The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [89]
He whips around, grabs my upper arms. “I can’t do that to you, Annah. I can’t.”
He starts to pull away but I stop him. “You asked me what I’d do knowing I only had a few days left and that was it,” I tell him. “That’s what I’d do. I’d stop worrying and being afraid and living in the past. I’d stop trying to keep my emotions safe. You know as well as I do what the horde is doing to the City—how it will eventually come across the river. And if it doesn’t, Ox and his men will find a way to kill us anyway. You know my time is limited.”
He closes his eyes. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he whispers. “I’m going to keep you safe.”
“And then what?” I ask him. “I’ll survive only to be alone again? To have you slink away? That’s not what I want. I want you. And I want you to understand that you’re not broken.”
Taking a deep breath, he presses his lips together until they disappear. I let the silence flow around us. “There’s something you need to understand about me,” he says. His voice is too even, too devoid of inflection or emotion.
“What?” I ask him, my heart starting to thud.
He reaches out his hand to me, cupping my cheek gently. “Do you think you could ever feel beautiful?” he asks.
I’m so taken aback by his words that I’m stunned speechless. I think about the night Elias made me feel beautiful, remember the touch of his fingers over my scars.
I remember how long I’ve waited for someone else to find me beautiful. How I push people away before they can see the ugliness. I’m too afraid of the pain that I know comes with losing love.
And I know he was right on the roof. I’ve been waiting for the validation to come from everyone else, hoping their words can heal the scars that rip through my skin and into my heart.
“I don’t know,” I answer him honestly. I don’t add that I hope so.
“Then how can you ask me to feel unbroken?” he says. I open my mouth to answer but nothing comes out. Because I don’t know what to say to him. He’s right, how can I ask him to heal himself when I don’t know if it’s even possible?
Elias and my sister don’t want me leaving the flat. I understand their fear—it’s not like the Recruiters don’t have enough reasons to cause me trouble. Under normal circumstances I might have listened but I’m not willing to sit around and hope that someone else finds a way off the island.
There has to be another place we can go because I don’t see the point of staying in the Sanctuary if it’s not ultimately going to keep us safe. And I certainly don’t feel safe here anymore.
For the day my sister and I do as Elias asks and stay in bed. My muscles still spasm from the memory of being frozen the night before and my hands and feet are painfully swollen. My head pounds and I have a hard time keeping food down, but Elias is persistent: he will make my sister and me healthy again.
Long after dark, when the flat is silent and I’m sure they’re asleep, I pull on clothes dried stiff by the woodstove and find Elias’s machete by the door. I slip it into my belt and sneak down the stairs, wincing until my body gets used to moving again and the ache in my joints subsides.
Outside the night sky’s clear and sharp, a million tiny lights exploding overhead—more stars than there ever could have been people in this world.
I think about how fascinated with space Elias always was growing up. How one year I saved every credit I had and traded them all over the months so that on the winter solstice I could present him with an old book mapping the stars. It was the longest night of the year and he spent the entire time on the roof, staring up at the sky and comparing what he saw to the little book in his lap.
It was freezing outside and I’d hauled every blanket we owned up to the roof. While I drifted in and out of dreams, he read to me stories of the stars, origins of their constellations. Over the years I’ve forgotten