Push (2 page)

Her pupils are dilated, huge and dark, leaving only a thin rim of hazel green. Because of me. I’m scaring her.

I’m scaring myself.

I feel like I’ve been through a wood chipper and the slightest puff of air will scatter all the bloody, raw bits of me across the floor. And there, at the edges of my mind, is the numbness that’s shrouded my every moment since Mom died. It’s crawling back like a swarm of maggots to rotting flesh. Part of me wants to let it, to say:
Yes. Welcome. Wreathe my world in fog. Make me numb. Make me feel nothing, nothing at all.

But I don’t want to be that girl anymore. I’ve worked so hard to be normal.

You were never just a normal girl.
I hear his voice in my head, but it’s just a memory.

Jackson’s gone. Forever.

I thought I could save him like he saved me.

I failed.

I can’t bear it. I can’t mourn again, can’t do it, not right now. Not anytime soon.

The guy in the back is singing off-key while he makes the pie. The woman behind the counter plants her fists on her hips. Her expression’s pretty clear. She’d like us to find the exit, like . . . now. Thanks for the concern, lady.

The few steps it’ll take me to get to the door stretch like an abyss before me. I’m not sure that my legs won’t buckle before I hit the sidewalk.

Carly shifts my arm from her waist and drapes it across her shoulders. Like she’s afraid I’ll crumble. I won’t. I refuse. I won’t let this break me.

“Miki, it’s okay,” Luka says, drawing out the last word like he’s trying to tell me something. I watch the key ring spin round and round and round his index finger.

“Slow breaths. You know the routine,” Carly says, and shuffles us both a couple of steps closer to the front door.

My thoughts are a series of cyclones churning destruction wherever they touch down, then moving on, spinning out of control.

From the corner of my eye, I see the keys go around again. The leather fob angles toward me so I can read the word on the round medallion at the center:
JEEP
.

And then everything stops. No confusion. Just clarity.

Those keys in Luka’s hand: they aren’t Luka’s; they’re Jackson’s. I remember him throwing them down on the table when we first settled in the booth.

My gaze shoots to the table. Four plates.
Four.

I stop dead, despite Carly’s less-than-gentle urgings toward the door.

“Find Jackson,” Carly orders Luka. “Where is he, anyway? We need to go. Like, now.”

Go. We need to go. We need to! . . .

“Wait!”

I break from Carly’s hold and turn to stare at her. She just said his name. Jackson. She
remembers
him. Remembers that he was here at the pizza place with us. My heart stutters, then starts to race double time. He’s not here now, but . . . he’s not dead.

Because if he were, Carly would have no memory of him at all. That’s what happens when you die in the game. Your entire existence from the moment you were conscripted gets wiped out as if it had never been.

When Richelle died in a Drau-infested warehouse in Vegas, everyone in her real life forgot all their interactions with her during the months from the time she was first pulled to the time her con went red. According to her memorial page, she died seven months before I even met her.

The only people who remember those months are the ones who knew her in the game—me, Luka, Tyrone, Jackson. For some reason, our memories of her remain.

If my con turns full red, I’ll go back to the moment where I’m lying in the road, my blood smeared on the truck’s bumper and pooling underneath me, warm and sticky. I’ll go back to my heart beating slower and slower until it stops. That will be the moment that all I am in
this
reality ends. My friends, my family will all forget everything about me from that second on. Like I’d never lived the intervening days, weeks, months at all. Not even memories of me from that time left behind. Just . . . nothing.

For Jackson, his life would be snuffed years ago when he died in the real world in a car crash with his sister at the wheel. In that fraction of a second somewhere in the past, he would cease to exist.

That would mean Carly never would have met him.

He wouldn’t have been here with us, out for pizza.

So while Luka and I would remember him from the game, Carly wouldn’t even know his name.

But she does. In fact, she thinks he’s here somewhere, not gone at all.

A tiny, terrifying seedling of hope unfurls. I clutch Carly’s forearm. “Did—” My voice is little more than a croak. I swallow and try again. “Did you see where Jackson went?”

“Would I be asking Luka to find him if I had?” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “It’s like he disappeared into thin air. Check the can,” she orders Luka.

