The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [18]
My eyes roll back in my head but it doesn’t matter. They were useless anyway. I much prefer the colors dancing in my mind. A woolen fog seeps in around me, blurring the pain and tempting me to dream.
“Annah!” Catcher calls to me, his voice loud but so far away. It slides along my consciousness, fading into the sound of water rushing and the wind howling. I want to raise my hand to his cheek. I want to tell him it’s okay. That it’s pretty here in my head and it doesn’t hurt. But instead I just let the black wash of waves roll over me and drag me under.
When I wake up there’s light and the crackle of a fire. I open my eyes and stare at an intricately carved ceiling of interwoven bricks arching overhead. The flames flick oranges and yellows over them, shadows stretching and snapping. Smoke curls through a small vent, disappearing into the void above.
We’re still underground at an old subway station somewhere in the Neverlands. I’m lying on my back on the platform, the quilt from my bag spread over me, its smell familiar and comforting. I let my head fall to the side, wincing as a dull ache throbs along my spine.
The stranger, Catcher, sits on the other side of the fire, staring at nothing. He’s so lost in his own thoughts, his own world, that he doesn’t realize I’m awake. I let my gaze wander over his features: sharp jaw, blond hair, brown eyes so dark they seem almost fathomless. His knees are bent with his elbows draped over them, a strip of cloth wrapped around his lower arm from where I cut him when we fell. Bruises from our tumble down the stairs already bloom under his skin.
There’s something about him that seems familiar, and I search my mind trying to figure out why. Generally I don’t bother with other people, don’t care what they look like or who they are. Everyone around me’s always a stranger.
It’s safer that way.
And then I realize what it is. “You’re the one from the bridge.” Belatedly it hits me what that means: He’s infected. I scour his face with my gaze, trying to detect how far along he is—how close to turning. But his skin’s flushed with health, his eyes clear. He looks nothing like the woman on the roof, only heartbeats away from death.
His eyes flick to meet mine. “How’re you feeling?” he asks.
I push myself up until I’m sitting, the quilt falling from my shoulders and pooling in my lap. I shiver, feeling dizzy and sick, but I shove the sensations away. “You’re the one who climbed the wall and fell in the river. They thought you were dead. You should’ve drowned.”
He drops his head a little, rubs the back of his neck with his hand. It’s such a familiar gesture that I stop breathing for a second. It’s something Elias always used to do. To buy time, to think, to figure out a way to swim through the awkward moments.
“I didn’t,” he finally says, and I almost want to laugh at his non-answer. But before I can react, before I can say anything or ask him to explain, he’s moving around the fire until he’s crouched in front of me.
He reaches out a hand, places it along my cheeks, rests his wrist on my forehead. I feel each scar on my face under his probing fingers. I yank my head away, setting off a sharp throb down my neck and a pounding against my skull.
“Your skin’s hot,” he says. His eyes are wary, his lips pressed thin.
“I’ve been lying in front of a fire,” I tell him testily, moving away and pulling the quilt up like a barrier between us. “Of course I’m hot. That happens with flames.”
He glances over my shoulder into the darkness with such intensity that I almost turn around. And then his chin drops to his chest. “Does it feel like …” He’s looking up at me as he struggles for the words. “Does it feel like fire in your veins?”
His question doesn’t make any sense to me. “What are you talking about?”
He focuses on his hands. “Inside,” he says. “Does it feel like you’re dying? Being eaten by heat?”
I push myself to my feet and stumble away from him. “What kind of question is that?