“Wow,” Dara said, “congrats, that’s arealachievement—”
“But he could have made me,” Noam cut in. “If what you’re saying is true, he could make me. At any time. He could use persuasion to force me. It wouldn’t work, of course, with the Faraday shield—but he hasn’t eventried.”
Dara stared at him, all his thoughts temporarily gone to white static.
He hasn’t even tried.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Dara managed, the words coming out uneven and full of rough edges. “Are you saying he’s—you think hecaresabout you? Or are you saying that I—that if only I’d been more likeyou, if I’d just been more—he wouldn’t have—”
The emotion rippled over Noam’s face like a sea change, and he lurched forward, a half step aborted at the last second. His hand, which had been reaching for Dara, curled into a loose fist. “No,” Noam said. “No—Dara, I don’t think that at all. I’m ... god, I’m such a fucking asshole. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Of course not.” Noam bit his lower lip hard enough it looked like it hurt; then he gestured toward the bed at Dara’s side. “Look. Can I—can I sit? Here?”
He at least waited for Dara to shrug before taking the seat, the mattress dipping under his weight and sending Dara tipping a little closer before Dara braced himself against the bed and shifted away again.
“I’m so sorry,” Noam said again. “I want you to know—I ... I know how hard this must be for you. Or I can imagine. I swear I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought there were any other way. It kills me to see how much this hurts you, Dara.”
Clearly it doesn’t kill you enough,Dara almost said, but he pressed his lips together instead and didn’t speak.
Noam turned his gaze from Dara’s face to his hands, which were clenched tight in his lap. Dara had learned to read every flicker of emotion on Noam’s face, had carefully paired every expression with its matching mental state after six months of reading Noam’s mind—months of watching him in secret over the edge of books and in late evenings as Noam spread his study materials all over the common room and settled in to work, pencil stuck behind one ear and his brow furrowed.
Noam was upset. No, more than that:distressed.
Good,a part of Dara thought viciously, and immediately regretted it.
He was a terrible person. A terrible friend. Ames had always said so.
Dara took a shallow breath. “Listen ... that first night, after the gala, when you told me what happened with Lehrer ... I didn’t respond the way I should have. I acted like any of this was your choice, but it wasn’t. I know that, Noam. You were sixteen, and drunk—it was never your choice.”
“Dara—”
“Let me finish,” Dara said, and Noam shut his mouth. “It’s like you told me when you confronted me about General Ames: things like that, when you’re a teenager, and especially with people in power ... they aren’t consensual. They can’t be, by definition. I know you don’t want to hear it, and maybe it’s easier to believe you chose this, but that’s not how any of this works.” He managed a bitter smile. “Take it from someone who would know.”
It was more than Dara had ever been able to admit in the past—that General Ames had raped him, that what Lehrer did—to both Dara and Noam—certainly fell under the same category, no matter what lies they’d told themselves in order to maintain some sense ofagency.
Maybe it was okay to admit helplessness. Maybe it didn’t make them weak.
Not at all.
Next to him, Noam had gone a sickly shade of gray, his fingers digging in hard at his own thighs. Dara chewed his own lip and wished with all his heart there was something he could say or do to make that sickness Noam felt go away. But there wasn’t. Not without lying to him—and Dara would never do that.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” Dara said instead. “I was so angry. And ... scared. I didn’t want it to be true either. I didn’t want to feel like I’d failed you by leaving you there alone.”
“You didn’t,” Noam said, finally lifting his gaze back to Dara’s. “I left you, remember? I sent you out there to die.”
“Only because I asked you to.”
“Still.”
Dara wanted to unravel all those tangled threads of guilt and shame in Noam’s mind. He might not be able to read Noam’s thoughts directly, but he could still sense those emotions knotted up behind Noam’s eyes. It hurt, a visceral kind of pain that Dara had never felt for anyone else. Not before he met Noam.
“Have you had any luck finding the vaccine?” Dara asked, nudging the conversation back onto—somewhat—safer ground.
“No,” Noam admitted after a moment. “Not yet, but I’ve found a lot of other useful material. For the leak. Letters, recordings from after the catastrophe ... that kind of thing.”
“Oh,” Dara said. “Well, that’s ... good.”
