“Hurt?” she asked in the tiniest of voices. Looking into her eyes was like looking into a haunted house.
“No, honey . . . it’s not bad,” lied Chong. “Hardly hurts at all.”
He reached out and gently stroked Eve’s tangled blond hair. She flinched at first, but he waited, showed her that his hand was empty, and tried again. This time Eve allowed it. Then she knelt down and laid her head against his chest.
“I had a bad dream,” she murmured.
That thought—that Eve believed this was a dream she would or could wake up from—came close to breaking Chong’s heart. He continued to stroke her hair while he lay there and tried not to be afraid of what he was becoming.
He hoped Lilah would never find him.
PART THREE
SANCTUARY
The act of dying is one of the acts of life.
—MARCUS AURELIUS
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Tom once asked us each if we knew what we would fight for. What we would kill for. What we would die for.
He said if a person didn’t know the answers to those questions, then they should never go to war. He also said that if a person did know the answers to those questions, they should never want to go to war.
I don’t know if I can answer any of those questions yet, but I feel like I’m already living inside a war.
66
“NIX?” ASKED BENNY GENTLY. “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”
She kept crying and didn’t answer.
“Look . . . Tom was right,” said Benny, “the plague is changing, and maybe that’s good news. Those papers said that it was mutating. Maybe it’s mutating into something that won’t be as bad.”
“Oh sure, and when’s the last time something changed for the better?” she sobbed. “Everything is wrong. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t how any of this is supposed to be. It’s all wrong, Benny. God, I’m so stupid.”
“Wait—what? Nix, what are you talking about? How’s any of this your fault?”
“You don’t understand.” She was crying so hard those were the only words he could understand. “You just don’t understand.”
“Nix . . . I want to understand . . . just tell me what’s wrong.”
Benny felt his own tears running in lines down his face and falling onto her hair.
What storms raged inside Nix? Benny could make a list, but he was achingly positive that any list he could make would not be complete.
“I’m sorry,” he said, because he had nothing better to say. “It’ll be okay.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not going to be okay.”
He pushed her gently back and studied her face. “What do you mean?”
There was a strange light in her beautiful green eyes, and an even stranger half smile on her lips. The smile was crooked and filled with self-loathing and self-mockery.
“Oh, Benny,” she said in a terrible whisper, “I think I’m in trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“I think I’m going crazy.”
He smiled. “You’re not going crazy.”
“How would you know?”
“Nix, don’t you think I’d know?”
She shook her head. “No one knows. No one understands.”
“Try me, Nix. If something’s wrong, then tell me. Let me in.”
“God, if you knew what was going on in my head, you’d run so fast. . . . ”
“No.”
“Yes, you would.”
“No,” he said firmly, leaning all his weight into the word, “I wouldn’t. You can tell me anything.”
She continued to shake her head.
So Benny said, “I hear voices.”
He dropped it on her, and for a moment she stopped crying, stopped shaking her head, and stared at him. A twisted half smile kept trying to form on her lips.
“Yup,” said Benny, tapping his temple. “Sometimes I have a real party in here.”
“This isn’t a joke. . . . ”
“Do I look like I’m laughing?” He did smile, though, and he knew that smile was probably every bit as crooked as hers.
“Why haven’t you said anything?”
“Why haven’t you?” Benny sighed. “It’s not like we’ve been communicating that well lately, Nix.”