The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [2]
I look back across the roof where I came from. It would be easy for me to just retrace my steps—leave her for someone else to deal with. But that seems unnecessarily cruel. After all, I’m alone on this island like she is. Maybe if I were in her position, I’d want someone to listen to me at the end.
She picks at the edges of the bite, pressing against the angry red infection lines streaking up her arm. “You got a man?” she asks. “You in love?” She sounds nervous, like she’s uncomfortable. Like she understands what I’m going to do and she’s just extending time a bit.
Her interest takes me aback. I try to say yes and no at the same time and instead it just comes out as a grunt. “I have a …” I stumble over the word, then mouth “brother.” It’s the lie Elias and I have told everyone to make our living together in the Dark City simpler. We’ve said it so long it feels like truth.
“He joined the Recruiters,” I say instead.
“When?” Her eyebrows pinch together.
The question has weight to it—if he joined up before the Rebellion it means he wanted to change the world into something better. If he joined up after it means he’s a masochist who gets high on the power of controlling people with no hope.
“Three years ago.” I’ve rarely had to say it out loud. Had to acknowledge how long he’s been gone. Before, I could just go from day to day: tomorrow to tomorrow to tomorrow without having to bundle them all together in heaps to represent weeks and months and years.
The woman laughs, her wet mouth open and lip curled in where she’s missing a few teeth on the left side. She doesn’t even have to say how absurd the hope in my voice sounds. We both know the survival rates of the Recruiters before the Rebellion: one in seven. Only that one ever makes it home after his two-year term is up, and Elias should have been back a long time ago.
Anger darts through me. Maybe that’s what she wants. To make it easy for me to thrust the knife into her chest. Make me want to feel the jolt of the blade grazing over her ribs and the squelching heat of her blood. I take a step toward her, narrowing my eyes. She’s as good as Unconsecrated, and I’ve put them away before.
She just slips the stem of the pipe through the gap in her teeth and inhales, burning a red glow between us. “Oh, honey,” she finally says, but it’s not judgment I hear, it’s pity.
It unsettles me, and I turn to the side so she can’t see the expression on my face. Even so, her gaze traces over my scars again, one by one. She tilts her head as if trying to piece them together in some sort of pattern.
“Oh, honey,” she says again, and I know it’s for the misery of this moment. “You been waiting for him all this time?”
The concern in her voice sounds like the way a mother would talk to a daughter, and this opens up a fresh ache inside me. I nod.
“The City’s dying,” she says. Her voice is calm and gentle. Soothing. “You should leave. Find a new life.” She drags the thin strap of her shirt up over her shoulder but it just slides down her arm again.
I shrug. “This is my home,” I tell her. I know I sound defensive.
There’s silence between us for a bit. Not real silence—that doesn’t exist—but as quiet as it gets in the Neverlands with the moans drifting from the alley and the sound of someone yelling the next block over.
“I had a man once that I stuck around for,” the woman says. She pokes a toe through the tip of her worn shoes and I wait for her to tell me more, but instead she just contemplates her foot awhile and then shrugs.
“Some men have a strange idea of what love is.” She pushes a strand of greasy hair back behind her ear and I see bruises dotting her neck.
What she doesn’t understand about me and Elias is that I promised him I’d wait for him to come back, and leaving would mean he’s dead. I know there’s nothing else that could keep him from coming home to me. The evening he left he said he’d find me again, and I believe