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Risa had been a bit tickled that Sonia didn’t recognize her right away. And when she finally did, the old woman let out a howl of uncharacteristic joy and dropped her cane so she could wrap her arms around Risa.
And in that moment Risa realized it was the closest she might ever come to knowing what it felt like to be home.
Now, two weeks later, Risa finds herself playing Wendy to the Lost Boys, for lately, it seems the only AWOLs who are getting as far as Sonia’s are boys, attesting to the sad fact that more female AWOLs are falling prey to parts pirates and other bottom-feeders.
When Sonia tells Risa she has “visitors,” Risa starts up the stairs apprehensively, but she picks up her pace as that apprehension turns to excitement. There are very few people Sonia would send Risa upstairs for.
She doesn’t dare hope which of those few people it might be, because she doesn’t want disappointment to show on her face if it were someone like Hayden or Emby, both of whom she’d be happy to see, were she not hoping for something more.
She flies through the open trapdoor, almost banging her head on the edge of the floor panel, and she sees him right away. She says nothing because for an instant she’s sure it’s her imagination. That her mind has pasted Connor’s face on top of someone else’s, because she so much wants it to be him. But it’s not her imagination. It is him, and his eyes reflect her own surprise.
“Risa?”
The voice isn’t coming from Connor, and her eyes dart slightly to the right. It’s Cam. His own astonishment has already turned into a broad grin.
Risa finds her head beginning to quiver. “Cuh . . . cuh . . .” She doesn’t know which of their names to say first. The sight of the two of them in the same visual image hits her like a concussive shock and she takes a step backward, hitting the edge of the trapdoor. It slams shut an instant after Sonia cleared it. Had the woman not been faster up the stairs than she had been down, it would have crushed her skull.
Risa can’t reconcile what she’s seeing: These two separate parts of her life juxtaposed upon each other. It feels as if the universe itself has betrayed her. Exposed her, leaving her raw and vulnerable to all attacks. She didn’t leave either Connor or Cam on the best of terms. Suddenly defensive, her surprise at seeing them decays into suspicion.
“Wh-what’s going on here?”
Cam, still dazed by the sight of her, takes a step forward, only to be fully eclipsed by Connor stepping in front of him, not even aware that he had done it. “Aren’t you even gonna say hello?” Connor asks cautiously.
“Hi,” she says, with such weak impotence she’s angry at herself. She clears her throat, and only now notices there’s someone else here as well. A girl she doesn’t know, who, for the moment, is content to observe.
With the prospects of this grand reunion fizzling like wet fireworks, Sonia raps her cane on the ground in frustration to get their attention. “Well, don’t just stand there,” she says. “Give us a love scene worthy of the ages, or at least a viral meme.”
“Happy to oblige,” says Cam, so arrogantly Risa wants to slap him.
“She wasn’t talking to you,” Connor says with such dismissive disdain, Risa wouldn’t mind slapping him, too.
This isn’t how this moment was supposed to be! Over these many months, she had pictured her reunion with Connor a dozen times in a dozen different ways. None of them were so rife with ice-cracking unease. As for Cam, she had thought she’d never see him again, so never entertained the idea of a reunion. Oddly, she finds herself more pleased to see him than she ever expected she would. It steals Connor’s thunder, and a part of her resents both of them for it. They shouldn’t be allowed to muddy each other’s moments. The clouding of her emotions should not be permitted by a sane, compassionate universe. But then, when has life deigned to show her any compassion?
Cam has come out from behind Connor’s eclipsing presence now. They stand there side by side as if waiting for Risa to choose. Suddenly Risa realizes that she has no idea how this is going to play out. She finds that as terrifying as being caught in a parts pirate’s trap.
It’s the girl—that unknown quantity in the room—who comes to her rescue.
“Hiya, I’m Grace,” she says, pushing between Connor and Cam, grabbing Risa’s hand and vigorously shaking it. “You can call me Grace or Gracie—I don’t mind either way—or even Eleanor, ’cause that’s my middle name. It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Ward. Can I call you Risa? I know all about you from my brother, who kind of worshipped you—well, he worshipped Connor more, but you were there too, although you looked different then, but I guess that’s on purpose. Smart to change your eye color. People think it’s the hair, but it’s the eyes that make a person look different.”
“Yes—that’s what the stylist who did it said,” says Risa, a little flustered by Grace’s barrage of enthusiasm.
“So is there stuff for us to eat in that basement down there, ’cause I’m starved?”
It’s only later that Risa realizes how effectively Grace’s rude intrusion completely defused an explosive situation. Almost as if she had planned it that way.
61 • Cam
This changes everything.
The fact that Risa is now smack in the middle of it all forces Cam to have to reevaluate his goal as well as his methods to achieve them. As a fugitive himself, he needed this shaky collaboration with Connor. Survival demanded it, and although in his heart he knows Connor is an enemy, he can only have one enemy at a time, and right now, it’s Proactive Citizenry.
Cam has to admit that from the moment he met Connor, he was as fascinated by him as much as he despised him. The way he showed compassion—even empathy—when Una did not. Connor probably saved his life that day at the sweat lodge. Had the roles been reversed, Cam would not have done the same. It made Connor worthy of study.
The plan, from that moment on, was to get to know Connor—and to use him to help bring down Proactive Citizenry. Then, once Roberta and all of her high-and-mighty cronies have been hobbled, Cam would know Connor well enough to hobble him as well. He must clearly understand the pedestal that Risa has put the Akron AWOL on before he can engineer the pedestal’s collapse, leaving Connor Lassiter as nothing in Risa’s eyes.
But now that Risa is actually here, Cam feels like he’s been reduced to being an ape having to pound his chest before her to win her affections. Is that all it comes down to, then? Primitive mating rituals sublimated to appear civilized? Perhaps—but Cam knows he’s a step forward in human evolution. A composite being. He has faith that his internal community will galvanize to outshine Connor at every turn. But why does it have to be now?
Sonia does not bring them down to the basement with the AWOLs-in-hiding.
