Nazeera chucks a shard of broken plate at me.
“Okay, all right, I’m sorry,” I say, and duck out the door.
35
Rosabelle
There’s no time to find new clothes.
I try to shove this thought out of my head, but as I run quietly through the darkened, abandoned streets, it occurs to me that this is a bigger problem than I’m ready to acknowledge. Not only are temperatures dropping as the night deepens, but the moon is too full and the streetlamps too bright; I’m obvious in my loose hair and pale hospital scrubs.
Still, the cold air is good for me.
Bracing.
I’d grown warm and complacent in that big, puffy jacket, and as much as I miss its warmth, wearing it would’ve made me an easy target; worse, I was hardly able to move my arms. Between being shot and freezing to death, the latter of the two is the slower murder, and I’ll just have to be okay with it.
I hear movement—a snatch of conversation—
I duck down a darkened alley and back up against the brick, taking the opportunity to try to orient myself. I can see my breath in the glow of a distant streetlamp, and I pull the collar of my thin shirt up over my mouth, willing my heart rate to slow.
Die, I tell myself.Die.
My pulse quiets, my thoughts distancing from my body in relief.
I think it’s possible I’ve gone insane.
I can’t believe that was me in that diner. I’ve never been so reckless. Never, not once in my life, have I been so out of control.
I nearly close my eyes.
James is a greater danger to me than I can ever put into words.
Even now, in the depths of a protective death, I can still sense his hands on me, his mouth on my neck. Heat gathers deep in my core, the sensation so powerful it nearly forces my dead heart back to life. The memories drown me. The gasp of his breath. The fever of his body. The give of muscle. His skin against my lips. His tortured sounds in my ears.
The desperate way he’d said my name.
The desperation I still feel when I think of him.
I want things from James I never thought I could want from anyone. I’ve been starved for years but I’ve never known this kind of hunger.
These people have poisoned me.
I think too much; I feel too much; I rest too much. I’m gorging on dream and delusion; intoxicated by fantasy.
I’m forgetting to shut down.
Die, I tell myself.
Die.
Winds sweep into the alley, and I register the cold in my head without reacting with my body. My nose grows numbas if from a distance, my fingers losing feeling one at a time.
For as long as I can remember I’d suspected there was something wrong with me, but as I grew older and the questions sharpened, I never allowed myself to truly wonder—not until I was lying on the cold ground in a rebel prison—what it really meant to die every day.
On the Ark, I’d never been able to risk self-examination.
I always policed my thoughts on the island; thinking too critically about myself seemed dangerous. I never gave my mind permission to dwell on who I was or how I managed to live this half-life, caging myself inside myself. The questions and the potential answers seemed fodder for torture during an interrogation, and I could never risk losing my life for fear of leaving Clara unprotected.
