“What’s that, moonshine?”
“Vodka,” he says. “Stolish-stoliks . . . some Russian pish.” He moves in and presses his lips onto my neck.
Great. Drunk Topher. So drunk he doesn’t even know what he’s doing. Just what I need. I’m actually perfectly positioned to flick him off me like a bug, slam him down on the floor, and smack his stupid face with the heel of my palm. His lips move to my ear.
“Toph, don’t do that, come on.”
He moves his hands down, wrapping them around my waist, pulling me back to him. I can feel his drunken enthusiasm pressing into my hip.
“Topher, please let go.”
I really don’t want to hit him, not in his current state. At the dojo I took every opportunity to humiliate him. Outside the dojo I had to restrain myself from decking him several times an hour when we had the misfortune of being in the same room. But grief has softened me toward him. His grief and mine. Now I just feel sad. He’s hurting. I’m hurting. Maybe this is all we have. And I miss Tucker so badly suddenly, it’s like being strangled. If I close my eyes . . .
“What’s the harm?” Topher slurs, one hand drifting up to cup my breast. “Turn around.”
I turn, though the sensible part of my brain is telling me not to, that’s it’s stupid, that I should just punch him and be done with it. The only light on in the room is a small reading lamp in the bottom bunk. It’s just enough to see his face, his eyes looking into mine. Enough to see his expression slowly downgrade from teenage lust to resignation and then something else. Maybe boredom, or heartbreak. His hands fall away from me.
“You don’t really like me that way, do you?” I say.
He doesn’t even pretend, or try to be polite. “Not really, no. But you don’t like me that way either.”
Like that’s an excuse.
“Actually, I hate you, Topher,” I say, outward calm concealing something inside I barely recognize. He has somehow made me feel like a thing he’s scraped off the bottom of his shoe, while at the same time making himself look the victim. “If you don’t get out of my room, I’m going to drop you so hard right here that your brains will come out your nose.”
He takes a step back, laughing a little. “Hard-core,” he says. “Tucker always liked the badass girls. Couldn’t resist them. Not even for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He chuckles blearily. “Ask Emily.”
My fist lashes out into a straight jab before I can stop it.
Drunk or not, Topher ducks and blocks like the black belt he also is. He doesn’t try to hit back though, something to be grateful for. That really would get ugly. He holds my wrist for a second, making the ring of bruises throb. I yank my arm away.
“Get out, please,” I say, my eyes starting to sting. “You’re drunk. You’re horny. Or you wanted to hurt my feelings for some fucked-up reason. Mission accomplished. You can go. Please go before I’m forced to kick the shit out of you. Tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . .” I can’t finish because my mind is screaming at me.
Emily. E.M.I.L.Y.
The sudden rage is so disorienting, I feel nauseous. And it has nowhere to go. I can’t fight Topher here. I can’t go chasing around the base at night like a madwoman, looking to confront Emily.
And Tucker is not around to deny or admit it.
Tucker and Emily. And all that time they spent alone in the woods practicing archery. It could be true. Or it could not. It wouldn’t be the first time Topher has said something nasty to get on my nerves. Maybe being drunk has made him forget we’re friends now. We were friends. Now I want to kill him. Or someone.
I close my eyes and say a little prayer, to whom I don’t know. When I open my eyes, Topher will be gone. Then I count silently backward from ten, pressing my fingernails into the palms of my hands. When I open my eyes, I’m alone.
My mind is like a horror story, told to scare children. Later, after Mandy comes back to the room, also smelling of vodka, and I lie in the dark, listening to her breathe above me, Tucker and Topher swim behind my eyelids until my head spins so vigorously I feel like I might vomit. Tucker, who loved me, is dead. Topher, who probably hates me, cried when he thought I was dead. Is that hate? Tucker, who might have cheated on me with Emily. Topher, whose hands and lips felt like needles under my skin. Tucker, whom I miss so much, I sometimes daydream about crawling into his grave. Is that love?
My parents love me. I should know what it is.
As I finally begin to surrender to sleep, my body recalls a rocking motion, and unnatural warmth wrapping around me, and snowflakes drifting down on my face. I smell charcoal and hear the buzzing of bees. I see my own face reflected in black glass. My bruised wrists still ache, as though I’m being pulled along in chains.
He built a fire and pressed cold snow on my bleeding forehead. He carried me and left me somewhere safe, somewhere warm, where Topher could find me. A heartless, soulless Nahx did this for me.
EIGHTH
The Rogues find me in the darkest part of the night, in the thick of the forest. I’m connected, at least, so my reflexes are fast and my strength sufficient to fight them. But they don’t attack. They surround me in a circle, as I step back, pressing into the straight trunk of a tree. Even the way they stand is disobedient, disorderly. Lazy almost. It’s as though the rigidity of our armor doesn’t affect them. They are dirty, too, though so am I.
One of them raises a human bow and arrow, drawing back the bowstring and pointing the arrow at me. I fix my eyes on it. If she lets it fly, I can catch it before it hits me. I think. I think I can. It seems like something I should be able to do.
Rank? her Offside signs. The other Rogues draw weapons too—some have our rifles, some human axes or knives.
The Offside growls and takes a step toward me. RANK?!
Eighth, I sign. Eighth.
They exchange a look. The first Rogue lowers her weapon, tucking both bow and arrow behind her back.
Join us? she signs.
Fear makes the fluid pulse through me. And the directives buzz, making the back of my neck itch. Dart the humans. Leave them where they fall. I want to answer, but it seems impossible to choose anything but the directives. And Sixth. I should go and look for her.
In the low light, the other Rogues surrounding me come into focus. Some of them seem injured. I notice the one to the right of the Offside is missing part of her arm. She has woven branches with sharp thorns around the stump. Another is missing half his helmet. The exposed skin is mottled and twisted, like the roots of a burnt tree.
Sixth. I should look for Sixth.
The Offside lunges toward me again, hissing. His hand slices through the air.
JOIN US!
I shake my head. No.