Chapter 46
Kiss my brave girls for me.
I’ve barely gotten the words past my lips when Nico says no. He keeps hold of my wrist but leans back, putting distance between us like I just suggested we burn down an orphanage for fun and he doesn’t want to be associated with me.
“Not happening,” he says.
“He needs to believe your switch flipped.” I wish I could yell so badly, but I keep my voice low. “It’s the outcome he expects, and he doesn’t change his mind. We’d be acting. You’d pretend to kill me. I’d play dead.”
“I’m not putting my hands on you,” he says. “Not even pretending. I won’t put myself there again.”
“This would be different,” I press. He wouldn’t be the only one stepping into his worst nightmare. The Girl Who Played Dead would have to reprise her role.
“It wouldn’t be,” he says. “Not for me.”
I want to point out that we’re running out of time and options and that sometimes the only choice you get is between bad and worse, but his voice has gone thin, and I can tell how painful the idea is for him even to consider. How can I argue with him when he’s saying he doesn’t want to hurt me?
“When the police find my body, they’ll ID me eventually, and then it’ll come out that another killer murdered the Boy Next Door,” Nico says. “That could be enough to prove to my parents and Nora that I wasn’t evil.”
“Don’t say when,” I say. “I’m not letting you do that for me.”
He scrubs a hand over his hair, then grips the back of his neck. I can feel him wrestling with thoughts in his head I can’t reach.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know where you’re coming from, and it’s a good idea—one I had, too—but I can’t do it. We’ll think of something else.”
I nod, even though I can tell how much he doesn’t believe it. “Okay.”
Nico and I drag each other back to the pole, where the water and blanket are. He moves us so I’m sitting between his legs with my back against his chest, his arms wrapped around me, and the blanket cocooning us both. His body curves around mine.
The shock that was keeping me functional drains away like water through a sieve. The temperature feels like it’s dropping. It gets through the blanket, through Nico’s body heat, until I might as well be one of those masochistic health nuts who plunge in the ocean in the dead of winter.
My vision keeps going spotty at the edges. I try to focus on Nico’s voice when he talks to me, on the steady rhythm of his breathing against my back, on the way he traces patterns on my arm.
“Eden,” Nico says. “Can you open your eyes?”
When did I close my eyes? I force them open, and Nico’s face hovers above me, his eyes wide and scared in a way that should probably alarm me more than it does.
“I’m fine,” I say, automatically.
“You feel hot,” he says.
“Oh yeah?”
It’s not something to joke about. Everything feels too warm and too cold at the same time, but I don’t want him to worry.
“Do we have more water?” I ask because it’s the only thing my brain can focus on anymore.
Nico steadies the remaining bottle with one hand as I drink everything except for the last quarter, then he leaves again.
I curl up on the floor, feeling his absence like a bruise, before he returns with a tarp he found buried under some collapsed debris.
He wraps the crinkled plastic around us, then slides back behind me.
Keeping my eyes open feels like trying to curl dumbbells with my eyelids.
“Do you want me to tell you about the mountain again?” Nico asks.
I want to tell him I’m sorry for being weak and for not being the kind of person who can power through blood loss and dehydration with the power of my mind, but the words won’t come.
The world grays out. I can hear him talking and try hard to hold onto each word he says, but all of them smear together until all I can think about is dunking my head into the puddles of rainwater on top of that mountain and gulping down muddy water until I die.
Nico’s chest rises and falls under my cheek in an unsteady rhythm.
I blink out at the shadowy expanse of the building, the entire thing coming in and out of focus.
“Hey, baby girl.”
I open one eye to find Dad crouched in front of me, and everything inside me stills.
He looks exactly the same as the last time I saw him, with his buzzed hair, stocky build, and tired eyes crinkled at the corners.
He’s wearing that half-smile he’d get when he caught me doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, but was more proud than mad about it.
“You’re not real,” I say, my voice barely audible even to myself.
Dad’s smile widens. “Does it matter?”
Guess not.
“I’m trying to be tough like you told me, but I’m not strong enough,” I say.
“It’s okay, little one,” he says. “You don’t have to be strong enough to win. You just have to be strong enough to try.”
“I’m scared,” I say.
“Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared,” Dad says. “It just means you do it even though you are.”
“Will you hate me if I give up?” I rasp.
