Summer Ruins

by Trisha Leigh

  The suggestion comes out of nowhere; it’s not something I’ve consciously thought until now, but it must have been brewing in the back of my mind. It’s cruel, probably, but I can’t let it bother me.

  Deshi’s expression flickers between horror and anger, settling on neither as he tries for indifference instead. The perfection of the look reminds me that he grew up the same way I did, always alone and pretending to be the same as everyone else, and it lands like a hard smack across my cheek. We should be in this together, not dancing around these issues trying to make each other feel the worst about the situation. I clamp my teeth together and wait for his answer, twirling a filthy chunk of red hair between my fingers.

  “They… they care about me. We’re friends. They know I’m no threat to them.”

  I lean back against the cool dirt, sip some clean water, then snort. “You are a threat to them, Deshi. We all are. That’s why we’re here in the first place and not walking through our last year of Cell like everyone else.”

  “No. They hate you and Lucas and Pax because you’ve injured Others. You killed Nat.”

  That takes me by surprise, and Deshi sees it on my face before I can think to hide it.

  “What? You’re going to tell me you let him live?”

  “Why on earth would we kill Nat? I have nothing against him.”

  “You had to have killed him. Otherwise, why hide him from us?” Deshi’s voice softens with curiosity, and for the first time he sits on the floor across from me, still out of reach, still tense, but finally engaged enough in our conversation to forget he’s not supposed to be in here at all.

  Even so, his casual use of the term us makes me cringe. “So you couldn’t find him, obviously. Zakej is the one who almost killed him, not us.”

  “But…” Deshi trails off, understanding dawning. “Because he was with you, and if we could find Nat, we’d find you three as well. And the Sidhe twins? They’re alive, too?”

  “I can’t tell you anything specific. You’ll only tell the Prime and his family, and we went to a lot of trouble to make sure they’re safe. Well, as safe as possible, at any rate.”

  They’re not safe. The three of them are trapped in their minds, probably dying at this very moment. We went into the hive and protected their vulnerable sinums so that the Prime can’t find them, but the long-term consequences are unclear. I’m honestly shocked Natej stayed alive all the way to the cabin, the way the Others beat him senseless after learning of his affair with Greer.

  “But why?”

  “Greer’s my friend.” It’s the simplest reason, but one he probably won’t understand.

  Then again, he refers to Zakej as a friend. The thought wraps cold fingers around the back of my neck until freezing dread squeezes my spine.

  Whether he understands or not, I’ll never know, because he doesn’t react to my confession. Deshi crosses his arms over his chest, blowing upward until his breath moves a stubborn chunk of black hair away from his eye. “Is it true about you and Pax?”

  The question reminds me that Deshi is still hurting over Pax’s betrayal, over the perceived betrayal of us all—gallivanting around the Wilds having a grand time while leaving Deshi with the Others. That’s how he sees it.

  He sided with the Others because he had no choice. My brain realizes the truth of this even while my heart resists sympathizing with anything about this traitor, this boy who trapped us here, who will play an integral part in our upcoming deaths. If he hadn’t made friends with Zakej and Kendaja, if he hadn’t believed what they and the Prime told him about us and about his place in this world, what would his alternative have been? Would they have killed him already?

  His choice wasn’t a choice at all, but a decision born of simple survival instinct. I know this, but it doesn’t mean it sits any better. “I love Pax. I’m in love with Lucas.”

  The sentiment is still so new to me that my cheeks heat up with the admission. When I get it under control and look up, Deshi is studying me with his eyebrows pinched above his nose.

  He blows that stubborn lock of hair away again, squinting and scooting a little closer to me, though it doesn’t seem as though he’s aware he’s doing it. “What’s the difference?”

  “Well. Hmm. It’s not that easy to explain.” He doesn’t respond, but stares at me intently. I owe it to him to try. We’ve been out there, learning a little bit more about our humanity and this planet every step of the way, while he’s been stuck in here, being spoon-fed lies. “Pax is my friend. I care about him, and I’d do anything to keep him safe and alive. Lucas is all of those things, but also something more. I want to be near him; he makes me happy. Like the feelings between Partners.”

