by Pintip Dunn
“Sorry I’m such a burden,” I mutter, not looking at him.
He puts a finger under my chin and tilts it up, so that I’m looking into his eyes. They’re dark and intense—and so damn-the-Fates inscrutable. Just once, I’d like to know what he’s thinking.
“I never said you were a burden, Jessa.”
For a moment, my heart stutters, suspended somewhere between beats. But he doesn’t continue. He never said I was a burden, but he doesn’t say I’m not one, either. He doesn’t say he likes me or enjoys my company. Probably for one good reason. It’s not true.
“Well, you’ve confirmed that I’m here, safe and sound. So you can go now.”
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind having a tour of the compound.” He looks over my shoulder, taking in the orderly rows of units with their shiny solar panels and the moving sidewalk that winds between them. “When I was here last time, Mikey met me at the gate at the crack of dawn, and he marched me straight to his house. Guess he didn’t want anyone to see me.”
I chew on my lip. On the one hand, I know exactly why Mikey took him straight home. The Harmony community doesn’t allow in many outsiders, particularly scientists—Mikey’s position notwithstanding. We may live in civilization now, but there’s always been a clear “us” and “them.”
On the other hand, Tanner was here to do Mikey a favor. To build a playpen for his daughter. It sucks that he was made to feel inferior—even if he is the most superior person I know.
What’s more, I remember the look in his eyes when he found out I’d been withholding information from him. Information that might be able to salvage his experiments. He’d been pissed, sure. But there had also been a sliver of hurt, an edge of betrayal. I’m not that girl who thinks only about herself. Who offers to help others only when there’s something in it for her.
At least I don’t think I am. I may not be as selfless as Callie, but I’m not a terrible human being, either.
For some inexplicable reason, it kills me to think he might believe otherwise.
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what he thinks. He’s barely spoken to me all week—and when he did, it always consisted of polite civilities.
Except once.
Two days ago, we passed the cardinal-haired woman in the hallway, the one who helped me get into the elevator capsule. She twisted the data-chip ring on her finger and mouthed, He’s cute. Immediately, I lunged into Tanner, wrapping myself around him. His torso was solid and warm—and pressed against mine. My mouth went dry, and my heart fluttered in my chest like a butterfly caught in a cage. I lifted my eyes, and they locked with his gaze. We stared at each other for what seemed like forever—and then the woman giggled and walked away.
He raised one of his eyebrows.
“I…uh, tripped,” I blurted out. “Sorry about that.”
“If you wanted to grab me, all you had to do was ask,” he said.
That was the first time he’d said anything personal to me all week. This is the second.
Without another word, I step to the side so that he can walk farther into the compound. Immediately, he zeroes in on Logan and Ainsley, still messing around with the hoverboard, and I know he must’ve seen my conversation with Logan.
“Who’s that?” he asks curiously. “Your ex-boyfriend?”
“Fates, no.” Why is he asking? Would he care if Logan were my ex? Would it matter if I were dating someone right now?
No, of course not, I tell myself sternly. I’m not his type, remember? And he’s not mine. I’m not interested in scientists, even if they build playpens for sweet babies. Even if their hands are remarkably gentle when they comfort you after a crying fit. I’m not.
I don’t think.
Aw, fike. This line of thinking isn’t going to get me anywhere. “Logan’s way too old for me,” I say. “Besides, he’s like my family. He was…my sister’s boyfriend.”
“Ah. I thought his name sounded familiar.” He opens his mouth, as if to say more, and then snaps it shut again.
“It’s not like he’s forgotten about Callie,” I say defensively. “I didn’t tell him she was in a coma, and he’s moving on. He’s finally happy. I can’t ruin that for him.”
I turn to stomp away, but he catches my hand.
“Hey,” he says softly. “There’s no judgment here. I was just asking.”
