Catalyst (14 page)

Our fingers intertwined, palms kissed one another. We retraced our steps through the brush, into the spindly trees and back to the car. Once seated inside, Seven turned to me. “What about the warehouse?”

There was something in her eyes I hadn’t seen before. Determination.

“Mitis, will you cross three, four, twelve and nine off the list?” She slid the key in the ignition and hit the gas before I could remember what those four items were. I reached across her and drew the seat belt across her lap, clicking it into place. She was driving fast and crazy but she was smiling. I clicked my seatbelt and took the list out of my pocket.

Drawing a line through three, my muscles tensed at four. Aric. He’d stolen her first dance and given Seven her first drink. But if it would ever freaking rain around here, I had a chance at redemption. I chuckled when the ink slashed through number nine. She was definitely crossing it off the list.

1.    
   Go swimming.
   
2.    
   Sleep under the stars
   
3.    
   Go to a party
   
4.   
   Dance with a guy
   
5.    
   …in the rain
   
6.    
   Make a mess
   
7.    
   Have my first kiss
   
8.   
   Drive a car
   
9.    
   ….really fast.
   
10. Walk the perimeter of the wall
    
11.  
    Go to the market
    
12. Drink alcohol
    
13. Get a tattoo
    
14. Blend in
    
15. Belly laugh
    
16. Hold someone’s hand
    
17. Give a random person a hug
    
18. Help Mitis
    
19. …and his friend.
    

20. Leave the city.

21. Take a piggyback ride from a really hot guy.

\ˈ
swā\

noun

1.
       
A slow movement back and forth

2.
      
A controlling force or influence

I DIDN’T WANT
to tell Mitis that I felt sick. My stomach started turning the moment Sonnet approached, and the churning got worse each time I saw her touch him. Every time I glanced at her body moving against his, I thought of pushing her into the lake, or into the fire... She was everything Mitis would want. Sonnet was all curves and softness against his strong, corded body.

She was coy glances and flirty smiles. I was awkwardness embodied. Aric had given me another couple of slashes across the mental list in my mind. He’d danced with me. His hands had settled low on my back, but he was respectful and hadn’t crossed any awkward lines, thank goodness. He had guided my own to fold around his neck and hadn’t laughed at my inexperience with all things normal.

Aric had even leaned in and whispered in my ear. He’d noticed the sheen of sweat forming on my head. “Are you feeling well, Seven?”

I smiled and nodded, hoping he wouldn’t see through the mask of lies that I’d put on.

“It’s the heat from the fire, I think.”

Lying. Most people got better at it the more often they used the skill. Me? I got worse. Aric wasn’t fooled. “You shouldn’t push yourself. I know you want to experience all the things you’ve missed. Sonnet said you didn’t have much longer.” He cleared his throat. “But you could wind up speeding things along instead.”

“Sometimes, I hope so,” I admitted so quietly I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. Every muscle in his body slowly tensed.

“Well, I hope not. And just so you know, I’m not with Sonnet anymore. I told her that I was never going to marry her. I don’t love her. She knows that now. We’ve agreed to be friends.”

My mouth was hanging open. There was no way Sonnet was going to give him up without a fight. I glanced over at her and Mitis. She’d maneuvered closer to us but was shamelessly pushing her body against his. And he was doing nothing to fight her advances. Why would he?

“Aric, do you know why there were so many people coming into the northern gate this evening?”

Aric’s father wasn’t an Elect, but he was friends with my father, one of the Elite and part of the club who knew the comings and goings of Confidence.

He looked at me questioningly. “Your father hasn’t mentioned anything to you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I don’t know all of the details, but they got the rail system fixed up around the area and are supposed to be working on building a new city. Citizens who work are given extra food rations.”

“Why do we need a new city? Ours is fine.”

He snorted. “The Elite section is fine. Everything else is crumbling—even City Center. Nothing lasts forever, I guess.”

Aric must have heard the words that had flown so easily out of his mouth. “I’m so sorry. Oh, God. I didn’t mean it like that, Seven.”

