Chapter 28 Rosabelle
Rosabelle
“Nope,” James says sharply, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. I meant what I said. We’re not discussing anything until you eat—”
“What?” I stare at him, stunned. “I don’t think you understand what I’m saying—”
“I understand exactly what you’re saying. I don’t care if the world burns to the fucking ground, Rosabelle. You’re going to
eat first.”
Nazeera is watching us, her eyes wide with alarm. Carefully, she says, “I think I should page Warner.”
“Good idea,” says James. “Invite him to join us for dinner.”
“Wait, is this a joke?” says the other one, the man with the dark hair and the familiar blue eyes, the one who was never formally
introduced to me. He looks panicked. “Is this— What the hell is happening right now?”
“This is not a joke,” I say, turning my attention to him, hoping someone will listen to me. “I need to get back to the Ark
immediately—”
“We can discuss it over dinner,” says James, before abruptly leaving the group to head down the hall.
“Bro, what the hell—”
“An hour isn’t going to make a difference if we’re all going to die anyway,” James calls over his shoulder. Then, “Nazeera, can I grab one of your jackets for Rosabelle?”
“Yeah,” she says, shell-shocked. “But—”
“I think I liked you better when you didn’t talk,” says Winston. He crosses his arms, frowning at me.
“Me too,” I say, looking away.
The quiet truth I’m struggling to admit is that, despite my urgency to return to the Ark, if I don’t eat something soon I’ll
be useless to everyone.
I’m feeling dangerously faint.
Floaters push in and out of my vision. I’m experiencing a general, heightened debility that scares me, and my efforts to marshal
self-possession are more tenuous than ever. James’s effect on me has grown only worse with time. I used to be able to summon
greater measures of composure in his presence, but now—
Now, I have no defenses against him.
I still haven’t processed the fact that I fell asleep in his arms. There’s no precedent for it.
It’s incomprehensible.
When I was forced to imagine my life married to Sebastian, I could hardly tolerate the idea of holding his hand, much less
sharing a bed with him. I don’t enjoy proximity to other people in general; I don’t like to be touched. I can’t even trust
the affection of my own sister. That I surrendered so easily to James, that my body yielded to him without hesitation—with
implicit trust—
Something dangerous is happening to me.
I’ve broken; a jammed lever has released a dam inside of me and I don’t know how to repair the damage. I can’t even see James
now without feeling breathless. It’s hard enough to look at his face—the juxtapositions of hard and soft, the balanced arrangement
of his beauty—but there’s something visceral and potent about simply being in his orbit. I’m getting addicted to the relief
I experience when I see him. I’m getting distracted by the need to touch him; to be touched by him. What I feel for him now
is worse than perilous. It’s lethal. It’s scaring me.
I need him to stay away from me.
Something soft lands at my back and I look up to find that James has draped a big, puffy pink jacket over my shoulders. I
try, once again, to pull myself together.
“Please, James, listen to me,” I try to say, but when he draws closer I feel unsteadier right away: I can already feel the
tremble in my right hand intensifying, the tremors rocking up my arm, and I make a fist, trying to contain it. “I—I have to
get back to the Ark,” I force out.
“No,” he says. “You’re in time-out.”
Winston chokes.
“What?” I blink, my eyes pinging between them. “What does that mean?”
“It means we’ll discuss this over dinner,” says James, moving toward the hall again.
“But I have to get back as soon as possible,” I call out to his retreating back. “And I can’t leave without the vial, which means I’m going to need—”
“The vial?” says the blue-eyed man. “What vial?”
Winston sighs, pushing a hand through his hair. It sticks up in places. “You know, when I said I was still waiting for something
exciting to happen, I was hoping for more interpersonal drama, less end-of-the-world drama. I’m really sick of end-of-the-world
drama.”
“Warner is on his way,” Nazeera says, lifting up her pager.
“Great,” says James, grabbing a denim jacket from a hallway closet. “Ask him if he wants waffles.”
“You hung up your jacket?” says Winston. “When did you hang up your jacket? I didn’t even know Nazeera owned hangers.”
“Rude,” she says.
James crosses the room toward me, his expression unreadable. “Finish putting on your coat. You look like a pink marshmallow.”
“But— What?” I look at myself, then carefully push my arms into the oversized coat. The interior is lined with something silky
that feels so luxurious I nearly close my eyes. It feels like wearing a pillow.
“Oh,” I say, blinking.
James is studying me, holding out my slip-on shoes from the hospital, but when I look up to meet his eyes I stiffen, struck,
like I’ve taken a blow to the head.
