13.
Jag grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. He hugged me, smelling of soap and fresh summer air. I wanted to bury my face in his chest and inhale him right down to my toes. Instead, I pushed him away. The light was not so gone that he couldn’t see my glare. I certainly noticed his perfectly styled hair.
“I’m so glad you made it across the border.” I folded my arms and focused on the horizon. “By yourself.”
“Come on, Vi, don’t be mad.” He smiled slyly, like he knew I wanted to slobber all over him.
“You’re a high-class jerk,” I said. “You left me!”
He had the gall to shrug.
“Don’t you dare shrug!”
He took an uncertain step forward that he should have taken backward.
“Stop,” I said. He’d left me in the woods—alone—to cross the border into the scariest place of my life—alone. “You. Promised.” I shoved him in the chest with every word. “You. Said. You’d. Help.”
“Vi—”
“Don’t ‘Vi’ me,” I snapped. “Why don’t you use my whole name?”
Jag opened his mouth to say something, then shut it.
“Spill it, Barque,” I said.
His mouth opened again. He squeezed his eyes closed and clenched his fists. “Look, you said I was different.” When he opened his eyes, his glare could’ve cut holes through me.
“You are.” I stepped closer to him, and this time he moved back. “It’s not a bad thing, Jag.”
“It is to me.”
“Well, maybe you’re mental.”
“Maybe you are.” He paused, and I took a swing at his pretty face.
He grabbed my wrist before I made contact. “Violet, don’t.” His voice became soft and full of apology. “I’ve been looking for you for two days.”
“That sure makes me feel better.” I tried shaking off his grip. He chuckled, but I wanted to stay mad. “Jag, don’t you get it? I told you my life was better, because of—and then you left me.”
“I know, I came back. You were already—”
“What was I supposed to do? Wait around for you? You deserve to . . . to . . . I don’t know what, but something really, really bad.” My voice cracked, totally ruining the threat.
“Please don’t be mad.” His words wrapped around me like a quilt. My anger faded, replaced by relief. Jag was here. He’d find me somewhere to sleep and something better than gel-flavored tubers to eat. Everything would be okay now.
He released my hands as we sat on one of the rocks. The silence was comfortable. It seemed like no time had passed, we’d never been apart, and he hadn’t abandoned me to cross the border by myself.
“You want me to fix your hair?” he asked. I interpreted this as Jag-speak for, “Please forgive me, you’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever met. I’m so, so sorry, and I’ll do anything if you’ll let me kiss you later.”
“Sure.” I sat on the dusty ground in front of the rock with him behind me, his knees gently pressing into my arms. Jag’s touch sent a thrill from the top of my head to my throat, where my breath caught. When he finished, he put his hands on my shoulders.
“I’m sorry.” His words in my ear made me shiver.
“Me too,” I said, getting up before I turned to total mush. “I didn’t know different meant bad.”
“Let’s just forget it, okay?”
“Forget what?”
He laughed—exactly the way Ty used to when I did that to her—and took out the first aid kit. “Let me doctor you up.”
As he spread cream over my burnt face and checked the status of the cut along my hairline, I watched him. Conversations passed between us, things we couldn’t say out loud but that patched up all the holes in the silence.
When he finished, he carefully laced his fingers through mine. “Come on, I’ll show you what my city is like.”
Holding hands with Jag was nice. He’d touched me lots of times, but he’d never taken my hand and held on skin to skin. The transmissions are crystal clear. No human contact past age eight, until you’re married. That rule is the first imprinted, starting at age three, when the transmissions become mandatory.
I’d hugged my dad before he’d left. He broke the rules, at least when no one else was around. And Zenn had held my hand and kissed me. But always in secret.
Jag pointed to things with his free hand while we walked. People sat on curbs or benches, chatting. Some of them ate at outdoor cafés, or loitered on emerald green grass with blankets and pets and friends.
In the distance, houses stretched in neat rows of straight streets. Orange lights showered each corner, continuing as far north as I could see. There were more Baddies than I’d ever imagined, but the people milling about didn’t seem that bad to me.
I kept glancing from face to face, hoping to find one that looked like my dad. No one paid any attention to me, and none of them looked remotely familiar. I gave up the search and tried to decipher the things Jag said. Some of it made sense, like, “That’s where I used to sit and feed the ducks when I was little.” He pointed to a small white-brick building. “That’s where we get mail.”
“Like e-comms?”
“Yeah, but no. We have some tech, phones and computers and stuff, but nothing like your comm. Mail is like, a message on paper.”
Several people came out with white paper squares in their hands. A girl with spiky red hair laughed when she looked at hers. Then she ripped it open, and I looked away. Didn’t she know how many trees it took to make paper? Didn’t she know most of the trees had burned in the fires?
Even as I thought these things, I wondered if they were true. I was making a judgment based on projections I’d seen in school about papermaking and logging. But I’d also been shown what prison was like, and that had been wrong. Maybe everything I’d been taught was a lie.
Could everything be different from what I knew? Different, different, different. In the Goodgrounds, I’d longed to be different. Here, I wanted to blend.
Without thinking, I reached over and traced a fingertip up Jag’s arm. He stopped speaking midsentence and gaped at me. The shocked look on his face felt like a slap. I pulled away. Good girls don’t touch boys, not even good ones. And Jag wasn’t good.
He reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear. “Hey, you just surprised me. You can touch people here. It’s okay.”
Something inside crashed and burned. I don’t know what. Maybe it was the shock of leaving the only life I’d ever known. Or maybe because deep inside I’ve always wanted to be a bad girl, but actually becoming one hurt too much.
I shook my hand out of his. He looked like he’d been punched. I wanted to apologize, but the words wouldn’t form in my mouth. Somehow he understood, because he flashed his Jag-winner smile and clasped his hands behind his back.
I fell in step beside him. He continued talking about the buildings we passed. “We sometimes watch movies in there.” Pictures—printed on paper—adorned the bricks. I stared at women wearing tops with no sleeves, men with guns, and two people who had their hands all over each other. I couldn’t look away.
“Movies?” I choked out.
“Yeah, they’re like really long TV shows.”
“TV shows?”
Jag’s face shone with happiness, and the next thing I knew, his hands slipped around my waist. We stood too close, touching all along the front of our bodies.
“Like your projections,” he said softly, tipping his head down. He moved his hand to my wrist and pushed my sleeve up as far as it would go. “Virgin skin,” he whispered.
Jag pushed the other sleeve up, staring at that arm too. The last of the sun warmed my skin, and I liked it—too much. I’d stopped listening to the transmissions. I’d walked in the park—with a boy—after dark. I’d pulled plenty of pranks, but I had never allowed the sun to touch my skin.
I felt dirty.
Now Jag was touching my bare skin, rubbing both his hands up and down. They felt as dangerous as the sun. A shiver ran through my body.
“Sorry,” he murmured, stepping away. I quickly pulled my sleeves down, feeling the heat from his touch build in my face.
“You’re almost one of us, you know.” He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “All you need is a new shirt and some tanned skin.”
He was right. People stared at me in the Goodgrounds because of my hair. Here, I stood out because of my covering clothes and the milky skin they hid.
Two girls walked by, their fingers flying over their phones. Something beeped, and one girl squealed. She showed the screen to her friend. Both of them threw their heads back and laughed in a way I’d only heard from Jag. Uncontrolled.
The girl who’d gotten the message started typing in a response. She wore a short skirt and knee-high boots. Her sleeveless shirt revealed golden skin that didn’t look as rough as Jag’s. Every strand of her shoulder-length hair was a different color. Bleached, brown, red, black, even a streak of purple.
The other girl had bright pink hair. I liked it and wondered what she’d used for dye. Her beige shorts could barely be counted as a piece of clothing. She’d tied the bottom of her green shirt in a knot. Her dark skin was natural, not tanned from the sun.
“You gonna walk by without saying hello?” Jag asked.
The girl with the multicolored hair looked over, and her face split into a grin. “Jag!” She launched herself at him and he caught her around the waist, her legs wrapping around his torso as he lifted her off the ground. They seemed to blend into one person. I watched, torn between envy at their relationship and longing to see Zenn so I could hug him like that.
“You got out,” she said once he set her down. She pocketed the phone and kept her hand on his shoulder.
He shrugged. “This is Vi,” he said, indicating me with a wave of his hand. It lingered for a moment, like he expected me to grab it. I didn’t. The girls appraised me, scanning from my blue-black hair to my sunburned face to my ridiculously long sleeves.
Jag pointed to the girl wearing the hideous boots and sporting the rainbow-colored hair. “Vi, this is Sloan,” he smiled at the pink-haired girl, “and Indy. My friends.”
The smile Indy gave him in return looked a lot more than friendly.
“Hello,” I said. (Yeah, I can be polite when the situation calls for it.)
“A Goodie? You brought another Goodie with you?” Sloan’s wide eyes flicked back and forth between me and Jag.
“Shut up, Sloan. She’s almost bad,” he said, defending me. He spoke in a voice I’d never heard before. Casual, light. No pleading tone, no sexy undercurrent. Nothing that would cure insomnia. He wasn’t the Jag I knew at all.
“Another Goodie?” I raised my eyebrows.
Jag shrugged again. I walked away, my polite-meter on empty. When I reached the end of the street, Jag, Sloan, and Indy had formed a tight triangle.
Jag gestured with his hands, his eyes wide and his mouth moving fast. He was spilling. Maybe I’d misinterpreted his Jag-speak earlier.
I expected him to have friends, but I didn’t think they’d be girls. Jealousy burned in the back of my throat no matter how hard I swallowed. With it came the disturbing thought that maybe Jag hadn’t told me the truth. Certainly not all of it.
My anger uncoiled, rocketing into full-blown rage when Thane spoke in my mind, He’s bad, and you’re not. You made the wrong choice.
I almost believed him. Which infuriated me even more. I narrowed my eyes and looked down the street, thinking that somehow I’d see Thane standing there.
People crowded onto the sidewalk as they left the movies, and I lost sight of Jag.
“Hmm, you look different,” someone said from behind.
“Different” echoed in my ears as I turned around. “Different” definitely meant bad.
The bald man stood in front of me. The man who took Jag’s brother.
The same man I’d tased and left for dead. Judging from the look on his face, he remembered.