It’s Chris. Pressing closer, she breathed him in. This is the smell of Chris, and he is real and so is this, so am I.
Before she could stop herself—what a lie; she didn’t want to stop—she was reaching up. Her trembling fingers feathered his neck and she heard him suck in a small, startled gasp.
“Lena, I—” he said. “We—”
“Please, please, please,” she whispered. Her body was shuddering, humming, warming. She brushed her lips over his skin, felt the hard throb of his pulse against her mouth, tasted the salt tang on her tongue. At her touch, he made a sound that was very far back, deep in his throat; she felt the sudden shock of it in his chest, the tremor rippling through his body like a bomb. She put a hand behind his neck, pulled his mouth to hers, and then they were kissing, and kept kissing, and his lips were warm and tasted of sweet oranges, and she focused on that, gave herself over to the feel of his mouth and his hands in her hair, the scorch of his fingers over her cheeks, her neck. She was tingling, all over, greedy for his taste, moaning into his mouth, and they were breathing in one another, and then he was saying her name and she needed that almost more than breath.
Yes, this is real and I’m Lena, I am Lena, I’m—
“Lena.” He pulled away, panting a little. “No. I can’t. I’m sorry. We shouldn’t. This isn’t me.”
But it is me. “Yes, it is,” she said. Her voice broke. “Please don’t, please don’t.”
“Lena.” He sounded out of breath. His hands tightened on her arms. “This isn’t right.”
“It is.” She heard the plea and didn’t care. “Chris, it doesn’t have to mean anything more than what it is. It’s not wrong.”
“Lena, I just . . . I can’t. This isn’t me,” he said again.
“You love her.” Her voice was used up and flat as paper, and she let her hands fall away. An enormous sense of defeat washed through like black water that might just sweep her out to sea, or drown her. Same difference.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think so. I care about you, I do, but—”
“Great.” She gave a broken laugh. “What every girl needs to hear.”
He was quiet for a moment. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair? Hey, news flash: life isn’t fair.” She heard the cruel cut in her voice, but she’d take anger over fear any day. “Nothing’s fair.”
“I know that. But I don’t have to make things worse. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do what’s right.”
“So now I’m wrong?”
“No. I’m saying I can’t let Alex go just yet. If I’m going to, you know, be with you or anyone, it has to be you, not who I wish you were.”
She couldn’t believe this. “So what? Who cares? What about what I need? Don’t I count for something?”
“Lena, you do, but—”
“But what?” she spat. “I’m not good enough? I’m not her? Have you stopped to think, for five seconds, how I feel? We are going to die out here, and you’re worried about being faithful to a dead girl?”
“Lena.” His voice had dropped to something low and dangerous. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t say she’s dead?” She hurled the word, like the quick hard crack of a whip.
“Stop,” he said. There was a warning thrum to his tone. “Lena. Please.”
“Stop. Lena. Please,” she mimicked, and then in her new and cruel voice: “She’s dead, Chris, and if you want to think about something, think about this: she didn’t love you. She used you and then she ran away.”
“No,” he said, sharply. “She wasn’t you, and I’m not Peter.”
That hurt, but she was glad. Anything was better than this bone-deep fear. “Oh, you got that right,” she said. “Peter wasn’t a scared little boy.”
“I’m not scared—”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“What’s going on? Why are we fighting each other? Why are you doing this?” he asked. She didn’t hear anger there, only a species of betrayal and wonderment, as if from a puppy that couldn’t believe its owner had just kicked it. “What do you want from me?”
I want you to make me real. It was the first and most urgent thought. I want nothing else to matter but right now, right here, on this goddamned floor, in this awful place.
But what she said was, “I want to be safe.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt her fury dissipating, like a storm finally blowing itself out. “I w-want someone to tell me everything’s going to be all right. I just . . .” A sob boiled into her throat. “I w-want the world to c-come back. I kn-know it won’t, but that doesn’t mean . . .” She was hitching now, her shoulders shuddering. “That doesn’t m-mean I d-don’t want—”
This time, when she felt his arms hug her to his chest, she did nothing but weep as if there would be no tomorrow. The chances there would be weren’t very good anyway. And this time, nothing happened between them, but that was all right. That was just fine.
