Smooth. I’ve been wanting to tell Gabriel about my crush on him, but between stabbing him and all his friends in the back, not being sure if he’s interested in guys, and my not being sexually attracted to people or wanting physical intimacy, there are way too many obstacles. And as if that wasn’t enough, he still remembers the old me. There’s no way he’d be interested in being with someone like that.
I don’t have the guts to look Gabriel in the face and see if he caught my slip. But his voice sounds the same as always when he says, “I’m happy when we’re together, too. You’re pretty bad at looking after kids, and you’re bad at being honest, too—like, really bad.” I grimace. “But you’re an amazing artist. Your ability to create beautiful things is breathtaking. You genuinely care about others. You give your all to support your friends, and you try to do good by everyone. I like that about you. I like a lot of things about you.”
I finally manage to meet his eyes. His slanted smile is softer than usual. It makes my heart pound painfully. I almost say something—I’m not sure what, maybe a confession of my feelings or that I’m not nearly as good as he thinks I am—but then the little ringleader of the kids calls, “Erik, Gabriel! We’re gonna arm wrestle, come referee!”
The moment shatters. Gabriel laughs. His expression is back to usual, all private gentleness gone. “We better go join them, huh?”
“Guess you’re right.” I don’t know if what I feel is disappointment or relief. I rock myself to my feet and offer Gabriel a hand up. Since he’s been overdoing it so much with his gift lately, he needs all the help he can get. He takes it. His hand is so hot I think it’ll burn me. Even once he lets go, I still feel where our skin touched.
* * *
I walk down a dark hall, totally sure of where I’m going and what I’m about to do—I just can’t remember exactly what either of those things are right now. At the end of that hall, Cal and Joan wait for me.
“Come to see me off?” My voice echoes around us, weirdly hollow. “That was nice of you both.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Joan says. When I walk closer to her, she holds out her hands and I take them. Her fingers twine through mine.
“It’s our first raid—our first attack against the Etioles,” Cal says. His eyes shine in the dark, solemn and maybe sad. “Of course we’re worried about you.”
“What, you think I can’t handle it? This is me we’re talking about.”
“Which is exactly why we’re worried, you arrogant show-off,” Joan says. I roll my eyes and she squeezes my hands.
“It’ll be fine,” I say. “You’ll see. Everything will go just as planned, and before long, we’ll have wiped every damned Etiole out of existence.”
My eyes snap open. It takes a while for them to adjust to the dark—and for my heart to slow down.
I’ve never had a full memory like that come back to me. It’s only ever been snippets. But that was so clear. It felt like it was actually happening. What’s going on? Why now, when I’ve just been getting scraps for the last month? Why that memory?
Well, no going back to sleep now. What time is it, anyway? It’s hard to keep track when you’re stuck underground.
Once my eyes adjust, I can pick out the details of my room. I haven’t changed anything, so everything looks just like it did when I disappeared from the rebels. Drawings wallpaper every surface but the floor, everything from furniture to doodles to sketches of make-believe cities and grand, ambitious buildings that’ll never exist. There are sketches, paintings, drawings in ink and charcoal—everything. Just like back at Central, wooden furniture and tiny models of buildings crowd the room. A miniature city is tucked underneath a large table in one corner.
The room is nice. It’s everything I would’ve imagined my former room to be, complete with drawings and models in my own style. But I don’t remember any of it. It feels like I’m sleeping in a stranger’s room, in a stranger’s bed. Seeing a stranger’s memories.
I wonder for the millionth time what happened to all the furniture I left back in my and Jay’s room. We were always talking about ways we could dump it all on other people, but we never did get around to it.
The thought of my old roommate makes my heart sink. I wish I could talk to him again—something I would’ve never imagined I’d think three months ago.
I need to get out.
It must be pretty late because no one’s around when I walk through the main office’s halls. I should go back. I’m already under suspicion, and probably from more people than just Devin at this point. If I’m caught wandering around at night, it’ll only look bad. But I can’t stand the thought of returning.
I stop in front of one of the meeting rooms and push the door open. I don’t care about the actual room; I cross through it to get to the balcony. The air isn’t that different from inside the building. All the air is stale down here. But it’s nice being in such a big open space. From the balcony, I look out over the city sleeping in the darkness. It’s only three stories down, but it feels so much farther away. Fires are lit in some parts of the town, either guards or early risers. I can’t make out details from here with barely any light. The whole uneven collection of random furniture and makeshift shelters looks like a long, huge monster sleeping in the night, just waiting for the right moment to rear up and bare its fangs.
“What are you doing up at this hour?”
I turn to see Joan leaning against the open balcony door behind me, arms and legs both crossed, but not threateningly. I didn’t even hear her come up behind me.
I face the town again. After that dream, I don’t really know how to talk to her. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Is that so?” She joins me at the balcony’s twisting iron railing and rests her elbows against it, hands dangling over the empty air. Watchful, silent. I don’t ask why she’s awake.
“This reminds me of a dream I had,” I say. “You and I were standing on a balcony just like this, and you said the night was approaching. I mean, I thought it was a dream. Hoped it was a memory. It came before you guys told me I’d been a rebel.”
“Well, it wasn’t just a dream.”
I grip the railing and lean back. “I’ve been having a lot of not-just-dreams lately. You were in the last one, you know.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Were we…?”
“Sort of. Not really.”
“Wow, that makes things a whole lot clearer. Thanks for the enlightenment.”
A corner of her mouth quirks up. “It wasn’t romance—not really. We were never physical, and there were never any feelings of love between us, either. We tried. I think we both wanted there to be something. But we were just two broken people trying to find comfort in being with someone else who was broken.”
“Is there really something so wrong with that?” I can’t remember ever being in a relationship. I don’t actually know how it works. But that doesn’t sound so terrible to me.
“There’s nothing inherently wrong with it,” Joan says. “But it wasn’t real for us. When I met Paul, and you and I broke things off, neither of us were worse off for it.”