Our eyes meet. I still can’t figure out a damn thing he’s thinking, but for the first time since the mouse bit me, my stomach stops sloshing and my nerves become still. He makes me feel, in this one infinitesimal moment…not safe, exactly, but understood. And that’s about as safe as I can feel in a world where Chairwoman Dresden has power.
“Slumming with scientists?” A voice intrudes my thoughts.
I look up. For the first time, I notice that passersby on the straightaway are shooting us—and, in particular, Tanner’s white lab coat—dirty looks. The guy who spoke is a couple of years older than me. I don’t know him well. He wasn’t part of the original Harmony but is the son of a woman who was.
“Come on, Jessa. I expected better from you,” the heckler continues.
I flush and pretend I don’t hear him. And hope to Fates Tanner doesn’t, either. “You sure you still want this tour?”
Tanner grins, and I realize that he has a dimple right in the middle of his chin. “Of course. Unless you’re scared?”
“S-Scared?” I sputter. “Fates, no.”
I get to decide with whom I spend my time. Not this heckler I barely know. If I want to hang out with a scientist, then I will.
To my surprise, I actually do want to hang out with Tanner.
Since Ryder’s been grounded from seeing or talking to me, I’ve been a bit lost. Floating around my cottage, going from one room to another as though my best friend will magically appear. It would be nice to have company for the afternoon.
“Come on,” I say. “I know the perfect place to begin our tour.”
19
Halfway up the observation tower, Tanner’s legs begin shaking. The tower is five stories tall—nowhere near the highest structure in Eden City. We have skyscrapers ten times that height. Difference is, we’re usually inside the building, protected by steel and glass, instead of outside, clinging to a chain-link ladder that sways in the wind.
A particularly strong gust buffets us, and the ladder swings back and forth. Heights don’t bother me—they never have—but even I have to pause a moment to swallow.
Above me, Tanner tilts his head skyward, either to pray to the Fates or to avoid looking down. Maybe both.
My lips curve. Okay, I am a terrible person. I really shouldn’t be enjoying anything about his obvious discomfort. But it’s not every day I get to see the great Tanner Callahan out of his element. Somehow, it makes him even hotter. His muscles are just as lean, his profile just as handsome. And yet, while I could push his attractiveness to the back of my mind before, now, my eyes are practically glued to the boy above me. I don’t know if I could look away if I tried.
“You okay, Tanner?” I call.
“Fine.” The verbal answer is quick and immediate; his physical response is not.
In fact, he stops climbing completely, gripping the rungs so tightly I can see his white knuckles from five feet below. The gust dies down, and the ladder steadies. Still, he doesn’t move.
My amusement turns to guilt. I wanted to knock him down a few quanta, and I knew he didn’t exactly love heights. At least, that’s what I’d assumed when Ryder said he avoided the vert walls. But I didn’t know he would be this paralyzed.
“We can go back down,” I say. “It’s no big deal. We’ll start the tour somewhere else.”
“I’m fine.” He pants the words, as though the oxygen’s thinner two and a half stories up.
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I am,” he snaps, and I hear a glimmer of the old Tanner. Miraculously, he starts climbing again. Hand, foot, other hand, other foot. Somehow, he powers through
the next two stories, and then we’re at the top. Although not yet on a solid surface. A five-foot gap separates the ladder and the central platform.
“Um, Jessa?” He licks his lips twice. “How do we get to the platform?”
“We jump.”
“Jump?” His mouth drops open. “What if we fall? Or worse?”
“What could be worse than falling?”
It’s the wrong question because it makes him look down. Through the mess of spokes and slats to the concrete sidewalk five stories below. At the tiny, ant-like figures of Logan and his girlfriend, still playing around with the hoverboard. At soft-spoken Zed, walking through the compound with a bucket and a set of pre-Boom fishing poles. At the flurry of bots in front of an open truck, unloading prepackaged meals and transferring them to the transport tube.
Sweat breaks out on Tanner’s forehead. “Please don’t make me talk about what’s worse than falling.”