My gaze shoots to his. He smiles a little, holds up the keys, and jangles them.
This
is what he wanted me to figure out.

Jackson’s alive.

Tears sting my eyes, threatening to fall. I didn’t cry when I thought he was dead, but now that I think he’s alive I’m about to collapse in a sobbing heap. I bite the inside of my cheek hard until I feel like I can keep it together.

Jackson’s alive.

Which doesn’t make sense because his con was red. He was dead.

I need to find him.

“We need to find him,” Luka says.

“That’s why I told you to check the can,” Carly says.

But Luka wasn’t talking to her.
We
need to find him, which means I need to get Luka alone so we can figure out a plan.

“Luka! Go check.” Carly sounds exasperated. “I’d do it but, hey”—she waves her fingers in the general direction of her fly—“missing some equipment here. . . .”

“He’s not—” With a shrug, Luka gives up and heads off to do as Carly ordered.

But we both know Jackson isn’t in the little boys’ room.

He’s . . . somewhere else.

LUKA UNLOCKS THE DOOR OF THE JEEP.

“Miki, you take shotgun.” Carly the magnanimous. “Last thing we need is you having another panic attack.”

“Bossy, much?” I mutter, mostly because she expects it. Yeah, she’s bossy and unpredictable, argumentative, pissy, sometimes even bitchy. But she’s also the friend who steps up when I need her, imagined wrongs forgotten, arms ready to hold me up when I feel like I’m going to fall.

She smiles at me and I want to hug her—for sacrificing herself to the cramped space of the backseat, for being safe and here, in the real world. For being exactly who she is, the friend who’s been there for me through it all.

So I do. I throw my arm around her shoulder and rest my cheek against her hair. She rubs circles on my back.

“I know,” she whispers.

But she doesn’t. She can’t.

“Thank you,” I whisper back. “For always being there.”

She hugs me hard. “Right back at you. BFFs, right? Remember when I got my tongue pierced? You sat there next to me and held my hand.”

“And almost threw up.”

“All the more reason that your attendance at the event was valiant.” She kisses me on the cheek and steps back.

“Hey, I was just about to get in the group hug.” Luka waggles his brows.

“You snooze, you lose,” Carly says, climbing into the backseat. “So . . . where’d you say Jackson went?”

Luka shoots me a look. “He, uh, went out the back door. To the alley.”

“That explanation is majorly sketch. You know that, right?” Carly pops the seat forward again and leans out to look at him. “Who’s he meeting there?”

Luka shrugs.

“Luka?” she says as I push the seat back and climb in.

He still doesn’t answer, just closes my door and rounds the hood to the driver’s side.

I stare out the window trying to come up with something plausible to say.

Undeterred by the heavy evasion vibe hanging in the air—or, more likely, spurred by it—Carly keeps right on going as soon as Luka starts the car. “He managed to disappear without a trace in the few seconds while I got up to follow Miki? That’s weird.”

She has no idea.

“Can someone answer me?” She unhooks her seat belt and leans forward.

Luka meets her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Seat belt.”

Carly flops back and I hear a snap. “Who was he meeting in the alley, Luka? His dealer?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. Great. The second we drop Carly off, she’ll text Dee and Kelley and Sarah about her suspicions. She’ll swear them to secrecy. But they’ll tell two friends, who’ll tell two friends. Carly won’t mean for it to balloon, but rumors have a way of doing that.

“Seriously, Luka . . . what’s Jackson into?”

“Nothing,” Luka says at the same time I say, “The queen of trying crazy shit is actually asking that question?”

I reach back to give Carly’s knee a shove to let her know I’m kidding.

She flicks my shoulder and says, “Is he in trouble? Should we do something?” She pauses, then asks, “Is he dealing? Maybe he’s getting his shipment in that alley. We really don’t know him that well—”

“I know him that well,” Luka cuts her off. His tone’s not like anything I’ve ever heard him use before. It’s a threat and a warning and an implacable statement.

“Okay. Fine. But I’m just saying—it’s weird.” Something in Carly’s voice makes me turn. She’s looking at Luka with this narrow-eyed, sort of predatory look. Then she sees me watching her and her expression goes neutral.

