by Malinda Lo
“Hi,” Riley said, and then turned back to David. “So are you okay? I was so worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” David said.
Reese sipped her drink and studied Riley surreptitiously as she flirted with David. Riley, objectively, was gorgeous. That dress and those shoes might look trashy on someone else, but on her they looked sophisticated. Though most of the girls were dressed more casually than Riley, she seemed quite comfortable in her outfit. She had the demeanor of someone who knew when people were looking at her, and she enjoyed it. Watching her leaning into David’s space, though, Reese didn’t think that Riley looked like his type. She was too polished. Too fake. David seemed a little uncomfortable with her, responding to her with one-or two-word answers.
By the time David extricated himself from the conversation with Riley, Reese had drunk half her cup of punch and the kitchen was beginning to seem a bit blurry. When he grabbed Reese’s free hand to pull her with him out of the kitchen, Reese saw Riley giving her a sharp, almost jealous glance. A burst of irritation went through her, and she wasn’t sure if it was her emotion or David’s. He led her through the back door and onto a broad deck, where clumps of people were gathered together talking and laughing. She welcomed the cool night air on her warm face. She asked David, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Riley gets to me sometimes.”
“Why?” She felt an emotion pass through him like a thin wire: resistance. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said quickly.
He shook his head. “It’s okay. She’s just hard to deal with when she gets like that. Pushy.” He drew her toward the edge of the deck, where they leaned against the railing. “It’s a nice night,” he said, changing the subject.
“Yeah.” The fog that had blanketed Chinatown was absent here, a benefit of San Francisco’s many microclimates. “How does Eric get away with this big of a party?” Reese asked, looking around.
“His parents are in Korea on a business trip. I don’t think they care, honestly. He gets away with a lot of things.”
A guy Reese recognized from the soccer team came over to talk to David, and though he greeted her also, she didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation. She continued to drink her punch as a steady stream of people came out onto the deck, several of them veering over to say hi to David. Some of them tried to talk to Reese, but she was bad at small talk; she always had been. Besides, David had slung his arm around her shoulders, probably in an effort to make her feel included—or to show that they were together—but all it did was make her feel him: his body, once so foreign to her but now increasingly familiar; the beat of his heart; a sense of anticipation rising between them. We don’t have to stay for long, he had said. The punch made her pleasantly woozy, and she had to lean into David so that she didn’t wobble on her feet. Her hand snaked around his waist, her fingers sliding over his hip. Heat flared inside him, and she felt a bit breathless. She finished her punch and carefully set the cup on the railing. The world seemed to tilt, and she grabbed at David.
“David,” she said. David.
His hand tightened on her shoulder.
I feel weird.
He pulled away briefly, and the air rushed between them, cool and refreshing. The noise of the party seemed to crescendo and she had to back away from the sound. “I’m sorry, I think I need to go someplace quieter,” she said.
She saw concern on his face. “Okay.” He apologized to his friends and said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
She linked her arm with his and they walked down the steps off the deck. The property was long and rectangular, and solar-powered lanterns marked the edges of a path that curved down the length of the yard. At the far end she stopped to look back. Eric’s house was lit up like magic.
“Hey,” David said, brushing a lock of her hair away from her face. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sorry. I think that punch must have been really strong.” Her head felt fuzzy.
“Do you need some water?”
“Maybe later.” She looked up at him. His eyes reflected the lights from the house, but most of his face was in shadow. She reached up to cup her hand around his cheek; his skin was warm. He covered her hand with his, turning her palm so that he could kiss it. It was so gentle, like a moment in a storybook. She wanted to cry.
“Are you sad?” he asked softly.
“No.” Everything inside her felt thick and heavy, all her emotions concentrated into a dense, sweet syrup. She pulled his head down to kiss him, and the moment his mouth touched hers she was overcome. All she wanted to do was kiss him. She wrapped her arms around him, pressing his body against hers. She had never imagined that kissing could be like this. Like being in his body at the same time she was in hers. She knew what he was going to do as he did it. His hands slid down her back, pulling up the fabric of her shirt. His fingers touched her skin, sending a shock through her body. He pushed her backward and she banged into something—a wall—and for a breathless second he parted from her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
There was a door behind her. He reached around her and turned the knob. “Privacy,” he said, and led her inside.
They were in a shed. He closed the door, but a small window near the ceiling let in light from the party at the other end of the yard. Flowerpots and buckets were stacked on the floor, and a wooden workbench was built up against the back wall. David lifted her onto the workbench, and as his hands tightened around her waist and her feet left the ground, she whispered again, “What are you doing?” But she knew the answer.
