But…was it?
I was so mad. Those feelings of hate, roiling through me. I wanted to hurt Yong. But if he hadn’t rushed at me, if he hadn’t tried to hit me, I wouldn’t have done anything. So Aramovsky is right—it’s not my fault.
Aramovsky stands, walks over to O’Malley, gently tries to wake the fallen boy.
I stare at Yong. I’m waiting for him to move, like this is a game and I’ve been tricked. He’s going to sit up and smile, and everyone will laugh because they are all in on it.
But no one is laughing.
And Yong doesn’t move.
Aramovsky helps O’Malley to his feet. Blood runs from O’Malley’s nose, and more trickles from a cut over his right eye.
He stares down at Yong.
O’Malley looks at all of us in turn, as if he, too, is waiting for someone to tell him this is a game. I see his eyes flick from Yong to the bloody knife, back to Yong, and then to me.
“Em, what happened?”
I glare at him. He would know what happened if he hadn’t got knocked out. Come to think of it, if he hadn’t got knocked out, none of it would have happened at all. He can defend me with words, it seems, but not with his fists.
O’Malley doesn’t look so beautiful anymore.
Aramovsky puts his hand on O’Malley’s shoulder.
“Yong attacked Em,” Aramovsky says. “She protected herself and stabbed him.”
I’m on my feet so fast I don’t recall trying to stand.
“I did not stab him! He ran into the knife. It was an accident, Aramovsky. An accident!”
My shouts bounce off the walls. Both Aramovsky and O’Malley lean back a little bit, away from me.
“An accident,” Aramovsky says to O’Malley, and nods. “It was obviously an accident, like Em said. I suppose if Yong hadn’t put you down, he wouldn’t have attacked Em—he’d still be alive.”
O’Malley winces. Did it hurt him to hear that? Good, it should hurt him.
“Spingate tried to save him,” Aramovsky says. “The cut, it was very deep. There was nothing anyone could do.”
O’Malley’s expression remains blank. He stands there, bleeding. He steps to Yong, kneels in the crimson slush. He stares at the body, but talks to us.
“Why did he attack us like that? He went crazy.”
No, he wasn’t crazy—he wanted to lead. He wanted it bad enough that he had no problem hitting to get his way. Yong was a bully.
O’Malley stands. He brushes slush from his pants. He sniffs…he’s crying. Not the noisy sobs of Bello and Spingate, but he doesn’t try to hide the tears that line his cheeks.
“This is horrible,” he says.
Then he looks at me. “So, Em…what now?”
Is he joking? I’m the leader who took us nowhere, who didn’t find food, who put a knife in Yong’s belly, and O’Malley still thinks I should decide?
Spingate is also looking at me. So is Bello, and Aramovsky.
They are all waiting.
Yes, I am the leader, and I should be. I’m the one making the decisions. I’m sorry Yong is dead, but that wasn’t my fault—it was his.
“We go straight,” I say.
I reach down and pick up the knife.
“No,” Bello says, the word almost a scream. “I told you the knife was a bad thing. Leave it, Em, just leave it.”
I ignore her. My skirt is ruined anyway, so I wipe the blade clean against it, first one side, then the other.
Spingate’s stomach rumbles. She hangs her head, her face hidden by thick red curls.
I take a few steps down the hall, until my feet are once again on untouched gray.
The others hesitate.
“Let’s go,” I say. “We have to get moving.”
O’Malley tilts his head down at Yong. “What about him? Do we carry him? Or maybe take him back to the coffin room, so he’s not on the floor?”
The question makes our situation hit home: Yong is dead, and I’m going to leave him here. We don’t know how far we have yet to walk. We have no food and no water. Our mouths are so dry our lips are starting to crack. We’re already exhausted—we can’t afford the energy needed to carry a dead body.
He’ll be lonely here.
I try to chase away that thought, because it is the thought of a silly little girl. Yong is gone. I didn’t like him, but he was one of us. Abandoning his body is wrong, I know it in my heart, but what choice do we have?
“No,” I say. “I’m sorry, but we can’t take him with us, and we’re not going back. He’s dead. He stays here.”
O’Malley looks down at Yong, as if he wants to argue with me and his reasons for doing so are right there, somewhere on the body. He stares for a long while, thinking, then nods slowly.
“I guess you’re right,” he says. “But…I don’t know, shouldn’t we bury him or something?”
Spingate stands, flicks red slush from her clothes. “That would be a neat trick, O’Malley. Want to dig right through the floor?”
O’Malley wipes his face with the back of his hand, clearing off both blood and tears.
He looks down the dark hall.