Alliance

by Leigh, Trisha

  We need to figure out how to save Flicker, where the Cavies are going from here, but I just can’t let go of the past without knowing he’s okay.

  At least for now.

  I’ve snuck away to Charleston half a dozen times to stand on this patch of earth and reassure myself he’s home and safe. I haven’t talked to him because of the hot fear that he’s going to hate me for leaving him.

  For lying to him about what I am.

  The Greenes aren’t home right now, even though it’s after eight p.m. on a school night. I shouldn’t be here either, standing around watching my breath plume out in white clouds. I should be with the other Cavies, trying to figure out how to get Flicker out of that sensory deprivation tank, to decide if we should stay or go once we do. Where we would even go if we left.

  But I can’t breathe at Saint Stephen’s, can’t think clearly while my mind constantly double-checks everything two and three times before it leaves my lips. In the city, the claustrophobia lifts and comfort settles in. Despite everything that’s changed in the past two weeks—two months really—this at least remains the same. And sometimes coming here is all that’s holding me together.

  My gaze wanders over the shoddy streets. Moonlight glints off the pavement as the sharp chill on the January breeze nips at my ears. Jude lives in the less affluent part of town, away from the historical districts I love so much, but his neighborhood does smell like the ocean. The taste of salt hangs in the air, clings to my skin in an invisible film that makes me feel cleaner than I have in days. I take a deep breath, reveling in it.

  I freeze when headlights swoop down the street, blinding me as a Camaro turns into Jude’s driveway. None of my Charleston friends, my normal friends, have cars since they live within walking distance of the school and it’s easy to get around town by foot. So when Maya, Peter, and Jude all tumble out into the darkness, my heart catches. They’re real again—not part of a dream, not a piece of a different life—alive and breathing and walking up to the front door.

  I strain to hear their words, barely able to make them out. If only Athena had come along. He can hear all the way to Japan, so across the street would have been no problem.

  As it stands, I don’t catch anything the boys are saying, but Maya’s naturally loud voice carries.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? You know you can stay with me.”

  Jude’s shoulders hunch, as though defensive, and Peter says something I can’t hear. Maya crosses her arms, clearly unhappy with whatever comment he’s making, but doesn’t stop Jude from unlocking the door. He disappears into the house and a light flicks on in the foyer, then in the hallway, and Maya and Peter trudge back toward the car.

  She’s driving—the car must be her father’s—but Peter walks around to open the door for her, then leans down, catching her lips in his. My jaw drops open and I expect her to push him away, to slap him, to scream obscenities.

  When her arms go around his neck to tug his body against hers, a squeak of disbelief sneaks past my lips before I can stop it.

  They break apart, heads tilted into the wind. I hold my breath, slinking behind the trunk, the bark cutting into my palms. Now it would be nice to be like Haint and actually be invisible instead of just wishing super hard.

  My stupid, see-the-age-someone-dies mutation screws me again.

  The sound of two pairs of footsteps trading pavement for smushy winter grass clogs my mouth with cotton. My legs beg me to run, but there’s nowhere to go.

  There’s nowhere to go.

  Those four words seem to govern my life.

  “Whoever’s over there, I have a cell phone and I know how to use it!” Maya’s boisterous tone assaults my ears. I close my eyes, my hands fisted, waiting to be discovered.

  “What, are you not even going to mention you’re with your totally buff boyfriend who will kick their peeping ass?” Peter’s offense sounds genuine, and despite my impending doom, the word boyfriend makes me choke on my tongue.

  “You’re not my boyfriend, dipshit,” Maya hisses.

  And then her face is peering around the tree, trepidation sliding into confusion before colliding with pure joy. “Norah?” she gasps.

  Norah. Not Gypsy. She doesn’t know me as Gypsy, as a Cavy, and my lips curl into a very real smile. Longing that has been building in my chest for weeks explodes, and my eyes fill with the first tears I’ve shed since Reaper betrayed us. Since we found out the government had used our unwed teenaged mothers as guinea pigs, creating the ten of us with various mutations and then giving us mean monikers as they kept us from the world. From our families.

