The Darkest Minds (50 page)

“Oh my God,” I said.

Liam’s face turned in my direction, and for the first time, I realized he was actually awake—his eyes were swollen shut. I let my hand fall on the arm hanging off the side of the futon, and moved it so it was across his chest. The breath escaped his lips in wheezing sighs. There was a thick layer of gummy, dried blood caked around his nose, his mouth, down to even his chin. Daylight would reveal the rest of the bruises.

“He needs antiseptic,” Chubs said, “bandages, something—”

“If you two come with me,” Olivia replied, “I’ll walk you to the supply room. No one will be out to bother us.”

“I’m not going to leave him,” I said, still crouched beside Liam on my knees.

“It’s all right.” I barely felt Chubs’s hand on my shoulder as he brushed by.

The screen door creaked open and shut behind us; I waited until I heard the shuffling footsteps of the other kid follow them out before I looked back down at Liam’s face. I moved my fingers, feather-light across his face, as gently as I could. When I came to his nose, he let out a sharp hiss, but he didn’t try to twist away until I brushed his swollen split lip.

I don’t know if I had ever cried as much as I had in the past month. I had never been like the other girls in my cabin at Thurmond, who cried every night, and then again every morning when they realized their nightmare had been real. I wasn’t even a crier as a kid. But there was no way to hold them back now.

“Do I…look as pretty as I feel?” His words were slurred. I tried to get him to open his mouth, to make sure all of his teeth were still there, but his jaw was too tender for me to touch it. I leaned forward to press my lips against where my hands had been.

“Don’t,” he said, one eye just barely cracked open. “Not unless you mean it.”

“You shouldn’t have gone after him.”

“Had to,” he managed to mumble out.

“I’ll kill him,” I said, anger flaring up inside of me. “I’ll
kill
him.”

Liam started to chuckle again. “Ah…there she is. There’s Ruby.”

“I’ll get you out of here,” I promised. “You and Chubs. I’ll talk to Clancy, I’ll—”

“No,” he said. “Stop—it’ll make things worse.”

“How could things possibly get any worse?” I asked. “I messed everything up for you. I ruined everything.”

“God.” He shook his head, mouth twisting into a shadow of a smile. “Did you know…you make me so happy that sometimes I actually forget to breathe? I’ll be looking at you, and my chest will get so tight…and it’s like, the only thought in my head is how much I want to reach over and kiss you.” He blew out a shaky breath. “So don’t talk about getting me out of here, because I’m not leaving, not unless you’re part of the package, too.”

“I can’t go with you,” I said. “I won’t put you in that kind of danger.”

“Bull,” he said. “Nothing’s going to be worse than being apart.”

“You don’t understand—”

“Then
make
me,” Liam said. “Ruby, give me one reason why we can’t be together, and I’ll give you a hundred why we can. We can go anywhere you want. I’m not your parents. I’m not going to abandon you or send you away, not ever.”

“They didn’t abandon me. What happened to them was my fault.” The secret had slipped out of me like a long exhale, and I’m not sure which of us was more surprised by the admission.

Liam settled into silence, waiting for me to continue. It occurred to me then that this was it. This was really the moment I was going to lose him. And all I could think about was how much I wished I had kissed him one last time before he started fearing me for what I was.

I leaned my head down on the cushion beside his. In a whisper, because I wasn’t brave enough to say it any louder, I told him about going to bed the night before my tenth birthday, about how I woke up expecting my usual birthday pancakes. About the way they locked me in the garage like some wild animal. And when that story was over, I told him about Sam. How I had been her Chubs until I wasn’t, until I was nothing at all.

My throat burned when I was finished. Liam turned his face toward mine. We weren’t even a breath apart.

“Never,” he said after awhile. “Never, never, never. I am never going to forget you.”

“You won’t have a choice,” I said. “Clancy said I won’t ever be able to control it.”

