When Lai still doesn’t speak, I leave without looking back.
I don’t make it far down the hall before Al’s voice follows me, asking me to stop, and then her hand catches my upper arm and makes me stop.
“Jay,” she says. “Look. I get it. But right now, we need to stick together. Lai needs us. She needs you most of all—you’re one of her biggest supporters. She could use some support right now.”
“Yeah.” It’s only one word, but it’s hard to get out. All I can think of is how easily Lai just gave up—how she wouldn’t even look at me.
“So?” Al asks.
“I don’t think I can do this right now, Al.”
“Of course you can. I know you can.”
I meet Al’s eyes, but it feels like a mistake as soon as I see the trust burning there. I have to look away. “It’s just—Lai is how I always wished I could be. Strong. Confident. Determined. I … I thought she was invincible. Not that she couldn’t be defeated by anyone but that she’d keep going no matter how many times she lost. Seeing her just give up…”
“She’s only human, Jay,” Al says gently. I’ve never heard her speak that way before. “We all have our moments when we want to give up. And she just lost a lot at once. Of course she’s hurting. Of course she thinks it’d be better to stop now before she loses anymore.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “That’s why she needs us to remind her there’s still plenty to keep fighting for.”
It takes several heartbeats for me to corral everything inside me under control. Finally, I sigh. “I need to apologize to her.”
“Nah,” Al says. “I think it’d mean more to her if you explained why you were so upset. C’mon. Let’s go back.”
27
AL
I DRAG JAY back into Lai’s room, but only about a minute has passed, so everything’s the same. Erik’s head snaps up when we walk back in, and relief practically rolls off him like smoke. Jay doesn’t say anything as he stands by the door, but at least he’s here. The last thing we need is for our team to fall apart as soon as it’s together again. Especially when Lai needs us so much right now.
“Lai,” I say. She doesn’t look up at me. I need to get her back on her feet—or at least stumbling on them. “What do you think the Order’s next move should be?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice sounds as tired as she looks, but there’s a hard, mean edge to it. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Because of one loss?” I ask. “Don’t get me wrong, it was a terrible loss—you lost your arm, your friends. That’s hard. I get that. But you lose badly once, and suddenly you don’t know anything? Come on, Lai. You’re tougher than that. You’ve been through a lot of shit and never given up. Why is this time different?”
She doesn’t answer right away, but I don’t get the feeling she’s not going to reply, so I wait. Finally, she says, “It feels like I’ve gotten this far by just ignoring all my shortcomings. I could pretend they didn’t exist and keep going. But I can’t pretend not to see them anymore. I can’t stop feeling them.”
“That sounds like a good thing to me. Trying to ignore your weaknesses never leads to anything good. Now that you know, you can work on them and try to fix them.”
She shakes her head. “There’s too much,” she says quietly. “There are too many things I’m lacking in. I’ve never thought Luke made the right choice in asking me to lead the Order. I took the position because I wanted to fulfill his last wish, not because I thought I was good enough, and now I have to face the fact that I’m not. I can’t just keep leading everyone to their deaths because of my selfishness. That’s not fair to anyone.”
“Lai,” I say, “you really think everyone would’ve come this far with you if they didn’t believe in you as a leader? It takes a lot to convince someone to follow you—especially into a war. But everyone here—they really look up to you. They love you. They believe in you. I believe in you. That’s not something a person can get just by being selfish.”
She finally, finally looks up at me, and her expression is so vulnerable my voice softens reflexively. “Besides, if selfishness is really all that got you here, I don’t think you would’ve made it this far. I don’t know what it is that drives you to do so much for the Order or what got you here in the first place, but I don’t think that’s all that’s moving you forward now. You might not’ve noticed it yet, but you’re fighting for a lot more than you think. There’s no other way you could’ve made the Order into what it is today.”
I jump when Lai starts crying again. She looks down. Then, so quietly I can barely hear her, she says, “Thank you, Al.”
I really am bad with crying people. But I sit next to her on the bed and wrap my arm around her shoulders, pulling her into me until she’s crying into my shoulder. Erik and Jay come to stand beside us. “Anytime, Lai.”
* * *
The next couple of days crawl by. Lai barely leaves her room. She doesn’t ask how things are going in the Order, but I can tell she wants to. She hasn’t brought up quitting being leader again, but she hasn’t taken it back, either.
Peter, Trist, and Syon rushed over to see her as soon as they heard she was awake. I felt like I was intruding when the three of them burst into the room and ambushed Lai in tearful hugs—and I could tell Erik and Jay did, too. We made up an excuse to leave before they started talking.
Jay’s keeping busy. Peter has pretty much replaced Fiona as the Order’s co-second-in-command with Trist, and Jay’s basically filling the captain position Peter left behind. The three of them and Syon are always talking to people, trying to calm everyone and arrange for more medicine, more food, more everything.
The mood of the Order itself is weird. Everyone’s in a state of mourning, but maybe thanks to Jay and everyone’s early intervention, there’s this sort of understanding that they need to keep moving, too. Trist and Peter called a huge meeting of the Order soon after we all got back from the ambush, to relay news and try to rally morale, but since then, nothing big has happened. I think they’re waiting for Lai. I think we all are.
But Trist and Peter’s waiting feels different. When I talk to them, they’re so sure Lai will come back around. “You’ll see,” Peter says one time when I ask him about it. He’s obviously beyond tired, but he actually smiles. “Lai always pulls through. She just fell down a little harder than usual and needs more time to get back up. But she’ll come ’round.”
I wish I could be that confident. I believe in Lai. I know she can pull through. I just don’t know if she wants to—and that’s the biggest thing.
When I get exhausted doing the few things I can right now—which mostly involve running things from place to place and asking people if I can help and then running some more for the errands they give me—I go find Jay. I need him right now.
He’s not with Trist or Peter, so I go down to the Order’s vegetable plots. Sure enough, he’s there, squatting at the edge of one of the small fields and looking out over the sprouting greenery. From the blank look in his eyes, I doubt he even sees it. I’m surprised that Erik’s sitting with him.