“You think so?” He shakes his head, squinting at Poppy across the parking lot as she draws a stitch through Woody’s leg. “She’s kind of amazing, you know. When things went south, she knew exactly what to do. She’s not afraid of anything.”
“Everyone’s afraid of something.” I think back to her face on theboat, when she wasn’t sure Chill was coming. How she was first to the rail when he took off his life jacket and jumped in. “She was afraid of losing you.”
He casts another surreptitious glance her way, smiling to himself as he slips his empty frames back on, his eyes a little glassy, a little unfocused without the lenses. Without the magic. “I think I understand, now, why you wanted to leave.”
He’s light on his feet as he runs back to help the others, without the life jacket that’s been weighing him down for so long. Maybe it’s the heavy plastic frames obscuring his vision, or the gradual deterioration of it out here in the real world. Or maybe it’s because he’s only got eyes for Poppy. They’re hopeful and bright, as if he’s seeing the world and all its possibilities clearly for the first time. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t notice the crow still watching us from the trees.
26
The Lives We Buried
FLEUR
I follow Julio along a sandy path into a housing development. He hunches into his sweatshirt, hands shoved into the pockets of his wet jeans. He glances at me over his shoulder as I pluck pine needles from my sweater. “The poor bastards,” he says, shaking his head. “You didn’t even get your hands dirty.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You tore all four of those Guards limb from limb, didn’t you?” he asks when I finally catch up to him.
“I never said there were four.”
He rolls his eyes at me. “Guards always work in teams of four. You of all people should know.”
I rub my arms against a chill, rmembering that dead-end alley where Doug’s team cornered me. How helpless I felt, surrounded by Guards, trapped in a building, three flights off the ground. I was lucky this time, close to the woods. I shudder to think what might have happened if we’dbeen ambushed on the beach or trapped in the bathhouse when they caught up to us. “Jack was there. He helped.”
“Like you needed it,” he mutters, jamming his fists deeper into his pockets to mask a shiver. “I almost feel sorry for them. That shit hurts.”
Blood rushes to my cheeks. That fight between us was years ago. Why bring it up now? “That was an accident. And I only maimed you.”
“Some accident.” Julio arches up on his toes to peek over a lattice-crowned fence gate before popping it open. “It took me years to live that down.”
“Whatever.” I sidestep a stack of lounge chairs and a kidney-shaped pool covered in green plastic for the season. “I was scared. You were trying to drown me. I did what anyone would do. It’s notmyfault you underestimated your opponent.”
He pitches his voice low. “Pipe down, killer. You’ll wake the whole neighborhood.”
“If the Battle of the Bathhouse didn’t wake them, I doubt we will. Besides, you said no one would be here.”
He peers into the back windows of a darkened clapboard cottage.
“You want to talk about it?” I ask.
He tests the lock on the window. “Not especially.”
“Julio.” Something in the way I say his name makes him stop, even if he won’t look at me. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Julio rubs his eyes, turning to rest his weight against the windowsill. He stares down at his hands as if they belong to someone else. “I grabbed his transmitter.”
“It was an accident.”
“Was it?” Dark bands of cloud drift over the pink and grayhorizon. The wind’s as conflicted as we are, the air thick with the threat of rain.
“Marie’s right. You did what you had to do to stay alive. And Amber did what she had to do to save you.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” His defeated sigh smells like salt water. Like fatigue and frustration. I open my mouth to ask him what he means when he reaches up into a crevice in the deck above his head and a set of keys falls into his hand.
“You know these people?” I ask.
He unlocks the door, cracking it just enough to sniff the air inside before dragging me through it with him. He guides me by the sleeve past a rack full of surfboards, a sofa, and a big-screen TV without turning on a light. “Just people I hang out with sometimes.”
