Defy Me

“Everything is fine,” she says, shooting me a sharp look. “We’re fine. But someone needs to tell me what’s going on.”

“Are you sure we’re fine?” I ask once more, quietly.

She levels me with a dark look.

I sigh. “Well, in that case,” I say. “You should know that Kenji was just admiring Aaron’s sense of style.”

Nazeera turns to Kenji. Raises a single eyebrow.

Kenji shakes his head, visibly irritated. “I wasn’t— Dammit, J, you have no loyalty.”

“I have plenty of loyalty,” I say, slightly wounded. “But when you guys fight like this it stresses me out. I just want Aaron to know that, secretly, you care about him. I love you both and I want the two of you to be frien—”

“Wait”—Aaron frowns—“What do you mean you love us both?”

I glance between him and Kenji, surprised. “I mean I care about both of you. I love you both.”

“Right,” Aaron says, hesitating, “but you don’t actually love us both. That’s just a figure of speech, isn’t it?”

It’s my turn to frown. “Kenji is my best friend,” I say. “I love him like a brother.”

“But—”

“I love you, too, princess,” Kenji says, a little too loudly. “And I appreciate you saying that.”

Aaron mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like, “Unwashed idiot.”

“What did you just say to me?” Kenji’s eyes widen. “I’ll have you know I wash all the time—”

Nazeera places a calming hand on Kenji’s arm, and he startles at her touch. He looks up at her, blinking.

“We have another five hours ahead of us on this flight,” she says, and her voice is firm but kind. “So I recommend we put this conversation to bed. I think it’s clear to everyone that you and Warner secretly enjoy each other’s friendship, and it’s not doing anyone any good to pretend otherwise.”

Kenji blanches.

“Does that sound like a reasonable plan?” She looks around at all of us. “Can we all agree that we’re on the same team?”

“Yes,” I say enthusiastically. “I do. I agree.”

Aaron says, “Fine.”

“Great,” Nazeera says. “Kenji, you okay?”

He nods and mumbles something under his breath.

“Perfect. Now here’s the plan,” she says briskly. “We’re going to eat and then take turns trying to get some sleep. We’ll have a ton of things to deal with when land, and it’s best if we hit the ground running when we do.” She tosses a few vacuum-sealed bags at each of us. “That’s your lunch. There are water bottles in the fridge up front. Kenji and I will take the first shift—”

“No way,” Kenji says, crossing his arms. “You’ve been up for twenty-four hours straight. I’ll take the first shift.”

“But—”

“Warner and I will take the first shift together, actually.” Kenji shoots Warner a look. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, of course,” Aaron says. He’s already on his feet. “I’d be happy to.”

“Great,” Kenji says.

Nazeera is already stifling a yawn, pulling a bunch of thin blankets and pillows from a storage closet. “All right, then. Just wake us up in a couple of hours, okay?”

Kenji raises an eyebrow at her. “Sure.”

“I’m serious.”

“Yup. Got it.” Kenji offers her a mock salute, Aaron offers me a quick smile, and the two of them disappear into the cockpit.

Kenji closes the door behind them.

I’m staring at the closed door, wondering what on earth is going on between the two of them, when Nazeera says—

“I had no idea you two were so intense.”

I look up, surprised. “Who? Me and Aaron?”

“No,” she says, smiling. “You and Kenji.”

“Oh.” I frown. “I don’t think we’re intense.”

She shoots me a funny look.

“I’m serious,” I say. “I think we have a pretty normal friendship.”

Instead of answering me, she says, “Did you two ever”—she waves a hand at nothing—“date?”

“What?” My eyes widen. A traitorous heat floods my body. “No.”

“Never?” she says, her smile slow.

“Never. I swear. Not even close.”

“Okay.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with him,” I hurry to add. “Kenji is wonderful. The right person would be lucky to be with him.”

Nazeera laughs, softly.

She carries the stack of pillows and blankets over to the row of airplane seats and begins reclining the backs. I watch her as she works. There’s something so smooth and refined about her movements—something intelligent in her eyes at all times. It makes me wonder what she’s thinking, what she’s planning. Why she’s here at all.

Suddenly, she sighs. She’s not looking at me when she says, “Do you remember me yet?”

I raise my eyebrows, surprised. “Of course,” I say quietly.

She nods. She says, “I’ve been waiting awhile for you to catch up,” and sits down, inviting me to join her by patting the seat next to her.

I do.

Wordlessly, she hands me a couple of blankets and pillows. And then, when we’re both settled in and I’m staring, suspiciously, at the vacuum-sealed package of “food” she threw at me, I say—

“So you remember me, too?”

Nazeera tears open her vacuum-sealed package. Peers inside to study the contents. “Emmaline guided me to you,” she says quietly. “The memories. The messages. It was her.”

“I know,” I say. “She’s trying to unify us. She wants us to band together.”

Nazeera shakes out the contents of the bag into her hand, picks through the bits of freeze-dried fruit. She glances at me. “You were five when you disappeared,” she says. “Emmaline was six. I’m six months older than you, and six months younger than Emmaline.”

I nod. “The three of us used to be best friends.”

Nazeera looks away, looks sad. “I really loved Emmaline,” she says. “We were inseparable. We did everything together.” She shrugs, even as a flash of pain crosses her face. “That was all we got. Whatever we might’ve been was stolen from us.”

She picks out two pieces of fruit and pops them into her mouth. I watch as she chews, thoughtfully, and wait for more.

But the seconds pass and she says nothing, and I figure I should fill the silence. “So,” I say. “We’re not actually getting any sleep, are we?”

That gets her to smile. Still, she doesn’t look at me.

Finally, she says, “I know you and Warner got the absolute worst of it, I do. But if it makes you feel any better, they wiped all of our memories, in the beginning.”

“I know. Emmaline told me.”

“They didn’t want us to remember you,” she says. “They didn’t want us to remember a lot of things. Did Emmaline tell you she’s reached out to all of us? You, me, Warner, my brother—all the kids.”