The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [80]
All of us shells.
Except for one. Standing in the middle of the crowd is Catcher. The only one with his arms loose by his sides. The only one with his mouth closed, just standing in the midst of it all.
I stare at my drawing of him. I’ve captured the way his eyebrows curve, the slight slant to his eyes.
The loneliness and despair inside him.
Slowly I walk back to the wall. I pull out a thin strip of wood with a sharp black point. Painstakingly, I begin to scratch the bars of a fence over the mass of Unconsecrated. Needing something to hold them back.
Their fingers curl around the links, their faces against the fence. But when I get to Catcher I can’t stand to draw over him. I place the tip of the wood on my lip, thinking.
Using my fingertips I begin to add new details to the drawing, the chalkiness of the black dust gritty under my touch. To the left of Catcher runs the fence, but to the right I add other details. Rather than clutching the links, the Unconsecrated hold flowers, and balloons tug them to the sky. They wear bright hats and absurd makeup. I make them smile, as if they’re laughing rather than moaning.
I stand back from the mural, my breath still coming fast from the explosion of effort. Steam rises in wispy clouds from my cheeks and I’m panting for breath. I stare at the plague rats writhing against the fence, at the ferocious need of them. A complete contrast to the people on the other side, ridiculously happy. And in between is Catcher, as if he belongs with both and neither.
I cross my arms over my chest and stare at the image of him, feeling myself falling for him even more with every heartbeat. It’s stupid and I know it. I even hate myself for it, trying to find any reason to explain away the blaze of desire in my chest.
He’s gone.
I pushed him away.
And I pushed hard enough that he left.
My mind conjures images of my legs wrapped around him in the tunnels, of how he held me as we escaped from the City and how he swept me into his arms in the snow as if I were beautiful.
Every memory stings, reminds me of what I gave up. My mind screams for me to stop remembering, to just be done with the pain of it, but my body still warms, wanting Catcher.
They bang on the door at dawn the next morning, not even caring if someone answers before breaking it down.
“What’s going on?” Elias bellows.
I hear him trying to stop them but he can’t. They go from room to room until they shove open my door and I’m standing there dressed, already pulling on my coat.
My sister pushes past them and as soon as she sees me she gasps and screams, “Annah! What happened? What’s going on?”
I’d already seen my reflection in the window: a thin line of scabs arching behind my ear, a bald spot where the hair ripped free. I’d gone ahead and cut the rest of it before going to bed, preferring not to feel the remnants of my hair against my cheeks knowing it’s no longer enough to cover my scars.
Conall stands at the head of the crowd of Recruiters. I glare at him and he grins, coldly. “You’re gonna pay.” He raises his hand as if to hit me and Elias jumps forward, grabbing his arm.
“What’s going on?” Elias shouts, trying to regain order, but other Recruiters have pushed into the room and are clutching me, pulling me into the hallway. “What is this?”
I don’t fight them but they drag me anyway, grinning at my grunts of pain. I hear Conall explaining to Elias and my sister about the man I killed last night and Elias bellows that he’ll talk to Ox and get everything straightened out.
The joyous malice in Conall’s voice is unmistakable when he says, “Ox is the one who ordered this.”
Moans drift through the air as Conall drags me to the cable-car platform and hands me a shovel with a sharpened end, the same tool the Soulers carried last night. My stomach twists with foreboding but I keep my face placid.
Ox stands by the rope ladder leading to the shore on the unprotected side of the wall circling the Sanctuary. Unconsecrated stumble at the bottom, reaching up for us, swiping at the bitterly cold air. Their knuckles