Summer Ruins (44 page)

“How long?” Lucas asks.

“She said a month, maybe less.”

A rustling noise at my back shoots me to my feet and I whirl around, sure another enemy has popped up unexpectedly, ready to kill us all.

It’s only Greer, and she puts her hands up in the air with a tired smile. “Just me. Pax is asking for you, Althea.”

***

The tent they’re keeping him in is dark, but when I push aside the flap a beam of sunlight falls across his pale face. That’s the moment my heart stops beating. I don’t think I believed Pax was alive until now.

He squints into the light, his handsome face contorted in pain. The flap falls closed behind me, and we’re alone. I stumble to the makeshift cot, dropping to the cool grass and putting my hands gently to his cheeks.

Pax lies on his side, turned toward me, and is undressed from the waist up. He grins, trying for the stomach-flipping one but not quite making it, and a sob shudders past my lips. “You’re alive.”

“You saved me, Althea.” He reaches out a hand, grunting with the effort, and smoothes the wild strands of hair from my forehead. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I did, Pax. I love you, and you would have done the same for me. For any of us.”

“But I didn’t. I didn’t save anyone,” he chokes out, so much pain spilling toward me that I feel cold all over.

“That’s not true. You saved Tommy. And even though we didn’t save everyone today, a lot of people are alive because of us.” The words sound empty, even to my ears, because the victory feels like a failure when Leah’s grin pops into my mind.

“Leah,” he whispers. “She… I should have stayed away from her. She might not have been so eager to help if we weren’t spending so much time together.”

I raise my eyes to his, squeezing his hand against my cheek. “Don’t say that, Pax. She cared about you, and the two of you having each other these past weeks made her happy. She’d never have known what it was like to feel that way if it wasn’t for us unveiling them.” I swallow hard. “She wouldn’t have traded her whole life under the Others for her days with you. I know it.”

Pax drops his hand from my face, resting his head back on the pillow and not bothering to wipe the tears wetting his face. I grab a towel from the stand by the cot, drying his face until it stops getting wet again.

“Why didn’t walling Kendaja’s alcove work?” I ask, wondering if Pax has any ideas. “She sure did a number on you.”

“I told you she likes me,” he jokes weakly. “And I don’t know. I asked Greer the same question while she healed me—it actually felt like she was ripping me apart instead of putting me back together—and she thinks it’s probably because Kendaja’s mind doesn’t work the way everyone else’s does to begin with.” He tries to shrug, then hisses at the pain. “It doesn’t matter now.”

I suppose it doesn’t. I stay with Pax for a long time, until the sun goes down and he finally sleeps. We talk about where we’re going from here, what this new civilization will look like, and what we’ll be asked to give to it.

I tell him about Deshi’s movie—how even though it might seem as though everything is terrible now, and we hoped so hard this would turn out differently, a lot of people are thankful.

When his breathing evens out, I stand up to leave and see the ugly black strings tying the skin of his shoulder, neck, and back together. Flesh-toned shimmers stretch out between them, obviously Greer’s handiwork, and revulsion tightens my stomach.

Kendaja nearly tore him in half.

The Others ripped us all open, and nothing Greer can do will make us mend.

We’ll all have scars.

***

Three weeks later, the four of us are gathered at the old Underground Core. The Others’ spaceship is huge—we had to wake about twenty of them from the fever state so they could move the pieces outside and put it back together—but now it sits behind Mount Rushmore, ready to fly.

All of the Others are on board. Most of them aren’t aware of what’s going on, and even though a few of the lucid Wardens didn’t like keeping their friends and family ill, they didn’t argue with the Elements when they said it was one of the terms of us allowing them to leave uncontested.

There’s one more thing to do before they can leave. Since the Others are locked in the ship, their air filtration system turned on, the planet has begun, at a deep level, to tip out of balance. The Elements promised to show us how to fix it before they leave.

“Your planet suffered from an imbalance before we arrived,” Vant tells us, sticking close to Pax.

We’ve all been taking turns sticking close to Pax since he almost died. He stayed in bed for the better part of a week while the skin on his neck, shoulders, and back knitted together. It turned out his Atlanta father—the Healer—had survived the events of the Summer Celebration and was able to help tend to him.

Still, he said that without Greer’s help, Pax would have died from an infection.

“What do you mean?” Pax’s posture remains stiff, not languid the way it was when I met him, but the Healers say that will go away in time.

“It’s complicated, but the humans had not been caring for the environment the way they should have and the planet was starting to heat up. In a strange way, our coming here might have saved your world.” Vant shrugs, pink tingeing his cheeks.

I take a deep breath. “So what do we do?”

Greer steps forward. She’s still mostly sad, but sometimes she laughs now. I think we all do, but it’s often hard to recall the last time.

She opens four portals in the warm morning air, less sticky in South Dakota than it was in Texas. Lucas and Apa disappear through one, Vant and Pax though the next, then Deshi and Pamant go. Finally, Flacara and I step through the last portal, emerging on a hot summer beach.

“What now?” I ask her again, since I didn’t get an answer the first time.

Flacara sits cross-legged on the beach and I join her, not caring when hot sand sticks to the backs of my legs and catches in the hem of my sundress. The sundress reminds me of the one Cadi gave me in the magic summer vision last autumn, and for the first time in a while, the memory of Cadi and Ko conjures a grateful smile.

“It’s simple. The element of fire, of summer, is inside you, Althea. You’ve felt it, and you’ve used it to your advantage. To heal the planet, you must share your gift.” She plunges her fingers into the sand, nodding at me to do the same. “Close your eyes, and reach out with your heat. It’s deep, still. The unrest. But you will feel it tipping the wrong way. The warmth slides too quickly toward cold. Tell me when you do.”

