The Darkest Minds (55 page)

I felt so much older, then. Not sixteen, not sixty, not even a hundred, but a thousand years old. Older, but not brittle. I felt like one of the oak trees that grew along the highway overlooking the Shenandoah Valley, with deep roots and a strong core.

He gets to go, I thought. He gets to go home.

For a long time I did nothing but hold on to him. I wanted to memorize the way his hair curled at the ends, the scar at the edge of his lips. I had never felt time’s sting as sharply as I did then. Why did it only ever seem to freeze or move forward at a barreling speed?

“The crazy thing is, I had all of these plans,” he whispered. “What we were going to do. All the places I was going to take you. I really wanted you to meet Harry.” The window breathed in afternoon light. I felt his hand trail down the length of my arm. “We’ll be okay,” Liam said. “We just can’t let them separate us.”

“They won’t,” I whispered. “I was thinking…I know this is going to sound so corny, but…if there’s one good thing that came out of all this, it was that I got to meet you. I would go through it all again—” Tears pricked my eyes. “I would, as long as it meant I’d met you.”

“You really think that?” Liam sat up and pressed his lips against my hair. “’Cause, frankly, the way I see it, you and me? Inevitable. Let’s say we didn’t get stuck in those god-awful camps—no, just listen. I’m going to tell you the amazing story of us.”

Liam cleared his throat again and turned to fully face me. “So, it’s the summer and you’re in Salem, suffering through another boring, hot July, and working part-time at an ice cream parlor. Naturally, you’re completely oblivious to the fact that all of the boys from your high school who visit daily are more interested in you than the thirty-one flavors. You’re focused on school and all your dozens of clubs, because you want to go to a good college and save the world. And just when you think you’re going to die if you have to take another practice SAT, your dad asks if you want to go visit your grandmother in Virginia Beach.”

“Yeah?” I leaned my forehead against his chest. “What about you?”

“Me?” Liam said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m in Wilmington, suffering through another boring, hot summer, working one last time in Harry’s repair shop before going off to some fancy university—where, I might add, my roommate will be a stuck-up-know-it-all-with-a-heart-of-gold named Charles Carrington Meriwether IV—but he’s not part of this story, not yet.” His fingers curled around my hip, and I could feel him trembling, even as his voice was steady. “To celebrate, Mom decides to take us up to Virginia Beach for a week. We’re only there for a day when I start catching glimpses of this girl with dark hair walking around town, her nose stuck in a book, earbuds in and blasting music. But no matter how hard I try, I never get to talk to her.

“Then, as our friend Fate would have it, on our very last day at the beach I spot her. You. I’m in the middle of playing a volleyball game with Harry, but it feels like everyone else disappears. You’re walking toward me, big sunglasses on, wearing this light green dress, and I somehow know that it matches your eyes. And then, because, let’s face it, I’m basically an Olympic god when it comes to sports, I manage to volley the ball right into your face.”

“Ouch,” I said with a light laugh. “Sounds painful.”

“Well, you can probably guess how I’d react to that situation. I offer to carry you to the lifeguard station, but you look like you want to murder me at just the suggestion. Eventually, thanks to my sparkling charm and wit—and because I’m so pathetic you take pity on me—you let me buy you ice cream. And then you start telling me how you work in an ice cream shop in Salem, and how frustrated you feel that you still have two years before college. And somehow,
somehow
, I get your e-mail or screen name or maybe, if I’m really lucky, your phone number. Then we talk. I go to college and you go back to Salem, but we talk all the time, about everything, and sometimes we do that stupid thing where we run out of things to say and just stop talking and listen to one another breathing until one of us falls asleep—”

“—and Chubs makes fun of you for it,” I added.

“Oh, ruthlessly,” he agreed. “And your dad hates me because he thinks I’m corrupting his beautiful, sweet daughter, but still lets me visit from time to time. That’s when you tell me about tutoring a girl named Suzume, who lives a few cities away—”

“—but who’s the coolest little girl on the planet,” I manage to squeeze out.

“Yup,” Liam said. “Wanna try for the ending?”

By then, I couldn’t help myself. I brought both hands up to my face, pressing my fingers against my eyes.

I had to do it now, or I never would. We couldn’t hide up here forever. They could change their mind about his leaving as quickly as they had the first time.

I sat up and wiped the tears off my face, gritting my teeth. Liam pushed himself up so that he was sitting beside me on the edge of the bed, a concerned look on his face. For a moment I was terrified that he knew what I was about to do.

He tilted his head to the side, a small smile turning up the corner of his lips. I tried to smile back, but inside I was breaking apart. “What?”

When they brought us to the camps, they took everything. They stripped away our friends and family, took our clothes, took our future. They only thing we got to keep were our memories, and now I was about to take those from him, too.

“Close your eyes,” I whispered. “I’m going to finish the story.”

I felt the trickle at the back of my mind and let it turn into a roar. And when I kissed him, when my lips pressed against his one last time, slipping inside of his mind was as easy as taking his hand had been.

I felt him jerk back, heard him say my name in alarm, but I didn’t let him get away. I pulled myself from his mind, day by day, piece by piece, memory by memory, until there was nothing of Ruby left to weigh him down or keep him bound to my side. It was a strange unwinding sensation, one I had never felt before, or maybe one I never recognized until that moment.