“Eden?” Nico asks, voice hoarse from sleep. “Who are you talking to?”
I look back toward where Dad was crouched, but he’s gone.
I miss Dad so much. I miss the way he’d lie on the floor next to my bed and hold my hand after I had nightmares, all the way until I went back to sleep. He promised nothing could hurt me as long as he was there.
Except something did hurt me. Something hurt all of us, and Dad couldn’t stop it because he wasn’t superhuman. He was just a man.
I try to turn toward Nico, but the room spins like someone fired up a centrifuge. I can feel his hand on my face, but I’m already slipping away from him.
“Eden?”
I surface from unconsciousness slowly and disoriented. My eyes are groggy, and it takes a couple of seconds before I recognize Nico’s silhouette.
“The speaker turned on,” he says. “The Game Master said nothing, but I think he’s getting ready for the next trial. What do you need most right now?”
I move my arm, immediately regretting it as a ripe throb of pain rushes up through my shoulder.
I probe around the tourniquet. The fabric that binds my stump is sodden in places, and there’s a smell coming from it that I try hard not to think about too much.
I’m not cold anymore. I feel warm and comfortable, which would feel good if I didn’t know better.
“Thirsty,” I say.
“I can do something about that,” he says.
The swelling in his hands has gone down even more overnight, and he manages to get the cap off the water bottle. I sit up. The world pitches sideways, and I drop forward until I’m leaning on his shoulder, breathing through my mouth.
I want to tell him to drink first because he’s clearly in just as bad shape as I am, but the desert that used to be my mouth overrules my brain. I take three small sips, letting each one sit on my tongue before swallowing. He drinks the rest in measured gulps, then sets the empty bottle aside.
Great. So that’s the last of our water.
We eat both chocolate bars. We’re too hungry to hold out.
Once, I forgot to eat breakfast before one of Rosie’s soccer games and was so dizzy that I couldn’t walk straight.
Mom bought a chocolate bar from a vending machine and told me the sugar would give my body the boost of energy it needed until we could get back home.
I don’t know if there’s enough sugar in the world to supply my body with the energy it needs right now, but this is better than nothing.
I notice the toothbrush and toothpaste lying on the floor. I forgot the Game Master even gave us these. I reach for them.
“You trying to tell me something?” Nico asks, and I can hear his smile.
“It’s for me,” I say. “At this point, if the Game Master wanted to torture you, he could just have me breathe on you.”
I scrub my teeth way longer than I usually do. It feels good to do something normal.
Once I’m done, Nico plucks the toothbrush from my fingers and squeezes a line of toothpaste on it. He holds my eyes as he brushes his teeth, and the casualness makes it feel way more intimate than it has any right to be.
“You need fresh breath for anything specific?” I ask.
He angles away and spits on the floor, wiping the minty foam clinging to the edge of his mouth. “If I get lucky,” he says.
The room floods with light. Row after row of industrial fixtures that were invisible in the dark now blaze overhead. I throw my elbow over my face.
“Your fourth trial will begin momentarily,” the Game Master announces through the speakers, and I swear the volume is cranked up louder than before. “You have ten minutes to prepare.”
We already ate and brushed our teeth. What are we supposed to use the ten minutes for, writing our wills?
Please, for the love of all things holy, don’t let this next trial be the teeth thing.
I wipe tears away from my stinging eyes as they adjust to the sudden brightness, then turn to Nico.
The bruising around his eyes has turned deep purple.
His lips are so chapped they’ve cracked, dried blood caught in the splits, and his eyes are too bright, almost too focused, like he’s running on nothing but adrenaline and sheer force of will.
Seeing him in real lighting after everything that happened in the dark feels like a drug. Creases appear at the corners of his eyes as he smiles, and I know I’m not alone in the feeling.
He fashions a sling out of his hoodie, binding my arm against my body so it’s not dangling. He rewraps the stump too, and even though he tells me not to look, I still do, and find my hand has swollen into a puffy shape. The missing tip of my exposed thumb is dusky and caked with blood.
I’m not the first person in the world to lose a body part. So many people have survived worse.
Nico presses his cheek against mine.
“I have a plan,” he mutters against my ear. “To lure him down here.”
“Lure him how?” I ask.
“The same way Howard and Louise did,” he says. “By refusing to hurt each other. Make Morrow come down to force the issue.”
His brain is working about ten steps ahead of mine.