  Since we found out they expect to use us as operatives—as weapons.

  Maya’s arms are around my neck and nearly squeezing the life out of me before I can formulate a response. Her enthusiastic greeting nearly knocks me to the ground, and we stumble backward into the side of the building. The haphazard hug makes me grateful for the hat, scarf, gloves, and thick coat covering ninety-nine percent of my exposed skin. As long as she doesn’t plant a kiss on my cheek, I won’t have to find out when she’s going to die. I don’t want to know.

  “Oof. Maya, you’re killing me.” My lungs wheeze out the protest, and she pulls away faster than seems possible given the way we’re wrapped together.

  Then she whacks me hard in the bicep.

  “Ow!”

  “I should kill you for disappearing without a word, Norah.” The happiness in her eyes blurs, lost to tears that break my heart. “How could you do that?”

  The strength of her reaction surprises me because we were only friends for about two months before the proverbial poo hit the fan, but it touches more than shocks me. I’ve spent a good amount of time wondering about Jude, worrying about my father, and even fretting about Dane—seeing that he took a knife to the gut last time I saw him, even if he is the enemy—since we’ve been at Saint Stephen’s. But now that Maya’s standing in front of me, I realize how much I’ve missed her.

  My throat squeezes shut. “I’m sorry, Maya. I didn’t want to do it, and I wish there was some way I could have contacted you, but I, um, lost my phone.”

  I’d smashed the SIM card in my phone into tiny little pieces, to be more accurate. Details.

  “Can’t you just get a new one?” As is typical with Maya’s questions, there’s more behind that innocent tone of hers. Something she’s not asking, not telling, but wants to hear all the same. It’s as though she suspects my getting a new phone wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world but wants me to tell her why.

  Hope and wariness wrestle for prominence in my stomach. If she knows more than she’s saying it means Jude probably spilled my secrets.

  Which certainly makes my life more complicated. If that’s even possible.

  Maya and Jude have been friends their whole lives, and aside from Peter—who is watching the two of us in silence at the moment—Maya is the only person I can think of who Jude might have trusted with what he’d seen. As much as I wish he hadn’t told her, it’s not fair to expect him to bottle everything up.

  “What’s going on here?” I ask, raising my eyebrows and tilting my head toward Peter, praying for a subject change.

  Now that he’s been invited into the conversation, Peter leans in, lifting me off my feet and twirling me around like I’m five. He refuses to quit no matter how hard I kick or how exasperated Maya gets.

  He finally sets me down on wobbly legs and slings an arm around Maya, giving her a strange, crooked smile that lights up his whole face. “We’re a thing.”

  “A thing? You and Peter?” I direct to Maya. It’s not even close to the weirdest thing that’s happened to me recently, not with my sliding weirdness scale that starts with government conspiracies and ends with an underground rebellion made up of generations of genetic mutants that came before me, but it’s weird. Peter, everyone’s annoying brother. Or so I thought.

  “Shut up, Norah,” Maya scoffs, but her face flames red, the sly look she sneaks at Pet
er giving her away. When she glances back to me and realizes there’s no way I’m missing anything that’s going on, she frowns. “No, but seriously, shut up. No one knows.”

  “Why? I mean, who am I going to tell? And…but why?” I ask.

  “It’s because she’s afraid of all the other girls wanting to horn in on her territory,” he explains, dodging an elbow from Maya as though he’s been doing it his whole life. Which he probably has, just not in this context.

  Perhaps the biggest shock of the whole interaction is that, aside from the elbow and the requisite eye roll, there’s nothing but sweet adoration in the gaze Maya tosses his way. “Idiot.”

  “That was a rather affectionate idiot,” I comment, still feeling unmoored by this whole situation. I’ve only been gone two weeks. “What in the heck happened?”