The problem of Chubs rose in the back of my mind, and I had a split-second to make a decision. If he was alive—and he had to be, there was no alternative for me—the League would bring him in. But if Liam knew that, he’d come back to find a way to get him out, and the deal would be for nothing.

I would take care of Chubs.
I
would be the one to help him give the League the slip. There was no reason why Liam couldn’t think that his friend had made it home to his parents; no reason he needed another distraction from getting home himself. It was a simple adjustment, a quick patch over an ugly memory.…

And then I was out of air and out of time. The door behind me opened and I pulled away from Liam. He stayed board stiff, his hands resting on his knees, his eyes shut tight. Cate looked back and forth between us, her brows drawing together. I stood and moved to her side.

A moment later, Liam’s bright blue eyes opened, and he was seeing me. He just wasn’t seeing Ruby.

“What happened?” he asked, looking between Cate and me. He reached up to touch his face, which was still swollen and battered.

“You had a car accident,” I said. “The League picked you up.”

Cate stiffened beside me; I caught the sudden comprehension fall over her features, out of the corner of my eye.

“The League…” he repeated, his eyes narrowing.

“Yes, but if you feel well enough, you can go,” Cate said, when she recovered. “Your brother asked us to give you some money for a bus ticket.”

“I bet he did,” Liam grumbled as he searched the ground for his shoes. “Why can’t I remember the accident?”

I’m not sure Cate realized how plainly she was wearing the shock on her face. Her hand floated up toward my shoulder—to steady me, or herself, I wasn’t sure—but I stepped away.

“Does your head still hurt?” I managed to choke out. I was still wearing his jacket. I couldn’t bring myself to take it off. “You hit it pretty hard.”

“A little,” he admitted. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, his brows drawn together in concentration. “And the League is just letting me go?”

Cate nodded and threw him an envelope. Liam threw it right back to her.

“I don’t want your money.”

“The procedure to contact your parents is also in here,” she said.

“Don’t want it,” he said. “Don’t need it.”

“What am I supposed to tell Cole?”

Liam drew himself up on unsteady legs. “Tell him to come home, and then we can talk.” He turned to me. “What about you? Are you really one of them? You look like you have a lot more sense than that.”

Wordlessly, I took the envelope from Cate. When I pressed it into his hand, he didn’t toss it back at me. “You’d better get going.”

“I’m not going to thank you,” he told us. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

Cate led him out into the hall. “You didn’t have to, and you never need to.”

He started down the stairs.

“Hey—” I called. Liam stopped, turning back up to look at me. “Be careful.”

His blue eyes flicked back and forth between Cate and me. “You too, darlin’.”

I watched him go, from the window overlooking the street, following his familiar shape as he stepped outside and closed the door behind him. No car, no one to watch over, no one to help. He was completely free.

And he looked happy. Sure of himself, at least. His feet instinctively knew what direction home was. Now there was nothing left to keep him from getting there.

Liam passed through the white fence surrounding the house and stepped onto the sidewalk. He flipped the sweatshirt hood up over his head and glanced both ways before jogging across the street. I watched him grow smaller and smaller with each step.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies
, I thought,
and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning.

Be cunning and full of tricks, and your people shall never be destroyed.

Cate came up behind me, stroking a hand through my hair. “You’ll be happy with us,” she said. “I’ll take care of you.”

I drew the gauzy curtains shut, my fingers sliding over their silky surface. I watched her for a moment, searching for the tell that would reveal her lie. I wondered if she still thought I was the girl she had carried out of Thurmond, who had cried the first time she’d seen the stars.

Because she didn’t know that there were two of me now; split between everything I had wanted, and everything I would now have to be. One of me, the hardest, angriest part, would stay with these monsters and slowly find herself twisting into their shape. But there was another, secret Ruby. This one was as thin as a wisp of air, and had struggled for so long just to be. This was the one that Liam carried with him, without knowing. The one that would ride in his back pocket, whisper words of encouragement, tell him that he was born to chase the light.

For the first time in months, I heard Sam’s voice whisper in my ear:
Don’t be scared. Don’t let them see.

I turned from the window, and I didn’t look back.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A
S THE OLD SONG GOES
, “I get by with a little help from my friends,” and that’s definitely the case here. My thanks to:

My family, of course, for a lifetime of love and support. You inspire me every day.

Merrilee Heifetz, my amazing agent, who worked tirelessly on behalf of this project and was behind it in an amazing way from the start. Likewise, thanks are owed to Genevieve Gagne-Hawes for her early feedback, all of which helped shaped the story into what it is today.

The whole team at Hyperion, especially my editor, Emily Meehan. Both she and Laura Schreiber have taken incredible care of this story, and not a day goes by that I don’t stop and think how lucky I am to work with such talent.

My early readers, in particular Sarah J. Maas, who cried and laughed in all the right places, and Carlin Hauck, who helped back my imagination up with actual science.

Everyone at RHCB, for their unwavering support, interest, and understanding.

And, finally, there are no adequate words in the English language to convey how thankful I am to Anna Jarzab for loving this story as much as I do. I’m blessed to have you as a champion, but even more privileged to call you my friend.