by Malinda Lo
“More insurance,” he said to her after school on Wednesday. “Now that we have to deal with Hernandez, we need as much of that as we can get.”
As the SUV pulled up to the closed information booth beside the dock, David thought to Reese: If Eres keeps our secret, that will be one reason to trust the Imria.
Reese opened the door. Well, it will be one reason to trust Eres. She still wasn’t ready to trust the rest of them.
CHAPTER 22
When they arrived at Julian’s house, he had tacked a black cloth over the closet doors in his bedroom to create a backdrop, and he had set up a camera on a tripod. He angled several lamps straight at the backdrop and motioned for David and Reese to sit down on two crates he had arranged in front of the camera. “I’ll shoot you from the waist up,” Julian said. “It’s not fancy, but it’ll work fine. I’ll be behind the camera but I have a bunch of questions to ask. My voice will be edited out of the final interview, so I need you to answer the questions by restating them, if you know what I mean? Like a reality TV–style confessional.”
His questions were thorough, drawing out every last detail of their experiences beginning with the June Disaster and ending with their lessons on Angel Island. It wasn’t until Reese and David began to explain the purpose of susum’urda, though, that she realized how little Julian—and other humans—knew about it.
“Susum’urda isn’t about reading others’ thoughts,” she said. “It’s not about getting people to reveal their secrets against their will. It’s about connection.”
“What does it feel like?” Julian asked.
“It’s… hard to explain,” Reese said, and glanced at David.
“We’re not that good at it yet,” David said. “We’ve really only done it with our teacher. With Eres, it’s like seeing someone’s interior identity. Who they actually are, beyond what they look like on the surface. It’s incredible, and incredibly scary at the same time.”
“Why is it scary?” Julian asked.
“Because—” David hesitated, his gaze going beyond the camera to the UFO photos on Julian’s walls. Julian waited, and when David looked back at the camera, he was focused. “It’s scary because it opens you up to someone else too. It makes you vulnerable. In order to have that connection with someone else, you have to be willing to show them who you really are.”
“What about you, Reese?” Julian prompted.
She looked at the camera self-consciously. “For me, it’s mostly just scary.”
“Why?” David asked softly.
She looked at him. His dark eyes reflected the lights that Julian had pointed at them. Reese said awkwardly, “I’m just… I’m not the best when it comes to feelings and stuff.” Her emotions seemed to rear up inside her, both affirming her statement and rejecting it, and her face heated up with everything she had left unsaid. She turned to Julian, who was standing behind the camera watching her. “Do we have to put this in the interview?” she asked.
“No, it’s okay,” Julian said.
“Thanks,” Reese said, relieved. “Could we maybe take a break?”
Julian glanced at his watch. “Sure. My parents are going to make us come down for dinner soon anyway.”
“Great.” Reese got up. “I’m going to the bathroom.” She fled Julian’s bedroom and crossed the landing to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. There was a window in the wall that overlooked the backyard, and the sash was pushed up to let in the warm evening air. She could hear the sound of her mom’s voice floating up from below, and Celeste’s answering laugh. Her mom was staying for dinner, and her dad was going to show up soon too. One big happy family, she thought dourly.
She used the toilet even though she didn’t need to and flushed, then turned on the taps to wash her hands. Her face was grim-looking in the mirror, as if she had gotten bad news and hadn’t shaken it off yet. She tried to smooth out the frown that was dragging down the corners of her mouth, but her eyes still looked agitated. She felt like an idiot. David could speak so directly and honestly about susum’urda. He could tell the world what had happened to the two of them and make everyone believe. In comparison, she probably came off as a dork. An emotionally stunted, freaked out dork with secrets.
There was a knock on the door. “Reese?” It was David.
“Just a minute,” she called. She dried off her hands and took a shallow breath before opening the door.
He looked concerned. “Can I come in for a sec?”
She hadn’t expected that, but she let him in. “What’s up?”
He entered the room and pushed the door shut. He had a strange expression on his face—like he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to word it.
“What is it?” She began to imagine all sorts of horrible possibilities. He probably thought she was ruining the interview. Or maybe he was going to—she couldn’t think about it. Nervous sweat broke out on her skin.
