Текст книги "This is Not a Test"

Автор книги: Courtney Summers

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Grace insists on taking Cary breakfast.

“No way.” Trace tries to take the tray from her hands.

“I wasn’t asking you,” she says. “I’m telling you.”

“No,” Trace says slowly. “I’m telling you. I don’t want you anywhere near him when he’s like this. Stop being stupid, Grace.”

“Last I checked him—like an hour ago—he was fine,” Rhys says. “I doubt anything is going to happen to her if she goes in there right now.”

“Moreno can give Chen his breakfast,” Trace says. “Why are you doing this?”

“As student government president, I had to deal with people I didn’t like all the time,” she snaps. “I had to listen to them and then I had to advocate for them if they needed it—”

“News flash: you’re not student government president anymore.”

“And you’re not the boss of me!” Trace laughs at how childish she sounds and that makes her angrier. When he sees the look on her face, he stops laughing.

“Grace.” He’s full-on patronizing now. “Don’t be like this—”

“I told you we had to let it go.” She raises her trembling chin. “This is me letting it go.”

Something in her face tells him he’s not going to win this. He steps aside and Grace hurries out of the room and Trace glares after her and then transfers that glare to me, to Rhys.

“I put the gun down,” he says. “That’s as much as I’m letting it go.”

“You’re a great man, Trace,” Rhys says.

Trace shoots Rhys a dirty look and then heads out of the auditorium. A second later, he pokes his head back in and calls for Harrison. Harrison actually goes running to him.

I stare after them. “How did that even happen?”

“Trace has the gun,” Rhys says. “Harrison has joined his army.”

“This isn’t war.”

“Maybe we can convince Grace to become a double agent or something,” Rhys says thoughtfully. He catches my eye and laughs a little at the ridiculousness of what he’s just said and then he looks away. “She’s got the right idea, though. Grace.”

“What’s that?”

“That this isn’t a good time or place to hold on to things.”

I think I know what he’s going to say next and I don’t think I want to hear it, so I get to my feet, searching for some excuse to leave the room.

But Rhys says, “Sloane,” before I can find one.

“What?”

“I don’t want…” he trails off, and tries to figure out a way to put it. “I don’t want how I feel about you to get in the way.” I don’t say anything, just leave him hanging, which is cruel. “I mean I don’t want to hate you so much that—I’m like how Trace is with Cary because that’s going to fuck him over in the end. I want to forget about what happened outside.”

He keeps waiting for me to say something.

“I forgive you,” he says.

“Okay.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Thank you?”

“I didn’t ask you to forgive me.”

Rhys stares at the ceiling for a second and then he leaves the auditorium and since I have the room to myself, I go back to sleep until a slow roll of thunder wakes me up. By the time my eyes are open, a loud clap of it sounds overhead.

And then the rain, tapping against the skylights.

I am so sad.

I am so sad it makes me heavier than the sum of my parts. I shift, restless, but it doesn’t help. It’s like—time. All this time in here is on me, has its hooks in me. Maybe if I sleep more, I’ll wake up and I’ll feel different, but I can’t. The storm is really happening now and it makes the room feel emptier. Makes me feel emptier.

I get up. I want to see Cary. I want to talk to him about Lily again. I need him to make everything he told me about her hurt less somehow. The walk to him takes forever. It’s hard to breathe around how badly I feel right now. I round the corner and when the nurse’s office comes into sight, I’m grateful.

And then I remember I don’t have the key.

And then I want to break things.

But—the door is open. A little.

It stops me cold. Not right. That’s not right. I back up, think about finding Rhys, but there might not be time. I tiptoe over cautiously.

Grace’s voice.

“Stop talking, stop talking,” she’s saying over Cary, who is mumbling something at her. “Just stop talking. Shut up. Stop. Stop. Talking—”

Their voices cut off abruptly. I step into the room and peer around the door, past the desk and supply cabinets and posters about knowing your body.

The cot is empty and they’re beside it.

Cary has Grace up against the wall.

Cary has Grace pressed against the wall.

I process this like a two-year-old with no life beyond Disney movies: he’s hurting her. Then I realize, no—not hurting.

Kissing.

Cary and Grace.

I feel a little Norman Bates standing there, watching it happen between them. The way their hands fumble and grope all over each other, the way he kisses her mouth and her throat and how when he kisses her throat she leans her head back, all the way back, like nothing feels better than his lips against her skin. And then she lowers her head. She puts her palms against his face and makes him look at her and my throat tightens for what’s in her eyes. I don’t think she forgives him but it’s like her heart is a little more open than it was.