  “Partners don’t have feelings.”

  “Well, no. Not the way things are now, since the Others stole emotions from them.”

  Deshi looks down, refusing for a moment to meet my gaze. “It was for the best. People don’t need their emotions; they only complicate things that should be easy. Like choosing a Partner. That decision should be based on what’s best for their future, or how well suited they are to raise offspring. Not feelings.” He meets my gaze now, curiosity shining like stars in the blue parts of his eyes. “Feelings change.”

  I stare back for a moment, mesmerized by the black veins splintering the whites of his eyes, the sense of his words reaching into my heart and squeezing like fingers. After years and years of wishing my emotions would go away, my powerful fear at the thought of losing them surprises me even now.

  “The Others have feelings, though. They get angry and… scared,” I remind him.

  There aren’t any positive emotions I’ve witnessed in the Others, really. Greer says Nat cares about her, and while he’s never been particularly friendly to us, he has gone out of his way to at least look the other way because of their relationship.

  “Those emotions have uses, though, and outlets. They don’t feel love.”

  “Not even for their children?” I ask, thinking of the Prime and his banana balls daughter.

  Deshi shrugs. “What good does it do you to love?”

  The question trickles into my heart. Images flash against the backs of my eyes, memories I’d like to share with Deshi but not until I feel confident he won’t dismiss them out of hand. “It’s saved my life, Deshi. Love. It’s saved all of us. And it’s one of the things that makes the humans worth fighting for, I think.” He doesn’t answer, and the desire to reach out and touch him, to connect, surprises me. I’m not ready, and Deshi isn’t either, so I scratch at the skin around my nails instead. “It’s why we came here for you.”

  We’re quiet for a long time. My thoughts turn inward and I fidget with the rainbow bracelet still tied around my wrist. They skim over Brittany alone at the cabin with the Sidhe and Nat, who will die soon, too, without any change in their fortunes—inextricably linked to ours, now. Of the forty or so kids scattered in the Sanctioned Cities, waiting for us to lead them in an impossible quest to free Earth from the Others.

  We’re going to let them all down. If we die, Earth dies, too. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but eventually. When the Others leave, the natural elemental balance of this planet won’t be able to right itself without help, and all of humanity will perish within days. Weeks, maybe.

  It doesn’t matter.

  All I know is we can’t die down here.

  When Deshi speaks, it startles me. I’d been so lost in my spiral of hopeless despair I almost forgot he was still here. It’s so easy to slip back into the familiarity of solitude. It scares me how the ability to survive alone has always been such a part of me.

  “What?”

  “The Prime is going to be back the day after tomorrow. If you want to see Lucas and Pax one more time, to say… I guess to say good-bye, maybe I could take you. If you want.”

  The offer is quiet but sincere, even though Deshi doesn’t meet my eyes. It’s a gift—not an apology, not a peace offering, not understanding—but a gift all the same
.

  So I tell him, “I want.”

  Chapter 4.

  The next time Deshi sneaks down to bring me food, more than a day has passed, I think. “How long have we been here?”

  “A little over a week.”

  My brain tries to reconstruct the month or day it might be outside this mountain, but can’t grab hold of anything concrete. When we entered this place, I think it was the middle of April.

  I’m seventeen now. My natalday is the beginning of April, on the third. I missed it.

  The realization stops me for a moment, but sixteen, seventeen—it doesn’t matter. I don’t even know if it’s my real natalday. I shake it away, returning my focus to what’s important.

  We told the kids in the Sanctioned Cities to convene at the cabin if they hadn’t heard anything in sixty days. It will be summer then.

