by Tahereh Mafi
“J?”
“I’m trying to get dressed!”
“Oh.” I try really, really hard not to picture them both, undressed, in bed together, but somehow I can’t fight the image from materializing. “Okay, ew.”
Then: “Sweetheart, how long do you plan on being friends with him?”
J laughs again.
Man, that girl has no clue.
I mean, okay . . . It’s true that if for five seconds I stopped to put myself in Warner’s shoes, I’d understand exactly why he wants to kill me so often. If I were in bed with my girl and some needy asshole kept ringing the doorbell for no reason except that he wanted to talk through his feelings with her, I’d want to murder him, too.
Then again, I don’t have a girl, and at this rate, I probably never will. So I kind of don’t care—and Warner knows that. It’s half the reason he hates me so much. He can’t push me away without hurting J, but he can’t let me in without sharing her, either. He’s in a shitty position.
Works out for me, though.
And I’ve still got my finger hovering over the doorbell when I hear footsteps, growing closer. But when the door finally flies open, I take a sudden, jerky step back.
Warner looks furious.
His hair is disheveled, the sash on his robe tied too quickly. He’s shirtless, barefoot, and probably naked under that robe, which is the only reason I force myself to meet his eyes.
Shit.
He wasn’t joking even a little bit. He’s, like, genuinely pissed.
And his voice is low—lethal—when he says, “I should’ve let you freeze to death in Kent’s old apartment. I should’ve let those rodents devour your carefully preserved carcass. I should’ve—”
“Listen, man, I’m really not trying to—”
“Don’t interrupt me.”
My mouth snaps shut.
He takes a sharp, steady breath. His eyes are like fire. Green. Ice. Fire. In that order. “Why do you do this to me? Why?”
“Um. Okay, I know this will be hard for a narcissist like you to understand, but this has nothing to do with you. J is my friend. In fact, she was my friend first. We were friends long before you ever came around.”
Warner’s eyes widen with outrage. And before he has a chance to speak, I say—
“My bad. I’m sorry.” I hold up my hands in apology. “I forgot about the whole memory-wiping thing for a second. But honestly, whatever. As far as my memories are concerned, I knew her first.”
And then, all of a sudden—
Warner frowns.
It’s like someone hits a switch, and the fire in his eyes goes out. He’s studying me closely now, and it’s making me nervous.
“What’s going on?” he says. He tilts his head at me, and, a moment later, his eyes widen in surprise. “Why are you terrified?”
Jello shows up before I can answer.
She smiles at me—this big, bright, happy thing that always warms my heart—and I’m relieved to discover that she’s fully clothed. Not naked-under-a-bathrobe-clothed, but, like, she’s wearing a coat and shoes and she’s ready to walk out the door kind of clothed.
I feel like I can finally breathe.
But in an instant, her smile is gone. And when she goes suddenly pale, when her eyes pull together in concern—I feel the tiniest bit better. I know it sounds strange, but there’s something reassuring about her reaction; it means that at least something is right with the world. Because I knew. I knew that, unlike everyone else, she’d see right away that I wasn’t okay. That I’m not okay. No superpowers necessary.
And somehow, that means everything.
“Kenji,” she says, “what’s wrong?”
I can hardly hold it together anymore. A dull, throbbing pain is pressing against the back of my left eye; black spots fade in and out of my vision, pockmarking everything. I feel like I can’t get enough air, like my chest is too small, my brain too big.
“Kenji?”
“It’s James,” I say, my voice coming out thin. Wrong. “Anderson took him. Anderson took James and Adam. He’s holding them hostage.”
Seven
We’re back in the war room.
I’m standing at the door with J by my side—Warner needed a minute to pick out a cute outfit and braid his hair—and in the fifteen minutes I was gone, the atmosphere in this room changed dramatically. Everyone keeps glancing between me and J. Glaring, more like. Brendan looks tired. Winston looks irritated. Ian looks pissed. Lily looks pissed. Sam looks pissed. Nouria looks pissed.