“Well I think he’s full of it,” Liam said. “Listen, what I saw in the woods, when you…”

“When I kissed you.”

“Right. That…that really happened, didn’t it? What he—what that asshole—did. That happened to you. He kept you there, frozen, like he did to me.”

Yes, but also no. Because a small part of me had wanted Clancy to do it. Or had he only made me want him, played my emotions with a single touch? I nodded, finally, my insides still squirming with revulsion at the memory of his skin against mine.

“Come here,” said Liam softly. I felt his fingers’ light touch run along the crown of my head, feather-soft as they came down to cup my cheek. When I lifted my face, he met me halfway and kissed me. I was careful not to touch his face, only his shoulder and arm. When he pulled back, I seemed to follow, my lips searching for his.

“You want to be with me, right?” he whispered. “Then
be
with me. We’ll figure it out. If nothing else, I trust you. You can look inside my head and that’s all you’ll see.”

His warm breath spread over my cheek like another kiss. “Mike worked it out. He’s going to try and find a way to sneak us out, and then you, me, and Chubs? We’re gonna hit the road. We’re going to find Jack’s father, we’re going to find a way for Chubs to reach his parents, and then we’re going to talk about what we want to do.”

I leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You really don’t hate me,” I breathed out. “You’re not scared—not even a little?”

His battered face twisted with what I thought was supposed to be a smile. “I’m scared to death of you, but for a completely different reason.”

“I’m a monster, you know. I’m one of the dangerous ones.”

“No you aren’t,” he promised. “You’re one of us.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

C
HUBS RETURNED A FEW MINUTES AFTER
Liam faded into a restless sleep. He stirred again when we began cleaning the cuts and gouges on his face, reaching for my hand at the first touch of stinging antiseptic. When I felt his grip began to relax, and saw his eyelids flutter shut again, I finally released the breath I had been holding.

“He’ll live,” Chubs said, seeing my expression. He was stuffing away the rest of the supplies in my backpack. “He’ll have a wicked headache in the morning, but he’ll live.”

We took turns sleeping, or at least pretended to. My body was thrumming with anxious unspent energy, and I could hear Chubs muttering to himself, as if trying to work through the night’s events.

And then came the sound of feet slapping against the concrete steps of the cabin once more, and we gave up pretending altogether.

“Lizzie—” I heard one of the boys outside our door say. “Are you—”

She pushed past them, throwing the screen door open so hard that it slammed against the wall. Liam startled awake, more confused and disoriented than he’d been before.

“Ruby!” Lizzie was looking straight at me, her face ashen. Her hair had caught in her dozens of piercings, but it was the blood on her hands that stopped the flow of blood to my head.

“It’s Clancy,” she gasped, clutching my arms. “He just…fell and starting shaking all over like crazy, and bleeding, and I didn’t know what to do, but he told me to get you because you’d know what was going on—Ruby, please, please help me!”

I stared at her hands, the wet blood.

“It’s a trick,” Liam croaked from the futon. “Ruby, don’t you dare…”

“If he’s really hurt,
I
should go,” Chubs told Lizzie.

“Ruby!” she cried, like she couldn’t believe I was standing there. “There was so much blood—Ruby, please,
please
, you have to help him!”

He really thought I was stupid, didn’t he? Or did he just think his influence extended that far—that I could ever forget what he had done to Liam and go rushing to his side? I shook my head, anger rippling over my skin. Too
immature
and
weakhearted
to use my abilities, was I?

We’d see about that.

Liam pushed himself up into a sitting position. “You know him,” he was saying. “Don’t do it, don’t—”

“Show me where he is,” I said, over Chubs’s protests. I turned to him. “You have to stay with Liam, understand?”
You have to watch him because I can’t.
“I’ll take care of everything.”

I
would get us out. Not Mike, not a burst of random luck—
I
would get us out, and seeing Clancy’s face slack with my influence would be well worth the effort it would take to break into his mind. Hadn’t he taught me everything I needed to know to do it?