I smiled as much as I could. “Don’t be. You’re right. Nothing lasts forever.”

We sat in the front seats of the car. “What about the warehouse?” My body was done, but my stubbornness wasn’t. I slipped the key into the ignition switch, and my foot eased the accelerator down gently, avoiding the jerky start from our trip to the beach.

Mitis cleared his throat. I’d been driving slowly, but somehow hadn’t seen the road or anything before me. Only the memories of the evening had flashed through my mind. Buildings passed by swiftly. I wasn’t driving slowly at all. I was driving…fast, very fast.

I giggled, mentally crossing that off my list. “Mitis, will you cross three, four, twelve and nine off the list?”

Reaching across my chest, Mitis grabbed the seatbelt and locked it across my hips. Gripping the steering wheel for dear life, I stared ahead, trying to concentrate on not killing us in a fiery crash instead of how his hand was so close to my body. The sound of a second click echoed in the tiny tin can of a car. I didn’t blame him.

As we approached more populated areas of town, Mitis tried to find street signs to figure out where we were exactly. “There’s Eighty-fourth!”

I steered the car to the side of the road. “What are you doing?” Mitis yelled, hanging onto a grip on the roof near his door.

“Parking.”
Duh.

“We aren’t there yet.”

“I know. I just want to get out of this thing.” It was too much. There was no air circulating. I needed out. Now.

Putting the vehicle in park, I grabbed the keys and dashed outside to avoid him, my shoes hitting the pavement and my breath erratic. He couldn’t see me like this. Sweat soaked into my sweater and tights. If he knew I was getting sicker, he would tell me we were going home. That wasn’t happening. I was going to the warehouse.

So I gave myself a reason to be sweaty. I ran.

“Seven?”

What street did he say it was on?

Feet pounded the pavement behind me. They were coming fast. I turned to look over my shoulder. Mitis was gaining on me. I couldn’t let him catch me.

“What street?” I shouted.

“Stop!”

“No! What street?”

He growled. “Eighty-fourth and Second.”

I kept running. Another block. Then another. When I saw the sign for eighty-fourth, I almost jumped for joy and I guess I’d forgotten about Mitis, because he almost tackled me. Steel arms caged me. “Why are you running from me?”

Giggling, I let my lungs expand as much as his arms would allow. “I wasn’t…running…from you, Mitis. I was just running.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, traveling across the sky in our direction. It had been clear when we left home. I hadn’t noticed the thickening clouds at the bonfire, but they were tall, the billowing columns illuminated by the electric storm. We weren’t there for more than a couple of hours. This storm was blowing in fast, which meant it would be intense. Lightning struck one of the spires atop a skyscraper in City Center, raising the hair on my arms and neck. Mitis eased his grip, but didn’t let me go.

“It’s another four blocks to Second Street.” Lightning flashed again, this time spidering across the sky in a beautiful and intricate web of electricity. “We should go,” he urged.

“Yeah. Let’s go.” I started walking in the direction I thought Second Street was located, but his deep, rumbling laughter filled the air.

He jerked his thumb in the opposite direction. “It’s this way.”

I smiled and sauntered past him, swaying my hips dramatically. He reached out for me, but I dodged him and kept walking.

“What do you think you’re doing, Seven?”

“Walking.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game.”

I laughed out loud. A fat raindrop splatted on the skin of my left cheek. Another hit my forehead. Maybe the cold sweats were over. Maybe a fever, a delirium had set in.

“I don’t have time to play games with you, or anyone else, Mitis. Tonight, I just want to feel alive.”

Mitis’s calloused hand found mine. Instead of tugging me along, he just held it in his own and stood beside me watching nature’s brilliant fireworks display, listening to its anger, to its power. His voice, though soft cut through the noise. “Why haven’t you marked it off?”

My brows pinched together.

He continued. “Number sixteen. Why haven’t you marked it off the list? We’ve held hands plenty of times.”

I shook my head and smiled. “Not the type of hand-holding I meant.”

“What kind did you mean?”

