by Meg Collett
The locks chirped, and I climbed inside with Sunny taking the wheel. We drove out of the underground parking garage with little fuss, which further surprised me. Not because I thought Mr. Clint intended to keep me on strict lockdown, but because it felt like I was doing something wrong. The guilt chewed at me.
Hunting had always been my escape. I pressed my hand to my belly. Now, sneaking out into the dangers of the coming night felt too dangerous. There was so much at stake.
Sunny caught sight of my hand. “We’ll be fine. Zero will pick us up on the outside when it gets dark.”
“We depend on her too much. Have you noticed she always wears the same clothes?”
Sunny twisted the wheel to turn off the garage’s ramp. She headed toward the front gate at a reasonable speed. “I haven’t wanted to ask about her clothes, but I think she’s staying at her family’s old home.”
“You mean the one where she killed her father?”
Sunny grimaced. “That’s the one.”
“Patricide seems to be trending here lately.”
“Good Heavens, Ollie,” Sunny admonished, shooting me a stern glance. “Don’t talk like that in front of Pinto.”
We pulled up in front of the gate. The window buzzed down with a rattling hum. Just like I’d hoped, Henry was on duty. He frowned as soon as he recognized us.
“I don’t think this is what Mr. Clint had in mind,” he started, already shaking his head.
“Henry.” I leaned around Sunny and gave the tall guard my best smile. “Henry, Henry, Henry. Do we have to go through this again?”
His expression squished up like he might be feeling ill. “But Mr. Clint said …”
“Does it look like I give a shit what Mr. Clint said—”
“Listen!” We all jumped in surprise at Sunny’s sudden exclamation. I blinked at her, but she ignored me and leveled a serious gaze on Henry. “I need tampons,” she said a little too loudly. “My period is really bad this month, and I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. I can literally feel the blood pouring out of me, Henry. I’m sitting in my own blood, and I need more tampons. I’m bleeding so much—”
“I’ll open the gate right away.” Henry waved up to the rook’s nest that controlled the gate. It unlocked and rumbled open.
“Thanks!” Sunny said brightly.
“I’m sorry about your … your condition.”
“Oh, me too. You have no idea. So much blood. See you soon!” Sunny revved the van through the gate’s opening with barely enough clearance on either side of the mirrors.
Only when we were about a mile down the school’s main road did she glance at me. “What?” she insisted when she saw my face. “You two would have been at it for hours. I just expedited the process.”
“You expedited it all right.” I snorted, unable to contain my laughter anymore. It spilled from me in a series of unattractive, uncontrollable heaves. I gasped, tears rolling down my cheeks as I bent over in my seat. “I think you just made Henry gay. There’s no way in hell he’s going around a vagina after that.”
“Please, it wasn’t that bad.” Sunny sniffed. “Men need to get over their silly aversion to periods. I mean, without a period, they wouldn’t even be here.”
“I hear ya,” I choked out.
During the drive to Kodiak, on the mostly empty roads, Sunny and I chatted about school and Hatter and Luke and all the things that felt so normal I could almost forget I was going to a baby doctor because I had a baby inside me.
A. Baby. Inside. Me.
Occasionally, the shadows in the back of the van shifted and fluttered, but Zero never came through completely. She was checking on us in her special way. I missed her. I wanted to tell her the news, even though I assumed she’d picked up the announcement from my conversations with Sunny. Zero was weird about young kids since she’d been a lab experiment when she was just a kid herself. Maybe it unsettled her to know I was pregnant. It was reasonable enough ’cause it sure as shit unsettled me.
There were only a few minutes to spare when we reached Kodiak and pulled into the parking lot of the women’s care center.