He seemed to make up his mind. “You sure that’s all it is? That you’re not good with feelings and stuff?”
Her cheeks turned pink.
“I mean—” He waved his hands as if he were trying to gather up all his thoughts into a coherent sentence. “What happened with Eres today, and then what you said to Julian… I feel like something’s wrong.” His face reddened. “Is something wrong?”
She backed away, crossing her arms. Were they having a talk? The kind where people said, “Can we talk about something?” but actually meant “This isn’t working out”? She scrambled for something to say to stave it off. “I was a little overwhelmed at our lesson today, that’s all. You said it yourself—it’s scary.”
He nodded, but doubt was still written clearly on his face.
Her stomach sank. “Really. There’s nothing wrong.” She felt like a liar. She was a liar. She held her breath, as if that would prevent him from knowing.
His hands had been stuffed into his pockets as if to avoid touching her, but now he lifted a hand to her arms, pulling one of her hands free. She stiffened. “Do you not want me to touch you?” he asked, his face darkening.
She forced herself to let him hold her hand, but her anxiety shivered between them like a steel sheet in a gust of wind. On the other side, she felt his mounting sadness, and she couldn’t bear to feel it. Before she knew what she was doing, the words began to spill out of her. “I don’t want to do anything wrong, and I’m afraid you’ll—you’ll see something in me that you hate or that will make you hate me, like that night at Eric’s party. I can’t control what I’m thinking of, and I don’t know how to deal with the fact that you can see it. I really—I really like you.” She felt as if her face were on fire, but she kept going. “I don’t want you to hate me, and yeah, I really suck at feelings and stuff. You should ask Julian! Ask anyone. I just—I wish we could be normal, you know? Like not have to do these interviews and explain everything, even though I know it’s important. Nobody gets it except for us. Humans don’t understand the Imria, the Imria don’t understand humans, and nobody understands us. We’re stuck in the middle, and we have to explain it to everyone. I know that. But I suck at talking about this stuff, and I—” She ran a hand through her hair, unable to stop talking. “I wish we could be normal and go out without being followed, and I don’t know, I wish we could make out in your car or something instead of being so restrained or whatever Eres wants us to be.” She finally ran out of words, halting abruptly as a smile reached David’s eyes.
He laced his fingers through hers. She felt his heartbeat through his skin, a regular percussion that echoed her own.
“You can close yourself off, can’t you?” he said. “Try it.”
“You mean—”
“We can be normal for five minutes. I’ll try it too.”
She sensed him folding away his consciousness, as if he were closing the panels of a puzzle box one by one. She tried to do the same thing. She focused on her own heartbeat as Eres Tilhar had taught her; she centered on her own inhalation and exhalation. S
he closed off the third eye that opened every time David touched her, and he bent down, letting go of her hand so he could cup her face, and kissed her. His lower lip slid across hers, slightly dry. Even though she had kissed him before, she had never kissed him without being able to sense his internal self, and he felt so different now. Separate. A physical form she did not understand. She felt inordinately clumsy, and she wondered if being divorced from his consciousness made her a bad kisser.
Had she ever noticed that he was several inches taller than her? She had to stand on her tiptoes, stretching her arms up to slip them around his neck. His upper back felt strangely unfamiliar beneath her hands, a landscape of muscle she didn’t know. He pulled her closer, his hands on her waist, and she arched her back to fit against him. The heat that built inside her came slower than it had when she could also sense him, but it was unmistakable: a glowing flame that began to lick at her belly. He turned her, pushing her against the door, and in an awkward dance she moved her arms, whispering “Let me—” And she circled her arms around his waist.
Cracks broke in her consciousness—and in his. She saw brief flashes of what he was feeling: her hair tangled in his fingers; the taste of her mouth. She shuddered as the walls of her conscious self began to crumble, and she tried to hold them up at the same time that she wanted to drink in his emotions. It didn’t work.
And then David was pulling away from her even as she tried to drag him closer. He planted his hands on the door on either side of her head and pushed back.
“I don’t think that was even five minutes,” he said, breathless.
