I examine his profile, adoring his commitment, his strength, even his stubbornness, even if all of those traits got him into trouble. He’d rather be right than safe, and for that we have much in common. “But I don’t see why you blame Bill,” I probe.
“Alpha practically works for the Guild, running her charity to help counsel Flawed people’s families, so it wasn’t difficult to draw my conclusions.”
“That’s what the charity is on the outside; she’s actually using it to gain support for the Flawed cause. She uses it as a way to gather everyone together. She is trying to end F.A.B. institutions. She was trying to get me on her side, and bring you with me,” I explain.
Carrick absorbs this. I see that he is having the same crisis of trust I am. Nothing is simple when you’re Flawed, you become a pawn in many peoples’ games. As much as I feel for him, I’m comforted that what I’m experiencing is not unique to me.
“Bill told me that if you’d stayed with them longer they would have helped you to find your parents. That was their intention all along, but you were with them less than twenty-four hours. You never gave them a chance to prove themselves to you.” I say this as delicately to him as possible, trying to judge his mood before continuing. He doesn’t respond, two hands tight on the wheel, looking straight ahead, an intense look on his face.
“After you were taken to Highland Castle, your parents were brought to Vigor to live safely. Then on your release, you were given a tip as to their whereabouts. When you think about it, I’m sure Alpha and Bill were the ones who orchestrated your being reunited with your parents. I mean, how did you find out about Vigor in the first place?”
He still doesn’t answer me: He’s silent and lost in thought as he tries to figure it all out, moves the pieces in his mind that he was once so sure of. Carrick ran away from Alpha and Bill to find his parents. If he’d just stayed with them, he could have found them and not have been branded. It’s quite possible that his loss of freedom was all for nothing. I don’t push the conversation about his parents any further, but there is something I can’t avoid anymore.
“You knew about Art becoming a Whistleblower, didn’t you?”
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, concentrates on the winding road inclining up the steep hill.
“I thought you knew,” he explains. “It’s been in the news.”
My granddad must have known and kept it from me.
“When we were in bed,” he continues, “and I mentioned him, I thought that you knew he was a Whistleblower. But then you defended him. I realized you had no idea.”
And I’d accused Carrick of sleeping with me to get to Art. Why can’t anybody trust anybody? I sigh.
“Sorry if I should have told you then,” he says gently. “I’d timed mentioning him so badly in the first place, I didn’t want to do any more damage.”
“It’s okay. I’m not angry.” I pause. “Actually I don’t think I’ve ever felt more angry, but I’m not angry with you.”
Now that I’ve opened the doors, the anger suddenly pulsates through me. The image of Art wearing the Whistleblower uniform makes me feel ill. It was never a career Art would have pursued; he wanted to study science. A job in the labs of the very facility he just raided would have been his dream. Becoming some eccentric scientist with his big mop of hair, he who would try to find a cure for the cancer that took his mom away. We had a plan. A very specific, much-talked-about plan. Humming University for his science degree and my mathematics degree. Art and I were supposed to be together. But instead, I’m Flawed and he’s a Whistleblower. The hunted and the hunter.
His decision to become a Whistleblower is personal. It’s a slap in the face, a kick in the stomach; it’s telling me that he supports his dad, that he agrees with the Guild’s decision. It’s him saying, I believe that you’re Flawed, Celestine. Flawed to the backbone, just like my dad believes. I support the pain he put you through, you deserve everything you got. And when I find you … What then? What’s he going to do to me?
Carrick is looking at me anxiously.
But as angry as I feel, I just can’t suddenly hate the person I once cared for so much. I can’t switch it off that quickly. I’m not a robot; I want to try to understand. What is Art thinking? Why is he doing this?
“Maybe he’s pretending,” I say suddenly. “Maybe he became a Whistleblower to help me.”
“How would he do that?” Carrick’s voice is flat.
“I don’t know.” I rack my brain. “Maybe he’s just using it as a way to find me. Maybe he’s like Marcus and Kate, one of the good guys.”
As soon as I say it, I believe it. I sit up in my seat, full of hope. I look at Carrick, though, and his soldier face is back. He’s angry, closed off.
Juniper and I got mood rings as gifts one year from our parents. They worked through the measurement of your temperature. If you were hot, they were red; if you were cold, they turned purple or blue. When they were sitting on our bedside tables at night, they were black. Carrick’s eyes remind me of those mood rings. I’ve spent so long trying to figure out what color they are, and now I know why. Their color seems to represent whatever mood he’s in, which is why they appeared black when we were in the Highland Castle cells, why they were hazel with green speckles when we slept together, and now … well, now he won’t even look at me.
He pulls the car over, stops it right on a dangerous curve, as if he doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Anyone coming around the corner won’t have enough time to see us, will hit us. He gives me a fright. He looks at me angrily, dark brown eyes now, no green, no light.
“You’re deluding yourself if you think he’s pretending. Today we watched him take Evelyn away from her mother. Your granddad is still sitting in a cell in Highland Castle; don’t you think Art knows someone who could pull a few strings? He was part of a team that was searching for you in a state-sponsored facility. You want him to rescue you, Celestine? Is that what it is?”
“No!” I snap.
“Because I’m right here, actually putting my life on the line, helping you.”
“So am I!” I yell back.
He glares at me, anger steaming from him, and I match his stare, feeling the heat rising inside me and burning. He looks like he’s going to say something else, but he thinks better of it, pulls the car off the curve, and continues to drive up the mountain. We don’t say a word to each other for the remaining forty-five minutes. In fact my neck gets sore just from looking out my window, away from him.
I’m fuming. It takes a long time for the rage to slowly simmer, and when it does, it’s not him that the anger is directed at—it’s myself. Because I know he’s right. Art isn’t trying to help me. If he was trying to he would have by now.
PART TWO