The Body Market was still in operation as far as I knew, though I’d heard it was severely diminished.
Today it seemed closed altogether.
The metal garage doors were pulled down, locked tight to the ground.
The chaos we’d created on its opening day had ruined its reputation. Word got out among the Body Tourists that the market of New Port City wasn’t reliable, that maybe it wasn’t even legal, that the bodies available for sale might be bodies that their owners did not bequeath to the state and were instead being snatched right out from under their plugged-in minds. The New Capitalists never saw it this way. The New Capitalists argued that the bodies in the market were legally obtained, regardless of their owners’ knowledge of the plan to sell their bodies.
There were two kinds of body snatchers, in other words.
The kind that my sister and the New Capitalists were, and the kind the New Capitalists were accusing the App World refugees of being—people who’d relinquished their bodies to the Keepers in exchange for eternal virtual life, who’d broken this contract and taken their bodies back unlawfully with the help of our Shifting App. The New Capitalists’ defense didn’t matter much, though. They could plead with the Body Tourists all they wanted, argue that what they did was legal, but it wouldn’t change things. Not anytime soon. The damage was done.
I stopped pedaling and took a deep breath, inhaling the fresh, salty air.
The wharf and the ocean were visible farther down the hill, beyond the Water Tower that shone a bright clear blue to match the sky and the peaceful September weather.
My heart pounded in my chest.
It did this every time I came back here. A part of me always wondered if I’d run into Jude, even though she was probably in the App World. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I did see her, if I’d run the other way or try to talk. Now that she’d fallen from grace, she wasn’t really a threat. But I didn’t know if we could ever repair our relationship, or if I even wanted to try.
I hopped down from the bicycle and propped it against the wall behind a patch of sunny yellow flowers that grew through the sidewalk, and headed along the street and around the corner, my heart pounding even harder. I nearly expected Jude’s familiar face to appear in a window or out of thin air. Unlike the happy bustling movement around the library, the streets were empty near the Body Market. People were staying clear. The place had an air of foreboding that the warm breeze and bright sun couldn’t mask. Even the abandoned neighborhoods and mansions of New Port City before the refugees occupied them hadn’t felt like this. They at least had cheerful and wild gardens that sprung up in the weeds throughout their grounds and birds that chirped in the tree branches outside their windows, the sound of the waves rolling in and out on the nearby beaches that made a person think of lazy afternoons and swimming.
But this part of the city just felt . . . wrong.
Plus, I hadn’t seen another soul since I’d turned down this street.
I walked a few more steps and halted. Hissed in a breath and clutched at my racing heart.
The sounds of a motor, loud, obnoxiously loud, approached from down the hill.
I was standing in the very same spot where last winter I’d left the Body Market after scouting it for the first time. Snowflakes had started to fall and I’d marveled at them, right at the same moment I’d heard a similar roar of an engine and around the corner came Kit. He’d parked his bike and said my name as though we’d been introduced at a party, as though we’d known each other our entire lives.
I pressed my hand harder against my chest, the fabric of my top warm from the sun beating down onto it.
The roar got closer.
I watched as the motorcycle raced up the hill to the place where I waited, rooted to the spot, and came to an abrupt halt. The motor was cut and the world fell silent. I saw a flash of stars inked on skin and wished the eyes of the rider who was right now dismounting his bike weren’t hidden behind dark sunglasses.
He hesitated, then walked straight up to me.
“Hello, Skylar,” Kit said.
Just like that. As though six months and a terrible betrayal hadn’t passed between us. One part of me wanted to throw my arms around him, to kiss him like I’d dreamed of ever since that night we’d spent together and all those days during the blizzard at his cottage. But the other part of me was far stronger, so instead I turned my back on him and walked away.
5
Skylar
wildflowers
“SKYLAR, WAIT! PLEASE talk to me!”
I kept walking, faster and faster up the hill, in the opposite direction of my bicycle. It’s not like I could make it to my Keeper’s on foot, but maybe I could get far enough that Kit would give up and leave so I could go back for it. I grabbed at a railing along the front steps of an old townhouse, then propelled myself forward again.
Did I really want Kit to give up? Or did I want him to catch me? To finally explain what happened after all of this time apart and so much terrible, painful silence?
“Skylar!”
Kit was close. I didn’t need to turn to know this. His voice was so clear to my ears and I could sense his nearness, imagine him, the curve of his shoulders, his torso, my body and mind having memorized everything about him whether I wanted to or not. His footsteps sounded behind me and then . . . and then . . .
His hand reaching for my arm, his fingers on my skin, urgent.
I yanked my arm away. But I stopped walking. My back was still to him, my breathing fast and heavy. We were in front of a beautiful gray-blue house covered in wooden slats, and I stared at it, trying to pull myself together. A plaque next to the shiny red door said that it was built in 1827. For a second I wondered who might live there, who had kept it so nicely painted, the lawn trimmed and flowers brimming from the boxes outside the windows, when so many of the other houses on this block were nearly falling down.
