“Shh,” I said, trying to soothe him. “There’s no leather jacket.”
“You were wearing it the first time I saw you,” he said, frowning slightly. Then he sagged suddenly back against the pillows, as though the effort of speaking had exhausted him. And I sat next to him while he slept, gripping his hand, watching the sun revolve in the sky outside the window and the patterns of light shifting on his sheet.
And I felt joy.
Conrad always held my head—lightly, with both hands—when we kissed. He wore glasses for reading, and when he was thinking hard about something, he would polish them. His hair was straight except for a bit that curled behind his left ear, just above his procedural scar. Some of this I observed right away; some of it I learned much later.
But from the beginning, I knew that in a world where destiny was dead, I was destined, forever, to love him. Even though he didn’t—though he couldn’t—ever love me back.
That’s the easy thing about falling: There is only one choice after that.
now
I count three seconds of air. Then a blast of cold and a force like a fist, driving the breath from me, pummeling me forward. I hit bottom, and pain shoots up my ankle, and then the cold is everywhere, all at once, obliterating all other thoughts. For a minute, I can’t breathe, can’t get air, don’t know which way is up or down. Just cold, everywhere and in all directions.
Then the river shoves me upward, spits me out, and I come up gasping, flailing, as ice breaks around me with a noise like a dozen rifles firing at once. Stars spin above me. I manage to make it to the edge of the river, and I slosh into the shallows, shivering so hard my brain feels like it’s bouncing in my skull, coughing up water. I sit forward, cup my hand to the water, and drink through frozen fingers. The water is sweet, slightly gritty with dirt, delicious.
I haven’t felt the wind, truly felt it, in eleven years.
It’s colder than I remember.
I know I have to move. North from the river. East from the old highway.
I take one last look at the looming silhouette of the Crypts. Free. I’m free. The word brings with it such a surge of joy, I have to consciously stop from crying out. I’m not safe yet.
Beyond the Crypts, I know, is the old, dusty road that leads to the bus stop—and beyond that, the gray sludge of the service road, which extends all the way on-peninsula and eventually merges with Congress Street. And then: Portland, my Portland, gripped on three sides by water, nestled like a jewel on a small spit of land.
Somewhere, Lena is sleeping. Rachel, too. My own jewels, the stars I carry with me. I know that Rachel was cured, and out of reach to me now. Thomas told me so.
But Lena …
My littlest …
I love you. Remember.
And someday, I will find you again.
Copyright
ANNABEL. Copyright ? 2013 by Laura Schechter. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition ? 2013 ISBN: 9780062237385
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FIRST EDITION
Contents
Begin Reading
Copyright
Raven
Here are the top three things I’ve learned in my twenty-two years on the planet:
1. Never wipe your butt with poison ivy.
2. People are like ants: Just a few of them give all the orders. And most of them spend their lives getting squashed.
3. There are no happy endings, only breaks in the regular action.
Of all of them, number three is really the only one you have to keep in mind.
“This is stupid,” Tack says. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
I don’t bother replying. He’s right, anyway. This is stupid, and we shouldn’t be doing it. But we are.
“If anything goes wrong, we abort,” Tack says. “I mean anything. I won’t miss out on Christmas for this shit.”
“Christmas” is code for the next big mission. We’ve only heard rumors about it so far. We don’t know when, and we don’t know where. All we know is that it’s coming.
I feel a sudden wave of nausea, a tide rolling up to my throat, and swallow it.
“Nothing will go wrong,” I say, even though of course I can’t know that. That’s what I said about migration this year. Nobody dies, I said, over and over, like a prayer.
I guess God wasn’t listening.