Parched (21 page)

“You were a straw?”

I explain the story. The boys both liked Izzy, and worked out the best way to get to her was a double date. Like an idiot, I thought Joey was actually into me. We got spicy noodles in Charity then watched a stream artist weave patterns of music and color. Sometime around midnight, when the night was velvety and the stars looked brighter than usual, Joey kissed me. My first kiss ever. Then he asked if I thought Izzy would ever go out with him.

“Joey Lucas sounds like an idiot,” Hunter observes.

I shrug, picking at my cuticles. “Whatever. Learned my lesson there. You know,” I add tentatively, “I've never told anyone that story.”

“Too humiliating?” he guesses, and I nod. “For what it's worth,” he says, “I can't imagine you being anyone's short straw.”

My cheeks start to tingle warmly. “Thanks.”

His gaze moves with uncharacteristic slowness all around my face. “You're very interesting, Tess.”

“Interesting?”

“You're full of contradictions.” He props his chin onto one hand, eyes narrowed in concentration. “When we met, you pulled a knife on me—” I groan with embarrassed laughter. “But you're also quite sensitive. You love your friend Izzy, but you won't bend to her will. You can be guarded; you can also be open. You seem determined to challenge the authority of the Trust yet you don't break any laws. Sometimes you seem shy. Sometimes you're the most confident person I've ever met.”

“What you're saying is, I'm a mess.”

“No. No!” he exclaims. “Not at all. I'm saying you're interesting.” He reaches over and squeezes one of my hands. I flinch and gasp in pain.

“Are you okay?” he asks, instantly concerned.

“I'm fine.” I curl my fingers inward to hide the blisters. “Just had an intense workout today.”

He leans forward to get a better look at my hands. “May I?”

Oh so gently, he turns my hands over and examines them. This is the first time Hunter has touched me. He's so close I can smell him—a sharp, woodsy, clean smell. Like peppermint mixed with ash. Cologne? Shampoo? I'm not sure, but it's sort of intoxicating and makes me feel strangely hungry, even though I just ate.

Hunter runs one long finger over the reddest, sorest part of my palm. I catch myself flinching both at the soreness and the feather-light touch. “How did this happen?” he asks.

“I kind of fell down a rope,” I confess. My voice isn't much more than a whisper. “Not very graceful. They're fine, really.”

He glances up from my palms, studying me. But then his look changes from a fact-finding mission and into . . . a gaze. His eyes soften. His whole face softens, like sunlight slowly warming a dark space. His hands shift beneath mine, as if exploring what it's like to touch me. A surge of energy rockets between us, landing as a soft slow explosion in my chest. We're staring at each other. My breath trips in my throat.

Hunter drops my hands. His tenderness vanishes as fast as a buzzcar.

“If you say so,” he says. The wall is back, but this time he's thrown in a moat for good measure. “We're done here.” He gets up and starts heading toward Abel's study.

“Hunter!” I call after him, getting to my feet.

He turns to meet my eyes blankly. “What?”

“You don't have to be weird about it,” I tell him hotly.

“About what?”

I roll my eyes. “Nothing, obviously. I just want to make sure we're okay.”

“Of course we are,” he replies, in a way that makes me sure that the exact opposite is true. Without another word, he turns and leaves the room.

I sink back down at the dining room table, reeling.

What.

Was.

That?

When
I come home the next day, I'm mentally prepared to find my socially awkward babysitter encased in a metal cage surrounded by snarling guard dogs or perhaps strung up from the ceiling, armed with a pointy stick. But instead, I find . . . nothing. Hunter isn't here.

Or the day after that.

Or the day after that.

When I ask Abel, he tells me he hasn't spoken to him about it, but he believes Hunter is just “very busy” right now. “He has a lot of other commitments, and I suppose I was overworking him,” he tells me between forkfuls of frittata. “He said to pass on his apologies.”

“So, did you speak to him or not?” I ask.

Abel blinks. “I did,” he says, after a beat. He squirms in his seat, clearly uncomfortable. “I'll talk to him, if you'd like—”

“Don't bother.”

