Gemma was surprised and relieved to find Pete already waiting for her, leaning heavily on the counter, head bowed. For a second, she hung back. His face was so serious, so sad, it made her ache.
But when he caught sight of her, his face rearranged into the one she knew so well, and it was like two plates slid together deep inside her and sealed off a rift. Her anger went, and so did her fear. If she could just stay with him, everything would be fine.
She was grateful that Calliope let her go, and even hung back when Pete hugged her, and kissed her gently, lips, nose, forehead, and lips again. It was funny: as soon as Pete had become her boyfriend, she had started being more careful about her looks, not less. She put on lip gloss and mascara; she always made sure her hair was blown straight; she agonized about what she wore. She told herself she wanted him to be proud of her, but it wasn’t that, not exactly. Really, she wanted to make sure he wasn’t embarrassed.
But here, in this place, even though she hadn’t showered—a ritual that, like laundry day, occurred once a week, in which replicas were shuffled in and out by the dozen to hose off in a dim concrete room with open holes for drainage—even though the toothbrush she’d been given had disappeared earlier that morning, even though she was braless, her breasts sticky-heavy beneath her shirt, she realized it didn’t matter at all. She loved him and felt, in that moment, truly loved: the feeling of being saved, of coming home after a long night at a terrible party, and getting to wipe your makeup off and take off uncomfortable tights and slip into a pair of worn pajamas.
“Another day in paradise, huh?” Pete said, touching her face.
She could feel Calliope watching them, and was struck by Calliope’s stillness, her complete absorption. She was reminded, then, of the way her cats, Bean and Ender, sat in the window seat to watch the geese that landed on her lawn on their way south. It was as if Calliope’s whole body was funneled into her eyes, and the desire to consume.
She was going crazy. She was going to lose her mind in this place.
“You okay?” he asked. She tried to smile but saw her reflection thrown back at her, ghastly.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I saw Dr. Saperstein today.” She lowered her voice, hooked her fingers into the neck of her T-shirt. Hers, familiar, real. “It’s all over. They’re shutting down.”
“Yeah, I kind of got the idea. I’m surprised they haven’t shipped out the toilets yet.” Then, unexpectedly: “Three replicas died today. I saw them packed up. They were loaded onto a gurney like—like meat or something. All bundled in plastic.” His voice was too tight, like fabric stretched thin by too much use. “There are children tied down in place. One of the nurses said that otherwise they’ll try and chew their own fingers, or scratch themselves until they bleed. And the nurses . . .” Finally, the fabric snapped. His voice cracked. “Nurses, doctors, soldiers . . . everyday people, good people. It’s like they’ve all gone blind. It’s like this place has blinded them. How can they stand it?”
“Pete.” She couldn’t make it better. She couldn’t explain. There was no explanation. They had to get out of here before they were poisoned. She took his hands. They were very cold. “Pete, listen to me. Dr. Saperstein is making arrangements with my dad,” Gemma said quietly. “He’s going to let us go.”
His eyes were like windows, suddenly shuttered. She was aware of a strange tension, not just here but everywhere, as if an enormous underground rift was slowly widening, as if they might all drop.
“We don’t have a choice,” she added. She seemed to smell smoke. Memories that weren’t even hers flowed to her, of Haven on fire, of the island burning and bodies bleeding out into the marsh. Maybe Calliope wasn’t feeding off her. Maybe she was feeding from Calliope, collapsing into her. “But the important thing is that we’re getting out of here. They’re letting us go.”
He looked away. A muscle pulsed in and out in his jaw. “When?” he said finally.
“Tomorrow.” Still he wouldn’t look at her. She followed his gaze and saw that he was staring at Calliope in the mirror. But she wasn’t looking back at him. She was standing, motionless, staring up at the ceiling with the strangest smile on her face, as if she was listening to a favorite song played far away. “I don’t know when. I think Dr. Saperstein’s scared. He’ll have to . . .” Negotiate, she nearly said, but stopped. The word wouldn’t make it out beyond a sudden tightness, a feeling of burning.
“I won’t go,” Pete said. “I can’t.” And she heard the crack of the fault line beneath their feet. She saw that they were already falling.
“You can’t save them,” she said, but she felt a rising panic as the dark rose up to reach them. She heard her own voice faintly and heard, too, the echo of Dr. Saperstein. “It’s already done.”
“I can’t just walk out of here.” He turned back to her but now she hardly recognized him. His eyes didn’t seem brown so much as gray. Smoke-gray. “I can’t just forget.”
“I’m not asking you to forget,” she said. She realized she was going to cry and had to swallow fast. “But there’s no other choice.”
“There is,” he said sharply. “There always is. There has to be.”
“Would you rather stay here?” She was cold and hot all at once. She was losing him. “What about your parents? What about how worried they must be?”
Pete stepped away from her. “So that’s it, we leave, and your dad’s the big hero.” He looked so different when he frowned, older and harder, somehow. She’d nearly always seen him smiling, had even begun to believe it was his natural state, like having blond hair or freckles like a scattering of brown sugar. “And then what? We go back to school? We hold hands after chem and I drive you home and feel you up in your driveway and that’s it, that’s all we have, that’s all—”
He broke off, as if the words had driven the air from his lungs on the way out. “Sorry,” he said, in a different tone of voice, and, turning back, tried to put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Don’t,” she said. If he touched her, her skin would burn away, she would disappear into smoke. All along she’d been wrong. All along he had been ashamed of her—ashamed and disappointed, and trying to hide it only because she was the best he could do right now.