It would be so easy for them to catch me spying, but they can only see each other. Grace kisses Cary and suddenly everything is just slow and tender in a way it wasn’t before. The energy in the room shifts. They’re kissing still, but now they’re really kissing. It’s so open and so honest and so end-of-the-world and I can feel it from where I’m standing. I feel the absence of it from where I’m standing. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.

Still here. Still here. Still here.

Cary and Grace.

I hear them breathing.

I move away from the scene slowly and then I’m in the hall, tears in my eyes. I run past LaVallee’s office, past the auditorium where Trace and Harrison’s voices now float out. I push through the doors to the gym and Rhys is there, smoking. The first thing I want to say is Cary and Grace have paired off but I can’t because it will make the thing I’m about to do worse, wrong. I calm down. Walk across the gym slowly.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

I bite my lip and turn my head in the direction of the hall. He grinds the cigarette out and follows me out. I don’t look back at him.

I pick the locker rooms because they’re closest.

Once we’re inside he says, “Is it Cary?”

I shake my head.

“What is it?”

“Thank you,” I tell him.

“Whatever,” he says.

I should ask permission first, but I can’t. I move to him and then—I press him against the wall. My hands fumble and grope all over him and he lets it happen. His mouth is just as hungry against mine. He tastes lonely. I feel it all through him. It’s what’s making him not stop this, not ask questions, it makes him kiss me back. He was with girls all the time. They were always around him. I bet he hasn’t been used to not having anyone to touch like this and I’ve never—I’ve never had that.

And that makes me so angry I don’t know if I want to hurt him for it, for having it. Hurt Lily for having it. I kiss his throat hard, clumsily. I want him to feel it. I want to feel this. I need it to hurt for me to feel it, I think.

I run my hands all over him, dig my nails into his skin, and he says, “Sloane—”

And I look him in the eyes and he has the most incredible eyes. They’re unremarkable—a muddy brown—but they show me he’s as empty as I am.

He kisses me and his lips are soft. I don’t want soft lips. I want to feel it. He puts his hands on my waist and turns me around so I’m the one against the wall. In that brief moment, I take in the room around us. There’s barely any light in here. The storm is still outside. The rain, I hear it. I imagine it. Fat drops of water splashing onto roofs, tracing slick wet trails down before turning back into smaller droplets that hit the pavement and splash, making puddles.

“Your shirt,” Rhys mumbles.

My fingers unbutton my buttons. Nine buttons until my shirt is open. He slides it off my shoulders and it hangs from my elbows. He steps back a little, looks at me. I’m not wearing a bra, but then I remember he’s seen this before. He brings his palm against my skin, against my collarbone. He’s shaking and I’m dizzy. He kisses me again, hard. Finally.

The sky cracks open, thunder, and then all I can think about is the rain, the smell of the pavement after it rains. That musty beautiful smell that coats your lungs. A mild spring day, two girls in blue raincoats with yellow buttons shaped like flowers. Lily taking off her boots, grabbing my hands, and trying to drag me through all the puddles she could. I was always too scared and—she always let go of my hand.

“Sloane?”

Rhys’s voice brings me back, pulls me out of the memory. My hand disappears from Lily’s hand, the puddles disappear under my feet and it’s just me and him, but it’s not really me and him. It’s just this emptiness between us, the stupid idea I could kiss it away, and I’m crying before I can stop myself and then we’re on the floor and his arms are all around me and I keep saying I can’t because I don’t know what else to say. He tries to calm me, quiet me. Brings his hand to my face, tells me it’s okay. It’s not okay. I’m dying. I am dying. I have finally achieved what I set out to do. My heart is splitting open and I breathe in but no air gets into my lungs. I push against Rhys but he won’t let me go, so I lean into him, curl my fingers into his shirt and sob and the only thing that makes me feel okay about it is the fact that Cary broke down before me, Grace, she broke down before me, Harrison. But still, every second like this hurts, it hurts so bad I can’t stand it. I want it to stop, that’s all I’ve wanted. I let go of Rhys’s shirt when my fingers start to ache. I let him go, but his hold on me never wavers and it is so quiet.

And then he asks, “Why can’t you?”

The floor in the locker rooms is cold.

The floor is cold and Rhys is warm.

“Because she couldn’t.” I say it so quietly, he has to rest his head against mine to hear me. “She told me she couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Do what?”

“Be my sister.”

These words cut me, feel like they cut me when they come out. They tear up my lips, make them bleed. I’m your sister, Lily. I never stopped being your sister.

