I kept thinking about what Liam had said before, when he told me about his sister. Those memories are mine.
But if I wanted a future with my family—with Liam—then I had to relinquish my control. I had to let Clancy in if it meant I could avoid the same thing happening in the future.
You can trust him, said the same voice at the back of my mind. He’s your friend. He would never overstep.
“Okay,” I said. “But only those, and, afterward, Charles gets to use your computer.”
“Deal.”
Clancy knelt in front of me, hands cupping my jaw, fingers weaving through my hair. I tried not to squirm at his proximity and his assumption that I would be fine with it. We’d sat this close before, but somehow this felt different.
“Wait,” I said, sitting back. “I told Liam and the others I’d meet with them about something. Can we maybe do this later? Or even tomorrow?”
“It’ll only take a second,” Clancy promised, his voice soothing and low. “Just close your eyes and think about the morning you woke up on your tenth birthday.”
Come on, that same voice said. Come on, Ruby.…
I swallowed hard and did as he asked, imagining myself back in my old room, with its blue walls and enormous window. Bit by bit, the room reassembled itself. Blank walls bloomed with cross-stitch samplers Grams had sewn, pictures of my parents, and a map of D.C.’s metro system. I could see all six of the stuffed animals I slept with, on the floor next to my bright blue comforter. Even things I had completely forgotten—the lamp on my small desk, the way the middle shelf of my bookcase sagged—suddenly came back into clear focus.
“Good.” Clancy sounded far away, but I felt him near, closer and closer. His breath was warm across my cheek, an unexpected touch. “Keep…” He sounded breathless. “Keep thinking.…”
I saw his face through a glossy haze, his dark eyes burning the shimmering air. I saw only him, because for those few passing moments, he was the only thing that seemed to exist in my world. Every part of me felt slow and warm, like honey. Clancy blinked once, then again, as if to clear his own cloudy gaze, to remember what he was supposed to be doing. “Just keep…”
And then his lips—his lips were so close, smiling against mine. Fingers wove their way through my long hair, thumbs gliding along my cheeks. “You—” he began, his voice hoarse. “You are—”
At the slightest pressure, something hot and dark sparked there, sending a wave of desire straight into my core. His hands slid down over my neck, my shoulders, down my arms, down…
And then there was nothing gentle about it.
His lips pressed against mine hard, with enough force to drive them apart, to steal breath, and sense, and the feel of the bed under me. The skin of his face was smooth and cool against mine, but I was warm—too warm. The fever that swept up over me made my body go limp, and I was pressed back against the bed, sinking into the pillows there like I was falling through clouds. The blood had left my head, and all that was left there was a low, throbbing pulse. My hands came up to tangle in his shirt—I needed to grasp something, to hang on before I fell too far.
“Yes,” I heard him breathe out, and then his mouth was on mine again, his hands at the hem of my top, edging it up over my stomach.
You want this, a voice whispered. You want this.
But it wasn’t my voice. I wasn’t saying that—was I? In that instant, a flash of his black eyes gave way to a light blue. That was I wanted, what I really wanted. My mind felt slow, drugged with the strain of thought. Liam. But here was Clancy. Clancy, who helped me, my friend, beautiful in a way that made me lose trains of thought. Clancy, who more than liked me.…
Who was also an Orange.
My eyes flew open as his hands slipped up to my neck, his fingers tightening slightly around the skin there. I tried to pull back, but it felt like he had flooded my veins with concrete. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even shut my eyes.
Stop, I tried to say, but when his forehead found mine, the pain that exploded behind my eyes was enough to make me forget everything.
TWENTY-SIX
THE COMPUTER’S FRANTIC BEEPING woke me from a dreamless sleep, tugging at me until my eyes drifted open. I was lying in darkness.
My body felt heavy, and though someone had pulled off my sweater, my shirt was plastered to my skin with a thin sheen of sweat. If I had been alone, I might have taken it off, or at least kicked my jeans off my legs to let my body breathe, but I knew better. I was still in his room, and if I was here, then so was he.
The light on Clancy’s dresser was on, and I could hear the voices of kids below at the fire pit. Night, already? It was insane that my blood could run as frigid as winter at the same moment my heart started to squeeze out a panicked rhythm.
The creaking of the old mattress was drowned out by the TV. For a while, I did nothing but listen to President’s Gray baritone voice give his nightly address. My legs seemed to be the last part of my body willing to wake up.
“—assure you that the jobless rate has declined from thirty percent to twenty percent in this past year alone. I gave you my word that I would succeed where the false government would not. As much as they would like you to believe they have influence on the world stage, they can barely control their terrorist branch, this so-called Children’s League—”
The TV set turned off with a hiss of static. Footsteps.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes,” I whispered. My throat felt sore, my tongue swollen.
The bed dipped as Clancy sat down beside me. I tried not to wince.
“What happened?” I asked. The sound of the voices below grew louder, getting trapped between my ears.
“You passed out,” he said. “I didn’t realize…I shouldn’t have pushed so hard.”
I raised myself up on my elbows in a vain attempt to pull away from his touch. My eyes were fixated on his lips, the white teeth gleaming behind them. Had I imagined it, or had he—?
My stomach clenched. “Did you find anything out? Did it prove your theory?”
Clancy sat back, his face unreadable. “No.” He stood again and began to pace between the window and the white curtain. I caught a glimpse of the other side of the room, and was unsurprised to find that it was awash in the blue light of the open laptop.
“No, see, I’ve been going over this again and again in my head,” Clancy said. “I thought maybe you erased their memories intentionally because you were angry or upset, but you didn’t go all out and erase their entire memories, just…you. And again, with that girl Samantha. Samantha Dahl, age seventeen, from Bethesda, Maryland. Parents Ashley and Todd. Green, photographic memory…” His voice trailed off. “I’ve been thinking around and around and around in circles, trying to understand how you do this, but walking through your memories doesn’t tell me what’s going on inside of your head. No cause, only effect.”
I wondered if he even realized he was rambling, or that I had managed to get myself off the bed, with my only thought to get the hell out of that room and away from him. The pain came back to me in pieces.
What did he do to me? I brought a hand to my forehead. My head ached like all the other times he had been inside of it, but the pain was sharper. He hadn’t just looked in, he had made me want him—made me want to kiss him.
Hadn’t he?
“It’s late,” I said, interrupting him. “I need to…I need to go find the others.…”
Clancy turned his back on me. “Find Liam Stewart, you mean.”