She smiled. “Where do I hide my journal?”
“You don’t keep one, but Dubbs does,” I said “She hides it under our bed. She sleeps on the top bunk so you have to pass it up to her each night.”
She nodded. “What’s her favorite stuffed animal?”
“Elmo. It’s so old the black rubbed off its eyes, so you drew it on again with a Sharpie.”
“This is deeply weird,” Rosie said.
“I know,” I said.
“How do you feel about Linus?” she asked.
My heart stopped. I glanced sideways, toward a Swiss Army knife on his desk. I made him feel worthless.
“Crap,” Rosie said.
I couldn’t help it. I had to know. “Did you sleep with him?” I asked.
She slid her hands down into her pockets. “No,” she said. “I mean, yes, I slept with him, but we didn’t have sex.” She smiled, then made a goofy, embarrassed face. “How are you and Tom?”
“Awkward,” I said. “He misses the real Althea, but he’s such a decent guy that he’s trying to take care of me.”
A clanking noise came from the kitchen below, and I listened a moment for more.
“Tell me what you found out at Forge today,” Rosie said.
“The vault itself was empty, but I followed the tunnel past the clock tower pit,” I said. “It slopes down a long way and ends at a locked door. I heard mooing on the other side, which means—”
“The dairy barn,” she said. “I was trying to think how Berg moved all the dreamers out so quickly. It fits. They could have loaded all the dreamers into ice cream trucks and driven them away. Nobody would have noticed. Does Tom know?”
I shook my head. “I was too freaked out by seeing Berg. I didn’t really want to talk. I just wanted to come here and see Linus in case he knew where you were.”
“This is good,” Rosie said. “Don’t tell either of them. It’s not their problem.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’m still working that out,” she said.
“You wouldn’t kill anybody.”
She looked at me oddly. “I wouldn’t admit it.”
My heartbeat kicked in, and I wasn’t certain what to say. I believed, deep down, that Rosie could want to kill Berg because part of me wanted to, too. But I wouldn’t actually go through with it.
“You’re too smart to mess up your life that much,” I said doubtfully.
She gave a faint, feline smile. “Just promise me you won’t tell anybody about the tunnel,” she said. “Do that for me, and I’ll keep your secrets, too.”
“Okay,” I said. “I promise.”
30
ROSIE
BAGELS
WHEN WE GET DOWN to the kitchen, Linus has cleared away the cutting board and the mess. He brings over a bag of bagels. On the stove, a pot of marinara sauce is simmering, and the juicy smell is beyond amazing. The shades, pulled down to cover the windows, are backlit with gold from the evening sun. It feels like a totally ordinary kitchen, but this is arguably the strangest day of my life. I want to dismiss Thea’s entire claim that she has my mind, but I’m also so shocked by her that I guess I am believing her. She has me second-guessing everything I say or do. It’s like how I felt the first time with all the cameras at Forge, only a million times worse. When I lift my hand, I’m seeing the motion through my own eyes and wondering how it looks to her through her eyes at the same time.
Tom is in a chair at the table already, peeling an orange. Thea quietly apologizes to him about something, and though he seems a bit stiff, he says not to worry. He offers her a wedge of orange, which she accepts. She sits heavily in the chair beside him and lounges back in a relaxed, elegant way, as if she deserves to make herself comfortable.
I slouch.
“Coffee,” Linus says, and puts a steaming metal pot beside the bagels. “We’re out of milk. Help yourselves.”
Thea and I pick raisin bagels from the bag and both smear cream cheese the same way, in dabs. I lick my fingers, knowing I shouldn’t. She uses her napkin, which she rests on the top of her belly. What I don’t understand is this poise of hers. If we have the same brain, I don’t get why she’s smarter and calmer than I am. Unless she only seems smarter and calmer. Could be she’s as restless as I am inside.
She looks at Linus sometimes when he isn’t looking at her, and I can’t tell if she’s wistful or chagrined. He hardly looks at her at all. He doesn’t sit with us. Instead, he positions the fourth chair where Thea can put her feet up on it and tells her to do so. Then he goes back to brace his hand on the counter beside him.
I am not deceived. Some friction unites them. I don’t want to care, but it eats at me because I don’t understand it.
“Do you have déjà vus anymore, or any headaches?” Thea asks me.
I’ve never talked about the déjà vus in front of a stranger like Tom before, so the question makes me uneasy. “No. Do you?”
“I’ve been getting headaches,” she says. “They’re bad, but they don’t last long. I also had a déjà vu in the clock tower today.”
“She’s supposed to report any headaches,” Tom says. “They could mean a problem with her surgery.”
“I’m not going back for any more tweaks,” she says.
She fills us in about her recovery at the Chimera Centre, and she describes the lab she found there. I can see why she’s not psyched to have any more surgeries.
“What if they had never put Rosie’s seed in a new body?” Linus asks her.
Thea turns to him. “I’d be stuck in a petri dish, like all those other dream seeds,” she says. “I doubt I’d even know I exist.”
“What about Thea? What would have happened to her?” Linus asks.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Diego and Madeline were keeping me—I mean her—alive for the baby’s sake.”
Linus glances briefly toward Tom, and then back to Thea. He looks like he has more questions, but he doesn’t ask them. Instead, he aims his eyes toward his feet.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Linus lifts his gaze toward Thea, as if she’ll answer for them. She stares back at him, waiting likewise. I set down my bagel. This testy vibe of theirs bugs me. They had, what, two phone conversations together? I slept in his bed last night. I thought that counted for something.
“You might as well tell me,” I say. “I can’t read your mind.”
“It’s no big deal,” Thea says. “Apparently, Linus thinks I’m nothing like you.”
Linus crosses his arms. “That’s not exactly true,” he says.
“How are we different?” I ask.
“He likes the way you’re trusting and sweet,” Thea says, with her gaze still on Linus.
“I’m not,” I say.
“I guess then we are similar,” Thea says.
Tom lets out a low whistle.
Linus steps over to the stove. “You can stop anytime,” he says quietly.
Steam escapes as he lifts the lid and gives his red sauce a stir.
“So, Thea,” Tom says in a cheery, clear voice. “Did you tell Rosie about our trip to Doli?”
“What?” I ask.
Thea gives me a small smile. “I wanted to tell you I saw Dubbs yesterday,” she says. “We went to visit Doli, Tom and I. Ma and Larry were there, too.”