Sunny killed the engine and turned a serious gaze on me. “Are we going to have one of those long conversations where I talk you into going in there and embracing your destiny and all that bologna?”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “I don’t think I need a long conversation about my destiny and bologna because I’ve always been more of a ham kind of girl. Bologna is just nasty. But if we sit out here talking about it any longer, I probably will freak out, and then I’ll be hungry because we’re talking about meat and we haven’t had dinner yet. Then I’ll be freaked out and hungry, and that’s never a good combo for me. So, you wanna keep talking about it?”
Sunny opened her door and hopped out. “Let’s go.”
The women’s care center was a quiet facility, tucked away on an even quieter street. A few women sat in the waiting area, but they didn’t look up as we came in.
“I have an appointment with Dr. Abbey,” I told the woman behind the front desk.
She checked her schedule. “Right. You can head on back now. She’s ready for you. Just take that door on your left and go straight down the hall.”
“Can my friend come?”
The woman glanced at Sunny, who turned up her best “you can’t deny me” smile.
“Sure,” the woman said.
We went through the door and started down a hall. A nurse stopped me halfway, and with Sunny watching with a critical eye, she drew my blood and made me pee in a cup. I changed into a paper gown and was sent to wait in a small room painted in purples and blues. The lighting was warm, and there were current magazines sitting in a worn, soft leather chair, which Sunny perched on. Her foot jigged up and down.
“You’re making me nervous,” I told her. I pushed away a set of stirrups at the end of the bench I sat on.
Having been on the run for murdering my foster father since I was sixteen, I hadn’t spent much time in doctors’ offices. I’d paid for any medicine I needed out of pocket, which hadn’t always been easy given my condition. But doctors had meant records, and records had meant leaving a trail that Max could follow to find me and kill me. But Max was dead, and the scars over my heart proved it.
The door opened, and a slight woman with gray hair and blue eyes came in. She stopped when she saw Sunny and me, her eyes settling on the black scars on my jaw and neck. She checked her clipboard.
“Ollie Lyons?” she asked.
Without missing a beat, I said, “That’s me.”
“Ah, okay.” She glanced one more time at my scars before taking a seat in front of me on a rolling stool. “I’m Dr. Abbey, and I’ll be examining you today. Before we get started, I can confirm you’re pregnant. I’m assuming since you’re here with your friend and not the father that this wasn’t planned?”
I swallowed. “It wasn’t.”
“Do you want to terminate the pregnancy?”
My heart banged like a gong in my chest. “No.”
Dr. Abbey nodded. “Okay. Then let’s get started. Lie back for me and put your feet in the stirrups.”
I did as I was told. From the corner of my eye, I watched Sunny watch the doctor like a hawk. She’d warned me about how the ultrasound would work, that it wouldn’t be a goopy tool swiped across my stomach. Instead, I felt a pressure between my legs that I quickly tuned out by staring up at the ceiling.
“Ollie,” Sunny whispered. “Look.”
I looked where she pointed. A small screen by my feet showed a black and gray quivering mass that was my uterus. And the little gray blob in the middle was Pinto.
I gasped.
“Are you ready to hear the heartbeat?” Dr. Abbey asked and looked at me expectantly, waiting.
I darted a glance at Sunny and back to Dr. Abbey. “That’s … that’s an option?”
The doctor smiled. “Of course. Judging by the baby’s development, you’re about nine weeks along. We should be
able to hear something.”
“Oh.” I shifted in my paper gown, my heels digging into the stirrups.
Dr. Abbey’s soft smile shifted. “But we don’t have to if you’re not ready.”
“No,” I said in a rush. “I want to.”
Even though I sometimes had a no-touching policy that Sunny was all too aware of, and most times she asked permission before touching me or even hugging me, this time she reached down and took my hand without asking. She gave it a squeeze and told the doctor, “She’s ready.”
My hands were drenched in sweat and Sunny had to feel it, but like the true gem she was, she didn’t mention it, nor did she mention the fact I was crushing her hand in mine. I squeezed like I could pull her perfect bravery and strength from her marrow into mine.
