So he tried to save Marie, too. And he succeeded, or failed, depending on how you look at it.
It’s hard to want to kill someone once they’ve saved your life.
No wonder Marie refused to come with us. Julio’s life wasn’t at risk back at the Observatory. She was probably determined to keep it that way.
“He cares about you,” I say as she sticks the cigarette back in her mouth.
“He has a lousy way of showing it.”
“Maybe.” An image of my mom and dad flits through my mind. The torn-up plane ticket to the Grand Canyon. All the radiation treatments and the chemo and the machines. “Or maybe it’s the peoplewho love us most who’d do anything to keep us alive, even when we don’t ask them to or want them to.”
She gives up on the lighter and shoves it back into the pocket of her army jacket with a muttered curse.
“You know those things will kill you, right?”
“We’re all going to die anyway,” she says.
I resist the urge to ask for a drag, even though I’ve never smoked one. It feels like a conscious choice to pull death into your lungs, to blow it back out in spite of everyone around you. “Where did you get them, anyway?”
“From Julio,” Marie says, heavy on the sarcasm, as if she’s just proven a point. I catch the curl of her smile before she turns, letting the wind conceal it under her hair. “‘Marisol,’” she says in her best imitation of Julio, “‘you’re rotting your lungs.’ But every year, he buys them for me anyway.”
“Marisol,” I say, copying her accent. “That’s pretty.”
She grimaces. “My real name’s Marie. That’s the name my dad chose for me, and I wasn’t about to let anybody change it. Julio picked Marisol so I wouldn’t get in trouble.” She levels a finger at me. “And he’s the only one who ever gets to use it.”
Even though she pretends to hate him, there’s a glimmer of adoration in her eyes when she talks about him. It feels good to have this thin strand of common ground between us.
“You don’t have to be by yourself all the time.” I jerk my chin toward the cabin. “They’re not all so bad, you know.”
Marie shrugs. “Amber’s okay, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say, hanging my arms over the rail. “I don’t think she likes me very much.”
Marie smirks. She doesn’t deny it. I wonder if they talk about me behind my back as they’re falling asleep. “Amber’s tough. Crazy smart, and she’s got wicked close-combat skills. She should have been promoted years ago,” she says thoughtfully. “I always suspected she had it bad for Julio. Lucky for him, I guess. She’s his best shot at surviving this mess.” She scrapes her hair from her face and raises an eyebrow, as if she’s letting me in on a secret. “She was a runaway before, you know. Phoenix to Woodstock in the summer of sixty-nine.”
“Is that where she met Woody?” With his long hair and John Lennon eyes, I can picture him there, like a scene from an old, washed-out photo.
Marie nods. I can just make out her frown in the dark. “Amber froze on the streets of New York that winter. Woody was there around the same time, protesting the war. A couple of enlisted boys beat the shit out of him and left him to die in an alley. That’s where Amber found him.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Was it?” She tosses the hair back from her face, letting the wind whip it behind her. “I don’t understand why everyone’s so protective of him. Woody’s a coward. A draft dodger. Is that really the kind of person you want watching your back in a war?”
“Is that what you think this is? A war?”
“I think that’s exactly what we’re sailing into.”
“If that’s the case, shouldn’t we all be on the same side?”
Marie pushes to her feet, cradling the purring bulge under her jacket. “Just because we came here in the same box doesn’t mean I want to be buried in one with you.” And just like that, our conversation is over, and I’m left trying to figure out what I said wrong.
I feel Jack’s presence in the cold snap of the wind before I notice himbehind me. He rests his elbows against the rail, his dark hair blowing back from his moonlit face and his T-shirt billowing with the wind. I take a long breath of him that makes my chest ache.
“Are Julio and Amber okay?”
“They will be,” he says.
“What have we started, Jack?”
