“You get used to it,” I say.
Mara stares at me. “Are you kidding?”
I shrug.
She holds my gaze for a moment, then looks away. She doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t need to. Her face says it all and the worst part isn’t the horror.
I wore that expression too, at the beginning. But the Rot sanded it off me and replaced it with something more practical. I looked at this place the way Mara is looking at it now, with the clear view of someone who still remembers what normal looked like.
But I don’t remember that shit anymore. What would be the point?
8
VI
My room.Door shut. Guys on the other side of it.
It’s the first time since the knock on the door that Mara and I have been alone, and it’s different now. Overwhelming, if I’m honest. I don’t know what she’s going to hit me with—judgment, compassion, acceptance? Her opinion of me matters. It shouldn’t, but it always has.
Mara sits on the edge of my bed. She hasn’t let go of the blanket from the safe house. Her shoulders are curled forward, her hands are in her lap, and she’s looking around the room at the draped fabric on the walls, the low lighting, the small table with a pitcher of water, and a stack of folded clothes. The boho luxe of it. A cage dressed up as a trendy bedroom.
I sit beside her. Close. Shoulders touching.
She cracks.
Not dramatically. There’s no sobbing, no collapse. Just a long, shaky exhale that starts deep and works its way out, followed by her head dropping forward and her hands pressing the sides of her face. She stays like that, breathing andtrembling, letting the weight of whatever she’s gotten herself into to take root.
I don’t touch her. I don’t speak. I just sit there and wait. I don’t tell her how lucky she is to have me to help her adapt. Or the guys to protect her.
It’s a fucking miracle, when it comes down to it, that she’s starting out in the Rot like this. No one is ever this lucky. Of course, she knows none of this.
After a minute, she lifts her head, wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand, and exhales one more time, steadier now. “Sorry,” she says.
“It’s okay.”
“I’m not going to fall apart on you.”
“I know. And if you did, that’s okay too.”
She almost smiles. Almost. It gets halfway to her mouth and stalls.
I ask where she slept. Doorways at first, then a burned-out office building on the Rot’s eastern edge, then wherever she could find that was dry and out of sight. She slept sitting up most nights because lying flat left her too exposed. It’s easier to get up to run from a sitting position rather than prone.
I ask what she ate. She shrugs. Whatever she could scavenge. Canned goods from buildings that hadn’t been fully stripped. Water from pipes she wasn’t sure were clean. Once, a Rotter at the edge tossed her half a sandwich without stopping or looking at her. She ate it so fast, she threw up.
I ask about the cold. She just shakes her head.
I don’t push.
“Your mom came looking for you,” I say.
Mara goes still. “Oh my God that’s right. One of the guys said that. What the hell?”
“It was a few weeks ago. She showed up at the Rot. Asked about you. I told her I didn’t know where you were. Which was true.”
Mara stares at me. “What did she say?”
“That she was worried. That she wanted you home.”
