“This is what I mean,” she says, her tone appealing. “Please, Evie, I’m not trying to take anything away from you—”
I stand up. “I have to get ready for the raid.”
“Evie...”
I can’t hear my name even one more time. It’s nineteen steps to my bedroom. Nine steps to unplugging my computer setup, and three hundred twenty-seven carrying it all, piece by piece, out to my car.
“What are you doing?” Mom asks, watching me go.
“I’m going over to the Whitakers’ house,” I say. “Ash and I are doing the raid together.”
We had no such plans, but I don’t want to be here anymore, and I know Ash has another outlet in his wall that I can use for my power strip. I’ll set up my monitors on the floor. Mom doesn’t stop me, but as I carry my tower outside, I hear her talking to Mrs. Whitaker on her phone in the kitchen.
Ash is waiting for me on the porch when I pull into their driveway. He doesn’t ask what happened as he helps me carry my setup to his room.
“Everything okay, Evie?” Mrs. Whitaker asks me. She doesn’t follow us upstairs.
“Yeah,” I say over my shoulder. “Gotta do this raid.”
When everything is upstairs, Ash watches from his computer chair as I set it all up. The minute I’m done, he tosses me the pouch of edibles. It’s almost empty. I take one.
“So what happened?” he asks.
I recount the conversation for him. By the time I’m done, the world has gone a little soft at the edges, and so has my anger. “I’m tired of people telling me how I should feel. I’m tired of thinking Ishouldfeel a certain way, and I don’t. And since when has caring about something been abadthing?”
“She’s worried about you,” he says.
I growl. “Yeah, Iknow. I feel awful about it, because I don’t know how to get my point across without making her feel bad, and then I feel guilty, and then I get mad that I feel guilty, and I do or say something that hurts her again.” I sit back on the floor, throw my arms up, let them fall limp. I laugh at the noodle-y feeling of them, at my own hopelessness. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t win.”
Ash slides out of his chair and joins me on the floor. The way he slides is pretty silly, and I know he does it to make me laugh. “I think we’re all trying to survive right now,” he says. “You gotta do what you gotta do. You can apologize later.”
“Easy for you to say. Your coping mechanism is weed.”
He laughs. I laugh. It’s a feedback loop of giggling that I can’t stop. We fall against each other, then topple to the floor, and then we’re kissing. I float happily away from my twisted-up emotions. It’s so nice to close my eyes and be here now, touching him.
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” he says. The words float through the dark space I occupy like beautiful silver moths, dreamlike, glinting and gone.
“Me too,” I say, unsure if I am replying to something he really said or something I only think he said.
His fingers are soft on my cheeks, my neck, in my hair, down my back. I lose track of the boundaries of my body for a while; only when they start to come back to me, joined by the roughness of the carpet and the ache in my hip from lying here like this, do I check the clock. It’s half past twelve; plenty of time before pre-raid prep.
“I don’t want to come down yet,” I say, grabbing the pouch where we discarded it by my computer. “Just get me to the raid and I’ll be good.”
Ash grabs the gummy out of my fingers before it reaches my mouth. “Not a whole one. You’re asking for trouble.”
He carefully tears it and gives me one side. We each eat half. He pulls me onto the bed, where we stretch out on top of the covers. We face each other. I brush a strand of Ash’s hair off his forehead. He bunches mine up around my face, like the ruff of a fur coat.
“Everyone acts like it’s only bad things that come out of death,” he says, running his thumb along my cheek, “but good things happen too. Like this.”
Yes, good things can happen too. I can find a purpose, and a person who cares, and a place to go when everywhere else feels wrong. This doesn’t all have to be bad; I wish my mom could see it. Maybe I’m not happy in this moment, but I’m certainly not sad.
I start to lose the sense of my body again. I love that I’m not afraid or uncomfortable being touched when I’m with Ash, and the edibles are just a nice bonus. I nest against his chest, pressing my face to the warm skin of his neck. I could stay here forever.
“I could stay here forever,” I tell him. He replies, but his voice is very far away. My eyes are so heavy. I get my phone out, set an alarm just in case, then curl against Ash and close my eyes.
But I can’t sleep. My thoughts have picked up speed. I sink into the heaviness of my body, willing my mind to slow, but it doesn’t, it can’t. I need to get up, to check the internet connection on my computer. Ash isn’t moving, though, so I shouldn’t worry about it. A nap is the better idea. But what if I can’t fall asleep? What if I just lie here until my alarm goes off?
I roll over. Ash’s hand is warm on my thigh and—Mom would be mad if she found out I was taking these edibles and—Iwillsee my name on the Van Der Gelt Tower raid after we win today and—Alissa slept in the room down the hall and—Mrs. Whitaker is down—what time—the room is warm—
