“I’ll think about it,” I said, finally. I was pinned under his dark gaze again; the hair on my arms standing on end, like a whisper of electricity had run over it. I took an unknowing step closer to him.
“Listen to your gut,” Clancy said, turning to head back inside the Office. A cluster of kids called out to him from where they were setting up lunch near the fire pit and, ever the president’s son, he smiled and waved at them real pretty.
Listen to your gut.
So why was it at odds with my head?
I made a beeline for the wood dock I had discovered the afternoon before, needing to find some way to wash out the jitters racing through my heart. My mind felt tangled with the possibilities.
Clancy Gray had just offered me everything I could have asked for. A way to avoid repeating what had happened to my parents and Sam. A way to be with Liam, to find Grams, to not live in constant fear of what I could do to them. So why hadn’t my yes come tumbling out, then?
I ducked under the rope tying off the path to the lake and made it all the way down the trail before I realized anything was amiss.
“Crap,” I said when I saw him.
“Oh no—no, no, no,” Chubs said. The goofy grin dropped off his face and he stopped throwing bread crusts out to the ducks gathered in the water. “This is my secret hideout. No Rubys allowed.”
“I found it first!” I huffed, plopping down next to him.
“You most certainly did not.”
“Try a week ago, while you were unpacking.”
He balked at that. “Well…fine. But I got here first today.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on Garden duty?”
“Got tired of hearing some girl coo about how smart the Slip Kid is for making them plant carrots.” He leaned back. “Aren’t you on Storage duty?”
I looked down at where my hands had clenched into fists. When I didn’t answer, Chubs set the bread bag aside and sat up straight.
“Hey, are you all right?” He put a cool hand to my forehead. “You look like you’re going to be sick. Are you experiencing any migraines or dizziness?”
That was an understatement. I croaked out a laugh.
“Oh.” He pulled his hand away. “That kind of head trouble.”
I lay back against the rough wood and threw my arm over my eyes, hoping the darkness might help dampen the headache. “You said Jack taught you how to use your abilities?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “That was the only way I was ever going to learn—if some other kid taught me, I mean. It just took a while to decide.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought that if I didn’t use them, they’d eventually go away,” Chubs said, quietly. “I thought everything might go back to normal. There’s scientific evidence that if we stop using parts of our brains, those sections will eventually cease to function, you know.” After a moment, he asked, “Did Clancy offer to help you with your abilities?”
I nodded. “I told him I’d think about it.”
“What’s there to think about?” Chubs smacked me on the stomach with his book. “Didn’t you say that you didn’t know how to control it?”
“Well, yeah, but—” I’m afraid of how much I don’t know.
“You need to be able to control it, otherwise it’ll always control you,” he said. “It’ll scare you and manipulate you until you go crazy, die, or they find the cure. And guess which one of those things will probably happen first.”
The lunch bell sounded—two rings, for second meal. Chubs stood and stretched, throwing the rest of the bread out into the water.
“You really think they’re going to find a cure?” I asked.
“My dad used to say that anything was possible when you put your mind to it.” His mouth twisted into a humorless smile. At the mention of his father, my stomach clenched.
“You still haven’t had a chance to send them a message.”
“I’ve asked around, but there’s only one computer in this entire godforsaken place, and only one person gets to use it.”
That’s right. The silver laptop on Clancy’s desk.
“Did you ask him if you could use it for a few minutes?”
“Yeah,” Chubs said, as the fire pit came into view. It looked like they were handing out sandwiches and apples. “He said no. Apparently it’s a ‘security risk’ if someone other than him touches it.”
I shook my head. “I’ll ask tomorrow. Maybe I can convince him.”
“Could you?” Chubs grabbed my arm, his face lightening considerably. “Will you tell him that we have a very important letter to deliver, but we need to be able to look up Jack’s father’s new address? Tell him we’ll do anything—no, tell him that I will personally lick every single pair of shoes he owns clean.”
“How about I just tell him that it’s the whole reason we came here in the first place,” I said, “and leave your tongue out of it?”
Chubs waited until I had taken my sandwich from the table before pulling me away. I thought he might want to eat back at the cabin or even the dock, but we wandered until we found Liam.
He and a few of the other guys on the security team were on a break from their rounds and had found themselves a nice clearing in the trees. It was just wide enough to square off into two small teams for a quick game of hover ball, otherwise known as football with no hands. Chubs and I found an old tree trunk to share, ignoring the small group of female spectators who had gathered to cheer the teams on.
A tall redhead with an explosion of freckles on his face levitated the old football at the start of a play. He ran alongside it, trying to keep both it and himself out of the reach of the others. Liam, at one point, had the football an inch in front of him, but his hands were too slow and his footwork too bad to catch it when it was tossed to him.
“Keep your eye on the ball, butterfingers!” I called. Liam’s head whipped around in our direction. Just as his gaze locked on mine, Mike, who had the football at that point, mowed him over to get to the makeshift end zone.
Chubs and I cringed as Liam hit the ground and knocked his head against one of the old trees’ roots.
“Wow,” I said. “He wasn’t kidding about sucking at sports.”
“It’d be funny if it weren’t so damn sad.”
The other boys were too busy laughing to keep the ball in the air. Liam stayed on the ground, his face flushed red, but his entire body shaking with laughter. He lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face, giving me, along with every other girl present, a glimpse of skin.
This time, I was the one blushing.
One of the guys I didn’t recognize jogged over to Liam and helped him up, patting him on the shoulder. They laughed together like they had known each other since preschool.
But that was Liam for you—he joked about Zu making friends at the drop of a hat, but he was the same way. But Chubs and I were perfectly content to sit by ourselves, watching, waiting, but not dipping our toes into the ocean. Maybe we had just gotten too used to being alone—and maybe that needed to change.
The next morning, at exactly 9:21, I found myself standing outside of Clancy Gray’s office, my hand raised and ready to knock. The only thing preventing me, besides the nerves hula-hooping my guts, was the conversation happening on the other side of the door.
“—sure we have the kind of numbers to do that. If I sent the amount of kids we’d need, there wouldn’t be enough left here to maintain watch.” It was a girl’s voice, soft but not sweet. Olivia, most likely, if they were talking about security.
“I get what you’re saying, Liv, but it would be a waste to miss this opportunity,” Clancy was saying. “We’re getting low on medical supplies, and Leda Corp has stopped running as many trucks up through our area.”
“Are you going on another one of your trips?” she pressed. “Isn’t that when you usually pick up tips about shipments?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s just…you haven’t gone on one in almost a year,” Olivia said. “And you used to go all the time. I know we haven’t been hurting for supplies, but maybe if you met with your source…”
“No,” Clancy said, with finality. “I can’t leave the camp anymore. It’s not safe.”