Chapter 44
VI
I’m still buzzing when I get back to the room with legs slightly shaky and flushed skin, a post-sex glow that makes you want to lie down and stare at the ceiling and replay every detail.
Mara is sitting cross-legged on the bed, braiding her hair. She takes one look at me and her eyebrows go up. “Well.”
“Shut up.”
“Which one was it?”
“Rogue.”
“I knew it. You’ve got that Rogue look. It’s different from the Sting look.”
“There is not a Sting look.”
“There is absolutely a Sting look. The Sting look is more intense and slightly angry. The Rogue look is…” She smirks at me and points with one finger. “This. Giggly.”
“I am not giggly.”
“You’re a little giggly.”
I am a little giggly. I drop onto the bed beside her and lie on my back and close my eyes and let the glow do its thing. For about ninety seconds, everything is fine.
Then Mara says, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’ve been hanging out with this guy Tommy. He’s so nice. He’s been showing me around, helping me understand how things work. Like, who handles what, where stuff comes from, how the trade system operates. It’s been really helpful.”
My eyes open.
“Who’s Tommy?”
Instant suspicion. Jesus, am I a product of the Rot now, or what?
“He’s just a guy. He works in trade logistics or something. He’s been here awhile. He’s older, like forties. Super friendly. You’d like him.”
“How long have you been hanging out with him?”
“A few days? Maybe a week? He started talking to me in the neutral zone and we hit it off. He’s great.”
Something pricks the back of my neck.
“Mara. You’ve haven’t been here long. You don’t know these people.”
“I know. That’s why I’m getting to know them.”
“By telling them what? What do you talk about?”
She stops playing with her hair and looks at me, frowning. “What do you mean, what do we talk about? Normal things. Life. The Rot. How I’m adjusting. He asked about you a little, like how you were doing, if you were settling in okay.”
“He asked about me?”
“In a nice way. Like, caring. He knows you’re dealing with a lot.”
“What does he know about me and what I’m dealing with?”
“Vi, what is your problem? He’s a friendly guy making conversation. I didn’t give him your diary.”
I sit up. The glow from my rendezvous with Rogue melts away. Whatever he gave me ten minutes ago has been replaced by something colder and sharper. I know I’m about to be unfair, but I can’t stop it.
“My problem is that you’ve been here less than a month and you’re trusting strangers with information about me and my situation. You don’t know this guy. You don’t know what he wants or who he talks to or what he does with what you tell him.”
“I didn’t tell him anything important—”
“You don’t know what’s important, Mara! That’s the point.
You don’t know the rules here. You didn’t go through what I went through to learn them.
You walked in the front door because I asked the guys to let you in, and now, you’re making friends and telling people about my business like this is summer camp. ”
Mara’s face changes. The easy warmth is gone and what’s underneath it is harder than I expected.
“Wow,” she says, raising her hands in surrender. “Okay.”
“Don’t ‘okay’ me.”
“No, I think I will ‘okay’ you. Because what you’re actually saying isn’t about Tommy.
You’re saying I don’t belong here. That I haven’t earned it.
That I showed up late and I didn’t pay my dues, the price of admission by going through the shit you did, so I don’t get to have friends or feel comfortable or do anything without your permission. ”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s exactly what you’re saying. You’ve been thinking it since I got here. I can see it every time I do something on my own. Every time I talk to someone or go somewhere or act like I’m allowed to exist in this place without checking in with you first. It drives you crazy.”
She’s kind of right.
“You know what drives me crazy?” I say. My voice is low now.
“Months. I was here for months, Mara. Alone, with no one from my old life and no one who knew me from before. I went through a Hunt. I got chased through this building by strangers in masks. It was terrifying and fucked-up. Then, I had to figure out who to trust and who to avoid and how to survive in a place with no rules and three men who owned me.”
“I know—”
“You don’t know. You don’t know what it was like. You were outside. You were free. And I was in here trying not to fall apart.”
Her eyes go bright and for a second, she looks like she might cry, and then she doesn’t. She gets angry instead.
“You’re right. You didn’t ask me to come,” she says.
We stare at each other. Two women who’ve known each other since they were kids, standing on opposite sides of something that’s been building since the day Mara walked into the Rot with guilt in her eyes and a bag of letters hidden outside.
I didn’t reach out to her and ask her to come. Why would I have?
“We weren’t talking, Mara. Remember? That was your decision.
You pulled away when Dad’s shit went public.
You stopped calling. You stopped showing up, because your mother told you to.
You told me that yourself. She said my family was poison and you chose her over me.
So don’t stand there and act like you were waiting by the phone for an invitation. ”
That’s ugly. I know it’s ugly.
“I was scared,” Mara says. Her voice breaks on the word.
“I was scared for you. And I came as soon as I could. I brought everything I had. And since I got here, I’ve been trying so hard to be useful and not be in the way.
I’ve tried to help you with your dad’s stuff, and you look at me like I’m a tourist. Like I’m visiting your life instead of being part of it.
I know I deserted you. I was a coward. And I’ve been trying to make up for it since I got here. ”
The anger drains out of me. All of it. Gone.
“Sorry,” I say. My voice cracks. “I’ve been unfair.”
“Yeah,” she says. “You have. But I’m sorry too. I’m scared for you, Vi. Not about the Rot or the guys or anything. For you. You’re so deep in this thing with your dad, I barely recognize you sometimes.”
I don’t have an answer for that. I barely recognize myself sometimes.
I cross the room to the bed, sit down beside her, and pull her into me. She resists for about half a second and then she’s holding on, and I’m holding on. We’re both crying, which is stupid but also honest.
“Talk to Tommy,” I say into her hair. “Talk to whoever you want. It’s not my place to police you.”
“I was going to anyway,” she says. Her voice is muffled against my shoulder. “But thank you for the permission I didn’t ask for.”
I laugh and it comes out wet and broken. She laughs too.
“Don’t disappear on me,” she says. “No matter what happens with the papers or the guys or any of it. Don’t go somewhere I can’t reach you. Don’t do the same thing he did, Vi, keeping everything close, shutting people out, handling stuff alone. Your dad did that and look what happened to him.”
“I won’t.” I mean it, right now, in this moment, holding my best friend on a bed in a dead mall, I mean it completely.
Whether I can keep that promise is another question.