I wake up on the cold station floor, and Quinn is missing.
“Petra,” Jazz mutters, and tries to sit up. She lets out a screech, crumpling back onto the tiled floor. I slide closer and elevate her leg using Quinn’s backpack. This should help stop the bleeding. Then I take her head in my lap. “I thought it was only a nightmare,” she says. She begins to cry, and I can tell from her eyes that it has nothing to do with the pain in her leg.
After a few minutes, a noise echoes through the station. “Quinn?”
“Coming!” And he’s with us again. “I heard a scream,” he says, and lowers a rusting, dented solar respirator onto the floor.
“It was me,” Jazz admits.
He pushes his hair away from his eyes and crouches next to her. “How bad is it?” he asks. Cautiously, he presses his hand to her forehead.
“I’m fine,” she says, and leans away from him. Her eyelids flutter as she courts unconsciousness again.
Quinn turns to me. “I found a ton of those respirators. This place must have been swarming with drifters. But there’s no one here now. You’ll be fine.”
He smiles, but it looks forced. “What are you talking about?” I swallow hard.
“Hear me out, Bea.”
“No,” I say.
“We can’t carry her across the country.”
“You’re leaving?”
“One of us has to get help, and I won’t let you go out there alone.” I don’t want to be without him. Not again. Not ever. I try to speak, but the words get trapped in my throat, and I cough. He pats me on the back. “Give me the map and let me go,” he says.
“Where?
“I’ll find Sequoia. How hard can it be to locate a building big enough to house a whole movement? Someone will be able to help, and I’ll be back. Alina will be there.” He lowers his voice. “Jazz doesn’t stand a chance if we all stay here.”
“There has to be another way.” Now I do cry as the weight of what’s happened and what will happen crashes down on me. I want to be stronger, I just don’t know how.
He wraps his arms around me, holding me up as much as embracing me. “I’ll be back. I promise,” he says.
My parents made a promise like this, and it was the last time I ever saw them. I let him hold me. But I don’t believe him.
“They work. I checked,” Quinn says, unloading another respirator, and pressing his hand against the solar panel bathed in light from above. He turns a knob on the top, nudges it with his foot, and we listen to the old thing grind to life. “And they’re mobile, so you can carry them . . . if you have to.” I nod even though the respirators are enormous; I’d never even be able to lift one. “But you should stay here, so I’ll know where to find you,” he says.
Beside me, Jazz mewls and turns over in her sleep.
“What day is it?” I ask. I want to feel grounded to something reliable, predictable. And unless I know when he left, how will I know when to expect him back? When to stop waiting?
Quinn blinks and calculates using his fingers. “Monday,” he says. “Or Tuesday. Let’s say Monday. Look, every time the sun comes up, throw something in there.” He points at a tarnished water fountain attached to the wall.
“And when should I stop counting?”
“Bea.” He sighs. “I’ll be back.”
“Don’t go,” Jazz says, waking up. She winces with pain. “Can’t you give me a piggyback? I’m light. I’m really light.”
She’s already sweating a fever, though she’s shivering. “You need to conserve your energy,” I tell her.
Quinn buttons up his coat. “Tell me this is for the best,” he says. “Please tell me I’m doing the right thing.” I don’t answer but follow him outside into the derelict city. The sunshine has melted some of the snow. The air is still frigid. I tuck my chin into my chest.
“Your air won’t last long,” I say.
“Stop it,” he says.
“
“Bea . . .” He takes my wrist, lifts his mask, and pushing back my sleeve, kisses it. I close my eyes, and he takes off my glove and kisses the palm of my hand. Eventually he has to put his facemask back in place, so he wraps me up in his arms. I rest my chin on his shoulder. “I can’t read you,” he says.
“I can’t read myself anymore.” I take a deep breath and push my hair away from my face. “If Jazz dies, and you don’t come back, I’ll head for Sequoia,” I say.
He looks up at the rows of broken clerestory windows set into the red brick of the station and nods. “Give me two weeks. You can survive here for two weeks.”
“Yes,” I say, but we both know Jazz won’t make it that long.
We stand for a few moments longer, holding hands and looking at our boots in the sludge.
“Why did it take me forever to see you?” he asks. He puts his hands around the back of my neck and pulls my head toward him so that our foreheads touch. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
I nod, but I don’t tell him that I love him, too. Maybe he’ll be back, maybe he won’t; my love won’t change what happens.
6
RONAN
Niamh is admiring herself in my bedroom mirror. She’s dressed in my father’s black mourning robe, and it should look weird, but Wendy’s taken it in so it fits, and Niamh wears it as though it were made especially for her. Usually I’d make a snarky comment, but I just watch her. “What do you think?” she asks.
I climb out of bed, pulling on the pants I left draped on the chair next to it. “I think I’d appreciate some privacy.”
“You should be up. I don’t know how you can sleep.” Today the ministers will pay their respects in the chamber. But that probably isn’t what Niamh means; ever since she found out our father died, she has spent all night in his bedroom, sobbing into the pillows. I let her grieve—someone should.
“You feeling better?” I ask.
“No, Ronan,” Niamh says. “Our dad is dead. I feel like crap.”
I stand behind her. My eyes in the mirror have dark circles beneath them. I look older than I did a week ago, which shouldn’t really surprise me.
I pull a sweater over my head and push my hair away from my eyes. Wendy bustles into the room with a tray.
“Morning,” she says.
“Hey,” I say. Niamh doesn’t bother looking at her. Wendy sidesteps Niamh, balancing the tray on her hip, and as she brushes past me, I have a feeling she wants to give me a hug. Wendy brought us up after our mother died and was the closest thing I had to a parent. But my father didn’t want her trying to replace my mother, so she stopped cuddling us. Maybe my father threatened her, and I was too shy to admit that a hug now and then would have been all right.
Wendy puts the tray on the dresser. “Toast and tea,” she tells me. “Have it while it’s hot.” On her way out, she stops in front of Niamh. “You look lovely.”
Niamh shrugs. “I know,” she says, though Wendy is already out of the room. “And it would be nice if you made some effort too, Ronan.”
“Give me a minute’s peace, and I will,” I say.
