She walked away from him, just to the other side of where his tree was, and sat down against something whose trunk was not spotted like the birches, something whose name she didn’t know yet, and waited, watching him. His hair fell over his face in waves, every bit of gold glittering in the sun. She wanted to walk up to him and just run her hands through those silky gold waves, the way she used to with Ams when she was sad, only she knew it would be different with this boy, for her.
She closed her eyes, listening to the leaves and the bugs, smelling the tree she was leaning against, and hoping she could find anything at all to say to him that would make this bearable. But there wasn’t anything she could say, so they sat across from each other silent as ghosts for a long time, and she must have fallen asleep after a while, because she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder, shaking her slightly. She jumped up, and Brody was standing there, looking at her with all the suns in his eyes. She reached out, without thinking, and wrapped her arms around his chest, and he let her, his hands on her back, making it warm where he was touching, too warm.
She moved away from him, blushing, and hiding it by looking down.
“I couldn’t leave you alone here, Brody. I am sorry. You don’t need to talk to me, or to anyone, not unless you want to, but I don’t think you should be alone.”
He looked at her strangely, eyes angry.
“I gave Riley my word that I wouldn’t hurt myself. I intended to keep it. But it doesn’t seem anyone here trusts me enough to do that, hence Drake and Riley tracking me yesterday in the first place.”
He reached behind his back and took out a small knife and his stun gun and handed those to her.
“These are all the weapons I have on me. Take them. There are slave bands and ties on the flier. I don’t have any on me, but when we get there, you can put one of those on me, if you want. Riley or Drake or somebody stuck a tracker on me, so they already know where I am at all times. Is there anything else I can do to make all of you just leave me the hell alone?” he screamed.
She took the knife and the gun from him and stuck them into her jeans behind her back, not looking at his face, and walked to the trail that led to where the flier was.
She couldn’t take any more of this, not today. She heard him following behind her, but she didn’t want to see his face. She was just trying to help, and she was angry at him for making her feel every kind of wrong for it. She heard him calling her name after a while, but she couldn’t talk to him. For the first time since Trina died, she just wanted to curl up by herself in some tiny dark room and cry, so she kept walking until she saw the rest of them crowding around the fire, Riley standing next to Ams, watching them come out of the woods.
And then Brody was running to where Riley was, and hitting him in the face, without saying anything, over and over again, and Riley not moving anything, letting him do it. Ams was screaming at Brody to stop, pushing him away, and Riley, still looking at Brody, telling her to leave, and that she just needed to let him, and finally she stopped shoving Brody and ran to the flier, eyes full of water. Nobody else said or did anything, and after a little while Brody seemed done, because he wasn’t hitting Riley anymore, just stood there staring at him. Riley, face flushed, reached into Brody’s sleeve pocket, and pulled out something tiny, too small for her to see from where she was, and threw it into the fire. And then he grabbed Brody by his head and pulled him towards him and hugged him, without saying anything, running his hands through the gold threads.
She felt like she was intruding on something ancient between the two of them, something that she had no right to watch, so she went into the flier to look for Ams, hoping she was all right, hoping she didn’t punish Brody for this. Ams was talking to Trelix and Loren at the front, nodding her head to whatever they were telling her.
“You okay, Ams?” she asked as softly as she could. She was. She could tell that much just by her face. But she looked busy with whatever she was talking to these boys about. She leaned down in her seat, and pulled a blanket over her shoulders. She wished she could take back what she said to Brody when they were in the cave. Wished she could have talked him out of coming to Waller instead of what she did. She didn’t know how anybody could live with what he just saw, how anybody could survive that, and she felt every kind of guilty for encouraging him to bring Trina here.
“We can get to Crylo in two hours and twelve minutes. Our shields still work, so they wouldn’t know we were there. You and I, they can’t touch us, Laurel. We can go right in, and we can find the ones who did this, who are probably still doing this to other girls, and we can end it. Trelix and Loren said they would help. There are plenty of weapons in the flier. We just can’t tell the others. But there is nothing they can do to stop us once we are in the air.”
Ams was speaking quickly, frantically, and she could tell she meant it from the way she was looking at her.
“We can’t do this to them… Taking off like that, and them not knowing where we are, it’ll kill them. We have to tell them. And we have to know what we’ll be walking into. I am sorry, Ams, but we just can’t do it like this,” she said softly.
“Get off the flier, Laurel. I mean it. If you are not coming, you need to get off, right now,” Ams snapped at her, staring at her, eyes angry.
It was so like her to do something insane on an impulse because she felt hurt in the moment, because she thought she could single-handedly fix the universe. She didn’t know what to make of this new Ams, but she knew she couldn’t argue with her when she was like that, so she got up and walked towards the stairs, and then screamed at the top of her lungs, “Riley! Ams plans on stealing the flier and taking it to Crylo.” Ams had her by the throat, choking her, covering her mouth with her hand, but Riley and Brody were already running to her, running up the stairs and there wasn’t a thing Ams could do about it then.
Riley pulled Ams away from her, and took her back down into the clearing. She saw Brody standing in front of her, looking at her, concern in his eyes. She didn’t want his concern, didn’t want his anything, so she walked to her seat, pulled the blanket over herself and closed her eyes. They would have to take it from here. She was too damn tired and too hurt to think for anybody. She just wanted to be alone. And she knew what Brody felt like, when he asked her to leave earlier, and felt every kind of wrong for not giving him the space he needed. She felt a hand squeeze her shoulder, but didn’t want to see who it belonged to, so she stayed as she was, covered up.
“Please, look at me,” Brody’s voice.
She didn’t want to look at him. She had too many tears collected in her eyes that she was holding in all this time, and she didn’t want anyone, least of all Brody, to see that.
The hand pulled the blanket from her face, and she turned away from him.