“Why?”

“Because—our dad beat us. We were going to leave together. We had this plan but she left me with him instead because being stuck with me made her feel trapped … she left me and—” I think of myself sitting on the edge of the bathtub and it was so long ago, too long, and I start to cry again. “I’ve been here so much longer than I was supposed to be—”

He tells me it’s going to be okay until all the words blur together into a hum that makes me close my eyes and I start to go away and five, ten, fifteen minutes later, I’m aware of my hand sliding down to his lap and then nothingness and then the gentle sensation of his index finger pressing into my open palm and then his hand is at my face, running his fingers across my skin and I’m so awake. I untangle myself from his grasp and get to my feet so fast it surprises him. I can’t look him in the eyes. Rhys grabs my hand and tries to pull me back down but I jerk away.

“Sloane, wait—”

My shirt is still undone, wide open. My face burns. I button it up so hastily, every button is one button off. I have to get out of here. I push out of the locker room and run. His voice chases me down the halls. I duck into the girls’ room and lock myself in a stall and then I just sit there with my head against the side of it. I don’t even realize I’m not alone until I hear my name and then I freeze and lift my feet off the ground, like this could make me invisible.

“Sloane?” Grace pushes against the stall door. The lock rattles. “I know you’re in there. I saw you run in. What’s wrong?” I press my lips together. “Sloane.” The lock rattles again. “Open the door.”

I reach forward and unlock it. Grace steps back.

“I saw you with Cary,” I say.

“What—” She stops. “That’s why you’re upset?”

I leave the stall, push past her. “So the last few weeks were just a total game to you? You just—you and Trace make it hell to be in here, you push Cary until he’s broken and then we all have to pick sides but then you’re basically fucking him in the nurse’s office—”

“Sloane—”

“That is not cool, Grace!” I want to break something. I storm toward the door and then double back. She stares at me, her mouth hanging open. “Give me the keys.”

“What?”

“Give me the keys to the nurse’s office.”

“Why?”

“I want to see Cary. Give me the keys or I’ll tell Trace what you were doing—”

“What is your problem? I came in here because I heard you crying and I wanted to see if I could help—” I hold my hand out, cutting her off. She looks at me and she knows I am not going to talk about this with her anymore. She digs into her pockets and gives me the keys along with a pleading look. “Please don’t tell Trace about this.”

I promise her nothing. I go back to the nurse’s office. My hands are shaking so badly it takes me forever to unlock the door, so it’s not like I surprise Cary or anything. He’s laying on the cot and I think he looks satisfied. I hate him. I slam the door behind me.

“I thought you loved my sister.”

He sits up. “What—”

“I saw you with Grace. I thought you loved my sister.”

He has to separate the sentences before he can tackle either of them.

“Sloane—”

“I saw you with Grace.”

“Sloane—”

“And you were wrong about her anyway,” I say. He gets up and steps toward me and I step back. I wish I had a switch, some way I could turn myself off. And now I’m just lying, I don’t know why I’m lying. I’m lying because I’m the only one that can say the things I need to hear. “You were wrong about Lily. You were wrong about her. I’m her sister. I would know. She was—she wasn’t like—she was free. She wasn’t trapped—”

“Okay, but—”

“You were wrong—”

“Sloane—”

Cary stops. His gaze catches something behind me. I turn. Rhys stands in the doorway, staring at us. I shove the keys in his hands and leave them both standing there and all I can think is how she left me when I needed her and that I need her. I still need her.

I sleep. I refuse to be awake. In the afternoon, Trace asks Rhys if I’m sick. I open my eyes and ask him if he’ll shoot me depending on my answer, which goes over about as well as I expect it to.

“Sloane, get up,” Rhys says at one point. “Move around.”

I stare at the skylight. It’s raining again. A rainy spring that will turn into what kind of summer? It’s hard to imagine it summer, everything bright and alive and someone, somewhere not having sorted all of this end-of-the-world stuff out.

I go back to sleep.

Eventually, Rhys prods me awake and volunteers me to take Cary his dinner and I don’t want to but he says I have to, that he won’t leave me alone until I do. Grace, mysteriously, has given up the job. I grudgingly take a tray down to the nurse’s office. Cary is not surprised to see me. I set the food on the desk without looking at him and head for the door.

“She never took her shirt off,” he says at my back. I stop. “When we were together. I thought it was cute because she was usually so confident. I never thought she was hiding something.”

I see them in my head. They’re in a car, the backseat, they’re all over each other. He’s trying to push her shirt up, she’s pulling it back down and playing coy to hide the bruises.

