“Ethan!” I called out.
I was going to tell him that they had taken me away from Mom and Dad, that Lucie’s aunt had called me her little contingency plan and sent me here. I didn’t know what was happening, and I wanted to go home. I was going to ask him for help. But I remembered that Mom and Dad had said Ethan was in trouble, and I figured that he would not be able to send me home. I thought he might want to go home as well and he couldn’t.
So I didn’t ask him anything, but I edged closer to him. Ethan was always nice to me. The nicest boy I’d ever met, nicer than any of the boys my age, and I always thought I’d like to marry him if he wasn’t going to marry Lucie. I always thought Lucie was lucky.
I thought that if I could be with Ethan, I would feel better, and I would not be so scared.
I pushed past the other people. I didn’t say excuse me. “Ethan,” I said again.
He stared at me and said in a weird voice, “What are you doing here?”
“The lady,” I said, “Lucie’s aunt, she said we were going to be sent to . . . to the cages, to be cleansed and to give power to a beautiful future. My mom and dad always said that things couldn’t go on with the Dark city the way they were, and that . . . that a change was coming. They said it would be good.”
If it was a good thing, I should want to do it. I shouldn’t feel so bad.
“A brave new world,” he said, and there was something funny about his voice, like he wanted to make a mean joke. He didn’t sound at all like Ethan. But then he said, “Maybe it will be, one day. But I’ll never see it.”
I reached out shyly and touched his hand, and he jumped, like people didn’t ever try to take his hand. Ethan held my hand all the time when we went out and had to cross streets.
It was then that I understood. He was the other one. I forgot what Mom had called him. She’d said he wasn’t nice.
But he looked nice. He looked like Ethan. It’s funny, but he looked more like Ethan in the car than he had at home. It seemed to me that he was trying to look like Ethan really hard, and it seemed to me that maybe he was doing it because Ethan was in trouble and the other boy wanted to make sure Ethan wouldn’t be in trouble anymore. Even if he had to be in trouble instead. I thought that was really nice of him. I hate being in trouble.
He could tell that I knew, right away. There was something careful about him, like he was doing a chore, cleaning something maybe, and he was watching out because he didn’t want to miss a spot.
“Hush,” he whispered to me. “Please, it’s a secret.”
I nodded so hard, my head hurt.
“I get it,” I said. “You’re brave. Will you let me hold your hand? Only, I’m scared.”
Don’t tell my mom I said that. Don’t tell her, but I cried.
“Yes,” he said, quite loudly, and he didn’t sound like Ethan again. He sounded mad, but what he said was nice. “I’ll hold your hand until the very end.”
The car was getting pretty close to the big square with the new things in it, like birdcages but huge and horrible somehow. They were like the stuff you see with your eyes closed, when it’s night and you don’t want to open your eyes in case you are all alone and everything you’re scared of is real.
It was daytime, and there were so many people around me. All the people didn’t make me feel better, though. They were watching us, and their eyes went right through me, like the points of scissors into paper.
I held on to his hand pretty tight, I guess. He looked down at me, and he tried to kneel down beside me. He couldn’t quite do it, because of the chains.
“Don’t look at the cages,” he said. “Don’t look at them. Can you just look at me? Look at me, and don’t look at anything else.”
I looked at him. He looked like Ethan does, but he was thinner. He looked like Ethan would if Ethan had been sick, and people had been . . . had been not very kind to him. He had a sad mouth, but his eyes didn’t seem sad. His eyes looked afraid of me, as if I was an exam and he thought he was going to fail me. I looked at him, and maybe it was a silly thing to think, but I thought I liked him just as much as Ethan.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can do that.”
I don’t know how it was exactly, if I hugged him or he hugged me, but he was suddenly holding on to me. I put my head down on his shoulder and he put his arms around me, as much as he could when we were fastened to opposite sides of the car. I held on to his shirt as hard as I could. I was crying a lot by then, and I got his shirt all wet. I don’t think he minded, though. He held me, and I felt a little bit of wet on my neck. He was crying too, even though he was pretty big. Even though he was almost grown up.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m trying not to be scared. I won’t be scared. Just don’t let me go.”