“Yeah, this friend of yours looks real friendly,” Diesel murmured.
“Paradise Falls,” Fix whispered. “I used to live there. Before I found the M—”
“No newsfeeds over breakfast, please, soldier,” the Major said.
“Sorry, sir,” the boy muttered, switching off the screen.
They were all looking at her. Grimm with pity. Diesel with suspicion. Fix, something in between. But they were all looking.
“You okay?” Grimm asked.
Lemon stood there on shaking legs. Thinking about where she’d come from, where she’d been, how totally her life had turned in just a handful of days. She felt torn in two. Wanting to leave and help her friends. Wanting to stay here and belong. Not knowing what she wanted at all.
“I think I need some air,” she heard herself say.
She still could feel them watching her as she left.
* * *
________
The night was so bright it was almost blinding.
Lemon lay on a rock with her face to the sky, looking at the stars above her head. She’d spent most of her youth in Los Diablos, shrouded in smog and fluorescents and drums of burning trash. The night sky had always been hidden, just a black question mark above her head. And even though the skies were still full of crud out here in the wastes, there was less light to spoil the view. She could see stars overhead, hundreds, maybe, trying to twinkle through the pollution haze.
Ezekiel had told her the fast-moving ones were satellites—metal cans orbiting the earth, beaming back data nobody really knew how to collect anymore. But she’d seen on the virtch once that the stars that never seemed to move were actually suns, waaaayyy off in space. She wondered if there were planets circling those suns, out there in all that black. If there were girls on those planets, looking up to the night sky the same way she was, feeling just as lost as she did.
“Your mother used to do this,” the Major said.
He sighed as he sat on the rock beside her. A cool wind blew in off the wastes, but she still felt warm beside him.
“You mean go off and sulk in the dark like a little kid?” she asked.
“I mean wear her heart on her sleeve,” the Major smiled. “You’re a lot like her, you know. You have her strength. You feel things just as deeply as she did. She was proud, just like you. And Lord, was she stubborn.” The old man chuckled, shaking his head. “Too stubborn for her own good.”
“Guess I’ll have to take your word for that.”
“I guess you will.”
“…Why’d she leave me?” Lemon asked, her voice soft.
“I don’t know, Lemon. I really don’t. Lillian was…a complicated girl.”
She said nothing. Wondering why it mattered, anyway. So she didn’t know exactly how old she was. So they got her name off a cardboard box. So some stranger she never met dumped her when she was born. So what?
So what?
The old man reached out and squeezed her hand. “Everything happens for a reason. The Lord has a plan for us all.”
“I don’t believe in your Lord.”
“Well, he believes in you. And he does have a plan, though it’s seldom the same one we have for ourselves. I surely didn’t see myself holed up out here in the desert twenty years ago. You probably didn’t imagine much of this, either.”
“You got that right,” she sighed.
“Where did you see yourself?”
Lemon sucked on her lip and shrugged.
“Never really thought about it. Growing up in Dregs, it’s hard to have a plan that goes much farther than the next meal. And after that, I was always the tagalong, you know? Running with Evie. Running with Zeke.”
“It seems like your friends might’ve run on without you.”
Her chest hurt at the thought. She didn’t rightly know why. She’d seen that Gnosis logo on the wall in the newsfeed of Paradise Falls. Done the math of why Dimples would be teaming up with a hunter like the Preacher.
He was looking for someone, of course.
Didn’t take a genius to figure out who.
She’d said this would happen. She’d told Ezekiel he’d end up leaving her behind. He’d promised he wouldn’t bail on her, but who was she to him, really? A dusty little scavvergirl he’d known for a handful of days. Compared to Ana? The girl he’d loved for the past two years? How could Lemon be surprised he’d moved on?
Everyone was moving on.
She looked up at the sky above her head. All those stars trying to shine. And she felt so small it was like she was nothing at all.
“You’re not just a tagalong, Lemon,” the Major said. “There’s so much more to you than that. And you have the chance to be part of something much bigger than yourself here. You’re just too important to be sitting on the sidelines.” He looked at her intently, years of warfare and wisdom hardening his gaze. “You need to choose a team, or risk having it chosen for you.”
She chewed her lip. Sitting up and looking him in the eye.
“You really never saw Cricket in your dream?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“I need to know what happened to him, Grandpa.”
The name hung heavy in the air, slipping out from between her teeth before she had a chance to stop it. It was hard to fathom how so few letters could hold so much weight. She wanted to take it back. She wanted to let it ride. The old man’s lips curled in a smile, his scars creasing his battle-worn face into something close to kindly. But beyond that, she saw concern. For his people. For all he’d built here.
“The Brotherhood are on the warpath, Lemon. I’ve seen them, too. In my dreams. Brother War, leading a convoy through the wastes. They came so close to finding us when they caught Diesel and Grimm.” The old man ran a hand over his stubbled scalp. “Grimm told me about the woman that was with you in New Bethlehem—the one with the bees. Would you like to tell me what you were doing in the company of a BioMaas operative? Just happened to be in the neighborhood?”
Lemon combed her bangs down over her eyes with her fingers and mumbled.
“You’re just gonna make a big deal out of it.”
“Try me.”
She stayed mute, debating whether she should dodge the subject or spin some chaff. But she didn’t feel right about that, talking true. The old man had always been straight with her. She figured she should do him the same solid.