  It’s going to be my first summer, if I survive that long. Cadi and Ko are gone, and along with them the enchantment that pulled us from season to season, forcing us to skip the one where we would be the most comfortable. As much as I wish the Spritans hadn’t died, I have no desire to go back to the uncertainty of those years—never knowing if or when I’d wake up in a different bed, in the home of a family I knew but who didn’t know me, assuming something was wrong with me, not with the world.

  Brittany is probably panicking that we haven’t returned yet.

  Thinking about how things used to be lands my mind on the one thing that got me through all of those years without losing my mind: Ko’s note. “What was your note like? From Ko?”

  “It said, ‘Deshi, you feel different because you’re Something Else, a Dissident, but—’”

  “No, I know what it says. What was it in, though? Mine was in a locket…” I pull it out from under my soiled shirt so he can see it.

  “Oh. A movie. A DVD.” He holds out his hand for my locket.

  I unclasp it and drop it in his palm, scared for a moment that he’ll break it or take it away. But it doesn’t matter anymore. The locket served its purpose, and now it’s more of a comfort to me than anything. I don’t need it. “What’s a DVD?”

  He chuckles. “I didn’t know what it was called my whole life. A plastic case with a title and picture on the front, description on the back. A blank, silver disc inside. It wasn’t until I gained the Prime’s trust and they let me out of the prisons that I learned about real movies.”

  “Real movies?” We watched movies every Saturday with our families, but they were produced by the Others and never had much of a point. Another waste of time created to keep people busy and out of their hair.

  “Yeah. Mine isn’t like the ones the Others play on television. It’s… not happy, exactly. Or maybe it is. I think the fact that I can’t decide is why they don’t show things like it to humans. The emotions are too gray. You have to think about how it makes you feel.” He sits, staying as far out of reach as always, just outside the little fans of light sprayed into the darkness by the flames in my hands.

  “They let you watch your DVD now?”

  “I never told them about it. I don’t know. Even though I understand why they’ve done everything and that it’s necessary and all that, I…” He lowers his eyes, scooting a little farther back into the darkness. “I couldn’t do that to Ko. Rat him out. Even if he betrayed the Others, that stupid note’s the only reason I’m alive. You know?”

  “Yeah. I do know.” We let that shared truth swirl around us for a moment, until the heaviness of our entwined past starts to build in the back of my throat. “Lucas’s note has a disc, too. It took us a long time to figure it out but it plays music. You know about music?”

  “No. What’s that?” Curiosity and something else, like the beginnings of anger, thread through his voice.

  Without a good look at his face, it’s impossible to guess what he’s thinking.

  “Oh. Well, it’s not something I can explain, really. You should ask Lucas’s father about it sometime, though. He knows how to make it. Or I guess your dad could tell you, too.”

  “How do you know they can make this… music?”

  I tell Deshi about the memory Cadi shared with Lucas and me, of the night the Prime learned about our existence. The night Ko put the enchantment over us, telling the Elements that we would be hidden among the humans until the time came when we could decide for ourselves what course of action to take. The night the Prime killed my father. And his mother.”

  He goes completely still at the last bit, a fact I sense as much as see. His particular scent of fresh earth and lilacs spills into the space, along with a breeze that chills me in seconds. When Deshi moves toward me—slowly, deliberately—instinct propels me backward until I bump against the wall with nowhere to go.

  Deshi’s breath, sweet and fresh—especially compared to mine—brushes my cheeks as he stares at me hard, our noses almost touching. My heart struggles to escape my chest, pounding from the fear of what he might do. It hits me that this is the first time I’ve been afraid of Deshi. The black veins in the whites of his eyes seem to pulse and writhe. The idea that the veins represent a shift closer to the all-black eyes of the Others dampens my underarms with sweat.

  “The Prime didn’t kill our human parents. They abandoned us.” When I say nothing, Deshi places his hands on either side of my head, leaning in even closer. He could kiss me if he wanted to, but that’s not what’s on his mind.