I press my fingertips against my temples. I need to get things under control. I need a plan. That’s the priority right now. Find Jackson. Get answers. Figure out what his absence means in the big scheme of the game. Figure out why things are escalating so quickly, why there were so many Drau in Detroit.

“Hey, you okay?” Carly rests her hand on my shoulder. When I nod she says, “You’re right, Luka. I’m sorry. You know Jackson better than I do. If you say he isn’t dealing, I’ll take your word on it. Sorry. Really.” Carly the peacemaker’s back online.

“No hay problema.”
He grins at her in the rearview mirror and she grins back. Then he says, “Jackson took off with some guys he has a group project with. There was no parking on the street so they pulled in back. He asked me to get his car home because they’re going to drop him off.”

Even I almost believe him. I hadn’t realized Luka could improvise with such aplomb. I always thought his inner Boy Scout kept him honest.

“Well,” Carly huffs out. “Why didn’t you just say that?”

“I just did,” Luka says.

We’ve been driving for a few minutes, music on low, when Carly taps Luka on the shoulder. “What
is
that?” she asks.

“The music? Dubstep.”

Carly nods. “I’ve heard dubstep before, but this is darker, sort of experimental.”

“These tracks are old,” Luka says. “Maybe from the nineties? Jackson turned me on to them.”

“I like.” She taps my shoulder next. “You look better. You have some color back.”

“I’m better.” So much better. Because Jackson’s alive.

He might not have made it back from the mission, but he’s alive somewhere. The question is: Where?

Then I remember the cave, the gurneys, the clones lined up like cuts of meat in a butcher’s case. I gasp as my little euphoric bubble of hope bursts: What if the Drau have him? What if they’re going to use him as an original donor, create an army of clones from his DNA? I think of the girl in the cold room, her brain removed, the shell of her body kept alive by machines.

My fingers clench, digging into my thighs.

Luka cuts me a sharp look. I turn my face back to the side window, not wanting him or Carly to catch the resurgence of my panic.

Jackson isn’t going to die like that.

I’m going to find him. I’m going to bring him back. I’ve lost so many people I care about. I won’t lose Jackson, too.

This time, I will get a say in how things pan out. This time, the ending of the story won’t shatter me. I won’t let it.

A few minutes later, Luka pulls up in front of Carly’s house. I climb out, pull the seat forward, and hold it as she untangles herself from the backseat. She stares at my face for a few seconds.

“You wanna come do the Friday night dinner thing?” she asks, not even trying to disguise the plea in her tone. Her mom has this thing about the whole family being together for dinner on Friday nights. She doesn’t mind if they have friends over or head out after. But she’s non-negotiable on anyone skipping out on it.

Doing the Friday night dinner thing with Carly’s family would go a long way toward closing the distance that’s been growing between us for weeks, a crack that’s becoming a chasm. I hate to disappoint her, but every minute that ticks past could be putting Jackson’s life at risk. Getting Luka alone to brainstorm a plan has to be my priority right now, and Carly’s just handed me a golden opportunity.

“Maybe tonight’s not the best,” I say. “I’m not sure I can handle the crowd.” Truth. I may be ditching her, but at least I’m not lying. I try to ignore the feeling that I’m letting her down.

Carly skews her lips to the side but doesn’t argue. She looks disappointed but not pissed. My explanation’s plausible. I never want much company on the tail of a full-blown panic attack. Mostly, I just want my bedroom and my music.

Then she glances at Luka and I have the crazy idea she’s going to ask him to dinner. With her parents. And her brothers. Is she kidding? A boy who isn’t related to her at family dinner night? They’ll chew him up and spit him out. I guess she has the same thought because the invitation never materializes.

“You sure, Miki? I know Mom would love to see you.” That’s as close to begging as she’ll get.

I almost cave. Then I think of Jackson, trapped somewhere in the game, and I say, “Sorry. Call me after, ’kay? Maybe you’ll come over?”

She brightens a little. “’Kay.” Then she gives me a quick, one-armed hug. As she does, I catch sight of my backpack, rammed into the corner of the seat. I freeze.

Jackson’s backpack. It’s in the trunk. I have a place to start, the seeds of a plan.

As Carly heads for her front door, I expect Luka to start talking. When he doesn’t, I ask, “Do you know where he is?”