Castle looks super pissed.
He’s staring at me through narrowed eyes, and our years together have taught me enough about Castle’s body language to know exactly what he’s thinking right now.
Right now, he’s thinking that he’s more than a little disappointed in me, that he feels betrayed by my reneging on a promise to stop using the f-word, that I deliberately disrespected him, and that I should be grounded for two weeks for shouting at his daughter and her wife. Also, he’s embarrassed. He expected more from me.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper, sir.”
Castle’s jaw tenses as he appraises me. “Are you feeling better?”
No. “Yes.”
“Then we’ll discuss this later.”
I look away, too tired to drum up the necessary remorse. I’m too spent. Depleted. Wrung out. I feel like my insides have been scraped out with blunt, rusted tools, but somehow I’m still here. Still standing. Somehow, having J by my side is making this whole thing more tolerable. It feels good to know that there’s someone here who’s on my team.
After a full minute of awkward silence, J speaks.
“So,” she says, letting the word hang in the air for a moment. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this meeting?”
“We didn’t want to disturb you,” Nouria says too sweetly. “You’ve had such a rough couple of weeks—we figured it best not to wake you unless we had a firm plan of action.”
J frowns. I can tell she’s considering—and doubting—what Nouria just said to her. It sounds like bullshit to me, too. We pretty much never make special arrangements to let people rest or sleep after a battle—not unless they’re injured. Sometimes, not even then. J, in particular, has never been given special treatment like this before. We don’t treat her like a child, handling her like she’s made of porcelain. Like she might still shatter.
But Jello decides to let it go.
“I realize you were trying to be kind,” she says to Nouria, “and I’m grateful for the space and generosity—especially last night, for Aaron—but you should’ve told us right away. In fact, you should’ve told us the minute we landed. It doesn’t matter how much we’ve been through,” she says. “Our heads are here, in the reality of what we’re dealing with right now, and Aaron is going to be fighting alongside us. It’s time for all of you to stop underestimating him.”
“Wait— What?” Ian frowns. “What does underestimating Warner have to do with James?”
J shakes her head. “Aaron has everything to do with James. In fact,” she says, “I can’t understand why he wasn’t the first person you talked to about this. Your biases are hurting you. Holding you back.”
It’s my turn to frown. “What’s the point of this speech, princess? I don’t see how Warner is relevant to the conversation. And why do you keep calling him Aaron? It’s weird.”
“I— Oh,” she says, and frowns. “I’m sorry. My mind— My memories are still . . . I’m having a hard time. He’s been Aaron to me much longer than he was ever Warner.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I think I’ll stick to calling him Warner.”
“I think he’d prefer that from you.”
“Good. Anyway. So you think we underestimate him.”
“I do,” she says.
This time, Nouria speaks up. “And why is that?”
J exhales. Her eyes are both sad and serious when she says:
“Anderson is the kind of monster who’d take h
ostage a ten-year-old boy and throw him in prison alongside trained soldiers. As far as we know, he’s treating James the same way he’s treating Valentina. Or Lena. Or Adam. It’s inhumane on a level so disturbing I can hardly allow myself to think about it. It’s hard for me to fathom. But it’s not hard for Aaron to imagine. He knows Anderson—and the inner workings of his mind—better than any of us. His knowledge of The Reestablishment and Anderson, in particular, is priceless.
“More important: James is Aaron’s little brother. And if anyone knows what it’s like to be ten years old and tortured by Anderson, it’s Aaron.” She looks up, looks Castle directly in the eye. “How could you think leaving him out of this conversation was a good idea? How could you imagine he wouldn’t be the first to care? He’s devastated.”
And then, as if she conjured him out of thin air, Warner appears at the door. I blink, and Nazeera is following him into the room. I blink again, and Haider and Stephan come into view.