“Okay,” the doctor said, adjusting her machine. “Just give me a second to adjust this … You should hear it any moment now …”
A hummingbird flutter filled the room. A rapid pitter-patter of a noise that instantly tore through my skin and shredded me and took up residence deep inside me.
“Should it be so fast? Why is it so fast?” I trembled all over.
The doctor smiled at my terrified question like she got it all the time. “Your baby is perfect, Ollie. The heartbeat is completely normal.”
I barely heard her. My eyes were locked on the machine’s screen, where Pinto sat curled up like a bean, the sound of her or his hummingbird heart whirring around me. That noise in my ears, that was a heartbeat. A heartbeat coming from inside me. From the baby, from Luke’s baby, inside me.
Eyes glued to the screen, I pressed my lips together, tears streaming down my face.
Sunny bent down and kissed my forehead.
The doctor said, “Okay, I have to go check on a few other patients, but here’s this.” She handed me a slip of paper. It was a sonogram picture of Pinto. It shook in my hand.
“Thank you, Dr. Abbey,” I said, barely above a whisper.
“Of course, Ollie.”
She tidied up her equipment but left the lights dim. Before she left, she turned back to us and said with a smile, “You two are special.” She gestured to y hand joined with Sunny’s. “Your baby will grow up knowing the power of friendship, Ollie. That’s a wonderful thing.”
T E N
Sunny
With the list of Ollie’s prenatal vitamins in hand, I went down to the ward. I knew we had most of these in stock since I’d done the inventory recently. The trick would be taking what I needed without the other nurses knowing. I also wanted to have a few progesterone shots on hand. With all Ollie had been through over the past year, she was at a high risk for a miscarriage. I wanted to be prepared.
Nothing, and I meant nothing, was happening to Pinto on my watch.
I hit the lights, my eyes on the list as I walked into the large room that smelled like antiseptic and plastic. I knew this room better than my own dorm. It had always made me feel safe. Here, I had thrived when I was nothing more than a terrified first-year.
Not much time had passed, but so much had changed.
I sat the list down to sort through the cabinets. A pile grew behind me as my mind added more and more “just in case” scenarios. I was thinking I should have brought a backpack when a throat cleared behind me.
Jumping out of my skin, I whirled around.
Hatter stood behind me, his clothes bulky, his eyes squinted with suspicion. “Caught you,” he said.
“Good grief,” I breathed out. I took another shaky inhale to calm my heart. “You scared the daylights out of me. What are you doing down here?” I frowned, remembering what he’d said. “And caught me doing what?”
“You’re on it again.”
His voice was sharp with accusation, and it raised my hackles. “On what?”
“Don’t play stupid. It doesn’t work for you,” he growled.
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I recalled the heap of pregnancy medications behind me. I shifted to block his view of the table so he wouldn’t see the giant white bottle labeled “prenatal vitamins.” While I didn’t support Ollie keeping Pinto a secret, the revelation certainly wasn’t coming from me.
I focused on Hatter and snapped back, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m double-checking the inventory.”
“Do I need to call your grandmother? What would your mother say if she could see you like this?”
Rage roared through me. My face flushed with it; my hands trembled with it. “What the heck are you talking about, Hatter?”
“The saliva! You’re taking the saliva again!” He waved his hand at the table behind me, but the gesture threw him balance, and he had to grab a nearby counter to steady himself. His freckled cheeks flushed, and his eyes narrowed further, deepening the lines around his eyes that had once been laugh lines but now only marked his bitterness.
My anger rose higher to match his. “Saliva? I’m not taking that anymore!”
Earlier this year, when Dean was still at the university, I’d struggled with the compulsion—I didn’t want to call it an addiction because I was fine—to take aswang saliva. I craved that feeling of fearlessness after a bite or injection. It had been like a life raft in my sea of mediocre Sunny-ness. It had allowed me to be brave and strong and epic. But I didn’t need it. I was in control of it.
“I’ve seen you sneaking around, whispering with Ollie. You two are planning something, and it involves you on saliva. That’s why you’re down here in the middle of the night.”
