Taye had both hands twisted up in his pajama bottoms. “You were having a nightmare,” he said, like Noam hadn’t figured that out yet.
Noam was shivering even though the heat was cranked up high. He scrubbed both hands over his face. “Yeah,” he said eventually. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Waking you up.” Noam’s hands dropped back into his lap. Taye hadn’t moved from his perch, was still watching Noam like he thought Noam might start screaming again any second now.
“It’s no problem,” Taye said. “You ... kind of do this a lot, actually. So I figured maybe I should try and help for once.”
You do this a lot.As if Noam didn’t already want to sink into the floor and die of embarrassment. “How often?”
“Um. Pretty much every night you’re in the barracks?”
“Great.” Noam’s head tipped forward to rest against his palms. “Cool.”
At least it was just Taye in the boys’ dormitory. There was no one else around to witness Noam thrashing and screaming in his bed—inDara’sbed—every other night.
Only now Noam was wondering how often this actually happened. If some nights Lehrer lay awake and watched Noam squirm and cringe away from unseen shadows. If Lehrer knew what those dreams were about.
“I can get you some water or something,” Taye offered eventually.
“No. I’m good. Thanks.” Noam made himself look up again. “Really.”
A brief smile passed over Taye’s lips. “I had them a lot, too, when I first came here,” he said. “It’ll sound stupid. I mean ... my parents are still alive and all. I don’t have anything to be upset about. But the red ward ...”
Noam still remembered the girl’s corpse lying next to him in that hospital room, her face locked in an eternal mask of pain. That was in his nightmares just as often as Dara. Just as often as Brennan with his brains splattered all over the wall.
“I get it,” Noam said. “It’s a lot. Especially if you were a little kid.”
“I don’t want to make you talk about it if you don’t want to,” Taye started, “but ... he was my friend, too, you know.”
“Dara.” Noam sighed. “Yeah. It’s just ... I helped him get out into the quarantined zone. I don’t know if I told you that. So it was my fault he—”
Died.Only Dara wasn’t dead. He was here, now. And Noam had ripped his heart right out of his chest.
Noam wet his lips. “It was my fault he had to go through ... all that.”
If Noam had never gotten involved in the coup, Lehrer would never have needed to take Dara out of the picture. Dara would never have been locked up in that apartment. Dara would never have seen his future as a choice between suicide and a slower death out there, lost in the wilderness but free.
“I used to imagine ...” Noam swallowed against his raw throat. “I used to pretend he’d gotten better out in the QZ. That he was out there with all the stars, could see every constellation. Dara never seemed like the type who would likehiking, you know? But he told me he did. Once. Or that he wanted to try it, anyway. He said the only thing keeping him from packing up a bag and setting out on a trail for two weeks was the fact that he’d want to bring at least six or seven books, and they’d be too heavy to carry.”
Noam laughed a little, the sound surprising him. Taye grinned too.
“Shame he never told me that,” Taye said. “I could have made those books weigh next to nothing. Exponents, and all.”
“You’re gonna have to teach me that trick someday,” Noam said.
“Sure thing.” Taye paused a moment, drumming his thumbs against his knees. Then: “Dara really liked you, you know. He didn’t always act like it, but he did. Dara told me you were the most confusing person he’d ever met. Coming from him—”
“That’s a compliment,” Noam finished and gave Taye a tiny smile. “Yeah.”
Taye shifted back off Noam’s bed, getting to his feet. “I’ll let you sleep,” he said, crossing back to his own bunk.
Noam waited until Taye was under the covers and curled up with his face to the wall before he pushed up and reached under his bed to dig out his satchel. He’d picked up a bottle of sleeping pills from the pharmacy a few months ago when the nightmares about Brennan got bad. He’d been taking them more and more often. And one pill wasn’t enough anymore. Hadn’t been for a while.
Noam tipped four into his palm and swallowed them dry.
He couldn’t keep this up forever. He knew that.
