“Doesn’t matter,” he murmured, running his fingers through my hair. “I would know something was missing. I would know my life was pointless, even if I never understood why. Even if we’d never met, even if you never existed, I would still love you beyond all reason for the rest of my life.”
I kissed him, pouring every ounce of my frustration and anger into it. The sewer wasn’t exactly romantic, but with Benjy there, I didn’t care. He understood. He always understood, and in that moment, I needed him more than I could ever explain. The government might not have thought I was worth anything, but I was worth something to Benjy, and that should’ve been all that mattered.
At last I pulled away and cleared my throat. The lump was gone. “You won’t have any problem with it,” I promised. “You’ll finish early and still get a VI.”
“If you couldn’t get a IV, then there’s no hope for me,” said Benjy. I snorted.
“Please. Someday we’ll all be bowing and scraping and calling you Minister.” If anyone from our group home got a VI, the highest rank a citizen could receive, it was Benjy. The test wasn’t designed for my kind of intelligence,but it was tailor-made for his.
He slipped his arm around my waist and led me farther through the sewer, but he didn’t disagree. Even he knew how smart he was. “Did you get your assignment?”
“Sewage maintenance.”
“That’s not so bad. We’re down here all the time anyway,” he said, slipping his hand under the hem of my shirt. I pushed it away.
“In Denver.”
Benjy said nothing. Denver was so far away that neither of us knew where it was. To the west, more than likely, because the only thing east of D.C. was the ocean, but I’d never seen a map of anything bigger than the city. The only bright side was that Denver couldn’t possibly be as crowded as it was here.
“I’m going to talk to Tabs,” I said, and Benjy stopped cold in his tracks.
“Don’t. Wait until I take my test. Nina will let you stay at the group home, and then I can support you.”
“Nina won’t commit assignment fraud for me, and I won’t let you do it, either,” I said. “If they find out you’re hiding me, they’ll send me Elsewhere and kill you in front of the entire country. It’s not happening.”
“Then Nina can give me permission to get married,” he said, and my mouth dropped open.
“Are you crazy?”
“No,” he said. “I love you, and I won’t let them separate us. If that means getting married earlier than I’d planned, then so be it.” He paused. “Do you not want to marry me?”
“Of course I want to marry you, but you haven’t even taken the test yet, and what if being married to a III affects your rank? I can’t do that to you, Benjy. You deserve better than that.”
“What do I deserve, Kitty? To lose you? I don’t care about the consequences.”
At least he hadn’t fooled himself into thinking there wouldn’t be any. “You’d never let me risk myself like that for you, so I can’t let you, either,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “I’ve already made my decision.”
“Kitty.” He held his arm up to stop me, and when I started to move past him, he wrapped it around my waist again and pulled me closer. “I’m not going to let you do this to yourself.”
I tried to push him away, but his grip tightened. “I’m the one who has to clean up shit for a living, not you. You don’t get a say.”
“We can run away,” he said. “We can go somewhere warm. Have our own cottage, grow our own food—”
“Neither of us knows anything about farming. Besides, if a place like that exists, the Harts would have claimed it by now.”
“You don’t know that for sure. There’s hope, Kitty. There’s always hope. Please,” he said quietly. “For me.”
The way he watched me, silently begging me to say yes, almost made me change my mind, but I couldn’t do that to him. Running away would mean he would miss his test, and no mark at all was as good as a I.
I’d failed, but he still had his chance, and I couldn’t let him throw his life away for me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. His face crumpled, and he turned away, dropping his arm. The cold seeped in where he’d touched me only moments before, and my heart sank. I would have done anything to make him happy, but because of my stupid III, I was going to hurt him no matter what I did. At least this way I would be the one risking everything, not him.
Every bone in my body screamed at me to run away with him, to get as far from D.C. as we could, but as we climbed the ladder to the manhole that opened up half a block from the group home, I knew two things for certain: Benjy would spend the entire afternoon trying to talk me into not going with Tabs, and I would do it anyway.
* * *