“Of course it matters,” George says, closing his book, and his voice is sharper than I’ve ever heard it. I think of his steady hands peeling the onion, of the way he documents each finding in our labs with something between a child’s excitement and a scientist’s precision. “Something happened that set this whole thing off, and we don’t get to decide what it was. If our premise is wrong, then we’ll keep moving in the wrong direction, looking for the answer in the wrong places. And we’ll never be able to set it right unless we know which Catalyst was the true one.”
I shrug at him.
“Let me ask you something.” George examines me with the blazing intensity normally reserved for his microscope. “What exactly is it that you’re looking for? I mean, what do you want out of all this?”
I shift uncomfortably. “Of course—?I want the truth—” I stammer. “Then maybe people will stop being so awful. I mean, you should understand now. Didn’t it make you angry that night at the race? With all those copies of ‘The Mackelroy Misfortune’?”
He laughs a short laugh. “Who do you think mimeographed those and sent them around for everyone to read?”
“What?” I blink at him, dumbfounded. “Are you saying you did that?”
George sighs. “My mother is very resourceful, especially as head of the Library Preservation Society,” he says. “She got to almost every copy of the Council book first and tore out the pages. If she knew that I hid one and made copies, she would ship me off to boarding school.” He pushes his hair up from his forehead. “I’m not sure what compelled me. It just made me feel . . . right somehow, doing that.”
“Even if the Catalyst does end up being tied to you?” My throat clenches. “Even if people hate you for it?”
“We’re all in it,” he says. “We all have those questions, and we’re all hoping that it isn’t us. Shouldn’t that make us more empathetic when the truth comes out?”
I follow him to the foyer, where we almost collide with Will. He nods good night and climbs the stairs, and as I watch his retreating back, I want to ask George, How can you be so unafraid of the truth? Even truth that is inconvenient or damning or not what you want it to be?
“Well, it should make us empathetic,” George says, his voice rising at my silence. “So you know what?” He flings his arms out wide. “If it’s my family, then so be it. I just want to find out and end all of this. But know this, Aila. You can’t search for the truth with integrity if you’re only looking to find the kind that benefits you.”
I set my jaw, stung.
“I’m sorry,” I say, softening. “You’re right. When I first got here, I guess I did just want to clear my mother’s name.” I look at him. “And that was selfish. But now I want to find out the truth. For everybody’s sake.”
His mouth twists into a smile. “All right,” he says simply. “I believe you.”
Then he lifts the front window curtain and peeks out. “Look.”
Mrs. Mackelroy is parked on the drive, craning her neck out the window for any glimpse into what’s going on inside. George throws open the curtains and waves at her with both hands. She dives back into the shadows, laying on the horn in her haste. It blares a short, shrill blast.
George lets the curtains fall again and shrugs. “Covert Operations keeps trying to recruit her.”
He’s broken my sullen mood despite myself, and I open the door into the cold night. “You’re a really good friend, George.”
“You too, Aila,” he says, and I fix the latch behind him and hurry up the stairs to catch Will.
I call his name in a low voice just as he reaches his room, and his hand pauses on his doorknob.
He turns to me with a look that betrays the slightest surprise.
I make my way down the hall until I’ve left too little room between us, probably, for being alone in the dark hallway. I could take a step back, but I don’t. Neither does he. Lights are twinkling within his eyes, blooming, fading as he looks at me in the darkness.
“Can I help you with something, Miss Quinn?” he asks formally, his hand still on the doorknob, but his voice is scratched and smoky with whisper, and heat curls beneath my skin.
“Will,” I say quietly. I look up at him, almost close enough to feel him breathe. “Do you think you could you build me a target?”
There are things I have started to notice about Will: things like the smooth grooves that run over his palms like water, the slight scar just above his lip that appears only in a certain light, and how sometimes at breakfast I catch myself staring at his mouth and wondering what it feels like to kiss someone. It is a secret I don’t dare speak to anyone. Even to Cass.
Even to Beas, when I meet her in the back corner of the school library and we sit near the heater, the sky hanging gray and cold just beyond the window. She can actually practice her violin there now while I study or read one of her poetry books. Today she’s lent me Alfred Lord Tennyson. In Memoriam.
I like to watch her over the edge of the pages when she thinks I’m not looking. She refuses to let the Disappearances ripple outward and also rob her of her ability to play, so she perches over her music sheets, her arms furiously moving the bow over the strings, as if she could force the notes out from sheer will.
I startle when, without warning, she suddenly flings her bow and then scatters her sheets of music onto the floor.
I close my book. “Want to talk?”
I move to retrieve her bow and hold it out to her as an offering.
