The Ward

51


When the shaking stops, when I open my eyes . . . it’s like waking up to find that I’ve fallen off a map. The world I thought was round is flat, and nothing is as it was before.

A dull ache has taken Aven’s place inside my head.

She is gone, and so am I.

Under the canal’s surface, Derek steers the Omni east, high beams lighting up abandoned cars and buses. The waterways are empty like always. Even more empty now.

Vaguely, I feel the cloth of my leggings and the thick fabric of my vest holding in water from the canal. I think I’m cold. I know I’m cold, and for the first time, I understand what it feels like. Separate from the discomfort. I don’t care that I’m cold, or that my knees are scraped and raw and bloodied. Without feeling any of it, I watch the sunken city through the window. I remember Aven’s face at the Tank when she saw it all for the first time. Like the machines, in all their useless glory, were the greatest things in the world.

“Ren?”

Even my name feels far away, fragile in his mouth. He’s just as afraid of saying it as I am of hearing it.

I turn my head. That’s enough of a response.

“Where should I take you?”

For a moment, I forget that there was a plan. It all got so derailed. But there is a plan; it hasn’t gone away just because the governor was lying. “Garage,” I answer. Then, quieter, head tucked between the seat and the window, “I’m a fool,” I whisper to myself.

I know nothing.

Except for regret. But for what, exactly . . . I’m not sure. Could I have left Callum, and all the others, to die? I don’t know. But somewhere along the road, I went left when I should have gone right. I made the opposite choice.

And so I regret. Something.

Not being a better sister, maybe.

“You and Kitaneh knew not to do it. You knew not to play into his hands.”

Derek looks at me. He shakes his head. “You’re not a fool. We had no idea that he wasn’t going to go through with it—so really, we had even more reason to have done something.” He sighs, leaning back in his chair. “I should have done something,” he adds, his voice heavy, and that’s how I hear them: regrets.

He has them too. And they have nothing to do with me, or earning me. They’re for his own sake. Which is all I could take right now—I don’t know if I feel worthy, or good enough, of being earned.

“I saw you out there,” I say, mustering something like sympathy. I’m too empty for this kind of talk, but I manage to add, “You did something.”

“I was too late. I couldn’t stop the others. My brother, he almost . . .”

“I thought he was you.”

Derek slows the mobile, begins bringing it up for air. “Kitaneh must have found out on her own that you were alive, then told him and the others.” His voice rises. He’s afraid I might not believe him.

But I do, and I tell him so, and then we’re silent. The Omni’s headlights cut lines of gold alongside the boardwalk as we break the surface.

“Did you know . . . the word Tètai in Lenape—Kitaneh’s native tongue—means between.”

He doesn’t need to explain. “Between life and death,” I murmur.

“Between life and death,” he repeats, glancing at me out of the corner of his eyes. Then, barely audible: “But not for long.”

“What do you mean?”

“I acted against my family, in opposition to the order.” He swallows hard, his jaw squared to the windshield. “Against Kitaneh, my wife by contract, and also my single remaining blood brother, Lucas. They’ll come after me. His wife, too. They have to. It’s our punishment.”

When I look at Derek again, I see him differently. No longer through the rose-colored lenses I once wore. He’s made mistakes . . . centuries of them. I see his history laid out in front of me. The same family keeping the same secret, forever.

I see what he’s lost tonight.

We’ve both lost tonight.

“Then come with me,” I say, and I push down on the button in the center console that opens the roof. I don’t want to move—I’m sluggish and heavy as we bob sideways in the black water. But a gust of wind sweeps through the pit, shakes me from my stupor, and I stand.

I just want tonight to end.

“I thought I was coming with you anyway.” In his voice, equal parts fear and hope. He searches my eyes with his. “We have to find Aven.”

I nod, letting him take my hand to help me out of the Omni. I can feel every ache and hurt my bones are carrying as I step onto Mad Ave. Derek lifts himself out after and rests his hand low on my back.

As we walk toward Benny’s garage, I reach for my necklace out of habit, just to make sure it’s there. Attached to the chain, my two pennies—from Aven, and from Callum. Without looking at them, I can’t tell who gave me which.

And then I think of her. Alone. I see where I made the wrong choice.

“We have to,” I whisper, watching the stars overhead, slowly tracing their paths through the night sky. All of them alone on their orbits, together. All of us alone on our orbits—together, too.