I held up a finger. “First of all, Ollie would never support me taking saliva. You know that. She’s your friend too. And secondly, I’m not taking it.”
“I don’t believe you,” he snarled.
He was still holding the counter’s edge, leaning into it like he needed the support. And he looked so tired, like he hadn’t slept without nightmares in weeks. His clothes were too big, not because he was losing weight, but because he was trying to hide the flat, pinned-down shirtsleeve at his side.
My anger fizzled out faster than an ember in wet leaves.
I grabbed a brown bag, dumped the meds into it, and rolled down the top to seal the bottles away from prying eyes. When I turned back to face him, I said, “I’m sorry you don’t believe me, but I’m not taking anything.”
As I walked by, he sniped, “I don’t. I don’t believe you. You’re lying just like you always have.”
His words stung, but I told myself he was just angry. Just hurt. And he was lashing out. At the ward’s swinging door, I glanced back. “Get help, Hatter. Talk to someone. You can’t run from it forever.”
I left, letting the door swing shut behind me.
* * *
Tuesday evening, Ollie had fallen asleep on my bed, her cheek pressed against the pages of her Tracking textbook. She snored softly, her eyelids twitching as she dreamed. Quietly, I closed my notebook and turned off my desk lamp.
I needed to do something. An energy simmered deep in my gut that I couldn’t settle by studying. My argument with Hatter had my mind revolving around thoughts of saliva and the fearlessness that always accompanied a hit, and I couldn’t pull my thoughts from the feeling of a high no matter how hard I tried.
Not that I had been trying that hard.
I checked my watch. I had time for a few runs through the fear sim before lockdown. I grabbed my bag and toed on my sneakers. When I left, I carefully slid the door shut behind me.
It was late enough in the evening that the other students were holed up in their dorms, watching television or studying. The Death Dome hummed with their activity. I took my time down the stairs, nodding to the guards in the watchtower. I enjoyed the vibrant feeling that flowed between the floors of the dorm, wafting up and down the halls like the scent of freshly baked cookies. No matter all the bad things the school had been through, I would always feel safe inside the dorm. It would always feel like peace to me.
With a swipe of my student card I was out in the first-floor hal
l, which was dark, the classrooms empty and dusty. I’d turned for the staircase to head up to the sim when the elevator dinged. The doors slid open, and I heard her.
“—tomorrow. We’ll figure it out. They’re good kids.”
Marley’s voice floated down the hall. Without considering what I was doing, I ducked into the darkened staircase and peered out at the elevator. She and Mr. Clint stepped off.
He turned to the cafeteria and said, “You’re right. I just worry. Talk to you tomorrow.”
She waved. “Have a good evening.”
When she left through the front door, I followed, thinking of Ollie napping upstairs. If Ollie were here, there was no question she would follow Marley, even though the older woman was probably heading to her apartment in the barracks. I felt silly creeping after Marley just to confirm she was going to bed, but I slipped out the front door before it could close. I let the redhead cross the empty courtyard and then stepped out of the entryway’s shadows.
But she surprised me. Instead of turning toward the barracks, she angled the other way, toward the front gate.
I kept back, crouching behind a table in the courtyard.
Marley stopped at the gate and talked to the guards up in the rook’s nest. The gate clanged open a few feet, and she slipped out, still talking to the guards.
Rising from my hiding spot, I jogged over to the fence’s tall wall and tiptoed forward. The gate was still open, and she was just on the other side. I could practically smell her lavender patchouli scent from here. All it would take was for one of the guards she was talking with to turn around and they would see me down here on the other side of the fence.
I chewed on my lip. There was no way I could make it through the gate without anyone seeing me. The gate was made of densely woven metal with the school’s crest—a filigreed oval with snow-capped mountains beneath a sky full of stars—in the center. I couldn’t even peer through it to see where Marley was without risking her being right there, staring back at me.