I turn. “Rhys shouldn’t have told you.”

“Maybe but you need to bury it,” Cary tells me. “All of that’s over. You have to be here now.”

Bury it. Lily is gone, has been gone. It’s been weeks since I had to face my father and the last of those bruises have been replaced by ones that have nothing to do with him. I don’t want to be here now. Especially now.

“You’re not infected,” I say. Cary nods and looks at his still-bandaged arm. “Which means Baxter wasn’t infected, which means we let him go outside to die. Does it bother you?”

“I’m just glad it wasn’t me.”

“What about the Caspers?” I ask. “Are you glad that wasn’t you now? Did Grace forgive you? What about that?”

“I’m as close as I’m getting.”

“So you buried it,” I say. “You’re here now.”

“Yeah.”

“Enjoy your dinner, Cary.”

I leave, locking the door behind me. I make it a short way down the hall before I stop and lean against the wall, my head buzzing, trying to figure out everything Cary knows. Rhys told him about me and Lily. Did Rhys tell him I wanted to die? Did Rhys tell Cary what we did? When Cary sees me, does he see a girl with her shirt open, pressed up against Rhys?

I go to the bathroom and I check my forehead. Underneath the bandage, my skin is raw pink and red, gouged out and trying desperately to heal. I’ll have to change the bandage soon, but all of the first aid is with Cary and I don’t want to see him again. I leave the bathroom and make my way to the auditorium. I’m almost there when Rhys charges out of it. He shouts my name.

“Sloane, I need the key to the nurse’s office—we have to get Cary.”

Figures.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing. We just have to get him now.”

He won’t tell me what it’s about before we get to Cary. He won’t even tell me after we get to Cary, just says we have to get back to the auditorium now, it’s important. There’s a strange energy about him, not dire, but urgent. When we step inside the room, Grace, Trace, and Harrison are huddled around the radio. Trace turns it off as soon as he spots Cary.

“What is he doing out? It’s not tomorrow yet—”

“Cut the bullshit, Trace,” Rhys says. “You know he’s not infected—”

“We agreed on three days. Put him back.”

“Here, Trace,” Cary says. “I’ll prove I’m not infected. Give me your arm.”

“Real clever. I want you to stay at least ten feet away from me at all times—”

“I can stand wherever the fuck I want to stand.”

Cary gets as close to Trace as he can before Trace reaches out and shoves Cary. Cary rebounds quickly, shoving Trace back. In no time, Grace is between them, looking tired. When she says, “Trace, stop,” an uncomfortable silence fills the room. Cary backs off, his cheeks pink. Trace pulls a disgusted look at the back of Grace’s head.

“Would you stop acting like you want to fuck the guy?”

Grace’s face turns white. She whirls around and Trace steps back, knowing at once he’s crossed the line but not knowing at all how on the mark he is.

“Grace, I’m—look, Grace, I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t—”

“You should be,” she says before he can finish, and there’s something beyond hurt in her expression. She shares everything with him but she can’t share this.

“The radio,” Rhys says. “If you’re finished.”

Trace walks over to the radio and turns it on. The soft drone of Tina T’s voice comes through the static, familiar at first and then—different.

“Emergency shelters have been established in the following locations…”

My fingers tingle at the list of locations. My ears perk up at the name of only one: Rayford.

“All survivors are to proceed to the shelter nearest to them for medical processing. Shelters are equipped with food, water, military protection, and first aid. Exercise extreme caution while traveling and avoid heavily populated areas. If you encounter anyone you suspect to be infected, do not attempt to assist them…”

“See that, Chen? We shouldn’t have attempted to assist you.” Trace turns the radio off. “Help isn’t coming for us. We have to go to it.”

“Rayford,” I say.

“Yep,” Trace says.

“That’s almost a hundred miles.”

“Yeah.”

Everyone is still. No one looks like this is good news.

“Sounds like a death sentence to me,” Cary says.

“Find a car,” Grace says. “Drive it out of here.”

“First we have to prepare, then we have to find a car, then we have to assume that car can get us there, then we have to assume absolutely nothing will go wrong from here to there.”

“Your point?” Trace asks. “You’re not saying anything we don’t already know. We were talking about this before you got into the fucking room.”

Cary keeps going, undeterred. “We don’t know how congested the highway is going to be. We don’t know how bad the infection has spread. How many are out there…”

“We could take back roads.”

“Which adds more time to the trip. There’s not going to be any supplies on back roads,” Cary continues. “So what happens when we run out of gas? We just die on some country road or camp out in the woods? Start a colony?”

