Hot beef broth with rice noodles is what’s on the menu for lunch today. At least, that’s what Remi and I found in the cabinet in one of the office lunchrooms. I slurp up a noodle and grimace when it burns my chin, and for some reason it makes Evie laugh hysterically.
“She really likes to see physical pain,” Remi says. “I stubbed my toe on the sidewalk earlier today and she thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.”
“How has it been?” I ask. “The two of you hanging out together.”
Remi looks down at the blonde little three-year-old blowing at the steam above her bowl. “Really,” Remi says, “it’s been fun. I didn’t really expect it, but it has. Maybe she’s a great distraction from all the crap that happens in the world.”
“How’s Gabe?” I ask.
“You talk like we don’t live in the same building,” Remi says. “You’ve seen him about as much as I have.”
“No, I mean,
you
and Gabe,” I say.
Remi shakes her head. “There is no
me
and Gabe.”
“Really? I thought there would be. You two seem to hit it off well.”
Remi stares down at the table, and I’m not sure if I said the wrong thing or not. I forget that there is so much that we don’t know about each other yet. There is still an entire three year gap where we didn’t even know the other was alive. She could never know how much Lucas meant to me. She could never know the pain I felt. Unless, that is, she has felt the same pain, and just hasn’t told me yet.
“We hit it off because we are good friends,” Remi says. “I just don’t want to pursue any relationship. I hate the thought.”
“Why?” I ask.
She shakes her head and looks down at Evie. “You like the soup?”
Evie nods her head up and down, making sure to flash me a grin before looking back down at her bowl.
“Personally, I’m curious about your life over the past three years,” I say. “You seem like you’re holding a lot back.”
“Aren’t we all?” Remi says. “Life for the past three years hasn’t been
life
. It’s as if we only get small glimpses of happiness, but then they are crushed by a herd of greyskins or raiders.” She points to the door. “Or attacks by people like Shadowface.”
“So, you don’t want anything to do with Gabe because of the world we live in?” I ask.
“That’s part of it,” she says. She looks down at the table and I can tell her eyes are starting to get watery.
“Who was it?” I ask.
“You knew him,” Remi says, looking up at me. A single tear falls down the side of her cheek and the sight nearly makes me start crying. “His name was Gilbert.”
My mouth falls open and I’m not sure what to say, so I don’t say anything.
“He and I were together for a very long time,” she says. “Almost immediately after the outbreak. Then, about a year ago, we got separated. I assumed he was dead, but it appears that you met him. And then he actually
did
die to save you.”
“Remi, I’m so sorry,” I say. I feel dumb. I feel shocked. I had no idea they were together. It seems strange, but in a way, it fits.
A few more tears fall down Remi’s face, but she doesn’t attempt to wipe them away. Evie gets on her knees in the chair beside her and reaches out to grab Remi’s face. With both hands on either of her cheeks, Evie stares at Remi.
“Don’t cry,” Evie says. “It’s okay. Don’t cry.”
I wonder how many times someone has had to tell Evie not to cry. How much sadness has she felt already? How much more sadness will she feel for the rest of her life? She repeats the words over and over, probably like Lydia had to do for her whenever Evie was scared.
“I’m okay, Evie,” Remi says. She pulls Evie from her chair and hugs her tightly. She shakes her head for a brief second when she looks at me. “Kids always need coddling,” she says, rolling her wet eyes.
Of course, Remi is the one that needs coddling, and she knows it. Having Evie in her arms might be the best thing in the world for her.
Once Evie is back in her chair, eating her soup, Remi wipes her cheeks and starts slurping her own noodles. “Will you tell me about Gilbert?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
I tell her everything, though I leave out the fact that Gilbert was difficult to be around most of the time. But now I suppose I get it. It was possible he had grown bitter ever since losing Remi. I told her about how he was the one that found the vial of Starborn blood, all the way up to the point where he sacrificed his life for ours. I told her the truth about it too—that he knew I had seen his future and that he had a chance to change it and didn’t.
