stings my eyes every time I blink, but it keeps my heart ticking, too. I don’t know why. I don’t feel particularly vengeful; all I feel is sorrow kicking me straight in the gut. But I will. I think that is it. I will be vengeful, and so I must persevere until I can exact my revenge on someone whom, until today, I treasured and loved and who I thought loved me, too.
Funny—ever since I was little, I was taught to be forgiving, and this thought makes a laugh slip between my teeth. The same woman who admits to me now that she knows nothing about forgiveness, that she isn’t capable of such things, taught me to always forgive those who falter.
Perhaps we don’t teach our children what we know—only what we ought to know.
If I had children of my own, I would teach them what a sham forgiveness really is. And I would make them cold and hard so they couldn’t be gutted. I would make them cruel, because that is what this world is. Cruel. Those with soft hearts can’t survive, not in peace.
I kick the cold sheet off and turn on my side. I wrap my arms around my stomach and think to myself: That is what my father did.
He tried to make me a monster. A tough, hardened, violent monster, one cruel enough to survive Compound Eleven. I stare into the darkness and turn it over in my mind. Perhaps he wasn’t angling for allotments; perhaps he wasn’t pining for a son. Perhaps he was acting in my own interest all along. Perhaps I have been wrong about him.
I roll onto my other side and shake my head. Lies.
This must be what it feels like to lose your mind. Thoughts become warped; they twist inside your head until you’re too confused to move a muscle. What I need more than anything is to quiet my mind. That must be the key to sanity.
Like my mother. She has quieted her mind to keep her sanity.
Another laugh.
So maybe quiet minds drive us insane. Maybe they are insane.
I roll onto my back and thump my palms against my cheeks. I am losing it. I know I am, because I can hear scraping and thudding and it is thunderous inside my brain. Now I see neon, my vision is no longer true—
“Eve.”
My arms flatten against my bedsheet. Terror. But once I look up, I see a familiar figure standing over me. I see, too, that his face is carved out of the blackness by the neon light shining from the hall, and that means my cell door must be open.
And it isn’t just a familiar face.
It is him.
I don’t think about my actions—I simply act, I simply react. The balloon in my stomach lifts me from the bed and into his stiff frame. It is hard and unyielding, but I wrap my arms around him anyway.
It is Wren, and he got my door open. I am free.
His hand grips the back of my head, and his mouth is in my ear. “Are you okay?”
I am shaking my head back and forth as a million thoughts tumble inside. I am not okay. I am not, but I am, because he came. “You saved me,” I whisper.
“Only so you could go save yourself.” He pulls away and adds curtly, “I need to close the door.”
I watch his long body as it shuts out the neon light from the hall. We are swallowed by blackness until my fingers switch on the lamp. In his hand, he holds a padlock with a keypad on it, and he places it on my desk next to my folded-up jeans. I remember that I am almost naked, other than an undershirt and underwear, but I don’t care. Of all the things to care about lately, that is not one of them.
Before he can turn to me, I am twisting my arms around his chest, sealing out any air trapped between us. Maybe if I hold him close enough I won’t remember the fact that my best friend betrayed me. Or that I am leaving now, going to Compound Ten. Or that I broke up with him and he came to my rescue anyway.
Maybe I won’t remember the massacre that happened beneath my feet or the sound of Jack screaming for my mother and me.
I breathe deeply, letting the smell of his skin and his shirt soothe me, and it must work, because my pulse slows and I feel almost peaceful.
Then I realize that other than a hand on the back of my head, he doesn’t hold me. I am clutching him like I never want to let go, but one of his arms hangs limply at his side. It is a simple thing, but it sends pain radiating through my chest.
I know I ended things. I don’t know if I was right or wrong when I did it, but I know it doesn’t change the fact that it happened.
“Eve.”
Too many thoughts, too many emotions. I push them aside and wrap my hands around his neck. I stand on my toes and kiss him, and for a second I think he is going to resist, but then the hand that hangs by his side wraps around me, and he tugs me close, and, for a fleeting moment, life is good.
It doesn’t last long. He pulls himself back several inches and says my name again. His voice is heavy, somber.
I shake my head. No. Don’t want to hear it. I can’t accept whatever he is about to say. I don’t want to be reminded of the fact that we broke up and shouldn’t be kissing right now. And I don’t care if it’s messy and confusing; right now, he is my rock. I step forward and kiss him again.
This time, I kiss him hard; I squeeze his shoulders, I push him in the direction of the bed. I can feel him starting to resist, so I push harder, like I am fighting in the Bowl, and once he sits, I straddle him. My fingers run under the hem of his shirt, and his fingers find my bare legs, dig into flesh. He kisses me now just as hard as I kiss him.
Just as my lips curl into a small smile, I am pushed from his lap, shoved toward my desk.
“Put your clothes on.” His voice is cold and level. He drags his palms over his face, then stares at me.
“Why?”
“What do y
ou mean why? Because this is a mistake. I know why you’re doing…that. And I’m not being a part of it.”
“A part of what?”
He gives me a look. “I’m not a child, Eve. You’re doing this because you’re a wreck and you want a distraction.”
“No, I’m doing this because I like you. A lot.”
“That’s a quick change of heart.”
“That was yesterday. I was angry. This is now.”
“I’m not talking about the fact that you broke up with me, although we should probably discuss that. I’m talking about the fact that until you were locked in here a few hours ago, you were planning on leaving for Compound Ten. Tonight.”
I am still. When I try to swallow, I realize my throat has gone dry.
“You weren’t even going to say goodbye,” he whispers. “After everything.” His gaze drops to the floor, and it makes me hurt.
“Wren—”
“If you want to think I’m a monster, that’s fine. I get it, trust me. But there was nothing I could do to stop the cleanse. I did the best I could for you, Eve, and I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.”
“A monster?” I let out a nervous laugh. “Not for one second—not from the moment we met and you kicked the shit out of me in the Bowl—have I believed you were a monster.” I look him straight in the eye. “You’re not, and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”
He stares at me. I feel like he is looking not at me, but through me, deep inside to the darkest recesses of my mind.
“What?” I finally ask.
“You’re serious?”
I turn my palms to the ceiling. “Of course I am.”
“Even after yesterday.”
I let out a deep breath. “Even after yesterday.”
He shakes his head again, but this time he is smiling. “I take it from the welcome I just received you’ve had a change of heart about us breaking up.”
I shrug. “That was a mistake.”
“But still. I didn’t handle the whole thing very well. I would promise to do better in the future, but I guess there’s no point.” Suddenly, his smile is gone.
Escaping Eleven (Eleven Trilogy) Page 30