“So we shouldn’t worry?” asks Kerr Barstow, a girl who lives a few doors down from where Mila lived. I’d see them together sometimes, at the rec center track, several years ago before Kerr shifted cliques and left Mila to her books. “It isn’t contagious?”
“The only thing contagious here is paranoia,” Haven says. “So take care of yourselves, and try not to worry.”
They seem to accept this, mostly. No one else questions Mila’s absence, or anything else we’ve told them—not loudly enough for us to hear, anyway. They line up by residential wing, leave their thumbprints on Leo’s and Zesi’s screens.
But I feel a pit forming in my stomach. Yes, it was my call to keep the truth from them, and Haven’s doing a pitch-perfect job of stopping the fear spiral before it gains traction—it’s just not a thing Ienjoy.
“Crisis narrowly averted,” Haven says under her breath, just to me.
“For now,” I say. I scan the lines, try to find Yuki or Grace in the crowd. No sign of either girl in Leo’s line, and I don’t see them in Zesi’s—
My sight catches on Akello Regulus, whose eyes are locked on me. I blink, look away, pretend I haven’t seen him staring, that it hasn’t unnerved me.
He knows. We aren’t being truthful, and he knows.
He steps forward in line, nods at Zesi, presses his thumb to the tablet. When he’s completed the check-in, he once again turns toward the balcony, our balcony, and fixes his eyes on mine. I don’t look away this time, and neither does he. He holds my stare for a second too long before slipping out of the room.
I don’t know why he’s chosen to keep quiet.
All that matters is that he stays that way.
12
SHADOWS AND SUN
“THIS ISN’T GOING to work for long,” Haven says as soon as it’s just us. We’re alone in the corridor now, behind closed balcony doors. “Did you see Akello? Did you see how he was looking at us?”
He was looking at me, not us, but I’m not in the mood to split hairs. “I saw it.”
“What if he starts talking? Asking questions? What if he knocks on Mila’s door, goes to check on her?” She glances over her shoulder, makes sure no one’s there to overhear us. “I’m going to look like a liar, Lindley. We all are. They’re going to hate us.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, will the headache away. “They won’tallhate us,” I say. “Some of them will get it. Some will understand.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Haven says.
We’re long past the days of tiptoeing around each other’s feelings. It isn’t often we agree, and I think she sometimes pushes back just for the sake of being contrary. I know I do that,anyway, to her. Occasionally. She can be a thorn in my side, the shadow to my sun, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re better for it.
“Hey,” she says when I don’t answer. “Hey—you doing okay?”
I’m not, but it isn’t like anyone’s going to benefit from knowing I’m depleted. “It’s just a lot, you know?” A station to run. All the death, all the grief. Stepping into this role ten years too early under all the wrong circumstances.
“I’ll help however I can, you know that, right?”
I cut my eyes at her—my eyes are too sharp, and I know it, but I don’t let them soften. “It’s not like I can’t handle it, Haven.”
“Did I say you couldn’t handle it? No. No, I did not.” She makes a show of rolling her eyes. “It’s just a lot to handle, that’s all. And I’m here if you need me.”
“You’re doing a good job,” I say,thank youin disguise. “Now I should probably go do mine.”
Natalin is pacing around inside the refrigerator room when I arrive for our meeting, as if I’m late. I’m early, for the record. For once.
“We’re low on pro-packs,” she says before I can even say hello. “Not critically low, not yet, but if we don’t get another shipment within the next seven or eight days, it isn’t going to be pretty. We have to have protein, Lindley, we need—”
“I know.” I raise a hand, cut her off. “I know. Let me think.”
The hum of the refrigerator room is loud in our silence. I scan the shelves; they don’t look as bad as I expected, actually.“We have a lot of VPs, it looks like?” I make my voice bright, as if VPs aren’t the absolute worst. The vege-packs are no one’s favorites—we prefer our celery and spinach in the context of meat stew or chicken soup, not plain. Green things must taste better on Earth. “And we have loads of rice and pasta, right? And potatoes?”
“Good luck getting everyone to actuallyeatthe VPs,” she says. “The rice and pasta are good options, you’re right, but they could cause more problems—we’re on our last backup water filter, and there’s only so much water to begin with. We can’t cook as much rice or pasta as we’d need, because we’d be maxing out our filtersanddraining our drinking supply.”
