Becca’s head was still full of her conversation with Jake when she scanned the cafeteria for Heather the next Monday.
She almost didn’t recognize her. Heather wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her hair stuck out in tangled curls. She moved without grace; as Becca watched, she stumbled to an empty table in the corner and set her tray down so hard a drop of chili jumped up onto her shirt. She didn’t seem to notice.
Becca crossed the room and slid her tray into the space across from Heather.
“Whoever you are, just leave me alone,” Heather muttered. She looked up. “Oh,” she said flatly. “It’s you.”
Becca sat down. “I’ve been looking for you all morning. I thought maybe you had skipped school again.”
Heather studied her chili as though it were an alien lifeform. “What do you want?” For a second Becca wasn’t sure whether Heather was talking to her or the chili.
Becca took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
She’d had all day Sunday to think about her conversation with Heather, and about what Jake had told her. And the more she thought, the more she knew she had been wrong to push Heather about what she had found in her mom’s files. Heather didn’t need that kind of pressure right now. She didn’t need that reminder of what her parents had been.
That would leave Becca with nobody to talk to about what she had found. But that didn’t matter right now. Heather needed a friend—Becca’s conversation with Jake had shown her just how much—and she had nobody else.
“I’m sorry about… everything I said,” Becca continued. She couldn’t get more specific than that. Not here. “I won’t talk to you about it anymore, if you don’t want.”
Heather stirred her chili. She didn’t answer.
“Whatever you need, I’m here for you,” Becca promised.
Heather spoke without looking at Becca. “I need you to leave me alone.”
Becca flinched at the coldness in Heather’s voice. “I should have told you about your parents sooner, too. I won’t keep things from you anymore.”
Heather jumped up from her chair. She slammed her hands down on the table; both their trays shook. “I said leave me alone!”
In the sudden quiet, Becca felt everyone’s eyes on her.
Heather’s breath came raggedly. Her eyes looked like a trapped animal’s. “Please,” she mumbled. “Please. Please go away.”
Becca’s best friend was in there somewhere. But Becca couldn’t see her.
Heather didn’t move. Neither did Becca.
Slowly, the conversation in the cafeteria started up again.
Heather was slipping away. Somebody had to keep her here. Keep her sane.
But hadn’t Becca said she would give Heather whatever she needed?
She had thought she had known what was best for Heather before, when she had put off telling her about her parents and led her to the note. It hadn’t helped. If anything, she had only made things worse.
If she pushed Heather now, would she be making the same mistake all over again?
Becca swallowed her next round of apologies and walked away.
Chapter Eight
A knock on Becca’s door dragged her out of her dream.
She muttered something incoherent and pulled her blanket up over her head. The knock came again; the blanket did nothing to muffle it.
With a sign, Becca pushed the blanket away and flicked on her light. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. “What is it?” she mumbled.
“Can I come in?” her mom asked from the other side of the door.
As if Becca could say no. “I didn’t know you were home.”
“I didn’t have anything urgent to deal with, so I decided to come home and catch up on some sleep.” The door opened, and her mom stepped inside. “Speaking of which, you’re in bed early. Especially for a Saturday.”
Sleeping was easier than being awake, these days. Less opportunity to think about all the things she was trying to push to the back of her mind. “I was tired.”
Her mom held something out to her. Her eyes still blurry from sleep, Becca squinted at the object in her mom’s hand. Her phone. She must have left it in the living room when she had gone to bed.
“Somebody called for you.” Her mom crossed the room to her.
Becca reached for the phone, but her mom pulled it back. She sat down on the bed next to Becca. “Your phone said it was Jake. Is this the same Jake you thought was working for Surveillance? You told me he had stopped bothering you.”
She had told the truth… sort of. In the three weeks since their conversation at the playground, they had taken the first shaky steps toward getting to know each other. They never talked about Jake’s past—he never brought it up, and Becca didn’t want to push him. Instead they stuck to other things, safer things, like school and TV and all the everyday inanities people talked about to fill up time. They talked almost every day… but he never bothered her.
Somehow Becca didn’t think that was what her mom meant.
She straightened, trying to will herself awake. “How should I know why he called?”
“I checked your phone. You two have been talking a lot over the past couple of weeks.”
Becca stopped mid-yawn. “Wait. You read my texts?”
“You told me you thought Jake was working for Surveillance. There has to be a reason you were suspicious of him.”
“I was wrong about him. You had no right to go through my phone.”
Her mom looked down at the phone and pursed her lips. “You haven’t given me much reason to trust your judgment when it comes to friends lately.”
“You mean Heather,” Becca said flatly. She could always tell her mom the truth—that she and Heather hadn’t spoken in almost three weeks—but no matter how things were between her and Heather, she needed her mom to know that she still stood by her friend, that she didn’t believe Heather was a dissident.
“Yes. I mean Heather.” Her mom shifted on the bed so she could look directly at Becca. “And now this Jake. Three weeks ago, you were sure he had ulterior motives. Now you two are… friends? More than friends?”
Becca wasn’t sure what they were. For now, it didn’t matter. She was someone who knew his history but wouldn’t call him a dissident, the only person who hadn’t started whispering behind his back after he had broken his invisibility rule by stepping in to help Heather. He was someone who was willing to talk to her, who could make her forget about Heather and her mother for moments at a time. They would figure out the rest as they went along. “We’re… talking.”
“And whatever made you suspicious of him doesn’t matter anymore?”
Her mom didn’t even accept her friendship with Heather. What would she think of Jake, if she knew Internal had arrested him? If her mom was willing to condemn Heather based on what her parents had done, Becca doubted it would matter that Internal had realized their mistake and let Jake go.
Becca tried to force her half-asleep brain to think. “I guess I got paranoid after what happened with Heather. It seemed strange for him to ask me out when everyone else was treating me like a disease. So when he asked me about Heather, I assumed that had to be the reason.”
“I can’t control who you spend your time with,” said her mom. “But if you’re going to keep talking to this person, I want to meet him. You should invite him over for dinner sometime.”
Becca started shaking her head before her mom had even finished her sentence. “I told you I was wrong about him. I’m not allowed to be wrong about somebody?”
“I’m not saying you couldn’t have been wrong about him before. I’m concerned that you might be wrong