Trace throws his hands up. “Well, what the fuck else are we supposed to do? We have to go there if we want help. That’s what they said. They are not coming for us—”

“I know that,” Cary says. “I think we should go, I just want to make sure we’ve thought of everything—”

“What is—” Rhys interrupts. “What is ‘medical processing’?”

“It’s probably some kind of procedure to make sure we’re not infected, duh,” Trace answers. “Are you infected? No. There, processed. Welcome to safe haven.”

Rhys doesn’t respond. He turns the radio on and we listen to it again. And then again. Each time we hear it, what little hope it gave us diminishes until Rhys finally turns the radio off for good.

“It feels impossible,” Cary says. “Rayford.”

“It is,” Harrison says. I thought out of all of us, he would be the most excited, the most insistent that we leave, but he’s not. “I think we should stay here.”

“We can’t stay here forever,” Cary says. “We have to leave.”

“But does it have to be today?” Harrison asks. “Tomorrow? This week? What if they’ve reclaimed this town by the time we get there and we never had to take that risk—”

“But it’s not safe here,” I say. “We still haven’t found Baxter’s way in.”

“It’s safer,” Harrison says. “Baxter said we should hold on to this as long as possible. We have food, we have shelter, we have water, we have some first aid, and no one here is infected.”

“That water’s not going to last,” Cary says. “It’s going to run out eventually.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know when—”

“Which could be all the more reason to go—”

“Baxter said they waited now. I don’t want to go out there again. They’re out there and they’re waiting for us—”

“Harrison, we have to do things we don’t want to—”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Harrison explodes and it is so beyond anything we expect from him, we’re stunned into silence. “You’d make us all go out there just so you can throw us under the bus like you did with the Caspers!”

Cary’s jaw drops. His eyes dart from Harrison to Trace and I watch that realization hit him hard, that Harrison is no longer “his” if Harrison ever was.

“Where’s the gun?” Cary asks. He turns to Rhys. “You have it, right?”

“No.” Trace doesn’t even try to keep the glee out of his voice. “He doesn’t.”

“How could you give him the gun?” Cary asks us.

“I didn’t give him the gun,” Rhys says. “He took it—”

“Great, one of these nights, I’ll wake up with a fucking gun against my head—”

“Now that’s a good idea,” Trace comments at the same time Grace says, “He would never! Trace would never.” She turns to him. “You would never do that, Trace. Tell him.”

But Trace waits an agonizing minute before saying, “Not unless I had to.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Cary asks.

“Well, maybe you’ll still turn. Maybe you’re just a late bloomer.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” Rhys says.

Trace shrugs. “A guy can hope, can’t he?”

The Rayford discussion just dies. Everyone is on edge after that except for Trace. He finds it endlessly amusing to incorporate words like bang, shoot, click, and trigger in every sentence that comes out of his mouth until Cary can’t take it anymore and leaves the room.

Grace sits in a corner alone, wringing her hands. All of this drama. All these little dramas. It’s exhausting. She looks exhausted. I go to her and sit beside her. She glances at me and glances away and I feel bad for how I laid into her yesterday. I shouldn’t have.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I would never say anything to Trace.”

“I know but Cary might,” she says. “If Trace keeps pushing it.” She forces a weak smile at me but her eyes are full of worry. “And then Cary probably would wake up with the gun against his head. It would kill Trace if he found out.”

“Cary won’t tell,” I say.

I don’t know if that’s true but she relaxes a little, lets herself believe it.

“It’s not going to happen again with him,” she says. “It was spur of the moment. I just—wanted to touch someone, you know? Be close to someone. He was there. Do you get that?” I do but I don’t say so. “Look at Trace and Harrison.” She nods at them. They’re on the couches. Trace is leaned back, his hand resting between his legs. Harrison mirrors his pose. In some extremely fucked-up way, they look like they belong. “Guess what Trace said to me.”

“What?”

“He said all Harrison needs is a little guidance.” She sighs. “I guess that’s how pathetic we both are now.”

“It’s not pathetic.” I swallow. “When everything happened … like the day it happened, I was thinking about you. I thought about you a lot after Lily left.”

“Nothing bad, I hope.”

“Never,” I say. “I was thinking about that sleepover because I really liked your family. You guys were the perfect family to me.”

She laughs. “We were far from perfect. Trust me.”

“I needed to believe you were,” I say. “It was a good memory. I needed it after Lily left.” And then, something else she needs to know: “I’m not strong, Grace.”

She stares at me for a long moment and then puts her arms around me.