It’s weird, seeing them together like this, all of them little science experiments. Super soldiers. They all walk the same, tall and proud, perfect posture, looking like they own the world.
Which, I guess they kind of do. At least, their parents do.
Bizarre.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to be raised by parents who teach you that the world is yours to do with what you will. Maybe Nazeera was right. Maybe we are too different. Maybe it never would’ve worked out between us, no matter how much I would’ve wanted to give it a shot.
Nazeera, Stephan, and Haider give us a wide berth, standing off to the side and saying nothing—not even waving hello—but Warner keeps walking. Jello meets him in the middle of the room, and he pulls her into his arms like they haven’t seen each other in days. Somehow, I manage not to vomit. But then I hear her whisper something about his birthday, and a massive wave of guilt washes over me.
I can’t believe I forgot.
We were celebrating Warner’s birthday a little prematurely last night. Today is his proper birthday. Today. Right now. This morning.
Shit.
I dragged J out of bed on the morning of his birthday.
Wow, I really am an asshole.
When they break apart, Warner makes a sudden, almost imperceptible motion with his head and Nazeera, Stephan, and Haider make their way over to the table, taking their seats alongside Ian and Lily and Brendan and Winston. A little battalion ready for war. Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re all just a bunch of kids. It definitely doesn’t feel like it. But these four, in particular—they look pretty damn striking.
Warner is wearing a leather jacket. I’ve never seen him wear a leather jacket before, and I don’t know why. It suits him. It has an interesting, complicated collar, and the black of the leather is stark against his gold hair. But the more I think about it, the more I doubt the jacket belongs to him. We had no possessions when we landed here, so I’m guessing Warner borrowed it from Haider. Haider, who’s wearing one of his signature chain-mail shirts under a heavy wool coat. But all of that is nothing compared to Stephan, who’s wearing a gold field jacket that looks like snakeskin.
It’s wild.
These guys look almost like aliens here, among the normals of the world who don’t wear chain mail to breakfast. But even I can tell that Haider looks like some kind of warrior with all that metal draped across his chest, and that the gold jacket really pops against the brown of Stephan’s skin. But who sells shit like that? They’re like outer-space clothes or something. I have no idea where these guys do their shopping, but I think they might be going to the wrong stores. Then again, what the hell would I know. I’ve been wearing the same ripped pants and shirts for years. Everything I once owned was faded and poorly mended and a little too tight, if I’m being honest. I considered myself lucky to have one good winter coat and a decent pair of boots. That’s it.
“Kenji?”
I startle, realizing too late that I got lost in my head again. Someone is talking to me. Someone said my name. Right? I glance at their faces, hoping for recognition, but I get nothing.
I look to J for help, and she smiles. “Nazeera,” she explains, “just asked you a question.”
Shit.
I was ignoring Nazeera. On purpose. I thought that was obvious. I thought she and I had an understanding—I thought we’d entered into a silent agreement to ignore each other forever, to never acknowledge the dumb shit I said last night, and to pretend that I can’t feel the blood rush to all the wrong places in my body when she touches me.
No?
Okay then.
Shit.
Reluctantly, I turn to look at her. She’s wearing that leather hood of hers again, which means I can see only her lips, which seems really, really unfair. She has a gorgeous mouth. Full. Sweet. Damn. I don’t want to stare at her mouth. I mean, I do, obviously. But I also definitely don’t. Anyway, it’s hard enough to have to keep staring at her mouth, but her hood is hiding her eyes, which means I have no idea what she’s thinking right now, or if she’s still mad at me for what I said last night.
Then—
“I was asking if you’d suspected anything,” Nazeera says. “About James. And Adam.”
How did I miss that? How long did I spend staring into space thinking about where Haider does his shopping?
Jesus.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I give my head a slight shake, hoping to clear it. “Yeah,” I say. “I kind of freaked out about it when we showed up here and I didn’t see Adam and James. I told everyone, too,” I say, shooting individual glares at my useless friends, “but no one listened to me. Everyone thought I was crazy.”