“Skylar, we need to talk,” Kit pleaded.
I crossed my arms. I didn’t trust them not to reach out to him. I almost couldn’t bear to turn around and see his face, the face that appeared in my dreams, the memory of him when I was awake making my chest ache, my heart in so much pain. No matter how hard I tried to get over everything, to forget it, to forget him, to focus on Rain—someone who’d worked so hard to regain my trust—I couldn’t. I stared at the base of the house in front of me, at the daisies shooting up from the ground, like little stars bursting with joy.
I hadn’t felt joy in so long.
My eyelids shut to block out the flowers, my hands balled into fists. There were refugees that needed help, children and families, people without homes for the winter, and there was anger in New Port City, and here I was, totally undone by Kit’s unexpected appearance. “There’s nothing to discuss,” I said, finally finding a few words for him.
He laughed bitterly. “You know that’s a lie.”
My nails dug into my palms. “Who’s calling who a liar?”
Kit’s breath grew ragged. “Are you going to look at me at some point?”
“Are you going to keep hiding behind those sunglasses?”
“I’m not trying to hide anything from you.”
“Are you serious?” I spun around and nearly toppled over, my balance off, the sight of Kit’s eyes, the way he was looking at me, the same way he used to look at me, so startling after so much time had passed. “You’ve been hiding for months. You’ve been gone for months. Sometimes I wondered if I might’ve dreamed you.”
A pained expression appeared on his face. “I thought you’d be better off without me. I’m not good for you, Skylar. I’m not good for anyone.”
I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. “If you’re so bad for me then what changed your mind? Why are you talking to me now?”
Kit stared at the sunglasses he held in his hands and polished the lenses with the hem of his shirt. “I’ve missed you. I think about you every day. And every day I’ve ridden here, to the spot where we first met, b
ecause I can’t get you out of my mind.”
“You mean the spot where you first kidnapped me?”
“Yes, there,” he said heavily. “I didn’t really believe I would run into you, though. Then today, there you were, and I almost wondered if I was seeing things.”
“If you’d really wanted to see me, you knew exactly where to find me. You knew I was at Briarwood. Which means that you chose not to find me. All this time you chose not to see me.” I forced myself to keep my eyes steady on Kit’s face. Maybe if I could just not look away, if I could just master the feelings bashing around inside my rib cage, then I’d stop being so powerless where Kit was concerned. “And I didn’t expect to see you here. If I had, I wouldn’t have come.”
“Is that really true, Skylar?” Kit shifted from one foot to the other, his thick boots scraping along the sidewalk. He ran his hands through his hair, and inky stars appeared from under one sleeve, birds in flight from under the other. “You haven’t wished to see me even a little?”
Any resolve I had left crumbled. I wanted to trace the arc of those birds and stars on his skin, one by one. “Of course I’ve wished to see you. I’ve wished it every single day. Just as I’ve wished every single day that you hadn’t betrayed me. You told me I could trust you. You promised not to hurt me.” I breathed in, gasping for air. “You betrayed me. Worse than Rain ever did. How can I forgive you?”
Kit looked up from his glasses and met my eyes. “I don’t know. But maybe we could find a way? Maybe if you wanted to forgive me, eventually you would. Do you want to forgive me?”
Tears stung my eyes and blurred my vision. “Yes,” I whispered, because it was true. “But I don’t know if I can. Or if I should. I probably shouldn’t.”
Kit was shaking his head. “No, probably not. And I probably should be a better person and not want you to. But I do want you to forgive me. I’m sorry. I’ve never been so sorry in my entire life.”
My arms twitched at my sides, my fingers stretching toward the ground. But instead of reaching out to Kit, instead of telling him I wanted to start trying to forgive him this very minute, to ask him the questions that had been plaguing me ever since that night at his house and everything that came afterward, to try and begin to understand how he could have betrayed me so terribly to my sister, to tell him that I was worried about rumors in the App World and the refugees here and how I could use his help, his company, his reassurance, instead of all of these things, I said, “I’m with Rain now.”
Kit took a sharp step back. The water far off down the hill framed the upper part of his body, deep blue with angry whitecaps. “What?”
I nodded, slowly, even though I already regretted telling Kit this thing, regretted speaking Rain’s name aloud between us. “We’re together, Rain and I. We have been, ever since . . .”
Kit opened his mouth. Then he closed it, his eyes dropping once again to the ground. He dug the toe of his black motorcycle boot into the place where a cobblestone was missing from the street. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” I said, my voice rising. “What you believe stopped mattering a long time ago.”
He looked up at me. “I guess that’s true.”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “All right, Skylar.”
“All right, Kit.”
“I guess . . . I guess I’ll see you around.”
“I know where to find you if I want to talk,” I said, the familiar ache in my chest growing as I realized that this was it, we were about to part ways, and the moment I’d thought about, of our meeting finally after so much time, was already over.
Kit put his sunglasses back on. He stared off into the distance. “If you say so, Skylar,” he said, then turned around and started down the hill to where he’d left his bike, leaving me standing there, alone again.