  It takes all of my strength not to turn my head, to look away from the desperation glittering in his blue eyes, the ones that match mine so perfectly. I see in them an emotion I’ve fought so often myself—denial. Deshi is clinging so hard to his belief that his mother abandoned him. I don’t know what he’ll do if I push, but there’s no other option. I’m not going to lie to him.

  “No, they didn’t,” I say softly. “The Prime murdered them to send a message about getting involved with conquered species.”

  His hands smack the wall on either side of my face. I can’t stop my immediate wince, but I lock my knees and refuse to give in to the temptation to slip from between his arms.

  “No, Althea. They were ashamed when they found out who the Elements really are, and they were disgusted by us—their own children—so they took their lives so they’d never have to look at us again. That’s what happened to our human parents.”

  In spite of the anger clenching his jaw, tears glisten in Deshi’s eyes. Without my permission, my hands lift up and settle on his cheeks. His skin feels warm to the touch, and every bit as smooth as it looks. He starts at my touch but, I think to both of our surprise, doesn’t pull away.

  “Our parents loved us, Deshi.” I yank a memory from deep in my mind, glad it’s there when I finally need it. “Your mother, her name was Na. They raised us until we were five, along with the Elements, but when the Prime found out they had to give us up. To protect us. They died to give us a life, Deshi. To give us a chance.”

  The confusion drops from his face, hardening back into disgust as he jerks out of my grasp. “Zak said you were a liar, Althea. Just like your mother.”

  My legs give out and I slump onto the floor, failure bitter on my tongue. I was so close to making him doubt, but as he lets himself out of my holding cell, I know he’s further away than ever. I don’t know what I could have said or done differently.

  This used to be my strong suit, my key to survival—tiptoeing around feelings and worrying about saying the wrong thing. But it hasn’t been my thing for long enough that I’m rusty at doing it well. The first sixteen—or I guess eleven—years of my life were spent always thinking about the potential ramifications of words before I let them slip out of my mouth. Then I met Lucas, and the ability to say whatever popped into my head freed me in a way that seemed impossible before that.

  Conversations were open with Pax, too, and even though we danced around issues a bit in the beginning, neither of us has been overly concerned with hurting the other’s feelings. Not for a while.

  I don’t have time to be ca
reful with Deshi’s feelings. Even though it hurts for him to believe the Prime lied to him, that his mother died not because she was horrified by what she’d created but because she loved him so much she couldn’t give him up, it’s the truth. The truth hurts, sometimes, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be known.

  ***

  The next time footsteps shuffle down the hall, they don’t belong to Deshi. A Goblert stops outside the marble bars, peering at me through the muted darkness with huge, black eyes. His paper-thin ears reach from his chin past the top of his hairless head, and there’s no way he’d reach past my waist if I stood. Dark veins thread patterns under his translucent skin, creating what almost looks like a road map made of blood vessels. Like the one who took Lucas to the Harvest Site last season, he’s clothed only by a threadbare piece of burlap slung around his waist.

  The Goblert says nothing—which is expected, since the Others engineered them without tongues—just sets a large pitcher and a paper bag on the ground within my reach. I expect him to leave right away. When he doesn’t, I look up to meet his empty gaze. The blackness of his eyes gives the appearance of blindness, as with the Others, but in them I find an unexpected kindness and intelligence.

  We stare at each other for several seconds until his mouth pulls down, the expression on his face changing to sorrow. He presses a long, thin finger against his lips, then nods toward the paper bag.

  “Thank you,” I whisper. It’s been a day or so since Deshi left, and my throat has dried out again. We should have been taken to the Prime by now, and the not knowing what’s going on has led me to bloody cuticles. “Do you know why we haven’t been summoned by the Prime yet?”

  The Goblert sighs, a frustrated sound, and stands still for several minutes, perhaps in thought. Then he straightens up and moves closer to the marble bars. I scoot forward, conjuring balls of flame in my palms to see him better. The action doesn’t frighten him, as I worried it might; instead it brings a faint smile to his skinny lips.