“He said that he didn’t make that choice before,” I tell her. “He said that he loved you so much. He missed you.”
“He mentioned me?” she asks.
“Just before he died,” I say. “Though he didn’t say your name. I would have never assumed it was you.”
More tears fall as we talk. She tells me about her life with him and how he was so hopeful for the future. He had even given her so much hope, but she too often brought him down. She then told me about the last time she saw him. She had assumed that he eventually died, otherwise they would have found each other.
“And we would have found each other if it hadn’t been for Scarecrow,” she says.
“There’s no point in thinking like that,” I tell her. “We are where we are.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Gabe says he loves me.”
“Do you feel anything for him?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she answers. “But I don’t want to. I’m afraid to feel.”
“I know what you mean,” I say. “Sometimes it’s easier to just stay numb. I’m afraid that’s what Ethan is trying to do. He probably thought I was dead, and now that he knows I’m alive, he doesn’t know what to feel. Really, I don’t know what to feel either. When I first saw him, I was happy…shocked, but happy. But that doesn’t change the fact that I shot him.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. But something has changed in him. Something weird is going on. He’s never acted like this before.”
“To be honest, Waverly, you haven’t known him all that long. Maybe a few weeks? A month before the attack, and then you didn’t see him for a month.”
“A month in this world feels like a lifetime,” I say. “People can become really close, quickly.”
“Yeah,” Remi says. “I suppose you’re right.”
We sit in silence for a few seconds, our thoughts taking us to different places. But we are startled when we hear yells from inside the office. Remi grabs Evie and rests her on her hip, while I open the door to the office to see what the commotion is all about.
We see Jeremiah at his desk in the center of the room barking orders to people. On the screen I see a truck approaching our perimeter. I’m guessing that from the look on his face, Jeremiah wasn’t expecting visitors.
Evie clings to me tightly, probably because the commotion of the office is too much for her. People are yelling at each other, a group of men charge out with their guns ready, and I hold Evie a little too close. I’m not afraid. Anxious, really.
When I look at the screens on the wall, I see one vehicle approaching. It’s a pickup truck. I close my eyes, knowing that it is coming from the east. It only takes me a second before I’m inside the truck, hearing conversation. From the sounds of their voices, there are just two people—a man and a woman.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” the woman says.
The man doesn’t heed her apprehension. “We’ve got to get help from somebody. From the looks of it, there is a settlement here.” The man pauses for a second. “At least, there used to be.”
“What if they are raiders?” she asks. “They’ll kill us.”
“If we don’t stop, we’ll run out of gas,” he says. “If we run out of gas, we’ll die. Do you want that to happen?”
I open my eyes and I find Waverly staring at me.
“What’s happening?” she asks.
“They just want to get gas,” I tell her. “There are two of them.”
Waverly looks away from me and at the screens. Jeremiah’s men walk out to meet the vehicle with their guns in front of them.
“They aren’t hostile,” I say, holding Evie even tighter to me. We watch the screen as the truck comes to a stop, the guards closing in. My feet move forward. “Jeremiah, you can’t hurt them.”
He looks at me sharply and shakes his head almost as if to shake off an annoyance. He doesn’t care about my opinion. He just wants to know why people are here. But I haven’t told him about my Starborn ability. I’m not sure I want him to know. The only ones that know are Waverly and Gabe…maybe Ethan, but no one else. I’d like to keep it that way.
Jeremiah lifts a radio to his mouth and I turn my head just a little to pick up what he’s saying. “If I don’t recognize them, be ready to take them out on my orders,” he says.
“Jeremiah, no,” I say, taking another step forward. I can feel my heart pounding in my ears.
He looks at me again and squints his eyes. “What is it with you? I’m trying to take care of a situation here. If I don’t know who they are, then they are considered enemy combatants.”