His hands were on the warm skin of her thighs, pushing up the fabric of her skirt, and he pressed his body between her legs as he kissed her. For the first time in her life, she understood why girls wore skirts. The muddled haze in her head had changed. It was focused now on only one thing: on drawing David closer to her, on touching him. All her senses were amplified, as if the volume in her body had been turned all the way up, and she could hear nothing but the pounding of their hearts in unison. His mouth was on her neck, making her shiver. Her hands were on his back, sliding up beneath his shirt, over the curve of muscle around his spine, over his shoulder blades. The touch of her hands on his skin was like stoking a bonfire. She could feel him roaring, his body surrounding her. He kissed her again and again, hungrily, and she only wanted to drag him closer. In this space, with him, she could completely lose herself. She didn’t need to exist anymore; she was merely a vessel for their connection.
Dimly, somewhere inside her, a warning bell rang. This was nothing she was ready for. It felt incredible; she was more alive than she had ever been; but who was she? She had forgotten her name. His fingers were unbuttoning her shirt, and she wanted him to do it—she yearned for him to do it—but part of her pushed back. A small, distant voice.
The last time she had been in this situation, something had gone horribly wrong.
Amber, pulling off her shirt as if she were plucking the petals from a flower. The softness of her skin, her mouth.
Abruptly, David stopped what he was doing. “Reese,” he said, his voice thick and dark.
She remembered herself. Her eyes blinked open, and in the dim interior of the shed she saw him breathing heavily, inches from her, his hands still on her shirt. Her hands were still on his back, and she felt the confusion inside him. The sudden, unexpected questions.
She pulled her hands away. “I’m sorry,” she whispered in horror. He had seen her memory of Amber too. “It just happened. I don’t know why.”
He stepped back. They weren’t touching anymore. “Are you still in love with her?”
There was a rushing sound in her head, as if she were holding a conch shell to her ear. “No,” she said sharply. “I was never in love with her.” But even as she said the words she could hear the lie in them. “I mean, I don’t think I was,” she amended, and guilt burned through her. He moved farther away, backing into a pile of ceramic pots that thunked together. She slid off the work
bench, and as her feet touched the ground in her new boots, the whole world spun. She grabbed the edge of the table. She was drunk; that had to be it. That one drink—what was in it? “I didn’t mean to think of her,” she said, her voice breaking. “I swear, it was like some glitch in my brain.”
He didn’t answer for a minute, and she was terrified that she had screwed this up without even meaning to. “Maybe we need to take things a little slower,” he finally said.
His words made relief and disappointment sweep through her all at once. “Okay. You’re right.”
He took a couple of steps closer to her, and she thought he might kiss her again, but he only reached out to button up her shirt. He buttoned it all the way up, until she felt the collar closing against her neck. “Maybe we should go home,” he said, sounding tired.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and reached for his hand.
But he drew away. “I know. Can you give me a minute in here alone? Wait for me outside.”
She was stunned. Unsure of what else to do, she stumbled out of the shed, leaving him inside. The night air was cool on her face and she felt like she might burst into sobs at any moment. In the distance, the lights of Eric’s party still sparkled, and she heard the sounds of laughter and conversation. She and David would have to walk out of there through that party. Everyone would see that something had happened, that something was wrong. It would be the talk of the school on Monday.
The idea of facing all those curious glances galvanized her. She took a deep breath, trying to push her way through the haze of the drink and the lingering effect of making out with David. If that memory hadn’t risen to the surface, they’d still be in the potting shed, and it was obvious what came next. To her shock, she discovered that part of her was grateful that the memory had stopped them. She wasn’t ready, and when she was, she wasn’t doing it in a potting shed.
With Amber, it had never been so all-encompassing, probably because Amber had made a point to close her mind to Reese—to “keep things to herself,” she had said. If I’d let you see everything, it probably would have freaked you out, Reese remembered her saying. That was an understatement. It was like being consumed by something so primal she had no control over it. Now she felt weak-limbed and fuzzy-headed and hungover—way more hungover than one cup of punch should have made her, even if it had been strong.
And she was terrified. Was this what the adaptation made possible? The horrifying intimacy of having someone see everything inside her, even things she didn’t want to see herself?
The door to the shed opened and David came outside. They faced each other under the night sky, ignoring the chatter of the party at the other end of the yard. “Are you okay?” David asked.
Hot tears pricked at the edges of her eyes, and she didn’t move. She didn’t know what to say or what to do. She wished she could go back in time—fifteen minutes was all she needed—and she wouldn’t have to feel like she had betrayed David against her own will.
I don’t think you betrayed me, he told her.
She looked up at him, but she couldn’t read his expression in the dark. You don’t?
No. But I think…
They both realized at the same instant that they weren’t touching. They were communicating mentally without touching. Reese stepped back in shock. David?
I can hear you so clearly, he thought.
It’s like you’re in my head.
It’s like we flipped a switch.
Reese’s face heated up. What had done it? His hands on her thighs or the way she had kissed him? Had that delirious, drowning feeling erased the space between them?
He came toward her and reached for her hand. “Reese,” he said out loud, breaking the taut silence. He pulled her into a delicate embrace, as if they were both made of fine china. “It’s going to be fine.”
“I hope so,” she said. Then she pulled away, letting her hand trail down his arm until their fingers were touching. Close, but not too close.
