I back myself up against my dresser as he steps into the small space, heat braising my head. I’m suddenly, irrationally terrified by the idea that he might touch me.
He does not.
He doesn’t touch anything. In fact, James doesn’t even come near me. He keeps the length of the room between us as he inspects it, and I see the small space the way he might: bare white walls, a twin bed with a matching nightstand. There’s an adjoining bathroom with a full-length mirror affixed to the back of the door. He doesn’t move from his spot, but his eyes are trained on my bed.
“Wow,” is the first thing he says. “You make your bed like a soldier. Impressive.”
I look at it: the tight, crisp sheets; the perfect corners; the smooth blanket. The pillows are uncrushed, plump like a pair of eggs.
I stiffen with alarm.
I’d not been expecting an inspection, and perhaps I should have. I didn’t sleep in my bed last night. Instead, I sat with my back against the door, staring into my messenger bag at the bottle of water and the small bag of nuts.
I ate all of them, every single one.
And then I licked the salt off the plastic and drank all the water from the bottle and stared into the dark and fought to breathe. I listened to the quiet, straining my ears for signs of life. I scoured every inch of the bathroom, fished my arm down the toilet, touched my fingers to the mirrors, unscrewed the stopper from the sink. I pulled every drawer out of the dresser and ran my hands down the walls and pressed my ears to the carpet, listening.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Each time, nothing.
It began to drive me wild. The idea that they might allow me to lock myself in my room without a shred of surveillance was driving me wild. I needed to find something, needed to know whether The Reestablishment had found a way to watch me here, and if not, why my enemy hadn’t, either. I finally collapsed in the middle of the room, my heart beating so hard my vision had begun to blur. I never made it to the bed, the sheets of which I’d yet to strip. I lay there, starfished on the floor, my eyesight blearing with fatigue, wondering how I’d ended up there, in that moment. I remembered something my mother used to say to me. When I’d whine for something she couldn’t give me,or when I was frustrated with a problem she couldn’t solve, she’d say—
Rosabelle, when there’s something you want but can’t have, you can either be patient or be creative. Choose a path.
When the bullet in my mother’s gun went off, the path was chosen for me. Nothing could slow the force of a shot that expelled her from her world and me from mine.
In an instant, I stopped being a child.
I had one dark skill for which I’d been trained in the most rudimentary of ways, and it was all I had to barter. Suddenly at ten years old I was a parent, a provider, a student, an idiot—and then, without ceremony, a murderer.
“It’s been two minutes.”
I look up, blinking.
“I counted,” James says, leaning against the wall. He looks at his watch. The straps are made of leather, the style out of place: an anachronism, noted. “It’s been two minutes and thirty-seven seconds since I made a comment about your bed, and instead of responding, you left. It’s like you just walked out of your head.”
I feel it again: heat, threatening to consume me. It flares up my chest, my throat. I don’t like the way he watches me. I don’t like the way he seems to pay attention.
I don’t like it.
I don’t like it.
I don’t—
“Where did you go?” he says.
“Nowhere,” I say quietly. “I’m right here.”
He flashes me a look that borders on amusement. “I’ll be right back,” he says, and leaves the room.
I’m standing in exactly the same position, my head held at exactly the same angle when he reenters the room a few minutes later, this time carrying a chair.
The door slams shut behind him, and I flinch.
He sees this but says nothing. Instead, he pushes the chair up against the far wall and takes a seat, giving me as much space as the room will allow. He nods to the bed.