“Ruby—” I heard Liam say, but I took Lizzie’s arm and guided her outside, past the confused kids, past the cabins. Outside, the temperature had dropped almost twenty degrees.

Fat tears dripped down her chin. “He’s in Storage—we were talking about—about—”

“It’s okay,” I told her, putting an awkward hand on her back. We ran through the garden and up the office’s back steps. She fumbled to put her key in the lock, only to have it jam. I had to kick it in; Lizzie was too far gone to do anything but sprint inside. The hall and kitchen were empty. The whole building smelled like garlic and tomato sauce. Everyone must have been out setting up for dinner.

Everyone except Clancy, who stood in the middle of the storage room, leaning against a shelf of macaroni boxes.

Lizzie ran to the back right corner of the room and dropped to her knees. She pawed at the ground, her trembling hands clutching only air. “Clancy,” she cried. “Clancy, can you hear me? Ruby is here now—
Ruby
, come here!”

My stomach turned violently, and I was surprised by how sad it made me feel to have my worst suspicions confirmed.

Why does it have to be like this? I thought, looking at him. Why?

“You came, you really came,” Clancy said in a bored, flat voice. He sounded like he was reciting the words from a script. “Thank you, Ruby. I appreciate your help in my hour of need.”

“Why are you just standing there?” Lizzie wailed. “Help him!”

“You’re sick,” I said, shaking my head. Clancy came toward me, but I moved to the opposite end of the room, where Lizzie had her face buried in the ground. “Stop it, I’m here. There’s no reason to keep torturing her.”

“I’m not torturing her,” Clancy said. “I’m just playing around.” And then, as if to prove his point, he barked, “Liz, shut up!”

She stopped mid-gasp. A trickle of blood escaped her lip from where she had bitten it. I took her hands, turning them over. The blood was coming from
her
, from two neat cuts across her palms.

“What do you even want?” I asked, whirling around. “I’ve told you everything, and what I didn’t say, you went ahead and saw!”

It was only then that I noticed what Clancy was wearing. Nice, pressed black slacks, a white button-down shirt without so much as a speck of dust on it, and a red tie, trailing down over his stomach in the exact same way the blood was dripping down Lizzie’s chin.

“I’m just keeping you in here for a little while,” he said, “then we can go.”

“And where, exactly, are we going?” My eyes fixed on the shelf behind his head, the one full of metal spoons and mixing bowls.

“Anywhere you want,” he said. “Isn’t that what that Blue promised you?”

I tried to stay calm, but the way he spat the word out—
Blue
—rankled my already frayed nerves. I don’t know if Lizzie sensed the sharp change in my mood, but Clancy did. He was smiling, that perfect Gray smile, the same one that had followed me across Thurmond’s grounds.

Good, I thought. Let him think I’m helpless. Let him think that there was no real threat from me, not until he was flat down on the ground, unable to even remember his own name.

“Do you have a better offer?” I asked.

“What if I did?”

“I’d find that hard to believe,” I said, inching closer, trying to distract him, “considering you care so little about me. If this situation had been reversed, you wouldn’t have come running, would you have?”

He shrugged. “I would have come. I just would have walked.”

“Please let Lizzie go,” I said. It scared me the way she was acting, like a little kid. What was it about being Orange that turned people into such monsters?

“Why? If she stays you won’t think about trying anything, because it might mean her getting hurt, or worse.” He said it so casually that I actually thought he was kidding.

“How can you be sure?” I hoped my voice sounded stronger than it felt in my throat. “I don’t know her that well.”

“I’ve seen your memories. You’re what shrinks call ‘overly empathetic.’ You won’t do anything if it means hurting others—not intentionally at least.”

He said it with the utmost confidence, which made the shock on his face when I lunged at him that much sweeter. For once, he hadn’t predicted my response, hadn’t pulled me under his sway. I slashed across his face, heard him grunt as my nails bit into his cheek.