“Samara!”
It doesn’t work this time. She blinks, stays upright, but she isn’t where I am. She’s lost in her head. And she’s still shivering. I grab my blanket from around her book, shake it out, and sit beside her, face to face, her knees at my side and mine at hers. I wrap the blanket around both of us, hold the ends together with one hand, and take her chin in the other.
“Samara,” I say, softer this time, “wake up.”
She doesn’t come back, but her expression changes, and it’s like a story. A terrible, silent story told from the inside. I try to put a name to what I see. Fear, confusion, maybe revulsion, and then she whispers, “I don’t want to see … ” And whatever it is that she doesn’t want to see, I know when she sees it, because the reaction in her face is pain. Anguish. Raw, naked grief. She rocks, eyes still closed, grabbing fistfuls of her own hair.
Her scream was the worst thing I’d ever heard, but this is definitely the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
Then she gasps, and her eyes flutter open. She looks at me, breathing hard, sees me, and closes her eyes again. Tears spill down her cheeks. I move my hand to the back of her head, bring her forehead to rest in the crook of my neck, her back heaving beneath my arm. I don’t think she was just seeing those things in her head, I get that now. Samara was living that memory, minute by minute, like it just happened.
I feel the tension leaving her body as she calms, Jillian breathing deep and slow right behind us. I want to pull the blanket tighter, but I don’t want Samara to remember where she is. I don’t want her to move. She doesn’t for a long time. Air breathes around us, and I catch the faintest scent of something fresh like lemon, or rain, only neither. Her breath is warm on my skin.
Finally I say, “What was the last thing you saw?”
“The body of my brother,” she says against my neck. “Burning. Mother said I had to watch, that … the Knowing need to see … to understand when someone is gone, or we can’t cache the memory.”
“How old were you?”
“Six.”
“And how old was your brother?”
“Seventeen.”
I hesitate to ask, but I want to know. “How did he die?”
“Poison. I heard his jaw … and his legs … break.”
I wince, thinking of that story she told with her face. Is that what it means, to never forget? To have an experience forever? Over and over again?
“Samara, how many times have you seen him die?”
“Five hundred and eighty-two.”
I tighten my arm. I don’t know what to say to her. But I was right to think she was traumatized, because that is nothing short of torture. I try to imagine what it would be like to watch Mom or Dad suffer like that. And then watch it again, when you know what’s coming. What has happened to these people, to make them like this?
She whispers, “There is a way … to Forget. I ran to the Cursed City looking for it.”
A way to Forget. Yes, I can see why she’d want that. Need it. “Did you find it?”
“No.”
“Then let me help you find it.”
She doesn’t answer, just lifts her head to look at me. Her cheeks are streaked, her hair tickling the bare skin along the edge of my shirt, breath still coming a little short. She lifts a hand and takes the glasses off my face. I don’t even know what she does with them. She’s looking right into my eyes, and when she raises her hand again, she lays it, very gently, on my cheek. I don’t think I could move if the cave fell in. When her question comes, it’s more breath than words. “Are you from Earth?”
I almost smile, because the answer is so easy. “Yes.”
She closes her eyes, breathes a long sigh, and it doesn’t take much to lean in and kiss her, once, just a little. She doesn’t move, doesn’t open her eyes. I touch her lips again, and she melts like ice in my mouth. The hand on my face slides back into my hair, and now I taste that fresh smell, lemon and sweet and a little salt from tears. I feel the skin of her neck beneath my fingers, a gasp of a surprise soft against my mouth. She kisses me back, almost wild, on her knees, holding me on both sides by the hair. And then the world beneath the blanket breaks open, the cold rushing in, and she is gone, standing, fingers on her mouth. Backing away from me.
“You cannot give me this memory,” she says.
I look at her, confused, like I’ve fallen into cold water in my sleep. But she doesn’t say another word. She turns and walks away through the red light.
As soon as I leave the shelter of the rocks, I run—past the eddying pool where Jill nearly drowned, where the boat is stuck, toward the waterfall that spit us out into this cavern. There’s a rockfall there, tumbling down an incline, a smooth, carved path upward that I realize must be leading to the cartage way. I sit just beyond the spray of the falls, head in my hands.
What just happened? I can’t believe I let it. No, I didn’t let it. I practically begged. What possessed me to take the glasses off? Touch his face like that? I was upset, broken by my memories, but I Know that’s not the only reason. I lean forward, and every time I breathe it’s a scent that is foreign, male. Beckett. And before I even feel the yank of the memory, I fall …
… and Beckett’s cheek is rough under my hand. I think he stopped breathing when I touched him. I can see his eyes now, and when I ask the question, he doesn’t hesitate. He lets a smile lift the corner of his mouth, and he says, “Yes.” Like it was the simplest of answers. I close my eyes, and for a moment, the pain of losing Adam lessens. And then I feel Beckett’s lips on mine. They’re softer than I thought they’d be. His grip is stronger than I thought it would be. He kisses me again, and his mouth is warm, and I ache, my fingers tangling in his hair …
I open my eyes to the present and my lips are flushed, cheeks hot in the chilly air. One way or another, this will be the ruin of me. And Beckett doesn’t know who I am. Not really. He doesn’t know what I am, or what I’ve done. What I’m about to do. To him. And Jillian.
What am I about to do? Nothing is the way I thought it was. Nothing. Could I really give Beckett, who told me the truth, to a Council who tells nothing but lies? Who gave me bitterblack to hide those lies, so that I could die as horribly as Adam?
And then I pause, sitting on the cold rocks, in the red dark beside the spraying waterfall. I never finish my memory of Adam’s death. I always pull myself out, crying and shaking. Or Nita would be there to help me do it. But today, while Beckett held me, I went from the dark behind the door all the way to the burning, to the depths of my grief. And there was something there. Something I hadn’t considered.