*
She was home by eleven thirty. David walked her up the front steps and kissed her good night, his mouth brushing over hers, light as a feather. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
David’s parents had invited Reese and her family over to watch the Sophia Curtis interview when it aired on Saturday night. “See you tomorrow,” she said, and then she unlocked the front door and went inside. She turned to peer out the window as David went down the steps to where his car was waiting on the street, the engine idling. One sedan pulled into a parking space across the street and another followed David’s as he drove away.
“How was your date?” her mom asked.
Reese spun around to see her mom standing in the archway to the living room, dressed in her penguin pajamas. Her dad appeared behind her mom and added, “You made it back early. I’m impressed.”
“It was fine. I’m going to bed.”
As she headed upstairs she heard her mom chuckling. “All right, honey.”
In her bedroom she took off her jacket and pulled out the recording device and microphone wire, hiding it in the back of her top desk drawer. She emptied her pockets, laying her phone and wallet on the desk, and caught sight of the flip-phone Amber had given her, tucked behind the lamp. The battery had died a couple of days ago, and she had no way to charge it. She had thought about throwing it away, but that had seemed oddly personal. The flip-phone was the only link she had to Amber, even if it no longer worked. Now she opened the drawer again and shoved it in the back next to the recording device so that she didn’t have to see it anymore.
She undressed, put on her pajamas, and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She held her long hair out of the way with one hand as she spit out the toothpaste and rinsed off the toothbrush. When she straightened up she was startled by how exhausted she looked. Her green-flecked eyes were anxious and had dark shadows beneath them. Earlier that night, before David had picked her up, she had been so worried about whether or not she looked cool enough. Now that worry seemed trivial. She had committed herself to misleading and probably double-crossing a powerful organization that had an army of supersoldiers at its command.
She clutched the edge of the counter as the reality of what she was doing struck home. If Lovick and CASS found out that she and David had recorded the meeting and planned to lie to them about what they learned from the Imria, the repercussions could be swift and deadly. She thought about her mom and dad downstairs, unaware of her intentions. She thought about the gunman at the ferry dock. It would be all too easy to arrange for an accidental shooting. Panic twisted through her gut.
There was still a chance to back out of this plan she and David had concocted. She could still do what Charles Lovick asked and make sure her parents were safe. Part of her wanted to do that; it would certainly be a lot easier. Besides, what if Lovick was right? Had the Imria really kept their ability to share consciousness a secret for all those years? The only Imrian she had a better than passing acquaintance with was Amber, and Amber had told her she had been trained to lie. The problem was, even though her knowledge of Amber should predispose her to believe that the Imria had lied, it didn’t make her believe they wanted to “erase our humanity,” as Lovick had put it. She didn’t trust the Imria—or Amber—but some instinctual part of her wanted to.
Or maybe she simply still wanted Amber.
A terrible, hot shame spread through her. She glared at herself in the mirror. You have to stop thinking about her, she ordered herself. You’re with David now. You want David. And she did want him. The memory of being with him an hour ago made her ache to pick up where they had left off, even though it also scared her half to death. This thing that the Imria had done to her and David was such a frightening gift. Before it had happened, she might have thought it would be cool to have access to someone else’s thoughts. Now she knew it meant that whoever she touched could know everything about her. Everything.
She splashed cold water on her face and rubbed the towel over h
er skin. She didn’t want to think about this anymore. It was too unsettling. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and fall asleep.
She went back into her bedroom and climbed under the covers, switching off the light. Sleep, however, was elusive. She lay curled on her side, her thoughts circling back to David and Amber. Amber and David. She tried to push Amber away, to put the memories of her in a box and lock it deep in the recesses of her mind. She reached out to David the way she had when they were in the hospital at Project Plato. She envisioned the shape of his body, the mental energy that formed the essence of who he was, but it was like groping in the dark for something that wasn’t there.
Maybe he was too far away to sense her, or maybe she was too upset to focus properly. The end result was the same: She felt alone in a way she never had before she discovered this connection with him. She was in her own room, with her head on her own pillow, but she didn’t feel at home.
CHAPTER 15
In the car on the way to David’s house, Reese heard her mom’s phone ring. “Can you get that, Rick?” her mom said. “It’s in my purse next to your feet.”
Reese slouched in the backseat, watching the pastel buildings of Noe Valley roll past as they headed toward Woodside. Reese’s dad answered the phone, and a moment later he said, “Reese, it’s for you. It’s Sophia Curtis.”
Surprised, she took the phone from her dad. “Hello?”
“Hi, Reese. It’s Sophia. I’m glad I caught you before the show airs.”
Reese sat up. The woman’s voice sounded oddly tense. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ve been cooperating with the Defense Department on our show, as you know, and I just came from a meeting with my producer. Unfortunately the DOD has forced us to change the focus of our story. You and David and your families are still in it, but we’ve been unable to spend as much time on your experiences in Nevada as we originally planned.”