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“You look crazy, angry. But then you get this weird smile on your face. I’m scared, really scared, because I think you’re going to do it. You lean down and whisper in my ear. ‘Run.’ That’s what you say.”
“Run?” I ask.
“I know. Crazy, right? You’re still on top of me—how am I supposed to do anything? But then I start to change.” The pen presses against her skin, hard now. It’s scratching her leg. “It felt like my skin was getting tight and itchy. My bones twisted and I grew hunched, small. My vision blurred, and then I could crawl away from you. I didn’t know how to run on four legs, but I ran anyway.
“I heard you scream, but I didn’t look back. There was a lot of shouting.
“They caught me under some bushes. I made it out of the house, but I just couldn’t run fast enough.”
She stops drawing lines and starts punching the point of the pen against her leg.
“Hey,” I say, putting my gloved hand on top of hers.
She blinks quickly, like she forgot where she was. “Barron put me in a cage and he put a shock collar around my neck—the kind they use on little dogs. He said that it was better than if I was dead. I was out of the way, but he could still use me. I made people sleepwalk right out to you guys; it’s easy for a cat to slip into a house and to touch someone. I even made you sleepwalk out of the dorms to where your brothers were waiting.
“You looked at me like I was nothing. An animal.” Her nostrils flare. “I thought you’d been trying to save me. But you never tried to save me again.”
I don’t know what to say. I feel a deep, aching sorrow that hurts more than I know how to express. I don’t have the words. I want to touch her, but I don’t deserve it.
She shakes her head. “I know Barron worked you. I’m here now because of you. I shouldn’t say that.”
“It’s okay.” I take a deep breath. “I have a lot to be sorry for.”
“I should have guessed that they’d changed your memories. Barron’s so busy trying to make people remember what he wants them to and make them forget everything else that he doesn’t notice that he’s strip-mining his own brain. He can’t pull the strings because he’s forgotten where they are.
“It’s just that you go so crazy being alone like that. Sometimes he’d forget my water or food and I’d cry and cry and cry.” She stops talking and looks out the window. “I would try to tell myself stories to pass the time. Fairy tales. Parts of books. But they got used up.
“In the beginning I tried to escape, but I guess after a while I just used up all my hope like I used up the stories.” Lila lowers her voice and leans into me, so close that the hairs on the back of my neck rise with her breath. “When I found out you were going to hurt my dad, when I overheard them, I realized escaping didn’t matter. I knew I had to kill you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I say. I think of my bare feet sliding on slate.
She smiles. “It turned out Barron wasn’t watching me as closely as he had before. I wore down the nylon part of the collar enough. It was still hard to get it the rest of the way off, but I did it.”
I think of the blood crusted on her fur when I saw her that first time.
“Do you still hate me?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “A little.”
My ribs ache. I want to close my eyes. Somewhere on the train a baby starts to cry. The businessman two seats in front of us is on the phone. “I don’t want sorbet,” he says. “I don’t like sorbet. Just give me some damn ice cream.”
I think maybe I deserve for my ribs to hurt more.
15
THE LIGHTS OF ATLANTIC City glitter along the boardwalk, as bright as day. We finally get out of the taxi in front of the Taj Mahal hotel, both of us sleepy and stretching from the long trip.
I look at my watch. It’s about fifteen minutes after nine. She’s late.
“I guess I can take it from here,” Lila says.
Yawning, I take out a pen, her pen. The one she was writing on her leg with. I write my number on her arm, right above the top of her glove.
She’s watching with half-lidded eyes as ink marks stretch across her skin. I wonder what it would be like to kiss her now, under the streetlight, with my eyes open.
“Let me know when you’re okay,” I say softly instead.
She looks at the number. “Are you going back?”
