Breathless, he asked, “What happened? Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound wanted to come out. I could only shake my head.
He glanced down at my suitcase, brows knitting. Then, understanding everything somehow, he shut his eyes and sighed in relief, “Okay.”
That was it. No more questions. No more demands. Just,okay, and the warmth of his hand as it cupped the back of my head and pulled me to him.
We folded together, arms around arms, hips against hips, his strong body enveloping mine. Unresistingly, I buried my face in the crook of his neck, finally able to breathe, to feel something other than my own sick terror.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“It’s okay,” he repeated, firmly this time. A promise not just to me but to us both.
It’s okay. I got you. Let’s go.
Chapter Ten
It was my first time leaving the city. My first time boarding a train. My first time escaping the netting of my life.
The world I knew remained afire with activity, a dazzling infinity of people and destinations, but the train station was as still and quiet as a thing in a painting. Two sets of train tracks going in opposite directions were wedged between two separate yet identical boarding spaces. One side’s purple awning, big draping clock, line of metal benches, and schedules posted on the walls reflected the other’s like in a mirror. Twin universes: autonomous and at the same time inherently interlinked.
I watched it all as if from a great distance, so detached from my body that I could barely hold up the cup of coffee Kai had gotten me and had trouble making out the outline of the train as it barreled toward us.
The seats inside the cabin were pale blue and generously spaced out, and the windows were clean and expansive. Kai tucked our bags under our seats, and after we took off our coats, we settled down without talking, without even looking at each other.
With an inaudible announcement, the train started rolling down the track once more, fast, faster, away from the city lights and into the vast, unknown darkness.
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass, observing my breath drawing circles of fog over my reflection. “I’ve never been on a train before,” I told Kai without turning to look at him.
“I know,” was all he murmured. Then, slowly, carefully, he took my hand in his and laced our fingers together until you couldn’t tell where he ended and where I began. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”
Irregular curves of mountains peered in the faraway distance, gray hunched silhouettes against the impenetrable black sky. Faintly, I recalled what Kai had said about the place we were going:The sky is closer there.
“I want to see the sun rise,” I whispered.
“I’ll wake you before that,” he promised as he unfolded the coat from his lap and dragged it over me like a blanket.
Too vacuous for any kind of resistance, I melted into the seat, experiencing everything through sense alone. The familiar scent of Kai’s cologne. The living heat of his body next to mine. The subliminal rumble of the train. My eyelids grew heavy; my mind turned blank for what felt like a single moment. But when I opened my eyes again, everything was purple and liquid with dawn.
I lifted my head off Kai’s shoulder, stretched my limbs as much as the space allowed me, and took a sip of the forgotten coffee, cold now and tasting of the paper cup.
Kai too had fallen asleep, his head lolling back against the seat, his lips slightly parted. He looked so serene I didn’t want to wake him, but as though he sensed my gaze on him, he stirred, eyes opening slowly at first, then all at once.
Breathing in, he sat up straighter. “Hello,” he rasped.
I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Hello.”
He gave me an apologetic look, consciousness returning to him in fragments. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I promised to wake you before dawn.”
“It’s okay. We both needed it.”
Another inhale, followed by a long, shaky exhale, his fingers holding back his hair. “Anya,” he said softly, “will you tell me what happened?”
Prickles of tension crept over the back of my neck, my smile falling. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him as I murmured, “I don’t know. I just left. I couldn’t tell them… I couldn’t ask…”
“You were scared,” he said, meaning I was scared of what I would find out, not scared of the Center itself. I knew that, but I chose not to correct him. Because he was right. Because the Center was not the problem.
Deep down, under multiple layers of shame and guilt, I could admit now that I did not want to remember. What I really wanted was to forget the fact that I could not remember. I wanted to be normal again. I wanted to be happy, no matter how shallow that sounded. I just wanted to behappy. To allow myself to exist and at the same time accept that my existence meant nothing. The freedom of that nothingness.I am no one, which means I can be anyone.
