“Awesome.” Alex jumps onto the closest bed, kicking both legs in front of her and watching me. My bag is at the foot of the other bed. It’s time to start unpacking, but I can’t stop looking at the door. If they can lock us outside, they can also lock us inside.
“I know what you’re thinking and it’s not like that. I’ve been here over a year. I know.” Alex props a pillow behind her and opens a Wired magazine. “Face it, Wick. You’re with your people now. You can be who you really are here. It’s going to be the best thing that ever happened to you.”
The old Wick would’ve had a field day with that one, but I’m . . . trying. The whole thing does sort of, kind of feel like the best thing ever. But my brain keeps snagging on how the entire place seems too good to be true. If we’re all one big happy family, what’s with the security? Why are they watching us? Why can’t we come and go as we please? I understand I’m in danger, but what about the others?
I pick at my lower lip. “Yeah, see the thing is . . . the bad stuff can’t get in, but how do we get out?”
“We don’t.” Alex returns to her magazine and flips a page.
“How can you be okay with that?”
“Because I know what’s on the other side of those walls.”
I swallow around the sudden knot in my throat as Alex flips another page. She’s trying to look busy and totally failing. Her eyes never move. She’s not reading. She’s stalling.
“And if I had to guess, you do too.”
I open my mouth, close it. Alex is staring hard at her magazine, pretending the conversation’s done. Maybe it is. In the end, does it matter? I told Norcut I’d play. I promised Bren I’d try.
“Don’t you owe it to the people who love you to stay safe?” Alex’s eyes still aren’t moving, but she flips another page. “If I had anyone left, I’d stay put for their sake. Now, I stay put for mine.”
I nod, turning my attention to unpacking. Bren has stuffed my bag with practically everything I own. On the one hand, it makes me smile because that’s so her. She prepares for everything. On the other, it makes my stomach squeeze tight. I’m not going home anytime soon. I’m not here because I won the sleepaway-camp lottery. I’m here because I’m supposed to be improving myself. I’m here because I’m being hunted—and yet those aren’t the only things filling my brain. It’s all the other stuff: how I won’t get to wake up to one of Bren’s early conference calls blaring down the hallway. How I won’t see Lauren at school or Lily at breakfast.
How I’ve never been away from my sister for longer than a week and now I don’t know when I’ll see her again.
I unfold two pairs of jeans and stare at them. It would sound so trivial to say how much I miss them already and yet it’s thumping in my head. There are things you lose that you will never get back, and right now I feel like they’re all standing in front of me.
“It gets better, you know,” Alex says. “Eventually, everything does.”
We look at each other, the silence stretching between us. “How long did it take for you?” I ask at last.
“About two minutes. I never had what you do.” She considers me, eyes so dark there’s no transition from pupil to iris. They’re just smudges of black. “So what’s with the Kool-Aid packets?”
Kool-Aid? I glance down, realize Bren packed all my jeans, all my sweatshirts, enough underwear to open a store . . . and single-serve packets of Kool-Aid—cherry, grape, lime, even blue raspberry.
I clear my throat and it catches. “I used to dye my hair. These were all the colors I used to use.”
“Oh.” Alex’s gaze lifts to the blond knot at the top of my head. “I thought parents hated it when their kids dyed their hair.”
“She did.” I put the packets on the table next to my bed, arranging them so the cherry flavor is on top. “She does. Bren likes my hair natural.”
“I’ll bet. You look like a poster child for the Aryan Nations. So why’d she send them?”
“No idea.” A lie. I do. Or, at least, I think I do. The Kool-Aid packets feel like an apology, like an attempt to make things up to me. It’s nowhere near enough, but still . . . she tried.
Alex snaps her magazine shut. “Security was increased before you arrived.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. So who’s hunting you?”
“I don’t know.” And there’s something about Alex’s question that stops me short. “And you? Are you being hunted or whatever too?”
“Pretty much.”
“What’d you do?”
“Got sloppy. Almost got caught. Hart saved me.” Alex smiles like it’s funny, but we both catch how practiced she sounds. It makes chills push across my skin. This place is not what they say it is and yet . . .
My eyes snag on the Kool-Aid packets again. You can be who you really are here and I think I’m going to be a redhead again.
“Can we use the kitchen?” I ask.
“Duh.” Alex sits up, eyes slitted. “Wait. Where are you going?”
I snag two towels from the bathroom and wiggle a Kool-Aid packet at her. “I’m going to dye my hair.”
8