Instead, I run.
My body thrills at this — I haven’t run in ages. I’ve been too scared to go on my daily runs, but now I’m not running as I would for exercise. I’m running as if the force of the wind whipping around my body will be enough to keep all the pieces of me from crumbling.
Past the fence, down the path, past the soy fields. When I get to the main road that connects the Recorder Hall and the Hospital, I go straight to the Hall. I don’t know why. I should hate this place. The last time I saw Luthor, it was here, in the Recorder Hall. But I’m certain, more certain than anything else, that the clue Orion left for me is here, and maybe if I can find that clue, I can also find something to make things right again.
I’m still running as I enter the Hall, pass the groups of people pouring over the wall floppies, and head straight to the fiction room. I throw open the door so hard that it bounces off the wall, and I don’t pause until I reach the shelf that holds the book I’m looking for.
I slide the heavy book off the shelf, panting in an effort to catch my breath. An image is pressed into the front cover. A girl, a tree, and a smiling cat. The binding is cracked with age, the illustration faded. My heart races as I carry the book to the table in the middle of the room. I collapse into a chair and let the book thunk heavily on the metal tabletop. I can imagine Elder’s look of disdain at the way I let it slam against the surface. He treats books like treasured, rare things, and I guess they are, but my father used to dog-ear books and read them until they fell apart, and I like his method better.
I flip the book open and read the title page.
I’ve seen this book before. Not this exact one, but copies of it. It was required reading for the AP Literature class at my high school in Colorado. I planned on taking that class my senior year.
We left Earth before I had a chance to finish eleventh grade.
Those textbooks were brand new at school. Now this one is falling apart from age, despite the climate- controlled room it’s stored in.
I snap the book shut, and a tiny cloud of dust rises up. As I breathe in the musty scent of old pages and dry ink, the thing inside me that I’ve been trying to keep together breaks.
I let my head fall down to the book, pressing my face against the illustration of the Cheshire Cat’s wicked grin, and I sob, great, gulping sobs that choke me. And I think about the last time I choked, on tubes as I emerged from the slushy ice when I melted, and then, later, as Luthor’s arm pressed into my neck. And then all I can think about is how the girl at the rabbit farm choked too. And suddenly, I can’t get enough air into my lungs, just like she couldn’t get enough air into hers.
She died, alone and scared. I’m not dead, but I’m still alone and scared.
19 ELDER
“FOUND YOU,” I SAY, PUSHING OPEN THE DOOR.
Amy sits in the middle of the gallery on the second floor of the Recorder Hall. Her knees are pulled up to her chin and her arms wrap around her legs. A thick, old book rests beside her, open-faced but ignored. The art room is cluttered, sculptures and paintings from last gen’s artists stacked on one side and rows of canvases propped up on the other — mostly from Harley, but a few from some other artists. Art isn’t exactly respected here on
“How did you find me?” Amy asks as I plop down beside her.
I tug at the wi-com around her wrist. “They have locaters, you know.”
She nods silently. Her head falls against my shoulder, her long red hair spilling down my arm.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” I say.
“I’m just sorry it happened. Do you…” Amy doesn’t look at me as she says this. “Do you know who did it?”
“We have some suspects. Second Shipper Shelby said she saw a Feeder shouting yesterday in the Recorder Hall. Something about doing whatever he wanted…”
I watch her closer. Shelby also said that the person the Feeder was shouting at was Amy. She gives no indication of that now, although I can see the secret behind her eyes, clawing to get out.
“Why did you run off?” I ask softly.
The last I’d seen of her was a blur of brown clothing. I didn’t like the idea of Amy running off alone, but I couldn’t abandon the investigation, not in front of the Shippers, and not before I knew they had everything they needed to find the killer. I tracked the location of her wi-com until I could escape.
“I thought I’d go ahead and get started on that clue Orion left me,” she says, her voice cracking.
“Did you find anything?” I ask, pretending not to notice that she’s been crying. The death of the girl in the rabbit fields seems to have affected her more than it did the shipborns.
Amy shoves the book over to me. I wince at the idea of a book — a
“Alice follows a rabbit down a rabbit hole,” she says, turning the pages in my hand to a chapter near the beginning. She somehow avoids touching me, just as she’s shying away from eye contact. “I thought it fit. But I guess not.”
I look at the illustration that accompanies the chapter: a girl in a poufy skirted dress, staring curiously down a hole under a tree.
“Why did you come to the gallery?” I ask, closing the book and setting it gently beside me.
”No one else comes here,” she says softly. “I didn’t want to stay in the fiction room, and I figured nobody would find me here.”
I wonder if she includes me as a nobody.
Amy twists the wi-com round and round her wrist. Her skin is pink there. I want to reach out and stop her. Instead, I turn the book over in my hands. I can’t figure Amy out, but maybe if I can figure out the clue, I can take her away from whatever place in her mind she’s retreated to.
“Huh,” I say.
Amy jerks her attention to me. “What? Huh, what?”
I hold up the back of the book to her. “‘Other works by Lewis Carroll,’” I read aloud. “
“So?” Amy eyes me curiously.
“The first clue was on the back of a painting, right?” I ask. Amy rolls her hand for me to go on. “Well, maybe the second clue is too.”
“
Instead of arguing, I jump up and head to a stack of paintings. Harley did so many and the gallery is so small that not every single one is hanging from the walls. I flip through the canvases quickly — I know exactly which one I’m looking for.
“Harley did a painting right after his girlfriend, Kayleigh, committed suicide. I remember when he finished it — Orion said it was his ‘greatest achievement.’” Amy looks at me doubtfully. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you really think he’d use another painting for the next clue?” she asks.
“Maybe?” I shrug, still sifting through canvases. “He left those clues specifically for you, but let’s be honest — he didn’t know you that long. I guess he saw how close you were to Harley in that short amount of time and figured the best way to leave the clues was with his paintings.” Amy doesn’t notice the bitterness in my voice; even Orion could see that she was closer to Harley than she was to me.
