Chapter 27 Rosabelle
Rosabelle
Chapter 27
He’s leaning against the doorframe in a black T-shirt and technical pants and that’s all it takes for my heart to start racing. It’s the shock, I realize, of his physical presence; there’s something staggering about his beauty. The wry smile on his face makes me irrationally angry. His arms are casually crossed, drawing attention to his muscular build, his strong forearms. His hair is a little wet—darker than usual—as if he might’ve recently taken a shower. His blue eyes are cold, closed off. He doesn’t seem happy to see me, and this disappoints me even as I can’t conjure a single reason why the sight of me should please him. After yesterday, I didn’t think I’d ever see his face again. I thought I was finally done with him.
I’ve been trying not to think about him.
I’ve been trying not to remember the panic in his eyes. The way he’d grabbed my wrists and apologized, over and over, for trying to feed me. I’m suddenly terrified that I’ll never be rid of him; that his voice, like Clara’s, will live on in a loop in my mind forever.
Where’d they take your sister? The asylum, right?
But, like, how do we get there?
“Hey,” he says, tilting his head. “You coming?”
But, like, how do we get there?
I hesitate a moment more, willing my body to cool. The effects of his initial, disorienting impact are beginning to recede, and I’m now becoming painfully aware that seeing him again might be the precursor to something darker. I thought that James, having served his purpose of delivering me to the rebels, was no longer useful. I thought my focus had shifted exclusively to the procurement of the vial.
If you’re smart enough, you’ll see it coming.
Maybe James is more important than I thought. Maybe he’s the one in possession of the vial. And maybe it will soon be my job to kill him—again.
It’s enough to reanimate my limbs.
I cross the room and he steps back as I approach, gesturing for me to precede him down the hall. “Lead the way,” he says.
I come to an abrupt stop.
I stare up at him, something like fear raising goose bumps along my arms. “Lead the way where?”
“To your room,” he says. “Which one is yours?”
Warning bells sound throughout my body.
In response I turn slowly forward, guiding him to my room in silence. The rebels continue to surprise me. Outwit me. I have no idea why he’s here.
To be fair, I’ve been trapped in this facility for less than twenty-four hours, and I’m not sure why I’m here, either. I suppose it’s plausible to assume that after my behavior yesterday they decided I was truly in need of rehabilitation. It’s an unlikely theory, but I can’t rule it out altogether. If the rebels actually think gathering ex-members of The Reestablishment in a room together is a good idea, then I’m dealing with levels of stupidity so astronomical as to astonish. In some ways a stupid adversary is more dangerous than an evil one. I can’t map stupidity. I can’t extrapolate theories from stupidity. I can’t solve for patterns in stupidity.
Then again, maybe that’s the point.
I hear James exhale behind me, the steady hush hush of his pants as he moves. I’m too aware of how close he is to me, how he seems to take up all the allotted space. The dark, musky scent of him is flooding my head with dizzying thoughts I’ve never had before. Never have I felt the absurd compulsion to press my face to a man’s chest and breathe him in.
I certainly won’t start now.
This place feels like a small college, with different wings for classrooms and dormitories. It also appears to be sealed entirely underground, or else the cinder blocks are impressively dense. There are windows out of reach, too high to access, and I need more time to study the light to be certain of its origin. It might be synthetic, or I might simply lack a baseline for this geographical region. Ark Island is located in what would’ve been the Pacific Northwest of The New Republic; but because I was unconscious for the duration of my arrival here, I have no idea where we are relative to my home. I’m still assessing. Mapping. This is without a doubt some kind of prison masquerading as a sanctuary.
Finally, we come to a stop.
“Hiiiiiii, Rosabelle No-last-name,” says Leon, poking his head out of his room. “Hiiiiiii, my beautiful Rosabelle, Rosabelle. I was waiting for you.”
Leon is my neighbor.
Right now he’s grinning at me the way he did yesterday when I arrived, with a fervor that might frighten someone else. He’s tall with golden hair and golden skin and vivid green eyes that rarely blink. He’s handsome and unhinged .
“Rosabelle means beautiful rose ,” says Leon, his head still hanging out the door like a dog in a window. “Rosabelle, Rosabelle, Rosabelle, Rosabelle—”
I glance at James, indicating with a nod that we’ve arrived at my bedroom door, and I’m surprised to find that he seems angrier now than he did upon arrival. His expression is stormy as he watches me, and I fumble a little under his silent fury as I search my pockets.
Finally, I procure the ancient brass key.
I enjoy the tactile, classic feeling of a key, but I don’t understand the logic. Why not lock us in our rooms using modern security mechanisms, opening and closing them remotely, regulating our freedom? Why give us the illusion of power?
“Rosabelle,” says Leon, tittering. “My beautiful rose. I can hear you at night. I listened to you all night, Rosabelle, I’ll give you a little earth, Rosabelle, let me look inside you, Rosabelle, Rosabelle, Rosabelle—”
James reaches forward, palms Leon’s face, and physically launches him backward into his room. There’s a strangled cry, a violent crash, and then James pulls Leon’s door shut with a slam.
