I wouldn’t have thought those things made me a leader, but the way O’Malley pointed them out makes it sound so obvious.
Maybe Yong wants to argue, but there’s nothing to argue against.
“Whatever,” he says, and leans on a coffin. He looks away, taking in the aisle of dust as if it bores him only slightly less than we do.
Spingate walks to me, offers me the tool. She doesn’t need to say why—the leader should carry it.
“You can be in charge, Em,” she says. She looks at Bello and Aramovsky. “Don’t you think Em should be in charge?”
A tooth-girl wants me to lead? My blurry memories tell me that’s an impossibility, and yet I see it with my own eyes.
Bello and Aramovsky glance at each other. Her hand-over-hand fussing starts up again.
“Until we find the grownups,” she says quietly. “Em can be in charge until we find the grownups.”
Aramovsky clearly doesn’t agree, but he stays quiet.
I take the tool from Spingate. I smile at her. She smiles back.
O’Malley is staring at me. Those blue eyes lock me in, make me feel jittery. When he looks at me, does his stomach tingle the way mine does when I look at him? He defended me. Why? Does he really think I could be a good leader?
He gives me a small smile, then he shrugs.
“I guess it’s up to you, Em. What do we do now?”
What do we do? How should I know? I’m in charge, but I realize that in the whole exchange I never asked to be in charge. That doesn’t seem to matter—everyone is waiting for me to make a decision.
So I make one.
“First, we get out of this room.”
I walk to the archway. The others follow close behind. Yong waits until we stand before it, then he joins us.
The archway is made of rust-caked metal, covered in dusty symbols just like the walls and coffins. What I thought might be doors are two slabs of stone, pressed together so tightly the vertical line separating them could be mistaken for a thin scratch. I don’t see any handles, any way to open them.
“Promising,” Aramovsky says. “Your leadership is off to a wonderful start.”
I ignore him.
Spingate steps forward and wipes dust from the archway’s right side, revealing sparkling gemstones set into the flaking metal.
Her lips move. I wait while she thinks.
“It’s similar to the coffins,” she says finally. “I push these three red jewels—”
She presses them, one, two, three, each jewel moving down a tiny bit until it clicks.
Below the jewels, a small panel pops open. Inside are two holes, same as we saw in the coffins.
Spingate claps and jumps up and down, delighted with her discovery.
I look at her, amazed. “How do you know how to do that?”
She bites her lower lip. Her eyebrows go up, then she shakes her head and shrugs.
“I don’t know. It seems…kind of obvious, somehow.” She points to a row of three red jewels on the tool’s shaft. “Press those—one, two, three—then use it to open the door.”
I pause a moment before doing so. If this doesn’t work, if the doors won’t open, I have no idea what we do next. Some leader I am.
I press the red jewels: one, two, three. I slide the tool’s prongs into the holes, feel a small vibration as something locks tight. The tool has become a handle. I lift it, feel an initial, wiggling resistance. I gradually increase the pressure until something hidden and frozen seems to break free, then the tool rises smoothly and clanks to a stop.
The floor shudders, the walls groan. A light shower of dust rains down from the ceiling.
A loud clang echoes through the air. The door-halves slide open a grinding fraction of an inch, making the entire room vibrate.
Outside our coffin room, the light is brighter.
The vibrations stop. The doors slowly open.
EIGHT
A wave of warm air caresses us.
Outside our open door is a hallway. The walls are white and smooth, but scratched and cracked in places. The ceiling seems to be made from some kind of pale, rough crystal that glows brightly. Like the coffin room, the floor is a field of soft gray.
Bello and Aramovsky hold each other, her head barely reaching his shoulder. Spingate takes a step behind O’Malley, who is watching me, waiting for me to act. Yong lurks in the background, still pretending to be bored as far as I know.
Someone has to go first.
I take a deep breath. I’m the leader, right? That means I have to lead. I pull the tool free.
When I step into the hallway, I am surprised that Yong steps out with me.
That smirk again. “Can’t let you have all the glory, can I?”
He pretended to be bored with us, but couldn’t let me be the first one out. Yong is strange. Or maybe he’s normal. I have no way of knowing.
The hall runs to the left and right, straight and true as far as I can see in either direction. And on both sides, more to the right than the left, bumpy things, all across the floor, just as coated in dust as the floor itself.
Those things are…
I think of Brewer, shriveled-up little Brewer.