It takes several minutes, and my frustration has started to build when a chill akin to Lucas’s touch tickles the tips of my fingers, steals warmth from under my palms. “There! I feel it.”

“Good.” I don’t open my eyes, but I can hear the smile in her voice. “Now, pull it back. Like balancing a seesaw as a child.”

I do what she says, and I feel her help me a little to keep it steady. Then she lets go, and I open my eyes. “We did it?”

“
You
did it, Althea.” She smiles, and it’s radiant and sad at the same time. “I hate that I have to leave you, but it is for the best. And I thank you. For being my daughter, for showing me that love can be a more powerful force than strength or knowledge. Don’t ever forget that.”

“Will we still be able to… to talk? Now that you’re leaving?”

Surprise and gratitude war for supremacy on her face, but neither win. “I don’t know how far the abilities of the mind can stretch. We’ve never attempted such a thing.”

I lean over and give her a hug, not because I think she expects me to, but because I want to. “I hope we can,” I whisper, laying my head against the thudding heartbeat in her chest.

Epilogue

It’s early morning, and my eyes open to find the Morgans’ bright orange comforter staring me in the face. I sigh and roll over, scratching Wolf behind the ears while he watches me, a worried expression in his mismatched eyes.

The guilt and the grief are always the worst when I first wake up. Images of our friends, of Katie and Laura, Christian, Mark, and all the rest, broken and gone forever, march across my mind, refusing to leave no matter how hard I will them away.

Leah’s face and Griffin’s are the hardest to see. The ones that trusted us, who cared for us, and who had faith we could do this impossible thing—save everyone.

The idea that we could have done more, could have understood what we were dealing with a little better, sounds a little less like the truth every day, but it doesn’t go away.

It helps to give in to the memories for five minutes before I get out of bed while Wolf’s wet nose and companionable presence can help ease the recurring horror. It’s September now, but it’s still warm and the trees outside my window burst with vibrant green leaves. After my shower and daily dose of jasmine shampoo, I throw on a knee-length sundress and a cardigan, along with a new pair of faithful canvas tennis shoes.

Perched on the edge of my bed, I tug my star locket out and unhook it so I can see the pictures inside. Fire gave me a photo of my dad. When I asked, she gave me one of her, too. Their faces remind me of lots of things, such as where I came from and how hard I fought to be here now, but also to not ever settle for less than everything.

“Althea! Breakfast! You’re going to be late!” Mr. Morgan hollers up the stairs, even though he rarely has to wake me up.

The nightmares do that, and even though I can sleep now without fear of my mind being invaded, sometimes it’s still hard. I snap the locket closed and finish drying my hair with my hands, even though Brittany says it’s weird and I should use a blow-dryer like everyone else.

My door swings open, even though no one knocked, and Jas stands in the doorway. Her midnight hair is a flyaway mess and a tiny hand perches on her six-year-old hip. “Mr. Morgan said breakfast, Althea. You’re late.”

“Am I late, Jas? What are you going to do about it, huh?” I shake off my melancholy and creep toward her until she squeals and streaks into her own bedroom, which used to be a spare. She lands on the bed and I tickle her until she begs me to stop, then braid her silky hair and put her in jeans and a T-shirt instead of pajamas.

“Breakfast?”

She nods, her emerald-green eyes luminous as they look up into my face. Then she pinches the inside of my elbow and leaps down the last three stairs, landing with a crash at the bottom.

Jas is teaching me a little about resilience every day. It’s exhausting sometimes, but it’s also fun getting to know what it might have been like to grow up with a little sister. I’m trying to enjoy it while I can, since they think a university—which turns out to be where kids go to learn more after Upper Cell—high school—will be up and running again by the time I’m ready to attend, a year from now.

The bad news is, it’s going to be in Iowa. More cold weather.

In the kitchen, Mr. Morgan burned the cranberry pancakes. Again. Instead, he gives us a rueful smile and we pour bowls of cereal, eating them at the round table. He puts his dish on the floor for Wolf to finish off the milk, then straightens his tie. “What do you think? Too much blue?”

“Yes,” Jas answers automatically.

I roll my eyes at her, then wrinkle my nose and pretend to study his ensemble even though he only has two ties. “You look handsome.”

He musses my hair and kisses the top of my head, grabbing our dishes and rinsing them in the sink. “You have a game today?”

“Yeah. You coming?”

“Of course.”

I joined the soccer team. I don’t know why; I’m not very good at it. The Monitors—the
teachers
—encouraged us all to get involved in an afternoon activity. Brittany’s cheerleading, a new and horrifying concept as far as I’m concerned. Lucas is playing a sport called baseball, and I like going to watch him whenever I don’t have a game. He’s not very good, either.

We don’t have anyone to play games against, just other kids from our own team. But the adults say that will change. Probably not for me, but maybe if I have children one day, there will be more cities and more teams for them to play against.

“I’m coming, too!” Jas exclaims. “I’ll be your cheerleader!”

“Jas, you’re not being a cheerleader, okay? Do something else.”

“I like the pom-toms.”

“Pom-
poms
,” I correct.

She grabs her inhaler—the thing that fixes her breathing problem—off the counter. I hear her race through the living room, calling a good-bye over her shoulder before the front door slams.

Sadness encroaches again as I walk through the living room at a slower pace, past pictures that include Mrs. Morgan. It makes me think of the other houses in this city and others, where people are staring at photographs of kids and their partners who will never come home. Maybe they’ll never even know what happened to them.

My backpack’s light, since this is the first day of school. The start was delayed about a month while the adults reconfigured everything, settled on what would be done about our lagging history and English education. It was decided that everyone my age would repeat their last year and take only the subjects they’d never had before, and the kids younger than us would start learning all subjects.