He turns to look at me, and I’m frozen in shock, my key still stuck in the lock.
“This piece of shit lives next door to you?” he says.
“Yes.”
James turns away and says nothing more. I study the column of his neck, his throat as it bobs.
My right hand shakes slightly as I turn the key, and then we’re entering my room and he’s closing the door behind us, and this simple action cuts the air supply in half.
I back myself up against my dresser as he steps into the small space, heat braising my head. I’m suddenly, irrationally terrified by the idea that he might touch me.
He does not.
He doesn’t touch anything. In fact, James doesn’t even come near me. He keeps the length of the room between us as he inspects it, and I see the small space the way he might: bare white walls, a twin bed with a matching nightstand. There’s an adjoining bathroom with a full-length mirror affixed to the back of the door. He doesn’t move from his spot, but his eyes are trained on my bed.
“Wow,” is the first thing he says. “You make your bed like a soldier. Impressive.”
I look at it: the tight, crisp sheets; the perfect corners; the smooth blanket. The pillows are uncrushed, plump like a pair of eggs.
I stiffen with alarm.
I’d not been expecting an inspection, and perhaps I should have. I didn’t sleep in my bed last night. Instead, I sat with my back against the door, staring into my messenger bag at the bottle of water and the small bag of nuts.
I ate all of them, every single one.
And then I licked the salt off the plastic and drank all the water from the bottle and stared into the dark and fought to breathe. I listened to the quiet, straining my ears for signs of life. I scoured every inch of the bathroom, fished my arm down the toilet, touched my fingers to the mirrors, unscrewed the stopper from the sink. I pulled every drawer out of the dresser and ran my hands down the walls and pressed my ears to the carpet, listening.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Each time, nothing.
It began to drive me wild. The idea that they might allow me to lock myself in my room without a shred of surveillance was driving me wild. I needed to find something, needed to know whether The Reestablishment had found a way to watch me here, and if not, why my enemy hadn’t, either. I finally collapsed in the middle of the room, my heart beating so hard my vision had begun to blur. I never made it to the bed, the sheets of which I’d yet to strip. I lay there, starfished on the floor, my eyesight blearing with fatigue, wondering how I’d ended up there, in that moment. I remembered something my mother used to say to me. When I’d whine for something she couldn’t give me, or when I was frustrated with a problem she couldn’t solve, she’d say—
Rosabelle, when there’s something you want but can’t have, you can either be patient or be creative. Choose a path.
When the bullet in my mother’s gun went off, the path was chosen for me. Nothing could slow the force of a shot that expelled her from her world and me from mine.
In an instant, I stopped being a child.
I had one dark skill for which I’d been trained in the most rudimentary of ways, and it was all I had to barter. Suddenly at ten years old I was a parent, a provider, a student, an idiot—and then, without ceremony, a murderer.
“It’s been two minutes.”
I look up, blinking.
“I counted,” James says, leaning against the wall. He looks at his watch. The straps are made of leather, the style out of place: an anachronism, noted. “It’s been two minutes and thirty-seven seconds since I made a comment about your bed, and instead of responding, you left. It’s like you just walked out of your head.”
I feel it again: heat, threatening to consume me. It flares up my chest, my throat. I don’t like the way he watches me. I don’t like the way he seems to pay attention.
I don’t like it.
I don’t like it.
I don’t—
“Where did you go?” he says.
“Nowhere,” I say quietly. “I’m right here.”
He flashes me a look that borders on amusement. “I’ll be right back,” he says, and leaves the room.
I’m standing in exactly the same position, my head held at exactly the same angle when he reenters the room a few minutes later, this time carrying a chair.
The door slams shut behind him, and I flinch.
He sees this but says nothing. Instead, he pushes the chair up against the far wall and takes a seat, giving me as much space as the room will allow. He nods to the bed.
“Have a seat, Rosabelle.”
“Why? What are you going to do to me?”
His eyes seem to die out, like a guttering flame. “I’m going to talk to you.”
I exhale, but slowly, keeping my body still. This is a relief. Finally, something that makes sense. Something I know how to manage. “You’ve come to interrogate me.”
“No,” he says, leaning forward, arms on his knees. “I’m just going to talk to you.”
My heart rate spikes again. I blink away the sudden rush to my head, backing up against the bed in confusion, my calves knocking against the frame. I draw upon an inner reserve to calm myself, crush myself.
Die.
You’ve been dead inside for years, I remind myself.
You’ve been dead inside for years —
Then, with a force that takes my breath away, I finally understand. In a moment of pure, undiluted panic, I finally understand. This is why I keep making mistakes around him— This is what’s wrong with me— This is why I can’t seem to die and stay dead, why my skin keeps burning, my heart keeps racing, my head keeps spinning—
He is what’s wrong with me.
After so many years being dead inside, James makes me feel alive.