I focus all my energy into become a faster, stronger, and better version of myself at Milkwood. I get Ling to pick me up an hour earlier from the filtration plant. I don't spend as much time hanging out with everyone at lunch. Instead I focus on roping, running, and fighting. I get my time on the obstacle course down to four and half minutes. Lana literally has tears in her eyes when she tells me, repeating over and over again that she knew I could it.

A week ago, a bleary-eyed Achilles told us he'd have the Liamond system cracked by Sunday night. A week ago, that seemed like a long way away. But now, the future has caught up with us.

As usual, it's a flawlessly beautiful day.

When I arrive at Milkwood, I'm eager to find out whether Achilles has done it, but I'm informed genius boy has requested we do not disturb said genius. Lana and Benji decide against overexerting me, so
instead I spend the morning learning a sailor's knot, which is strong enough to take a person's entire weight for fast-roping. When I point out that our plan doesn't involve me having to tie one of these, Lana shrugs breezily. “Better safe than sorry! Besides, isn't it kind of fun?”

I'm in the middle of tying that damn knot for the twentieth time when the back door bangs open. Achilles stands in the doorway, face pale and eyes sunken, arms flung open in a posture ready to receive adulation. “Ladies and gentleman,” he calls, instantly quieting the chatter of the backyard.
“It is done.”

“All right, Chilly!” whoops Benji, the first of many to descend on our skinny tech king. In a blur of cheers and hollers and bumped fists, the reality of what this means floods through me.

It's happening.

Tonight.

Ling stands off to the side of the hugfest enveloping Achilles, slicing off pieces of apple with a small silver knife and chewing meditatively. She looks calm and clear-eyed. She looks like a leader. When I catch her eye, she nods at me in slow confidence.

The late afternoon at Milkwood turns quiet. Ling instructs everyone to sleep or at least rest, in order to gear up for the night ahead. She tells me she has to go over some last-minute logistics with Achilles before giving me a ride back, so with no one to talk to and nothing to do, I decide to check out Moon Lake. Henny shows me the entrance to the twisting, narrow trail that cuts through the scrub. When I make it to the water's edge, I kick myself for not coming down here sooner.

The sun is starting to set and the hazy dusk is turning everything photogram pretty in musky shades of pink and purple. Pocket-sized brown birds hop in and out of the tall reeds that grow around the water's edge. I sink down and dig my fingers into the silty mud, as rich and dark as chocolate cake. The water laps gently at the shore, rhythmic and relaxing. It is so clear I can see tiny iridescent fish moving in a school in the shallows.

“Tess!” Ling calls, breaking my reverie. “There you are!”

“Just admiring the view,” I call back.

She comes over to sit down beside me. “Bo and I come down here sometimes,” she says. “It's a good place to get away.”

“Not exactly private up there, right?”

She chuckles. “Not exactly.” A few elegant blue herons sail in overhead,
landing with a quiet splish. Ling cuts me a curious glance. “What about you?”

“What about me what?”

“Any guy you're thinking about looking up now you're back?”

“No.” It comes out faster and harsher than I intended.

“A girl?”

I shake my head. “No guy. No girl.”

“Okay.” Ling blinks, turning her gaze back out to the lake. I immediately feel bad.

“I guess there's kind of someone,” I hedge. “In a very maybe kind of way.”

Her eyes light up. “Really? Someone from Kudzu?”

“No.” I smile. “His name's Hunter.” I skim over the basics: older than me, at post-ed in the South Hills, tall, smart, shy, nice hands.

“Mmm, I love nice hands,” Ling agrees. We both giggle. “So, he's an old friend of yours?”

“No, he's my uncle's assistant,” I say. “From post-education. He's been tutoring me, actually, in the evenings—”

“Your uncle's assistant?” Ling interrupts me.

“From post-ed,” I repeat.

“He's been tutoring you?”

“Yeah, every night.” I sigh. “We just go over education topics, nothing fancy.”

“What do you talk about? Just school stuff?” Ling is tense and on guard.

“No, not exactly,” I reply, confused. “We talk about Eden, sometimes the Trust.“

“Have you told him about Kudzu?”