I’m about to tell him what I heard—that they only want gas, and that
they
are the ones afraid of
us
being raiders, but I freeze when the man and woman get out of the truck with their hands in the air.
I see Jeremiah shake his head and start to lift the radio to his mouth. “Stop it!” I yell at him. He looks at me again and motions for one of the guards to escort me out.
“Jeremiah,” Waverly yells. “Don’t harm them!”
Again, his eyes squint and his jaws clench. I jerk my left arm away from one of the guards when he grabs me.
“We don’t know who they are,” Jeremiah says. “I can’t afford to take chances!”
“I don’t know about him,” Waverly says, “but I know the girl. I know her!”
My head jerks to Waverly, and the expression on her face is chiseled with surprise, her skin pale. She acts like she just saw a bomb go off. Her eyes travel to me and she swallows hard.
“Who is it?” Jeremiah demands.
“Her name is Jenna,” Waverly answers.
I walk away from the crowd and back into the lunchroom with Evie still in my arms. Gabe startles me when I walk in because I wasn’t expecting him to be here.
“Oh,” I say.
“What’s going on in there?” Gabe asks. “I heard shouting.”
“Oh, nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “Just newcomers. Everybody’s freaking out.”
Gabe nods and looks at Evie. “How are you doing, little Evie?” he says reaching in to tickle her neck.
She latches on to me and holds me tighter, turning her head away from Gabe. “She’s upset by all the yelling.”
“You want me to take her to her bed?” he asks. “She might like a nap.”
“No, I’ve got it,” I say.
I brush past Gabe, no doubt coming off as abrupt and rude, but it’s not directed at him, though I don’t tell him any differently. It’s not really directed at anyone. I have no reason to feel the way I do, and I don’t even understand it myself.
As I set Evie down on her cot, I don’t really mind the thought of passing her off. I was never really around kids much until it was part of my duty when I first lived in Crestwood.
That didn’t last long.
I don’t even really like kids all that much. I mean, I feel sorry for Evie because of her past and what she has had to go through, but how is it any different than the rest of us?
It’s different because she’s just a kid.
As the thought passes through my head, I feel a pang of guilt. I watch her as she almost immediately falls asleep, her eyelids brought down by invisible weights. I shouldn’t be thinking that way about her. She never will get the chance to have the childhood that I had. That chance was stripped from her the day she was born.
No matter how hard I try, my eyes can’t leave her. Her breaths are soft and sweet, her tiny fingers wrap around the edges of her blanket, clutching it like someone might try to take it away from her. How much has already been taken away from her?
As she breathes slowly, I wonder what would be worse: to live your whole life with fear—to struggle every day like Evie will have to do, or to be like me and live a life worry-free and then have it all stripped away. At least I will be able to have hope because I know what hope looks like. I know the other side of this whole greyskins problem. Evie doesn’t. She probably never will. Looking at her, I fear that she will live her whole life just trying to survive, never understanding the pleasures that life can offer, though I’m not sure it actually can offer them anymore.
The sound of movement breaks into my thoughts and a shadow forms at the doorway. Waverly stands there, looking down at me and Evie. She looks anxious.
“Why did you leave?” she asks.
“Evie was getting upset by all the yelling,” I answer.
Waverly nods.
“You said you know that girl on the screen?” I ask. “Or was it just a coverup so Jeremiah wouldn’t kill them?”
Waverly shakes her head. “Remi there’s something I should probably tell you.”
I hold up a hand and smile. “It’s okay, I already know.”
“Know what?”
“About Jenna. She’s going to take Evie away. I don’t really know why. Do you?”
“No,” she says, sitting on the floor next to me. “My visions rarely tell me why something is happening. The interpretation is left to me, which hasn’t worked out too well up to this point.” There is a pause. “How did you know about Jenna?”
“Before I left here to try and get help from Paxton, I came to your room. I couldn’t find you, but I found a notebook you had been writing in. You had written about the vision you saw of me giving Evie away to a girl named Jenna.”