Keira stared down at the package of cookies in her lap. “But crossing back and forth doesn’t make you hungry anymore?”
Walker leaned back in the worn chair. “True. I’ve done it too many times. And to be honest, I don’t really like the food here. Darkside stuff tastes way better. It’s nothing to look at, but it’s delicious.”
“What’s it like?” She recalled the fruit she’d seen in her living room.
“Fruits and vegetables, I guess you’d call them. There are huge orchards near here where we grow a lot of . . . well. You don’t have a word for them, I don’t think. But they’re sweet and kind of creamy. I guess you’d call us vegans?”
“You don’t eat meat? Wait. You had pot roast the other night.”
“Yeah. It’s not that Darklings don’t want to eat meat. There are hardly any animals Darkside, and even if you could find one, you wouldn’t want to eat it.” He shuddered.
“So, you miss it?”
“I miss the food, yeah. But there’s not much else left for me over there. My parents are gone. I never had many friends, since no one else’s parents approved of my family.” His eyes were rueful. “It was so easy to say yes, when the Reformers got ahold of me after my parents died. They made it seem like finding the Experimental would fix everything. That I’d be important. That I’d have a place in the world again. And by the time I realized they were wrong, I was stuck.”
It took Keira two tries to swallow the cookies in her mouth.
“Stuck how?”
“Stuck between, I guess. I don’t belong there, and I don’t belong here.” His shoulders slumped. “And then I found you. You’re beautiful and talented, but other than that”—he gave her a small smile—“you’re just like me. You know what it feels like to be stuck. To not belong wherever you are.”
He was right. Keira’d never felt like she was in the right place. She’d been working her whole life to get out—to get away. It had never occurred to her that she might feel equally misplaced once she got out of Sherwin.
Walker looked at her, spreading his palms open. “When I found you, really found you, it was the first time since my parents died that I didn’t feel alone.”
“Oh. Oh.” It was so exactly how Keira felt that she could barely breathe.
“Oh good or oh bad?”
“Good. No, really good. I hadn’t put it into words before. But that’s exactly it.”
Walker looked so relieved that it made her chest ache.
“Did you really think I’d break all of my own rules just because you were cute?” She sighed. “I wish we weren’t both so stuck. And I’m not talking about Sherwin.”
“I know. But we will figure it out. I swear.”
Keira stared around the room, her head full of questions she didn’t want to ask. She wanted things to be as normal as they looked. A shabby bed. A dented brass lamp. A glowing digital clock.
“Oh, crap! Is that really the time?!” Keira leapt off the bed, barely catching the towel before it fell.
“Yep,” Walker said. “So, what are we going to do about your mom?”
The way he said we made Keira feel calmer. Whatever happened next, she wouldn’t have to deal with it alone. She’d always pictured herself facing the hard things in her future on her own. Partnerless. Practically friendless. Sure, Susan would be in the background—a phone call away, if they needed each other.
Keira sure as hell needed Susan now. If Susan covered for her, then Keira’s mom wouldn’t freak out when she didn’t come home that night.
“Call her and ask,” Walker said.
Keira jumped like he’d slid an ice cube down her neck.
“Jesus Christ, don’t tell me you’re psychic, too.”
“Nope. But if you’re trying to pull one over on your mom, who do you call? Your best friend. I just did the math.” He tapped his temple.
“I don’t know if I can ask her to lie for me like that.”
Walker shrugged. “If you want, you can tell her you ran away to join the circus. But it’s your call. If you’d rather tell her the truth . . . ”
The thought turned Keira’s stomach. “She’d send me off to the mental ward before you could say ‘schizophrenic.’ I’ll call Susan.”
With each ring, her heart beat lower in her rib cage. When the voice mail message came on, Keira squeezed her eyes shut.
“Hey, it’s me,” Keira said. There was no way to even begin to explain what had happened. “God, I didn’t want to leave this on a voice mail. Things are really screwed up. I need your help. I mean, really genuinely life-or-death need your help. If either of my parents call you, please, please, please tell them I’m at your house. I can’t say why right now but . . . ” She bit her lip. She was asking a lot of Susan. Maybe she did owe her some of the truth. “If you can call me, I swear I’ll try to answer. I have a lot of things to explain to you. Until then, please cover for me. I’m begging you.”
She ended the call and looked at Walker. “How much can I tell her?”