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“It’s not my fault you’re a liar,” Chris says haltingly. He looks terrified. I think if he could, he’d take the words back.
Sam stumbles toward the door.
“I’ll talk to him,” I say to Daneca.
“You lie,” she says, grabbing my arm, desperate. I can feel her nails through the thin leather of her gloves. “You lie to him all the time. Why is it okay when you do it?”
I shrug off her hand, not letting her see how much the words hurt. Right now all my impulses are bad ones. I hadn’t realized how little Daneca trusted me until this afternoon. And if she’s anything like my mother—the only other emotion worker I know—maybe I shouldn’t trust her, either. “I said I would talk to him. That’s all I can do.”
Outside, Sam’s hearse is still in the driveway but I don’t see him anywhere. Not in Daneca’s mother’s elegant garden, not over the hedge in the neighbor’s backyard with an in-ground pool. Not walking down the side of the road. Then one of the doors of the hearse swings open. Sam is lying on his back inside.
“Get in,” he says. “Also, girls suck.”
“What are you doing?” I climb inside. It’s creepy. The roof is lined in gathered gray satin and the windows are tinted very dark.
“I’m thinking,” he says.
“About Daneca?” I ask, although I can’t imagine the answer is anything other than yes.
“I guess now we know why she wouldn’t get tested.” He sounds bitter.
“She was scared,” I say.
“Did you know she was a worker?” he asks. “Be honest.”
“No,” I say. “No. I mean, I guess I thought she might be—before I really knew her—because of her being so gung ho about HEX, but I figured she wished she was a worker. Like I used to. But you have to understand how frightening—”
“I don’t,” Sam says. “I don’t have to understand.”
It finally occurs to me what’s bothering me about the hearse. Being in the back reminds me of being in the trunk of Anton’s car, next to garbage bags of bodies. I remember vividly the smell of spilled guts. “She cares about you,” I say, trying to force my mind back to the present. “When you care about someone it’s harder to—”
“I never asked you what kind of worker you are,” Sam says, flinging the words at me like a challenge.
“Yeah,” I say carefully. “And I really appreciate that.”
“If I did…” Sam pauses. “If I did, would you tell me?”
“I hope so,” I say.
He’s quiet then. We lie next to each other, twin corpses waiting for burial.
11
WE CAN’T STAY IN DANECA’S driveway. Instead, we go to Sam’s house, steal a six-pack of his dad’s beer, and drink it between us in his garage. There’s an old maroon couch out there near a drum set from his older sister’s band. I flop down on one side of the sofa, and he flops on the other.
“Where is your sister now?” I ask, reaching for a handful of sesame-coated peanuts—we found a bag of them near the beer. They crunch in my mouth like salted candy.
“Bryn Mawr,” he says, belching loudly, “driving my parents crazy because she has a girlfriend covered in tattoos.”
“Really?”
He grins. “Yeah, why? You didn’t think anyone related to me could be a rebel?”
“How much of a rebel can she be in that fancy college?” I say.
He throws a musty pillow at me, but I manage to block it with my arm. It tumbles to the concrete floor.
“Didn’t your brother go to Princeton?” he asks.
