TWENTY-EIGHT
IN THE BASIN, SQUISHED BETWEEN the Eatery and some storage warehouses, is a damp, dusty building that the Rebels refer to as the Tap Room. When we enter, Clipper is weaving between the men at the bar, snatching near-empty mugs when drinkers aren’t looking. I tell him he’s too young to be drinking, but when he asks me how old I was when I had my first, I admit I was around his age and am forced to let it go.
The place is a combination of soldiers and civilians. Women cling to the shoulders of various men, dancing to the banjo and guitar being strummed in a corner. I look for my father among the faces, but he’s nowhere to be found. Bree and I fight our way through the crowded space and up to a waist-high bar.
“Hey, Saul!” Bree shouts, leaning over the counter so far that her feet leave the ground. It causes her shirt to rise and a sliver of bare skin becomes visible above her pants. “We’ll take two shots down here,” she says. The bartender, an older, portly man, slides the drinks our way and Bree shouts her thanks.
“On getting through a full day without wanting to kill each other,” I say, holding my drink before her.
“Speak for yourself.” She smirks but clinks her drink against mine and we throw back the shot.
“Another round?” she asks.
“They don’t ration this stuff?”
“Nah, but it’s okay for alcohol to run out. Can’t say the same about food.”
We share another few rounds before moving to the far end of the bar where we watch a group of young men playing an odd game with miniature spears. They take turns throwing them at a small target that hangs from the wall.
“We’ve got the next game,” Bree announces to them. The better of the men in the group, who has hit the bull’s-eye several times over, turns to face us.
He has hair the color of mud that curls behind his ears and a square head, too angular and sharp for me to miss it. This is Xavier Piltess—taller, wider, and far more filled out than the fifteen-year-old who taught me to hunt in the forests of Claysoot—but it is him. “Oh, you’re going down, Bree,” he says. “No way can you take me and Sammy.”
“Xavier?” I venture.
He pauses for a second and stares at me. I watch as his gaze halts on my eyes, noting their color: gray, not blue. Recognition breaks across his face.
“Gray!” he exclaims. We clasp arms and he slaps me on the back the way an older sibling might. “How the heck are you? Where’s your brother?”
We catch up for a few minutes while he finishes his game, never missing a shot. He was taken hostage by the Rebels over a year ago when an Order mission he was on failed. After hearing Frank’s lies unravel, he switched allegiances.
I tell him my story, a shortened version, which is speckled with white lies, but for him it doesn’t really matter: Blaine and I got Heisted. We’re both here now, me in training and Blaine in the hospital. I feel guilty when I mention Blaine. I should visit him again.
Xavier then introduces me to Sammy, a twenty-year-old from Taem who joined the Rebels when his father was executed for counterfeiting ration cards. He’d been using them to acquire extra water that he often brought to struggling villages beyond the dome. Apparently Frank didn’t consider this type of charity work acceptable.
Bree and I play the two of them in a game called darts. We lose spectacularly. I can’t seem to throw the darts with the right force or angle. They are like toothpick spears and my hands are clumsy with them. Xavier tries to correct my form and give me pointers, but I only improve by the smallest margin. I blame it on the alcohol.
We end up abandoning the game and taking a tall table hostage. Hal and Polly find the four of us, and we all sit on rickety stools, throwing back drinks too quickly and playing Bullshit. The game turns out to be identical to Claysoot’s Little Lie, only with a fouler name. Bree is the best bullshitter of us all. She fools us again and again, her lie always blending in with the rest. Even when she starts slurring her words and leaning more on me than the table for support, she’s still stumping us.
I learn that she found herself utterly alone when she was shipped to Taem after her Heist. She has no siblings; her mother died young; and, after being unable to locate her father in Crevice Valley, she assumes he’s dead. I learn a few other things, trivial really, but for some reason, they fascinate me more than her historical details. Bree’s elbows are double jointed. She has a birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon on her hip. Her favorite color is deep, rugged purple, the shade of silhouetted clouds against an evening sky. She hasn’t yet adjusted to sleeping without the sound of waves crashing on the shore.
As the game continues, the laughter in the Tap Room becomes an infectious disease. Everyone is doing it. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so freely.
Sometime much, much later, when we are all thoroughly giddy and a bit too gone, Bree attempts to visit the bar in search of another drink and instead falls off her stool. Polly shrieks with delight, as if this is the funniest thing, and the rest of us chuckle along in amusement.
“I’m gonna take her back,” I tell the others. She’s had enough, and no one argues with me. It takes us longer than it should to get to her quarters. I’m dizzy myself, not terribly, but Bree keeps directing me down incorrect passageways and we have to double back with uneven steps. She clings to my neck the entire time, her weight mostly supported by my arms, and mumbles incoherent things that I know she wouldn’t be saying if it weren’t for the alcohol: how nice I am, how she’s thankful I stuck up for her with Drake, how she wishes she could go back and not be so cruel to me when I was first brought in.
“It’s really hard discovering the truth,” she mumbles as we get to her place. “And it was probably terrifying . . . you know? How we treated you like a prisoner . . . a Forgery.” She pauses for a second and adds, “I’m sorry I wasn’t nicer.”
“No, you’re not,” I tell her. I let go of her cautiously as I fumble to open the door. She stands wavering on the spot, like tall grass in a breeze.
“Yes, I am. I’m sorry,” she says stubbornly. Her shirt is hanging lazily off one of her shoulders and her eyes look confused, soft blue seas. She steps very close to me, so close that her eyelashes brush my chin, and leans in, pressing her hands into my chest. I know what she wants and I pull my head away.
“Why won’t you kiss me?” she asks simply. Her voice sounds like a child’s.
“You don’t want me to kiss you.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No. You don’t.” We stand frozen in the doorway and she drops her hands to her sides.
“You don’t think I’m pretty.”
“That’s not it,” I admit.
“Then why? You got a girl already? You married?”
“What’s married?”
“You know—two people, with rings. Together forever.” She’s swaying again, blowing ever so gently. I think of Emma. Two people. Together, like the birds.
“No, I’m not married,” I say.
“Then kiss me.” Her hands press onto my chest and she leans into me again, but I pull away. It’s harder to resist her this time. There’s this urge inside me, tugging, telling me that I should follow my feelings. It’s what I always do. But this isn’t really Bree, and this isn’t really me, either. We are in cloudy bodies, foggy reflections of ourselves. We are feeling things that we might not tomorrow. And I love Emma. Emma, not Bree.
“I can’t,” I say, taking her hands in mine and squeezing them. Her skin is warm, on fire in my palms, and the words escape me before I can reflect on them. “But if you wake up tomorrow and you still want me to kiss you, I will.”
Bree smiles, and then bends over to throw up on my boots.