Falls the Shadow

by Stefanie Gaither

  “Home sweet home,” Seth says, fluffing one of the pillows and sending a cloud of dust into the air.

  “I’m going to go see if I can find some better blankets and stuff,” Jaxon says. He hasn’t really said much—or even looked at me—since I hurried away from him in the department store, and I can’t help but feel like he’s making up this excuse to get away from me; the blankets in here aren’t that dirty or holey. And I don’t think he’s going to find better-looking ones anywhere else.

  “Good luck,” Seth says.

  “Try not to kill each other while I’m gone,” Jaxon says. He sounds relatively cheerful, but I don’t miss the way his eyes jump right over me when he takes one last look around the room. He disappears into the hallway before I have a chance to say anything else.

  With a sigh, I get up and move to the table on the far side of the room, where Seth neatly stashed most of the weapons he brought. I pick up gun after gun, studying them, asking him every question I can think of about them. It gets Jaxon out of my mind at least, and, besides, it seems like a good idea to know all I can about these weapons.

  You know. Just in case.

  For everything I ask, though, Seth only has a curt, one-word answer.

  When I run out of questions, I give up and start sifting through the other supplies he brought. The suitcase that Jaxon carried in is crammed full with clothes on one side and vacuum-packed nutrition pills and other equally non-exciting foods on the other. As unappetizing as the food looks, though, my stomach still spasms with hunger at the sight of it; I can’t even remember the last time I ate.

  I take one of the pills, unwrap it, and bite it in half. It has a chalky texture and bland vanilla flavor, but I force myself to swallow the other half too. These pills aren’t manufactured for their flavor, I know; I wasn’t expecting them to be any better. They’re lingering products of a struggling postwar economy: cheaply made, mass-produced, and genetically enhanced so they pack in almost an entire day’s worth of nutrition.

  I’m lucky because I haven’t had to eat much of this sort of food, but some of Haven’s poorer families exist almost entirely on it. I know that because I’ve read plenty of the e-mails and petitions lobbying my father to do something about nutrition standards, poverty levels, and everything else that’s wrong with the city. I used to help him sort through almost all of his mail, actually; we spent a lot of late nights at the computer together, and there was a time when I saw myself growing up to be just like him—working in politics, trying to make some sort of difference in the world like I always believed he was doing.

  Then Violet died.

  Her replacement came, and suddenly that’s all people seemed to write about anymore: cloning and Huxley and what-sort-of-moral-standards-are-you-setting-Mayor-Benson? That, and insults. Threats. And then one night my father told me he would take care of the e-mails himself. He locked the door to the home office, and it was still locked when he left for town hall the next morning. I spent at least an hour trying to break the door’s security codes while Violet kept watch for Mother, but it was useless. I never managed to get back in.

  A few minutes after eating the nutrition pill, my stomach is still growling, still unsatisfied, but my head has already started to clear. I’m about to close the suitcase when something sticking out of one of the interior pockets catches my eye. It’s the hilt of a pocketknife, but it’s much more ornate than any of the other weapons here. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands, studying the intricate carvings along the handle.

  “Do you make a habit of going through other people’s things?” Seth asks, suddenly right behind me. For someone with such a big mouth, he moves incredibly quietly.

  “I was hungry,” I say, holding up the empty wrapper. “Thought everything in here was public domain.”

  “That isn’t.” He holds out his hand so I can deposit the knife in it. “I don’t know how it got in there.”

  “It’s yours?”

  He looks reluctant to talk about it at first. But just as I start to turn away and go find something else to distract myself with, he quietly says, “It was a birthday gift. From my—from President Cross.” As he talks, he flips the knife open and closed with precise flicks of his wrist, his eyes focused intently on the blade. “First time anybody bothered to celebrate the day I was born. We had a party and everything—just me, her, and Jaxon, but it was nice, you know? So I keep this close. Reminds me that there are at least two people who know I’m alive.”

  “What are you talking about? Half the school worships you. Everyone knows you.”

  He laughs humorlessly. “The same way everyone knew Samantha Voss. And I’m guessing that, as of today, her death is already old news.” I make a disgusted face, but he just shakes his head. “Come on, Cate,” he says. “You’re in Theater too; you know how it goes: ‘Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage’ and all that crap.”

  “I never liked that play.”

  “Whatever. Point is, if I was gone this time tomorrow, there are two people who would miss me. And one of them, for reasons I’m still not sure I understand, has become rather infatuated with you.”

  I have a sudden, sick feeling that I know exactly where he’s going with this. Why he’s telling me all these things.

  “But you already knew that, didn’t you?” he says. “Because it’s come in handy.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “I’m not, actually,” he says. “I actually don’t think there’s anything funny about you taking advantage of my best friend. It’s probably the only thing in the world that I see zero humor in.” He takes a step closer to me. “So. I don’t know how you did it, what sort of crap you pulled or what lies you told to get him here, but—”

  “I didn’t tell him anything,” I say, my temper flaring. “He offered to go with me.”