“Listen, we don’t have to do this. We’ll just go back down and—”
“We’re already up here.” He closes his eyes briefly. “I…I don’t think I can brave the ladder for at least another hour.”
My throat tickles. I slap a hand across my mouth, but it’s too late. The laugh bursts out like a machine gun. “I’m sorry!” I gasp. “I’m not laughing at you, I promise. It’s just…” You’re adorable when you’re scared. Who would’ve guessed?
“I remember the first time I climbed the tower,” I say out loud. “I was nervous, too.”
He narrows his eyes. “How old were you? Twelve?”
“Something like that.” My lips vibrate, and I clamp them together. “Listen. The platform measures twenty feet by twenty feet. As you can see, there’s nothing up here. Just an old telescope and a pile of ratty blankets. No one’s used the tower in any official capacity for years. So you can’t miss the platform, and you won’t land on anything sharp, either. Easy as assembly pie.”
He doesn’t respond. The wind whistles across my ears, and two butterflies circle our heads and land on the far edge of the platform.
“I’ll go first,” I say. “You can jump into my arms. I’ll catch you if you slip.”
“You know, you’re really not helping. I’m not a little kid.”
“No,” I say, my mouth quirking. “A little kid would’ve been across five minutes ago.”
He looks pained, and I can’t help it. My laugh comes roaring out again.
“Sure, laugh now. We’ll see how funny you think this is when they’re sprinkling my ashes along the river.”
He takes a deep breath, mutters something about mutant babies of time, and then jumps. He crashes onto the platform, scaring away the butterflies.
I leap after him, ballerina-style. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Show-off.” He pulls his knees to his chest and tucks down his head. “Don’t mind me. I’m just going to curl into a fetal position for a few minutes.”
I sit cross-legged in front of him, patting him on the back. Partly because I feel guilty for making him come up here. And partly because I like him like this. When he shelves his ego for a few minutes and acts like a real person. “Who would’ve thought the great Tanner Callahan was afraid of heights?”
He lifts his head and pulls a water tube out of his shirt collar to take a few swallows. “Whoever said I was great?”
“You did. In everything you say and do. I mean, you even have holo-images of yourself playing across the inside of your locker!”
“That’s not me,” he says quietly. “That’s my dad, when he was young. If you watch the slide longer, you would see my mom, too.”
His dad? Oh.
All of a sudden, I remember the gossip about his parents being killed when he was young. Of course he would have a feed of them playing in his locker. Fike.
“I can’t handle more than a few inches off the ground,” he continues. “That’s why I stick to circuit racing on my hoverboard.”
“Since when?”
“Since the time I was six. My parents died in an accident, and I went to live at TechRA.”
So the rumors are true. He did grow up as an orphan in the care of the scientists.
He offers the water tube to me. Normally, I don’t share tubes with anyone, not even Ryder. The common cold is one of the few diseases the scientists haven’t cured, and sniffling and coughing puts a crimp in my extreme lifestyle. But for some reason, I lean forward and take a sip.
“They…they made me afraid of heights,” he continues.
I freeze, my lips still on the tube, the water just squirting into my mouth. “What did they do?” I whisper, even though a part of me already knows. The part that still wakes up screaming from my nightmares. The part that never left my six-year-old self’s past behind.
“They strapped me to a chair and made me relive memories that weren’t mine,” he says. I’ve said these words. To Ryder and Angela. In my own head. These are my words, my experience, and he’s taken them straight out of my soul. “Every last inch of me covered in cockroaches. Witnessing my parents’ pod accident. And my personal favorite: walking on a tightrope over a ravine before plummeting to my death. Every day for six long months.”