Later:
He wanted her to sleep. “Things always look better in daylight.” Oh, she doubted that. But she stretched out again and let him run the zipper. When he was done, he lingered, then laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think it was him, Lena.” “Him?”
“The boy from Oren?” He paused, maybe expecting her to say something. When she didn’t, he prompted, “The one Greg brought back the morning Alex ran away?”
“Oh.” Her memories were gauzy and a little unreal, as if her life’s story were penned in an old book belonging to an extinct race from another planet. “Yes. I remember that.”
She could tell that wasn’t the answer he’d expected, but he continued, “The kid was eight, maybe nine. But your brother’s thirteen, right?” She took so long to answer that he said, “Lena?”
“Yes, that’s right,” she parroted back. “He’s thirteen.”
“That’s what I thought. So . . . I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him, Lena. That means we might find him once we get back up toward Oren.”
“Okay. Thanks, Chris.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.” He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Me, too. But it’ll be okay, Lena. Everything will work itself out. Just get some sleep, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, a little surprised that the tears stayed put this time. As he rose, she added, “Watch out for that tea.”
“What?”
“The tea.” She pointed. “The cup’s by your left foot, next to the stool.”
“It is?” There was a tiny snick, a spray of light. The cup seemed to leap into being from the darkness. “Wow. Thanks. I didn’t see that.”
“No problem.” The bright yellow wink bouncing off the aluminum dazzled her eyes. Wincing, she rolled away and onto her side. A second later, she heard the click as Chris switched off the flashlight, followed by the shush of fabric, the slight squall of cold metal, a small sigh as he settled on his stool.
Pulling the sleeping bag up to her chin, she stared into the darkness, first at the fuzzy blue ghost images of that aluminum cup and then, as they dissipated, at the blocky silhouettes of lab tables and stools. Her gaze panned over gas spigots and chromed faucets, a glassy heap of broken beakers, a tumble of textbooks, a fan of torn pages from a lab book. The white face of a clock, its hands frozen at twenty-one minutes past nine, floated above the classroom door.
It’s dark. I shouldn’t be able to see this, but I do. Her eyes burned, but she had no more tears. Something’s happening to me, and I don’t know what, and I want it to stop; I just want things to be okay. Yet this she understood: things would never be okay for her again. Whatever memories of a brother she’d possessed were gone. She knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she must have a brother. The feeling was right. But there was an . . . an emptiness inside, the way there was when you chunked out the pit of an avocado then scooped out all the soft innards, leaving only skin. Where there had been brother, now there was a blank, a kind of grayed-out mental afterimage with no face, no name, and not a flicker of memory.
There was, instead, nothing.
Nothing at all.
63
They came three hours before dawn.
Chris hadn’t woken Nathan to take a shift. After what had happened with Lena, he couldn’t have slept anyway. Instead, he waited, alternately guilty and hollow-eyed with dread.
He’d been so stupid. He did like Lena, just not that way. Did he? No. He had to protect her. Lena was sick and scared, as confused as he was. She wasn’t thinking straight. No matter what she said, she was in love with Peter; he knew that. He couldn’t shake Alex either, and didn’t really want to, not just yet. Maybe hope was a terrible thing, but he held on to it anyway, despite what he’d said to Lena. So, better to let this whole thing just go and concentrate on what he had to do next. One step at a time.
He flicked a glance at the dim huddle beside his stool. Her breathing was even. Sleeping. No more dreams either that he could tell. He returned his gaze to the snow. God, he hoped he wasn’t right, but he just couldn’t get past the idea that the Changed boy had chosen to come out of hiding when he hadn’t needed to—and he had gone for Lena.
She was unraveling before his eyes. Before they’d kissed—stupid, stupid, stupid—what was all that other stuff ? It had sounded like a confession. Yet when they were talking about her brother, he’d sensed her sudden uncertainty. Could be dehydration, maybe. Factor in no real sleep for days and she was apt to be a touch confused.
Wait. He raked his teeth over his chapped lower lip, considering. Could she be dying? Oh, boy, he’d never thought about that. And if she was dying, they all were. He was just as exhausted, and Nathan was so much thinner—one stiff breeze and he’d blow away.