  “I charmed her. Not out of her pants yet, but give me time.”

  “Keep dreaming, doofus. You’ve barely paid for dinner.”

  “Well, that’s because you don’t want to tell anyone we’re…whatever this is.” He’s pouting now, as serious as he’s ever been, at least around me.

  “Because we don’t know what this is, and if I’m going to be dealing with shit from our friends for weeks on end, I’d like to have some idea first.”

  “Like you’ve sustained a traumatic brain injury that’s altered your higher function?” I offer, stealing a glance at Peter, who I’ve always found amusing and nice but not exactly boyfriend material.

  “Ha! I’ve considered that, but at the moment I’m thinking he might have hypnotized me or something.” She holds up her hand toward Peter. “Do not even run with some lame hypnotized joke. It’s too easy and I’m tired.”

  “This is so bizarre.” I can’t help but voice the predominant thought in my head. “When did this happen?”

  “About ten days ago.” Maya sighs. “We’re both doing community service at that therapeutic horse center, and seeing him helping those poor little dears on those big strong horses did something to me, bless their hearts. I’m thinking I can beat it, given enough time. Or antibiotics.”

  That makes me laugh again, in the way only Maya can in these loaded situations. Something about the easy happiness I’m feeling reminds me that tonight was supposed to be about one thing. And it’s not Maya and Peter.

  He looks at me when I abruptly stop laughing, and the smile falls away from his face, too. “Are you here to talk to Jude?”

  The buoyant euphoria of seeing them again comes to a crashing halt. They both watch me, expressions unreadable, as they wait for me to address the elephant in the room—what in the heck I’m doing here aside from basically stalking their friend.

  I swallow. “How is he?”

  “You ever thought of asking him?” Maya purses her lips, crossing her arms at me now.

  “I can’t, Maya. He’s okay?”

  She sighs, which means she’s going to relent and take pity on me. “I’ll tell you how he’s doing if you tell me how you’re doing. Really.”

  I almost say, Fine, and dare her to call me a liar. I’m not sure why I don’t, except that lying to people when they know you’re lying is about the worst feeling in the entire world.

  “I’m dealing with things,” I finally say, which is giving in and she knows it.

  But a little bit is never enough for Maya. “Can I help?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Jude didn’t tell me what happened the day you left. But I know it’s something.” Her pale gaze roams my face in what’s probably an attempt to read my mind, convince me to spill my guts.

  It touches me that Jude didn’t spill the beans about me and the other Cavies as I thought he did, but I’m hoping it’s not because he’s been mind-wiped or brainwashed or threatened within an inch of his life. The latter might be the only thing that’s actually possible, but given that the government has been running a genetic engineering facility that basically churns out mutants right under the public’s noses for forty-plus years, who knows what’s possible.

  “It’s something,” I tell her. “But it’s nothing you could help me with, and the more you know, the more trouble you’ll be in, too.”

  She puts a hand on her hip. “I love trouble, Norah. And it loves company.”

  “I think that’s misery you’re thinking of.”

  “Either way.” Maya’s expression turns coaxing. “How about two heads are better than one? You can’t argue with that.”

  The only way to end this conversation is to convince Maya I don’t need her, which isn’t the truth at all. Other than Jude, Maya was the first person to like me for me. The first girl who wanted to be my friend not because we were both Cavies, not because we had little choice, but because she wanted to.

  With an aching pain in my stomach, I squeeze my eyes closed, then force them open and go in for the kill. “I’ve got seven heads, including mine, already. We’ve got it covered.”

  She flinches, then clamps her teeth together, determination shining in her eyes. “Obviously not. Maybe your Darley Hall friends are too close to the problem to see the forest.”

  That makes me snort, relief that she doesn’t hate me bubbling over. Maya and her jumbled sayings. My gaze drags toward the house again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to talk to Jude. Find out what he knows.

  Even if he hates me, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have information about what happened with Dane Lee and the CIA after we disappeared.

