In The Afterlight

“That’s right.”

She put out her hands as if to say, well, there you go. She picked up her pen again. That meant you were never going to purposefully put us in danger. That you were a good person.

“That’s an awfully big assumption,” I said. “It could have just been me panicking, not thinking at all.”

Zu gave a little shrug. Better to risk helping someone than regret what you could have done. Lee said that.

“That sounds like him,” I said dryly. And that was the exact reason Chubs and I had to be so vigilant about every new kid we crossed paths with.

Are you and Lee fighting about the memory thing?

Ah. So he or one of the others had told her.

“Not exactly.” But then, what were we doing, exactly? Not being friends to each other. Not being whatever it was we had been. “It’s complicated. After what I did to him, it’s been nothing but complicated. And I accept full responsibility, but...”

Zu, as always, zeroed in on the root of the situation. Do you think he doesn’t forgive you?

Reluctantly I reached around her, pulling out the Beach Boys CD case from the dresser drawer. The paper was soft and beginning to tear at the center from how many times I’d opened and read it and refolded it again. I don’t know why I felt like I had to keep rereading it every night, punishing myself with it.

Zu read it, the crease between her dark eyebrows deepening. She clearly recognized his handwriting, but when she looked up, I saw confusion, not understanding.

“What?”

She wrote, What does this prove?

“The fact that he felt like he had to write this is a pretty big clue he thinks I’ll do it again—take his memories, I mean. Send him away.”

Zu calmly folded the note back up and then reached up to smack me in the nose with it with her patented are you serious? look.

Seeing I still wasn’t getting it, she picked up her notebook and pen again. OR—he wrote it because he was scared someone else would make you do it, like his brother. He says he wants to stay. This means he wants to stay, with you, with us, even knowing what happened. Did you even ask him about it? Does he know you took it? She gave me a very different look now. You shouldn’t take things that don’t belong to you.

“I haven’t talked to him about it,” I admitted.

Did you miss this? She pointed to the last line.

I shook my head, swallowing hard. “I saw.”

Zu studied me for a moment, dark eyes penetrating, flickering with understanding. Do you feel like you don’t deserve it?

“I think he...I think he deserves better than the best I could offer him.” It was the first time I’d admitted it out loud, and somehow putting it into the open only added to the weight of truth. I felt sick, lightheaded. He deserves better than me.

She looked torn between kicking me and hugging me, but settled on the latter. Too late, I’d realized how this would affect her—how someone already so panicked and afraid would react to seeing the people she thought of as her rocks crumbling.

When he comes back you have to talk to him, okay?

“Okay,” I said, not as certain as she was that he’d want to talk to me.

If you go to the bad place again, she said simply, tell one of us so we can help you back out.

“I don’t mean to be such a burden,” I whispered. All I ever wanted to do was protect you.

It’s not a burden if people are willing to carry it, she pointed out and, having made her final point, let herself drift to sleep. I rolled onto my side and tried to do the same.

It must have taken at some point because then I was dreaming, walking the damp, dark hallways of HQ, taking the path to Alban’s cluttered office, eyes tracking the exposed light bulbs overhead. The next moment, I was in a different hallway, cold tile under my feet, small hands fisted in my shirt.

I jerked back, my mind ripping out of the foggy haze of sleep, scrambling away from Zu’s terrified look. The lights in the lower-level hallway were switched off, as they always were after midnight. She stood in contrast to the shadows, worry overtaking confusion on her features. Her brow creased as she stepped toward me tentatively, reaching for the hand I’d pressed over my heart, trying to steady it.

“Sorry,” I told her, “sorry—sleepwalking—stress—it’s—” I couldn’t get my tongue around the right words, but she seemed to understand. Zu took me firmly in hand and walked me back toward our room, never once letting me stumble. My head felt light enough to drift away, and when I climbed back into bed, I banged my clumsy knees against the metal frame. The last thing I was aware of was Zu stroking my hair, smoothing it again and again until the pain pounding in my skull eased, and I was able to breathe normally again.

In the earliest hours of the next morning, the Op team and I set off for the open desert of Nevada.

15

I KEPT MY BELLY DOWN flat against the wash, ignoring the tinge of pain in the muscles of my lower back. It seemed wrong for the desert to be so damn cold, but I guess without the sun, and without the benefit of thick-leaved trees and brush, there was nothing to trap the heat of the previous day. Nameless mountains hovered behind us, the lighter of two deep shades of black. I kept looking over my shoulder as the hours passed, watching their jagged shapes lighten to the color of a new bruise. Aside from the yellow, dried-out clusters of low, prickly desert shrubs, there wasn’t much anything else to look for.

“What was that?” I heard Gav ask. “Is that a rattlesnake? I heard rattling.”