  “And you’ve tried really hard to convince him to leave you alone, have you?”

  At first all I can do is shake my head in disbelief. And then the only words I can manage, over and over again, are “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “I don’t think so, Benson. You aren’t fooling me.”

  My cheeks are flushed red hot at this point, the heat so intense that it burns away any hope of this turning into a rational conversation. But I don’t want to fight him either. I’ve spent my whole life avoiding him and the rest of his crowd, ignoring all the stupid things they said about me and my family; why should things be any different now? He’s just as obnoxious out here as he was back at school.

  This isn’t school, though.

  And things are different now. Because as much as I want to turn away from Seth—to put on that stone-faced mask one more time and march myself to someplace with better scenery—I can’t. Not as theatrically as I want to at least, since all my dramatic plans of storming off and slamming doors in his face are tempered by one thought: Jaxon. Wherever we stand now, it wouldn’t feel right to just walk away and leave him behind. Not after everything he’s risked to leave the city and stay with me.

  I’m beginning to wish that he and Seth weren’t a package deal, though.

  I take a deep breath through my nose. The pill wrapper makes a crinkling noise as I squeeze my hand into a fist, and then I walk over and throw it away in the tiny metal wastebasket in the corner. As wrecked as the rest of the room is, there’s really no point in properly getting rid of the trash, but the movement gives me a chance to finish clearing my head.

  “If you’re so convinced that I’m the bad guy,” I say, turning back to him, “then why did you agree to help me?”

  “I didn’t. I agreed to help Jaxon. Whole hell of a lot of difference.” He saunters over and flops down on one of the beds, lies back, and flips the knife open again. I search for something else to distract myself with and end up back at the same suitcase, taking things out of it only to cram them all back in again. Seth doesn’t stop talking. “And I only d
id that because I made a promise to his mom a long time ago—and over and over since—that I would watch out for him the same way she did for me. He’s too soft to be out here on his own. Sees too much good in people.” The sound of the blade puncturing and sawing through the mattress makes me glance over at him. “Lucky for you, right?” he says.

  “He isn’t just out here for me,” I fire back. “Don’t you even care about what really happened to Samantha?”

  “Knowing isn’t going to bring her back. Dead people don’t come back.” He stops carving up the mattress, props himself up on his elbows, and gives me a thin smile. “Or, at least, they don’t always.” The words are bitter, and suddenly I remember what Jaxon told me about Seth, back at the CCA headquarters.

  Both his parents are dead, we think.

  And what about the rest of his family?

  One of my mother’s favorite ways to try to explain away people’s hatred of us was to accuse them of jealousy, of wishing that they’d taken the time or resources to prepare themselves for the unexpected the way she and my father had. I’ve never given that reason much weight before, but now I can’t help but wonder: What if Seth hadn’t lost anyone? For good, I mean?

  Would he still be glaring at me the way he is now?

  I shove my hands into my pockets to force them to stop messing with the suitcase’s contents, and I wander toward the hall. The sound of his sigh reaches me all the way out here, and the relieved creaks of rusty bedsprings accompany it a second later.

  “Come on, Benson,” he shouts after me. “If you run off, I’m going to get blamed for it.”

  He appears in the doorway at almost the exact moment that glass shatters somewhere in the distance. Pounding footsteps follow. Then a loud crash, and an involuntary terror slams my heart against my chest. I look back at Seth, and he’s already walking toward me.

  “What was that?” I ask. He passes by me without answering, breaks into a jog, and disappears around the corner up ahead.

  I hear Seth calling Jaxon’s name. I don’t hear Jaxon answering him.

  I take a deep breath, and before I know what I’m doing, my feet are carrying me after Seth’s voice. And then I’m running, up one hallway and down the next, until I come to a window that looks newly broken, judging by the dust still swirling and settling around it. There are plops of bright wet blood scattered amid the dust and shattered glass. A fresh wave of fear courses through me, raising the flesh along my arms and neck.

  I hear Seth’s voice again, and I break into a sprint.

  I hurtle around a corner, into a damp, musty-smelling room with a tarp-covered pool in the center.

  And the good news is that I no longer have to worry about where Violet is. Because she’s standing right there, at the edge of the pool. Less than ten feet away.

  The bad news is that she has a shard of glass pressed like a dagger against Jaxon’s neck.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wrong

  My sister doesn’t answer when I call her name.

  She doesn’t even look at me.

  Over and over I’m shouting at her to stop, but it’s like there’s some sort of invisible wall between us and my words are just slamming into it and falling uselessly away.

  This can’t be happening.

  Only it is. And I have to do something about it. Now. I know how strong Violet is; I know how fast she is. And I don’t know what the hell she thinks she’s doing right now, but I do know how easily she could shove that glass into Jaxon’s neck, make it come right out the other side and cut every vein along the way. But maybe if she sees me, maybe if she realizes I’m here, maybe—

  I go for the arm holding the glass. I wrap myself around it, throw all my weight into trying to drag her to the ground, or at least away from Jaxon. I’ve caught her by surprise, but she’s stronger than I am—so much stronger—and she just braces her arm and swings me around until there’s suddenly nothing underneath my feet except flimsy black tarp. I manage to get my left foot balanced precariously on the crumbling edge of the pool, but the right one sinks down, flooding the tarp with water.