“The kind that means more than just holding a hand—the kind that means you never want to let go of it, that you’d do anything to touch the other person.” I swallowed, soaking in the scattered raindrops and truth.

He scowled. “You want love.”

I shook my head. “No. I want passion. I don’t have time for love, not the real kind.”

Mitis’s face scrunched up. It did that whenever he didn’t understand my peculiarity. “You don’t think the ‘real kind’ can happen in an instant? You don’t believe in love at first sight, like most girls?”

Did I believe it? If you’d asked me a month ago, I would have laughed at the absurdity. Of course, love wasn’t formed in an instant. Lust? Sure. Attraction? Definitely. But true love? No way. Not possible. What scared me the most was that Mitis was bending my definition of the word itself.

Love. The act of unselfishly caring for another person. I loved Mitis. I knew it in my heart. But I could never speak it. I couldn’t give it the power that words could carry. If he felt even a tiny fraction of love for me, it wouldn’t be fair to tell him that I loved him. If the emotion, this intense feeling and fluttering inside my heart and stomach that happened when he looked at me and when he touched me was love, I couldn’t let him reciprocate only to rip his heart out when I left. And I was leaving soon. I could feel it.

“I’m not like most girls, I guess.” It was true, and the only way to say anything at all without it being a lie that slipped off my tongue, slick as silk.

One side of his mouth tipped up. “No, you’re not. And that’s a very good thing.”

The rain began to fall harder, darkening the concrete sidewalk with wide splashes of water. I tugged him forward and he fell into step.

His deep voice cut through the sounds of the storm building around us. “For the record, I don’t want to let go tonight.”

“Of what?”

Mitis glanced over at me as we walked passed the dilapidated buildings, paint peels curling off the blocks of cinder that now crumbled, though they’d once been so strong. “You.”

I stayed quiet, processing what he’d just said.

“I didn’t want to dance with Sonnet. I just didn’t want to cause a scene. You were marking something off your list.”

He’d stayed quiet to give me a moment, a memory. “Any man would enjoy Sonnet’s attention.”

Mitis frowned. “I’m not just any man, Seven.”

I sighed. “I know that.”
And that is what makes this so damn hard, Mitis.

It began to rain in earnest as we came upon Second Street. Rivulets of water ran out of Mitis’s hair, onto his cheeks and dripped off his chin. I probably looked the same. Actually, I probably looked like a soaked rat. My hair looked stringy when wet.

The alley was just ahead. A streetlamp flickered, casting its orange glow on us sporadically. Mitis pulled my hand. He’d stopped and was smiling at me. “What is it?”

“Come here.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

I took the two tiny steps toward him only to have him snake his arm around my back and pull me tight against his body. “Aric got your first dance, but I get your first dance in the rain.”

There was no music, but we swayed to an inaudible beat, in perfect rhythm with each other. And we stayed that way until a group of teenagers, none of whom I recognized, passed by giggling into the shadows cast by the alley that had swallowed them up.

Pulling away from him, I nodded toward the darkness. We let it swallow us, too.

Between two abandoned-looking buildings, was a painted, canary-yellow door. Two men, the size of Mitis’s friend Cason stood sentry. They were intimidating with hulking muscles and sour expressions. When we approached, their eyes combed over us. “Who are you?” The man on the right directed the question at me.

“A friend of Michael Dillon’s.” I squared my shoulders and squeezed Mitis’s fingers. He didn’t even flinch.

“Mike?” The giant nodded his head and smiled, looking us both over. “Have fun, you two. But I don’t want any trouble from your pet.”

I stepped toward him. “This is Mitis, my companion. He is not a pet.”

Both gargantuan men chuckled, but pulled the doors open for us. I could feel the tension now rolling off of Mitis and wished they’d kept their big mouths shut.

A low bass filled the air, pulsated every metal stair underfoot, as we descended a long, spiraling staircase into a mass of writhing bodies. It smelled of stale sweat and alcohol, punctuated with wafts of perfume from girls who passed us by on their way to the floor, unable to contain their impatience and walk behind us.