All I could do was watch him go.
When I arrived at my Keeper’s, I was sweating and she was nowhere to be found. I’d pedaled hard all the way here. Maybe she was somewhere in the mansion, talking to the refugees occupying the upper floors. I went inside the entrance that led to her rooms, a bouquet of daisies in my hand, relieved I was alone for a while. I searched the cabinets until I found a vase and filled it with water. I considered leaving the flowers on the counter to die in the last heat of summer, dry and wilting. I don’t know why I picked them. It’s not like I wanted another memory of something to do with Kit that made me feel pain. But after he walked away I went to that wild patch of flowers in front of the pretty blue-gray house and yanked at one of them, hard, until the stem of it snapped. Then I yanked at another and another until I held a thick bunch of them in my fist. The sunny flowers stared up at me happily and my heart began to slow, little by little. I dropped them into the vase and set it onto the table. Every time I looked at the daisies my heart sped in painful, sharp bursts. Kit made me lose my control, my judgment, my sense. From the moment we met it had been like that. Then again, meeting Kit brought me back to life all those months ago during that blizzard, and right when I’d lost the will to care about anything.
The sound of a car engine brought me to the window.
Rain got out and started toward the door.
I opened it, surprised to realize I was happy to see him. Rain was steady and dependable and was always there for me. A quality that Kit could not boast, no matter what else he made me feel. “Hi,” I said, and smiled. “What are you doing here?”
He smiled back. Rain was beautiful—of this, there was no doubt. This, I could never forget. “I thought you might need a ride back to Briarwood,” he said.
“I thought I might stay here tonight.”
His smile slipped. “I could stay with you.”
I shook my head. Then I decided to give in. “No. We can both go to Briarwood,” I said, and his smile steadied. “I probably shouldn’t be away from Parvda.”
Rain’s eyes clouded. “I know.”
I headed back into the kitchen and Rain followed. “I don’t even know what she and Adam fought about.”
Rain pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “I don’t either.” He reached out and tapped the vase. “Did you pick these in the garden? They’re pretty.”
“Yes,” I lied. Then I changed the subject. “Have you seen the banner outside the library?”
“No. Why?”
I sat down in the other empty chair. “It says, ‘Refugees go home.’”
Rain grimaced. “Wow. The graffiti is one thing, but a banner outside the library takes such . . . such . . .”
“Effort?” I supplied.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Things seem to keep getting worse, by the day.” I looked at Rain, my eyebrows arching. “And did you hear what they’re calling us at the camp on the beach?”
Rain chuckled. “The king and queen of New Port City?”
The happiness I felt for him moments ago turned to annoyance. I dug my finger into a knot in the rough wood of the table. “You knew? And you let them think something so ridiculous?”
“Skylar.” Rain’s tone was playful. “You know they called me a prince in the App World, so it wasn’t that far of a leap from prince to king. To the refugees, I’m still royalty. And now, here, they see me with you. Do the math.”
“Fine,” I said, remembering so clearly that Rain was—had always been—royalty and treated accordingly. “You can be king, but I don’t want to be queen.”
“But you saved those people. You deserve the title more than me.”
“I didn’t. Not really. Everyone worked together to get the refugees across the border. And it’s not like all of them are happy with the decision.” I huffed. “I’m sure a lot of them are calling me plenty of other names, none of them as kind as Queen Skylar.”
“I think what they’re calling us is kind of sweet.”
“I bet Lacy doesn’t,” I said, before I could think better of it.
Rain sighed. “Lacy is La
cy.”
“Lacy is angry and she has a right to be.”
“Lacy will get over things.”
“But will she?” I closed my eyes a moment, and an image of Kit immediately appeared, so I opened them again. “Should she even try?”
“Yes,” Rain said, sounding hurt. “What do you mean, even asking me that?”
I laid my cheek on the cool surface of the tabletop. “I don’t know. Forget I said it. I’m just tired.” I lifted my head. “Let’s talk about the refugees on the beach. They need places to live for the winter, and the available housing here in New Port City is maxed out. And we need to figure out what to do about all the resistance to them.”
Rain stared at me, blinking. I worried he might refuse to drop the subject of Lacy, but after some more hesitation he spoke. “I think the resistance will die down eventually.” His eyes drifted to the ceiling, to the elaborate crown molding surrounding the chandelier above us, with its dusty teardrop crystals signaling the glory of another age. “People will get used to the presence of the refugees and begin to integrate them. It’s just that they weren’t prepared for such an influx and they’re struggling to adjust.”
I nodded, hoping that he was right. “In the meantime, maybe we could get everyone to help with scrubbing that graffiti. It’s not exactly . . . inviting to the refugees. Or helpful toward their integration.”
“If we scrub it, someone else will just graffiti over it,” Rain said.
I stared at the cheerful daisies and nearly winced. “Probably.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Rain said. “It will be fine.”
The Mind Virus Page 4