The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [116]
Catcher squeezes my hand in his but doesn’t answer because the reality is we don’t know. “Did I tell you about the night I climbed the roller coaster back in Vista?” he asks, trying to distract me from all the ways I imagine this whole thing failing.
I frown at him, trying to remember, and shake my head.
“It was after I’d been infected. I was alone, living out by that amusement park. I’d always been afraid of heights and I sat there and stared at the roller coaster and I realized that I was going to die. In a few days, I’d be dead.”
It hurts to hear him talk about what that time was like. How alone he must have felt.
“And so I climbed it. If I was going to die, let me die doing that—something interesting.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Are you trying to tell me that if all this fails, at least it will be interesting?”
He grins, pressing a finger to my lips to quiet me. “No, I’m telling you that it was this amazing feeling.” The light from the fire dances over his face. “I’d accepted that it was the end and I just sat there, staring out toward the darkness of the ocean and the starlight flashing off the crests of waves and knew that we were all part of this bigger whole. That somehow I mattered in the course of things and a part of me would always have left its mark on this world.”
He stares at me for a long while. “The funny thing is, once I realized I was immune and wasn’t going to die in a few days, I became scared of heights again. Scared of life and losing it. But for just that moment when I thought the infection would take me, I realized that life isn’t something to be scared of. That you don’t have to hold on so tightly that you can’t breathe.”
He leans his forehead against mine. “Don’t be scared. This is going to work—you’ll make it,” he whispers.
I squeeze his hand, never wanting to let go of him.
Eventually, my sister and Elias finish their prepping and we stand, the four of us, staring out into the darkness. I know what happens next: Catcher will leave to go light the fire in the big empty field not too far from the ship so that the smoke will guide us where to steer when we’re airborne after first light.
“It’s getting close to dawn,” he murmurs.
I grip him tighter. What if something goes wrong and this is the last time I see him? I close my eyes, willing the sun not to rise. Just this once.
Elias turns to stoke the large bonfire and my sister holds up the mouth of the balloon while he fans smoke into it, the fabric unfolding as it fills.
Catcher faces me, cups my cheeks in his hands. “I’ll see you soon.” He says it as a statement, not a question. The look he gives me is pained and I know he doesn’t want to leave me as much as I don’t want him to go. But he has to.
And I have to let him go. Just for a little while, I tell myself.
He presses his lips to mine softly and then urgently, and I wrap my arms around him, digging my fingers into the muscles along his back to draw him tighter.
When he pulls away his forehead barely touches mine. “Be safe,” he commands.
“You too,” I tell him. He nods and then nods again.
I search for anything I can say to keep him close, to stop him from going, but I know there’s nothing.
Except this: “I love you,” I whisper. It hurts to say the words, to know that he now carries my heart with him and that I have to trust him with it.
He kisses the tip of my nose, my mouth, my cheek. “I love you,” he says back, and then he turns and is gone.
The fire burns at my back, the smoke drifting and swirling around me as I watch him leave the building and cross to the cable car. As I watch it whisk him away from me.
On rooftops across the City I see other fires. Other sparks of light like stars. I try to shove my emotions down so I can focus on what needs to happen to keep us safe.
Behind me the balloon fills more and more. I help my sister keep the mouth of fabric open, astonished that it’s actually working. The seams hold, the oiled fabric capturing the hot air inside. I start to get a giddy rush in my chest. We just have to get off