The Darkest Minds

I leaned my head down on the cushion beside his. In a whisper, because I wasn’t brave enough to say it any louder, I told him about going to bed the night before my tenth birthday, about how I woke up expecting my usual birthday pancakes. About the way they locked me in the garage like some wild animal. And when that story was over, I told him about Sam. How I had been her Chubs until I wasn’t, until I was nothing at all.

My throat burned when I was finished. Liam turned his face toward mine. We weren’t even a breath apart.

“Never,” he said after awhile. “Never, never, never. I am never going to forget you.”

“You won’t have a choice,” I said. “Clancy said I won’t ever be able to control it.”

“Well I think he’s full of it,” Liam said. “Listen, what I saw in the woods, when you…”

“When I kissed you.”

“Right. That…that really happened, didn’t it? What he—what that ass**le—did. That happened to you. He kept you there, frozen, like he did to me.”

Yes, but also no. Because a small part of me had wanted Clancy to do it. Or had he only made me want him, played my emotions with a single touch? I nodded, finally, my insides still squirming with revulsion at the memory of his skin against mine.

“Come here,” said Liam softly. I felt his fingers’ light touch run along the crown of my head, feather-soft as they came down to cup my cheek. When I lifted my face, he met me halfway and kissed me. I was careful not to touch his face, only his shoulder and arm. When he pulled back, I seemed to follow, my lips searching for his.

“You want to be with me, right?” he whispered. “Then be with me. We’ll figure it out. If nothing else, I trust you. You can look inside my head and that’s all you’ll see.”

His warm breath spread over my cheek like another kiss. “Mike worked it out. He’s going to try and find a way to sneak us out, and then you, me, and Chubs? We’re gonna hit the road. We’re going to find Jack’s father, we’re going to find a way for Chubs to reach his parents, and then we’re going to talk about what we want to do.”

I leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You really don’t hate me,” I breathed out. “You’re not scared—not even a little?”

His battered face twisted with what I thought was supposed to be a smile. “I’m scared to death of you, but for a completely different reason.”

“I’m a monster, you know. I’m one of the dangerous ones.”

“No you aren’t,” he promised. “You’re one of us.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

CHUBS RETURNED A FEW MINUTES AFTER Liam faded into a restless sleep. He stirred again when we began cleaning the cuts and gouges on his face, reaching for my hand at the first touch of stinging antiseptic. When I felt his grip began to relax, and saw his eyelids flutter shut again, I finally released the breath I had been holding.

“He’ll live,” Chubs said, seeing my expression. He was stuffing away the rest of the supplies in my backpack. “He’ll have a wicked headache in the morning, but he’ll live.”

We took turns sleeping, or at least pretended to. My body was thrumming with anxious unspent energy, and I could hear Chubs muttering to himself, as if trying to work through the night’s events.

And then came the sound of feet slapping against the concrete steps of the cabin once more, and we gave up pretending altogether.

“Lizzie—” I heard one of the boys outside our door say. “Are you—”

She pushed past them, throwing the screen door open so hard that it slammed against the wall. Liam startled awake, more confused and disoriented than he’d been before.

“Ruby!” Lizzie was looking straight at me, her face ashen. Her hair had caught in her dozens of piercings, but it was the blood on her hands that stopped the flow of blood to my head.

“It’s Clancy,” she gasped, clutching my arms. “He just…fell and starting shaking all over like crazy, and bleeding, and I didn’t know what to do, but he told me to get you because you’d know what was going on—Ruby, please, please help me!”

I stared at her hands, the wet blood.

“It’s a trick,” Liam croaked from the futon. “Ruby, don’t you dare…”

“If he’s really hurt, I should go,” Chubs told Lizzie.

“Ruby!” she cried, like she couldn’t believe I was standing there. “There was so much blood—Ruby, please, please, you have to help him!”

He really thought I was stupid, didn’t he? Or did he just think his influence extended that far—that I could ever forget what he had done to Liam and go rushing to his side? I shook my head, anger rippling over my skin. Too immature and weakhearted to use my abilities, was I?

We’d see about that.

Liam pushed himself up into a sitting position. “You know him,” he was saying. “Don’t do it, don’t—”

“Show me where he is,” I said, over Chubs’s protests. I turned to him. “You have to stay with Liam, understand?” You have to watch him because I can’t. “I’ll take care of everything.”

I would get us out. Not Mike, not a burst of random luck—I would get us out, and seeing Clancy’s face slack with my influence would be well worth the effort it would take to break into his mind. Hadn’t he taught me everything I needed to know to do it?

“Ruby—” I heard Liam say, but I took Lizzie’s arm and guided her outside, past the confused kids, past the cabins. Outside, the temperature had dropped almost twenty degrees.

Fat tears dripped down her chin. “He’s in Storage—we were talking about—about—”

“It’s okay,” I told her, putting an awkward hand on her back. We ran through the garden and up the office’s back steps. She fumbled to put her key in the lock, only to have it jam. I had to kick it in; Lizzie was too far gone to do anything but sprint inside. The hall and kitchen were empty. The whole building smelled like garlic and tomato sauce. Everyone must have been out setting up for dinner.

Everyone except Clancy, who stood in the middle of the storage room, leaning against a shelf of macaroni boxes.

Lizzie ran to the back right corner of the room and dropped to her knees. She pawed at the ground, her trembling hands clutching only air. “Clancy,” she cried. “Clancy, can you hear me? Ruby is here now—Ruby, come here!”