“What?”

“Have you told him about—”

“No!” I exclaim angrily. “No, of course not!”

“How do you know,” Ling asks in a tone that sounds very much like alarm, “that he's not from Simutech?”

“Simutech?” I repeat. I laugh, bewildered. “No. And even if he was, why on earth would Abel—”

“Maybe Abel's spying on you,” Ling says, spookily calm. “Maybe he knows you were in his basement. Maybe he knows you're with us.”

Everything stops.

No. Hunter's not from Simutech. He can't be. He's a student. But even as I tell myself this, doubt creeps over me.

Is that why Abel insisted we spend time together, so Hunter can find out what I know? Or to keep me away from Abel? Is Abel watching me?

Has Hunter been lying to me?

“He's too young,” I find myself saying, my mouth coming to the realization before my brain does. “He'd have to be a post-ed graduate to qualify for a work choice like that.”

“Maybe he's older than he looks.” Ling shrugs. “If he's so smart, maybe your uncle had the Trust make an exception.”

I shake my head. “No. There's no way. He's
Hunter
. He's a geek, he's a total nerd—”

“Sounds like the sort of guy that'd be working for Simutech.”

Why did I never check this out? Why did I never ask to see his schedule or tell me who is his favorite teacher is? Why have I never seen any evidence of him having come from class?

Because I trust him
.

“This might sound extreme to you, but I don't want you talking to any strangers about anything right now,” Ling says fiercely. “We're all about to risk being banished if we're caught—”

“It doesn't matter,” I interrupt her, my voice bright and brassy with nerves. “He's disappeared. I haven't seen him all week.”

“Good,” Ling says brusquely. “If I'd known about this, I would have put a stop to it. We can't compromise everyone's safety.”

The more I think about it, the more unlikely it seems. If Hunter was actually watching me for a reason other than tutoring, how could he bail after a moment of whatever-that-was? Hunter just isn't into me. So much so that one moment of unexpected warmth sent him running for the hills. The South Hills. Where he is a normal science geek, just like all the other guys.

Isn't he?

“Don't worry about it.” Ling reaches over to give my shoulder a quick squeeze. “You're new to this. Let's drop it.”

The herons take off from the glassy surface of the lake, wheeling off into the lilac sky. A minute passes and the topic of Hunter fades with the dying light.

I glance at Ling. “Why did you join Kudzu?”

Ling is silent for a few moments. “Naz isn't the only one with family in the Badlands. I have an older sister, Sanako . . .” She trails off, gazing out again across the lake.

“Where is she?”

“Last I heard, she was near you,” Ling replies. “Another reason I decided to go to the Badlands.”

“Why is she out there?”

“Because I let her go,” Ling says harshly. “Alone.” There are tears in her voice. She twists to face me, eyes brimming. “Remember when you asked me if I'd ever killed anyone?”

Before I know what's happening, she's on her feet, striding off.

“Ling, wait!” I scramble to follow her, catching up in a few steps.

Reluctantly, she turns to face me. She lets out an unsteady breath, then lifts her eyes to meet mine. “Sanako predicted Gyan would cut off Moon Lake long before it was announced. She was clever that way. She could read the Trust like no one else could. She wanted to be out there when it happened. She wanted me to come with her.” Ling's lower lip trembles. “I said no. I wasn't as involved with Kudzu as she was.” Her voice is thick with self-loathing. “She was so much braver than I am. I should have gone with her. I should have helped.”

“How long's it been since you had contact?”

“Nobody's heard from her in a year.” Ling's voice is as small as the brown birds that hop quietly around the reeds. “She would've turned eighteen last month.”

Sanako might be alive. It is hard to stay in touch with people in Eden without scratch and off-cycle. But both of us know the odds aren't in her favor.

“That's why we have to do this, Tess,” Ling says. “Not just Aevum, but the bigger picture.”

“Open the borders,” I say.

She nods seriously. “Save the Badlands.”

And save Sanako. Maybe. If she's still alive.

Another long moment passes. Then Ling asks me, “Do you know what kudzu is, Tess? The word, I mean.”