I feel like my lungs are in a vise. Dear Fates. That’s why he’s afraid of heights. And I made fun of him for it. What in Limbo is wrong with me? “I’m so sorry, Tanner. I endured their torture for a few days, and I’ve had nightmares about it ever since. I can’t even imagine. Six whole months. And you were six years old…”
“It happened,” he says stoically. “I survived, with the help of an angel who appeared in my life. I don’t know who she was. Maybe a medical assistant or one of the FuMA employees. But she held me in her lap and told me none of this was my fault. She told me that as alone as I felt in that moment, one day I would be valued and loved. And I believed her.”
My heart contracts until it’s the size of a pebble. I never thought I’d meet anyone who could relate to my childhood. And here, Tanner endured the same torture I did—except much, much worse.
No wonder I felt he understood me. Somehow, some way, he must’ve recognized the scars of his past in me.
Those few days formed my lifelong hatred of the scientists, but he had to continue living with them. He had no other choice. I didn’t have my mom when I left civilization, but I had my adopted community. My adopted family. Logan, Mikey, Angela, and Ryder.
Tanner had nobody.
I lick my lips. “They made me live through those nightmares because they were trying to find out about future memory. Why did they torture you? Do you have some kind of psychic ability, too?”
“Nah,” he says. “They were trying to make me answer a question I didn’t understand. Explain a situation that was unexplainable. To this day, I still wouldn’t be able to give them what they wanted.”
There’s something else here. Something he’s not telling me. I lift my eyes to meet his, and I reach into the future—his future. The vision pours into me. The future Tanner grabs me and kisses me. Without warning, without hesitation. It is hot and searing and exquisite. And I like it. Oh, how I like it.
“No!” I fall out of the vision and scoot away from him, so far that I approach the edge of the platform. My pulse is thundering; my nerves are jumping. Oh, Fates. What’s wrong with me? Is it because I don’t want him to kiss me? Or because I want it too much?
His eyes turn watchful. “Come back here, Jessa. You’re too close to the sky.”
I look into the open space, fluffy with wads of cotton-ball clouds. I take a breath, hoping to inhale some of the sky’s serenity. He doesn’t know about the kiss. Why would he? In the vision, he acted impulsively, without premeditation. The desire to kiss me hasn’t arisen in him yet. Maybe I can prevent it from cropping up altogether.
“Look, you don’t want to kiss me,” I babble, staying where I am. And hope I sound more reasonable than I feel. “It’s only because we talked about kissing the other day. When you talk about something, you
give it life. Make it real. Like an annoying song you can’t get out of your head.”
He creeps toward me, his eyes flicking between my face and the sky. “So you can’t get the idea of kissing me out of your head?”
“I said it was annoying. Like a song. Not based on anything real.”
He stops five feet from the edge of the platform. “So let me get this straight. You saw into the future and we kissed. Right?”
“Y-yes,” I stutter, shocked that he guessed the truth so easily. “But it doesn’t have to happen that way,” I add quickly. “As my sister proved, we’re in control of our own fate. We can make any future we wish.”
“Unless this is our Fixed.” His voice is low, rough. And yet, every syllable imprints into my memory forever. “Unless this kiss is so important, it happens in every one of our worlds.”
“It’s just a kiss. How can it be that important?”
His eyes glitter with the challenge. With one last look at the platform’s edge, he crawls to me, slowly but steadily. “The path of our particular world might depend on this kiss. Would you risk our future just to be stubborn?”
And then, he’s right in front of me. He rests his hands lightly on my back. They slide down to my waist, until his fingers brush against the strip of bare skin between my pants and top. I shiver, and my skin pebbles into a million goose bumps. He pulls me against him. So much of my body is touching his that I can’t think, I can’t breathe. All I can do is feel. His trembling breath. My hammering heart. His shaking hands—or hell, maybe that’s me, vibrating against his touch.
Our lips are inches apart. Time blends together. You couldn’t move me from this spot if the world were crashing down around us.
“I thought I wasn’t your type,” I whisper.
“You’re not,” he says. “But for the fate of our world, I’m willing to make the sacrifice.”
And then, he closes the gap between us.