“I just…” Chubs stalked past us, only to stop and turn back again. “I never believed you, you know,” he said, his voice shaking, “when you talked about us getting out of camp and getting home safely. That’s why I agreed to write my letter. I knew most of us wouldn’t make it, with you in charge.”
I stepped forward the same moment Liam did, holding my hands out in front of me to keep him from doing something I knew he would regret. I heard Chubs storm away behind me, heading back in the direction of our cabin. Liam tried to take another step forward, but I pressed back against his chest. Liam was breathing hard, his fists balled up at his sides.
“Let him go,” I said. “He just needs to blow off steam. Maybe you should think about doing the same.”
Liam looked like he was about to say something, but instead, he let out a frustrated grunt, spun on his heel, and started toward the nearby trees, in the exact opposite direction Chubs had taken. I leaned back against the trunk of the nearest tree and shut my eyes. My chest was too tight to do anything other than take in shallow, short breaths as I waited.
It was nearly dark by the time he emerged, rubbing his face. The skin on both hands was torn and bleeding from smashing them into something solid. His face was drawn in the twilight, as if the flush of anger had been ripped out of him and he’d been left with nothing more than gray sadness. I held out an arm to him as he came near, wrapping it around the solid warmth of his waist. His arm settled down over my shoulders and he pulled me close, pressing his face against my hair. I took in a deep breath of his comforting smell—wood smoke, grass, and leather.
“He didn’t mean it,” I said, walking him over to a fallen log. He was still shaking, and looked unsteady on his feet.
Liam didn’t sit so much as collapse down onto it, leaning forward to brace his elbows against his knees. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”
We sat for a long time—long enough for the sun to disappear behind the trees, and then below the horizon. The silence and stillness between us became unbearable. I lifted my hand and guided it lightly down the length of knobby bones between his shoulder blades.
Liam sat up slowly, turning to look at me. “Do you think he’s okay?” he whispered.
“I think we should probably go check,” I said.
I don’t know how we made it back to the cabin, only that when we arrived, Chubs was sitting on the porch, silent tears streaming down his face. I could see the apology written there, the wretched guilt, and was surprised to find my heart could break even that bit more.
“It’s over,” he said as we sat on either side of him. “It’s all over.”
We didn’t move for a long time.
TWENTY-FIVE
IT SHOULDN’T HAVE SURPRISED ME that Liam threw himself back into watch duty, but it took a generous amount of coaxing from the others for his mind to refocus on the camps. I sat by his side more than once as he and Olivia talked through possible ways of breaking through camp defenses, offering suggestions here and there as they discussed how to bring up their ideas with Clancy.
The thing about enthusiasm—especially Liam’s particular brand—was that it was catching. There would be nights I would simply sit back, watching, as he became more and more animated with his hands as he spoke, as if trying to shape his ideas out of the air for the rest of us to see. His words were coated with such unyielding hopefulness that it visibly inflated everyone around him. By the end of the first week, interest in the project had spiked to such a level that we had to move the meetings out of our small cabin, to the fire pit. Now, when Liam went anywhere, it was always with a loyal pack of kids around him, trying to catch his ear.
Chubs and I were less enthusiastic about getting back into the swing of things. He forgave me, maybe because a miserable person can only stand to be alone with their misery for so long. He never went back to work at the Garden, but that girl, the bossy one, never ratted him out, either.
I went back to lessons with Clancy. Or at least tried to.
“Where is your head at today?”
Not invading his, that was for certain. Not even cracking it.
“Show me what you’re thinking about,” he said, when I opened my mouth. “I don’t want to hear about it. I want to see it.”
I glanced up from the pool of sunlight spilling from his window to the floor. Clancy leveled me with a look of annoyance that I had only seen him wear once, after realizing one of the remaining Yellows couldn’t zap one of the camp’s few washing machines back to life.
Never at me, though.
I closed my eyes and reached for his hand again; I brought to mind the memory of Zu’s backpack disappearing into the wild thicket of trees. Over the past few weeks, fewer and fewer of our conversations had involved words. When we wanted to get a point across, we shared it our own way—spoke in our own language.
But not today. His mind might as well have been encased in concrete, and mine might as well have been made of jelly.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I couldn’t even muster the strength to feel disappointed. I could feel myself slipping into a strange funk, one in which every little noise or sight outside the window was enough to distract me. I just felt tired. Confused.
“I do have other things I could be doing,” he continued, something simmering beneath his words. “I have rounds to make and people to talk to, but I’m trying to help you. I’m here with you.”
At that, my stomach did a strange flop. I sat straight up against his headboard, ready to apologize again, when he rolled off his bed and moved across the room to his desk.
“Clancy, I really am sorry.” By the time I came to stand in front of the desk, he was already typing away at his laptop. He let me stand there in silent, gut-twisting worry, for what felt like nearly an hour before he bothered to look up from whatever he was doing. He seemed tired of pretending now, too. Annoyance had taken a sharp turn into anger.
“You know, I really thought that letting your Yellow go would help you focus, but I guess I was wrong.” Clancy shook his head. “I was wrong about a lot of things, apparently.”
I bristled, but I’m not sure if it was because of the way he said your Yellow or the implication that I wasn’t capable of mastering the things he was trying to teach me.
I needed to leave. If I stayed a second longer, I might say something that would ruin our friendship. I might tell him that Zu had a name, that of course I’d be worried about her out in the world without me there to protect her. He should have realized that I could have spent the last few weeks spending time with her, but instead I had agreed to work with him. Spend time with him. Comfort and support him.
Maybe I had learned a lot, and maybe I had a better grip on my abilities, but staring at him, my fists clenched and shaking, I couldn’t justify it. What was the point of being holed up with someone who didn’t believe in me when I had people out there who did?
I turned sharply on my heel and stalked toward the door. As I opened it, Clancy called, “That’s right, Ruby, run away again. See how far you get this time!”
I didn’t look back and I didn’t stop, though some part of me recognized that this might be it—that I was walking out on the one chance I had to learn how to manage my abilities. Sometime in the last ten minutes, my head had disconnected itself from the stubborn muscle beating in my chest and, honestly, I wasn’t sure which was guiding me outside and away from him. But what I did know, with dead, absolute certainty, was that I didn’t want him to see the way my face crumpled, or for him to glimpse whispers of guilt and sadness circling around inside of my head.