Across the Universe - Beth Revis [83]
“My bad,” Erin said.
Was that pity in her eyes?
I left the line. Screw smudged mascara.
But when I sat down at the table, Jason laughed and passed me a napkin, and then he licked the corner of it and wiped my eye himself, and he brushed my cheek with his fingers, and his eyes lingered on my lips.
And I remembered saying goodbye to him, earlier that night.
Part of me wanted to demand who Kristen was. To find out who he’d been texting, earlier, when he wouldn’t let me see his phone. What his friends had meant about “big plans” next Saturday. After I’d be gone.
But another part of me said it was too late. We’d already... said goodbye.
Wouldn’t it be easier to believe Jason was my Jason, not a cheater, not a scumbag?
At the time, I didn’t think it would matter.
But now, my only regret is that I didn’t demand the truth.
46
ELDER
“SHE’S NOT HERE,” HARLEY SAYS. HE’S SITTING IN THE WARD common room, staring out the window at the wheat fields in the distance.
I head to the door that leads to the private chambers. “Don’t bother,” Harley snarls. “She wants to be left alone.” I open my mouth to ask why, but he adds, “For that matter, I want to be left alone too.” He rubs the side of his face, and I notice a dark bruise under his eye.
I make a mental note to check with Doc about the last time Harley took his meds. It’s not the standard mental meds I’m worried about—it’s the other pills Doc gives him, the ones that hold back Harley’s dark moods, make him less loons.
So I leave the Hospital alone. I pass the statue of the Plague Eldest, but I don’t pause. I don’t want him looking down on me, too.
Instead, I head up the path to the Recorder Hall. I see the people, still in full swing of the Season, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach, knowing that all of this is just contrived through Eldest’s water pump.
When I get to the Recorder Hall, I have to step over a pair of intertwined bodies to get up the stairs. Victria sits on a rocker on the porch, watching them, occasionally writing something in her small leather-bound book. I’m surprised she’s not with Bartie, not doing what the couple on the steps are doing, but Eldest did say the hormones affected the Feeders more than others.
Orion stands with his back to me, facing the picture of Eldest that looks out over the vastness of the Feeder Level. Before I can say anything, however, he lifts the picture from its nook on the wall and leans it against the floor of the porch.
“What are you doing?” I ask, shocked. The wall of the Recorder Hall looks naked without Eldest’s falsely welcoming face peering down from it.
“Time for an updated picture,” Orion says, picking the painting up and heading back inside the Hall. That makes sense. The painting of Eldest is at least a decade old. In the painting, his hair is still mostly brown, his eyes still clear, only a hint of wrinkles on his brow. I wonder what the new picture will show. Long white hair? Stooping shoulders that slope more because of years of limping? Maybe I’m off entirely. Maybe his age will make him regal.
“Hey,” Victria says without looking up at me from her book. She’s not talked to me much since Amy arrived, although we were really close before, when I lived in the Ward. She looks meaner now, more bitter than three years ago, when she was seventeen and I was thirteen. She was my first crush, then, but I don’t know why anymore.
“Hey. Writing another book?” Victria has authored nearly a dozen books and uploads them to the floppy network. They’re great—I don’t know how she does it. Really amazing stories about heroes during the Plague. Tragic stuff. My stomach sinks. I guess Eldest gave her “writing” goo before she was born.
“Not exactly.” She snaps her book closed and tucks it into the large pocket on her jacket. She doesn’t turn to me, though, she just stares out at the perfectly square and measured fields in front of her, dotted with couples.
I follow her gaze. “Hey, be careful out there. The Season’s pretty wild right now.” I’m