“Leave me alone, Brody. Please, just leave me alone.”
She hoped she sounded calm when she said it.
He reached over and took her face in his hands and held it, making her look at him, not letting her move, not letting her look away, “I can’t, Laurel. I have been a complete idiot, and I am sorry for that. Riley told me you like me… Ams must have said something to him, and I’ve been a bit of an ass to you. I’m sorry for that.”
She felt her face burn, and she squirmed away from him, needing to hide her face, but he wouldn’t let her, and she felt a lump in her throat, the about to cry lump, and hated that she couldn’t hide now. “Please, Brody, let go of me,” she asked in a desperate whisper, and he did.
She covered her face under the blanket again and sobbed, all the tears spilling out of her, nothing she could do about it. After a while, she felt him put his arm around her, not saying anything, just holding her, letting her cry. She didn’t know what she would do or say if she had to look at him again after this. She hated Ams for not keeping her mouth shut, and Riley for telling Brody whatever Ams told him. It wasn’t their bloody secret to tell, and she knew they knew that much, so them doing this to her was all kinds of wrong.
The sobbing was long done, but she was too scared to come out from hiding, too scared of what she’d see on his face, so she stayed where she was, and he let her for a long time, and she could tell nobody else was in the flier by the silence. Finally, when she felt like she was going to suffocate from all the wet heat of breathing into herself, she let the blanket drop, and looking away from him told him that she did like him, liked him from when she just met him, but that she knew it wouldn’t ever go anywhere because of everything, because of Trina, and she didn’t expect it to, so she had no intention of him ever knowing, and that she really was sorry she had lousy friends who couldn’t keep their mouths shut.
“Any chance you can look at me?” he asked softly.
She did, and his eyes were full of suns again, so much gold staring at her through all the blue, it made it hard to look at.
“I am far too broken right now, Laurel. I’m just trying to put all the pieces together. I can’t be with anyone like that. And I think a part of what you feel is pity, and I couldn’t do that to you. I see the way you look at me, and it hurts to see you hurting like that because of all the bad stuff that happened to me. I can’t do that to you….”
She held up her hand, stopping him, and he shut up, looking at her, surprised.
“I don’t want to hear the rest of it. I don’t need to. If you think any of this is pity, then you are right, it wouldn’t be fair. But I’ve never felt pity for you. Hurt, yes, but not pity. And everything that’s happened to you, I can’t help that it’s heartbreaking. But I see how you are. I liked you for that, not for anything bad that happened to you. But you are right, Brody. I deserve better. That’s what you tell people who care about you…”
She saw his face go hard. She knew she was throwing daggers at him, hurting him, but she couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop.
“It’s what you do, Brody, because it’s easier. But it’s a coward’s way out. Like putting a bullet through your head… Or making your best friend do it for you,” she spat at him and stood up, knowing that she really hurt this boy, and knowing, too, that he was just trying to be decent and that he didn’t deserve this.
He blanched, but stood up when she did, still looking at her.
“That’s what you think of me?” his voice quiet, too quiet. She nodded her head and ran. Ran from him, and from wanting to lash out at Ams and Riley for not keeping her secret, for making her do this to a boy who didn’t deserve any of it, ran from whatever she was turning into. She ran into the same clearing she saw Brody in earlier, if only because she could still see the trail to it, and she didn’t have it in her to plan, to think of any place else to go. She slumped against the tree he sat at before, the birch one, closed her eyes and hoped nobody would come looking for her.
“I’m sorry, Laurel. I was just trying to protect you,” Riley crouched in front of her after a while. And she remembered that day in Reston, holding Drake’s mushrooms in her hand, wanting to do it, and not feeling like any kind of a coward for it. What she just said to that boy, she couldn’t even picture herself being that cruel to somebody, and yet she was. She could tell she hurt him, his face draining of color like that, eyes welling up. The last thing she said to him, she knew it was the worst thing she could say to this boy, that it would hurt him the most, but she couldn’t help it. Maybe this was it, the beginning of her implant making her do things. Riley promised her that he’d know if it was.
She needed to know, before she went back to where Brody was, had to know if it was her or something else. So she told him what she said to Brody, all of it, and how he looked at her afterwards, hurt in his light eyes, and how she knew she was being cruel to him but she didn’t care, didn’t stop even then, as if she deliberately tried to find the most hurtful thing to say to him. She looked at Riley, his jaw tight, and she could see the strain around his eyes.
He was shaking his head at her, “It’s not what you think, Laurel. You lashed out at him because you were embarrassed, and that was entirely my fault. I didn’t think he’d tell you. I just wanted him to be a little kinder to you, that’s all. I’m sorry for that. What you did, it wasn’t the implant, I promise you it wasn’t. But Brody… You really did hurt him, and he wouldn’t talk to me or anybody about it. You should probably find a way to tell him you didn’t mean it like that, at least that last thing you said to him.”
He reached over and pulled her up by her shoulders, and walked her back through the woods to the fire. It smelled like Drake was cooking something. Riley walked her right up to Brody, and left her standing there like an idiot. She knew she had to apologize to this boy, who wasn’t even looking at her now, just standing there like a statue with his head down, hands in fists at his sides. She couldn’t do it like this, not here in front of everybody, so she took him by his wrist and he let her, and walked him away from the clearing, just far enough to where she could still hear their voices, but they wouldn’t hear hers if she was quiet enough.
She stopped, looking at him, hoping she could do this without bursting into tears. His head was still down. She really needed him to look at her, so he’d know she meant it, that it wasn’t just Riley putting her up to this.
“Please, look at me. I need to tell you something, and it would be easier if I could see you.”
He did, his face hard, eyes still full of hurt, looking directly into hers. No, this wasn’t going to be any easier. Nothing she could do about it.