A Few Hours Later
“Are you okay?”
I turn to Scarlett, blinking and dazed. We’re in the back of Hank’s cruiser, maybe three hours after we broke out of Sullivan Hall and raced across the Luminary grounds in the morning, armed guards running after us.
Three hours since I picked the lock on the front gates and stumbled out of the Luminary campus—finally—to find that Hank had left only to return to the school just before we escaped, with backup.
He and the other officers stormed the walls, shielding us with their own bodies as Luminary’s armed guards grudgingly retreated.
Local law enforcement ended up splitting the group of kids between six or seven different cruisers, calling our families to try to explain the circumstances and arrange for transport back home. Hank offered to drive Scar and me back to Tammy’s since it was on his way.
I’ve spent the last two hours telling Scarlett everything. And I mean everything. I told her about me and Ian, and the truth about my parents, and all the things Lynn admitted during that final test. I told her that everything I thought I knew about myself and my past was a lie.
Am I okay? I don’t know how I possibly could be. I don’t know how any of us could be.
“At least it’s over,” I murmur, instead of trying to find a way to answer. To my surprise, Scarlett frowns. The expression looks strange on her face.
“It’ll never really be over,” she says.
I swallow and look out the window until I can be sure I’m not going to cry. She’s right. How can it be over when there are still twenty students missing? When Rani and Mando are still missing?
“Do you think they’re okay?” Scar asks.
I shrug, because I don’t know how to tell her what I really think. That they’re dead, or too far gone to be helped. Tears prick my eyes.
Scarlett’s fingers weave through mine and squeeze. “We’ll find them,” she says, her voice oddly determined and stronger than I’ve ever heard it before. “They can’t hide them forever.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, forcing myself to say the thing I’m most afraid of. “And what if they’re—”
“We’ll find them,” Scar says again, cutting me off. “No matter what. I’m not giving up, and neither should you. We escaped that place. We’re strong.”
I look over at her, and despite everything, I manage a smile.
Tammy’s going to be so pissed that her plan backfired.
Instead of turning Scarlett back into the meek, timid version of herself that did whatever Tammy said, it turns out that a semester at Luminary made her kind of a badass.
I squeeze her hand back. “You’re right,” I tell her. “We’ll find them.”
Hank turns down the street toward Tammy’s house. There’s a light on inside. I find it oddly welcoming.
“I know it’s a lot more complicated than this,” Scarlett says. “But you know it never really mattered to me who your parents were. You’re still my sister. You’re Lia.”
“No last name?”
“Nah. You can be like Beyoncé or Rihanna.”
Hank slowly pulls to a stop in front of Tammy’s house. Almost as soon as he parks, the front door swings open, and Tammy steps onto the porch.
She looks like she just woke up. She’s wearing a bathrobe made of some kind of insanely soft-looking fabric, her bleached hair hiked into a messy bun on top of her head, not a stitch of makeup on. Her face looks smaller without it, younger.
She places a hand to her heart as the car pulls to a stop, and yeah, sure, she might be faking, but I know Tammy’s not that good of an actress. She looks just as freaked out as any mother would look in this moment. Maybe she didn’t know how awful Luminary was going to be, after all.
Hank swivels in his seat to face us. “What do you think? You guys gonna be okay?”
Technically, he’s speaking to both of us, but he’s looking at me, so I feel like I’m the one the question’s directed at.
Am I going to be okay? After everything I just went through? Everything I just learned?
All the things I thought I knew about myself were lies. My last name, my parents, my entire past was a lie. Am I ever going to be okay?
I look out the window, at Tammy waiting for me on the porch, and I feel a kind of release.
I can’t explain it. It’s not really that I think everything’s going to be somehow better now.
I know it’s not. All the problems I had before will still be waiting for me as soon as I step out of this cruiser.
Not to mention all the fun new ones I’m sure I’ll be facing. I mean, hello, PTSD, am I right?
No, it’s nothing as simple as all that. It’s just that I feel like I’ll be able to handle them now. Whatever life throws at me, I know I’ll be able to take it.
“Yeah, we’re okay,” I tell Hank. Then, turning to Scarlett, I add, “C’mon. Let’s go home.”