  “I think it would be better if he didn’t see you,” Peter tosses out, casting a wary glance toward Maya’s elbows. “He hasn’t been the same since you left, and thinking there’s a chance you’re coming back might make it worse.”

  My antenna goes up, vibrating with nerves. “What do you mean, not the same?”

  “You know…different.”

  “Thanks, Peter. I know the definition of not the same.” It’s hard to stop from throttling him, but the fact that he might give me some details keeps my hands fisted at my side. “Different how?”

  “Quiet. No fun. He’s been late to school in the mornings and runs straight home after practice or games.” He shrugs. “I mean, it’s not like a computer virus is melting his brain out of his ears or anything, but still.”

  Confusion scrunches my face. “What?”

  Maya jams her elbow into Peter’s ribs before he can get clear. “I swear, one more reminder that you’re a conspiracy theory junkie and you’re on at least a two-day make-out probation.”

  “Please, like you could keep your hands off me for that long. And it’s on the news, Maya. It’s not a conspiracy.”

  “Right, because the news never lies about anything crazy.”

  I tune them out, my mind on Jude. Two weeks ago, Jude found out that people who have superpowers actually exist, that the government is willing to lie, steal, and kidnap to keep that fact a secret, and that it’s possible to disappear into thin air. Not to mention that his journalist father hadn’t been crazy as everyone had thought when he’d gone snooping around Darley Hall looking for evidence of the Cavies and more. He’d been right.

  After something like that, it could be worse than him pulling away from his friends, for sure.

  “Well, the last thing I want to do is upset him more.” I flick one last glance toward the house, then decide to trust Peter and Maya. They’ve been Jude’s friends since forever, and maybe the best thing for all of them would be to forget they ever met me.

  I didn’t really want to see him, anyway. Or I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea…

  A weight presses on my chest at the thought. Clue number fifty-seven that I should get out of here and never come back.

  “I’d better go.” I turn to Maya and snag her in a hug, grateful again for my cold-weather wardrobe. “Thanks for giving a crap what happens to a girl you barely know,” I whisper near her ear.

  She pulls back, surprised, but doesn’t let go of my hand. “Pete, wait for me. I’m going to walk Norah wherever she’s going.”
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br />   “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with? It is nighttime and we’re not downtown.”

  Maya rolls her eyes, but I interject. “I’m just parked around the corner.”

  Maya drags me away, latched on to my hand like I’m Rose and she’s frozen Jack Dawson. She pauses once we turn the corner, raising her eyebrows in a silent question. I take the lead and we hike the few hundred feet to the barely running Oldsmobile I “borrowed” from Saint Stephen’s.

  It took me a few tries to get the hang of driving, but it’s not so hard. Scary, but not difficult.

  “All joking aside, Norah, I’m here if you need me,” Maya says when we stop walking. “And please, for the love of God, even if you’re not going to tell me what’s going on, could you text me once in a while?”

  I bite my lip, hating to lie but knowing there’s no other way to get her to shut up. “I’ll text you, Maya.”

  “You’d better.” She hugs me again, holding on a second longer than she would have two weeks ago. “You still have my number?”

  I shake my head. “Write it down for me?”

  It’s hard to ask her for a favor, but in the end, my lingering concern over Jude freaking out pushes me over the edge. “Will you promise to text me if you see any significant decline in…anything with Jude?”

  Maya purses her lips, glancing up and down the street as though she’s expecting someone—maybe Jude, maybe the spirit of her favorite Charleston ghost, Lavinia Fisher—to jump out of the shadows. Her eyes lock back on my face before she replies. “I’m more worried about him than Peter is. It’s not even all because of you leaving, I don’t think—no offense. I mean, he was pretty taken with you and all, but it seems like more than losing a crush. Like…everything changed for him that day, not just you leaving town without telling anyone. I mean, for heaven’s sake, I thought I was going to have to start telling ghost stories about you.”