“Rosabelle,” he says. “Shoes. Zipper. Please.”
My chest constricts.
“What?” he says. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I breathe.
But the gears in my mind won’t turn.
I feel almost dazed.
I’ve seen James a thousand times, and I’ve always acknowledged his beauty. The fact of his attractiveness is self-evident;
as indisputable as the wet of water. But now, somehow, it’s as if I’m seeing him through new eyes.
My own eyes.
No armor. No shields to dull the blow. I’m fully present in my body and his impact is devastating. He’s not just gorgeous;
he’s impossibly stunning. His hair. His eyes. The corded muscles of his arms. The powerful lines of his neck. How have I never noticed his shoulders? His hands?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he says, his voice lower now. He’s still holding my shoes, but they seem forgotten
between us. He takes a step closer.
Desperate, I grab the shoes from him.
Then I step back.
“Oh, shit,” says the blue-eyed guy. “I need to tell Alia I won’t be home for dinner—I was supposed to pick up milk—”
“We’ve got milk at our place,” says Winston. “Tell her to grab the carton from our fridge—”
“Hey, so, why do you need the vial before you can leave? What does it do?” Nazeera is slipping into a long leather jacket
as she speaks, and when she turns to face me she gasps, breaking into a smile. “Oh my God, you do look like a pink marshmallow.”
I’m still inching backward when she says this—struggling with the zipper as I try to put as much space between myself and
James as possible—and I startle when she comes over to help me.
She fits the teeth together, then tugs up the slider like I’m a child. “It’s so puffy it’s sometimes hard to see where it
starts,” she says. “Cute, though, right?”
She’s smiling at me like she means it. I feel like I’m wearing a big cloud; I can’t really move my arms. I realize only then
that she’s wearing her shawl as a headscarf—in a style decidedly reminiscent of outlawed religions—and this throws me off
guard.
I can’t quite make sense of Nazeera.
It’s possible religion is no longer illegal on the mainland, but I can’t decide whether she’s wearing a scarf like this on
purpose or if it’s merely a coincidence; clearly it’s not something she does all the time, and I can’t imagine what reason
she’d have to resurrect such a tradition.
Her father was the supreme commander of Asia.
Despite the cultures and practices once prevalent in the region, there’s no chance she was brought up in a faith system; not
when her father was loyal to the authoritarian ideology. In the name of instituting universal equality, one of the first acts
of the regime was to obliterate identity. People were to act as one body, indistinguishable. All visible symbols of culture
and religion were immediately criminalized.
It’s considered treason to suggest the existence of a power greater than The Reestablishment; the only entity declared worthy of worship is the establishment itself.
On the Ark, some have begun erecting altars to Klaus.
They’ve developed rites and rituals meant to fully submit themselves before his synthetic intelligence, asking for answers and guidance.
On the Ark, Nazeera would be sentenced to death if she were caught trying to resurrect an ancient faith.
“Yes, thank you,” I say quietly, confused. Still, I’m grateful for the head change, and I remember that she asked me a question.
“In order to explain the vial, I’d have to start from the beginning—”
“No,” James says sharply. “No more answering questions. You’re in time-out.”
“Jesus, this is ridiculous,” mutters the blue-eyed guy.
“You put her in time-out?” Nazeera says to James, fighting a smile. “Are you serious?”
“What does that mean?” I ask her.
“It means you’re in trouble,” Winston explains to me. He’s bent over, retying his shoelaces, and his glasses slide down the
bridge of his nose. He pushes them back up, then straightens to look at me. “It means you have to sit in your cool-down center
and think about what you’ve done.”
“What?” I stare at him.
“It’s called a fucking calm-down corner,” says the guy whose name I still don’t know. “And you’re all a bunch of idiots.”
“It sounds like Adam needs a time-out,” says Winston, crossing his arms. “Nazeera, which one is your calm-down corner? The one with all the dead spiders, or the one with all the dead spiders?”
She flips him off.
“All right, enough,” James says angrily. “Not another word out of any of you until we get to the diner.” He strides toward
me as he speaks, clearing the few feet of distance I’d only recently reclaimed. He buttons himself into a denim jacket as
he moves, and I recognize the fleece collar, the orange enamel kite pin affixed to the front pocket. I watch, transfixed,
as he tugs a navy beanie over his head, the article brightening his eyes, and when he looks at me again I feel winded, like
I’ve been knocked off my axis.
“You ready?” James says, towering before me.