  Would it have been too much to ask for the hotel owners to have drained the pool before they left?

  Because—more bad news—I can’t swim. My mother never saw fit to teach me, since she didn’t approve of the way “girls these days parade around half-naked when they go swimming.” I think the thought of the press taking a picture of me in a bathing suit horrified her.

  I look frantically at Violet and find her staring down at me through dead, emotionless eyes.

  “What are you doing?” I demand through clenched teeth.

  This time, the sound of my voice makes her flinch. She blinks. Crouches down along the pool edge so we’re face to face.

  “What are you doing?” she asks. “Do you know who this boy is? Do you know who his mother is?”

  “Of course I do!”

  “Then why are you with him?” Her voice is chillingly calm. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jaxon start to take a step. Violet’s gaze snaps toward him.

  “I thought I told you not to move,” she says.

  I throw more of my weight against her arm, trying to bring her attention back to me.

  “Leave him alone,” I say as evenly as I can manage. “He’s not . . . he’s not what you think. I can explain, okay? Just pull me back up and I’ll explain everything.” Her eyes are hollow again as she turns back to me. I take a deep breath. She knows I can’t swim. She’s not going to let me drown. She’s going to pull me back up now—

  And she does pull me. She jerks me so hard that the one foot I had up slips, and both my knees slam into the side of the pool with a sickening crack. Then she gives the arm I’m still clinging to a vicious shake, trying to knock me off.

  That’s when I lose my temper.

  I dig my nails into the skin of her arm, gripping tighter than ever. I press both my feet against the side of the pool for leverage, grit my teeth, try to ignore the ungodly pain in my knees, and then push off. Hard. Violet goes flying over my head and lands with the sound of crumpling plastic and a muffled splash behind me. I feel her sinking, the water pulling away from me as her body drags it down, and a new panic floods through me; because I know she can’t swim either. Or at least, the first Violet never could. She was terrified of water.

  Did I just kill her?

  I scramble desperately for the edge of the pool, kicking and flailing until a hand grabs mine, and I hear Jaxon’s voice telling me, be still, and, I’ve got you, don’t worry. But I’m not worried about me anymore. It makes absolutely no sense now, not even to me; but all I can think about is her.

  “She can’t swim,” I sputter out, along with a mouthful of dirty water. “Violet can’t—”

  “Cate!”

  Jaxon’s eyes go wide, and he tries to pull me the rest of the way up with one strong heave—but he’s not fast enough. I look back just as Violet explodes out of the water behind me. The glass shard comes down across my face, and her arm slams into my stomach, hooking around me and dragging me down, down, down. My fingers slip out of Jaxon’s, and a second later I’m under water.

  We tumble deeper and deeper, the tarp twisting around us. She’s going to drown us both. She has to realize that. Maybe she just doesn’t care. She’s not even trying to swim back to the surface, even though it’s obvious now that she can; instead she stays twisted and tangled with me, hacking wildly with the glass that’s somehow still in her hand. The water slows down her swing, but not enough to prevent her cutting several nasty gashes along both my arms, and across my hip when we reach the bottom of the pool and I try to push my way back up. Soon, the murky water is blossoming with clouds of my blood, and my vision starts to blur. The deep, cold water steals the feeling from my hands and feet. Then it takes the pain, too. And then I am weightless, floating without feeling, aware only of the shadow of a figure descending over me.

  My sister, coming to kill me.

  I shut my eyes. Tight
ly.

  * * *

  Pain. Behind my eyes. In my knees, my arms, my shoulders—everywhere, from my skin down to the very core of my bones. So much pain that for a long time I don’t realize the miracle of my own breath rising through my trembling lips.

  Things come back to me little by little after that. The feel of rough concrete beneath my fingertips. The choking scent of chlorine. The sound of water drip, drip, dripping somewhere close by.

  And then a voice.

  “Cate? Please say something. . . . say something—anything. Do something so I know you can hear me . . . please?”

  He sounds scared. And I’m hit with an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach as I realize, So am I. For him and for me, because I was almost too late, because my sister . . . my sister . . .

  Why is this happening?

  I open my eyes.

  “Finally,” Jaxon says, cupping a hand on either side of my face and pressing his forehead to mine. He stays like that for what feels like a long time, his hair dripping beads of the dirty pool water down onto the side of my face. The harsh scent of chlorine that’s masking his normal scent makes it hard to breathe, but I’m too numb to push him away.

  He pulls himself back after a moment, and we just stare at each other the way people stare at a burning building or a car wreck or some other kind of catastrophe—our eyes discreetly downcast but desperate for details. For answers about what really happened, however twisted and gruesome the facts may be.

  Jaxon opens his mouth several times to speak, but he stops every time.

  Because what do you say about something like this? I don’t even know what to think.