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Connor smiles right back at her. “I know exactly what I’d do.” Then he leans in close to whisper, she leans in close to hear—and he licks her ear with precision enough to get him happily slapped. He thinks it might get her off the subject, but it doesn’t.
“I miss Lev,” she says. “He’s kind of like a brother. I never had a brother—or at least not that I know of.”
“I have a brother,” Connor tells her. He doesn’t know why he’s chosen to volunteer this. He’s never spoken of him to Risa. Mentioning his life before the unwind order somehow feels taboo. It’s like conjuring ghosts.
“He’s a few years younger than you, isn’t he?” Risa asks.
“Three years younger.”
“Right—now I remember,” she says, which surprises him. But then he shouldn’t be surprised at all. The whole life of the notorious Akron AWOL has been dissec
ted by the media since the day he first got away.
“What’s your brother’s name?” Risa asks.
“Lucas,” Connor tells her—and with the mention of the name comes a wave of emotion more powerful than he was prepared for. He feels regret, but also resentment, because Lucas was the child their parents chose over Connor. He has to remind himself that it wasn’t his brother’s fault.
“Do you miss him?” Risa asks.
Connor shrugs uncomfortably. “He was a pain in the ass.”
Risa grins. “That doesn’t answer the question.”
Connor meets her eyes, so beautifully green, and just as deep and expressive as their natural color.
“Yeah,” Connor admits. “Sometimes.” Back before Connor’s parents gave up on him, he was constantly being compared to Lucas. Grades, sports—never mind that it was Connor who taught Lucas to play every sport. While Connor never had the dedication to stay on a team for a whole season, Lucas excelled, to their parents’ enduring joy. And the more Lucas shone, the dimmer Connor’s light seemed to them.
“I really don’t want to talk about this,” Connor tells her. And as easily as that, his old life and memories of his family are locked away just as securely as his letter to them is locked in Sonia’s trunk.
4 • Lev
Lev is anything but at peace.
He’s in the treetops again. It’s the dead of night, but the night is alive. The forest canopy rolls like aquamarine clouds beneath a blue floodlight moon.
He’s following the kinkajou again, that large-eyed monkey-like creature. Adorable but deadly. He now knows that it is his spirit he chases. It races before him through the highest branches of the dense rainforest, drawing him toward something resembling destiny, but not quite as fixed and fated. Not something inevitable, but something he could make real.
He dreams of the kinkajou, and this journey through the trees, often. Each visit to this peculiar sanctuary of purpose feeds him and sustains him. It reminds him that there is a worthwhile goal to the things he drives himself to do.
The dreams are remarkably vivid, and he always remembers them. That, in and of itself, is a gift he’s grateful for. It’s not just the vibrancy of the sights that makes it so palpable, but the chirping, screeching, singing sounds of nocturnal life around him. The scent of the trees and the ground far below, so earthy, yet unearthly. The feel of the branches on his hands, feet, and tail. Yes, his tail, for he has caught up with the kinkajou now. He has become the creature, and becoming it makes him whole.
He knows what comes next. The edge of the forest, the edge of the world. But this time something’s different. A feeling begins to well up inside of him. A foreboding that’s way too familiar in his life, but unknown here, until now.
Something acrid wafts toward him now on the breeze. The stench of smoke. The soothing blue light around him is tainted to lavender then maroon. He turns behind him to see a forest fire that stretches like a blazing wall in the distance behind him. It’s still perhaps a mile away, but it’s consuming the trees with alarming speed.
The sounds of life become shrieks of warning and terror. Birds frantically take to the sky, but burst into flames before they can escape. Lev turns from the approaching firestorm, and leaps from branch to branch trying to outrun it. Branches appear before him exactly where he needs them to be, and he knows he could outrun whatever that fire is, were the forest canopy endless. But it’s not.
Far too soon he comes to the place where the forest ends at a cliff that drops off into bottomless oblivion, and in the sky before him, just out of reach it seems, is the moon.
Bring it down, Lev.
He knows he can do it! If he leaps high enough, he can dig his claws into it and pull it from the sky. And when it falls, the shock wave it will create shall blow out the blaze like the breath of God blowing out a candle.
Lev gathers his courage as searing heat blooms against his back. He must have faith. He must not fail. On fire now, he leaps to the sky, and to his amazement he grasps the moon . . . but his claws don’t dig deep enough to give him purchase.
It slips from his hands, and he falls, while behind him the fire consumes the last of the forest. He plummets from that world into an unfinished corner of the universe that not even dreams have reached.
• • •