Nazeera pulls back her hood, and for the first time this morning, I can see her face. I search her eyes, but I get nothing. Her expression is clear. There’s nothing in her tone or posture to tell me what she’s really thinking.
Nothing.
And then her eyes narrow, just a tiny bit. “You told everyone.”
“I mean”—I blink, hesitate—“I told some people. Yeah.”
“You didn’t tell any of us, though.” She gestures at the little group of mercenaries. “You didn’t tell Ella or Warner. Or the rest of us.”
“Castle said I wasn’t supposed to tell you guys,” I say, glancing between J and Warner. “He wanted you to be able to have a nice evening together.”
J is about to say something, but Nazeera cuts her off.
“Yes, I understand that,” she says, “but did he also tell you not to say anything to Haider and Stephan? To me? Castle didn’t say that you had to withhold your suspicions from the rest of us, did he?”
There’s no inflection in her voice. No anger, not even a hint of irritation—but everyone turns suddenly to look at her. Haider’s eyebrows are raised. Even Warner looks curious.
Apparently, Nazeera is being weird.
But exhaustion has crashed into me again.
Somehow, I know this is the end. I’m out of lives. No more power-ups. There won’t be any more bursts of anger or adrenaline to push me through another minute. I try to speak, but the wires in my brain have been disconnected, rerouted.
My mouth opens. Closes.
Nothing.
This time the exhaustion drives into me with such violent force I feel like my bones are cracking, like my eyes are melting, like I’m looking at the world through cellophane. Everything takes on a slightly metallic sheen, glassy and blurred. And then, for the first time, I realize—
This doesn’t feel like normal exhaustion.
It’s too late, though. Way too late to realize that I might be more than just really, really tired.
Hell, I think I might be dying.
Stephan says something. I don’t hear him.
Nazeera says something. I don’t hear her.
Some still-functioning part of my brain tells me to go back to my room and die in peace, but when I try to take a step forward, I stumble.
Weird.
&nb
sp; I take another step forward, but this time, it’s worse. My legs tangle and I trip, only catching myself at the last moment.
Everything feels wrong.
The sounds in my head seem to be getting louder. I can’t open my eyes fully. The air around me feels tight—compressed—and I try to say I feel so strange but it’s useless. All I know is that I feel suddenly cold. Freezing hot.
Wait. That’s not right.
I frown.
“Kenji?”
The word comes to me from far away. Underwater. My eyes are closed now, and it feels like they’ll stay that way forever. And then— Everything smells different. Like dirt and wet and cold. Weird. Something is tickling my face. Grass? When did I get grass on my face?
“Kenji!”
Oh. Oh. Not cool. Someone is shaking me, hard, rattling my brain around in my skull and something, some ancient instinct, pries the rusted hinges of my eyelids open, but when I try to focus, I can’t. Everything is soft. Mushy.
Someone is shouting. Someones. Wait, what’s the plural of someone? I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many people say my name at the same time. Kenji kenji kenji kenjikenjikenji
I try to laugh.
And then I see her. There she is. Man, this is a nice dream. But there she is. She’s touching my face. I turn my head a little, rest my cheek against the smooth, soft palm of her hand. It feels amazing.
Nazeera.
So fucking beautiful, I think.
And then I’m gone.
Weightless.
Eight
When I open my eyes, I see spiders.
Eyes and arms, eyes and arms, eyes and arms everywhere. Magnified. Up close. A thousand eyes, round and shining. Hundreds of arms reaching toward me, around me.
I close my eyes again.
It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of spiders, otherwise I think I’d be screaming. But I’ve learned to live with spiders. I lived with them in the orphanage, on the streets at night, underground at Omega Point. They hide in my shoes, under my bed, capture flies in the corners of my room. I usually nudge them back outside, but I never kill them. We have an understanding, spiders and I. We’re cool.