She lifted her hand to her mouth; her lips felt bruised. David’s eyes were dark, his mouth red from kissing her. She felt weak. She felt exhilarated. “Three minutes maybe.”
He laughed shortly and took a step back. She reached out, hooking a finger on his belt loop. “David.”
He looked down at her hand, but she didn’t let go. “Yeah,” he said, his voice rough.
“I’m sorry.”
He glanced up, puzzled. “Why?”
“Because I’m a dork,” she whispered. “Because I can’t say anything I really want to say, and I just want you to know it’s because I want you to like me.”
The expression on his face softened. “I do like you. Didn’t you notice?”
She was embarrassed. “Maybe.”
“Well, you better start noticing,” he said, but his tone was gentle. He reached behind her, and she thought he was going to kiss her again, but he was only going for the door handle. “We should go back before Julian get suspicious.”
“He’s already suspicious.”
David laughed, and for the first time all day, Reese felt like things were probably going to be all right.
*
After school on Monday, David and Reese told Mr. Hernandez that yes, the Imria could use their abilities to sense what humans were thinking. He didn’t seem to put much stock in Eres Tilhar’s statements about ethics. “Have you gotten photos of the adaptation chamber yet?” he asked.
“We haven’t been able to find the adaptation chamber,” Reese said.
“We’ll get them in time,” David assured him.
They had to leave right afterward to get to David’s soccer game—the first of the fall season. It was a home game, and because the opposing team was their biggest rival, Reese knew there would be a decent turnout, but she hadn’t expected that having David on the team would draw so many spectators. The stands were completely filled, and Reese huddled with Madison and Julian and Bri, hoping nobody would realize she was there. David didn’t even start—he’d missed too many practices that summer—but when he was substituted in midway through the second half, photographers fanned out along the sidelines and Reese felt the crowd focus on him. Their attention was so strong that she suspected David could feel it too, even out on the field. He didn’t score, and sometimes she saw him turning his back to the crowd as if he were trying to shut them out.
Kennedy won 3–2, and afterward David was surrounded by press. When his coach finally extricated him, Reese saw him retreat to the locker room, white-faced. That was when the photographers noticed her, waiting near the entrance to the high school with her friends. Cameras flashed as rapidly as strobe lights, and she held up her hand to shield her eyes, but they didn’t relent. Madison put an arm around her and said, “Let’s go inside.” As Julian pulled open the door, Bri shouted at the photographers, “Leave them alone!”
Inside, the hallways echoed with distant sounds from the boys’ locker room. Reese ducked into a shadowy recess between a trophy case and the door to the computer lab. “Thanks,” she said to Madison.
“They’re so annoying,” Madison grumbled. “Did you know they’ve started trying to get me to talk about you? I got followed home from school one day!”
“Did they? I’m sorry,” Reese said.
Madison shrugged. “Whatever. I told them I wasn’t talking.”
Julian leaned against the trophy case. “Once they took a photo of me flipping them off. I saw it on the Hub—it got five thousand likes in ten minutes.”
Reese laughed weakly. “You guys… thanks.”
“I don’t know how you deal with it,” Bri said. “They are relentless.”
“Come on,” Madison said. “It’s boring here. Let’s go wait by the boys’ locker room.”
Julian groaned.
“Shut up, you know you want to, Julian,” Madison said.
“Yeah, but I don’t,” Bri objected.
“You’re coming!” Madison insisted, and grabbed Bri’s arm to drag her down the hall.
When the soccer team emerged from the locker room, they absorbed Reese and her friends into their big herd of soapy-smelling boys and shouted jokes, shielding her and David from the photographers waiting outside the school. They descended on a taqueria two blocks away and took up all the tables, and as Reese waited for her burrito to be made she watched David laughing with his teammates, and Bri and Julian arguing over some obscure plot point on Doctor Who, and even though she knew the press was waiting on the sidewalk, for this moment she felt safe.
There was something magical about it: this warm September night, the yellow-and-green flags fluttering from the ceiling, the salsa burning hot on her tongue, the Mexican Coke a rush of sugary sweetness. This is normal, she thought, and she wanted to cry.
CHAPTER 23
On Saturday, Reese’s father took her and David to Angel Island. She had thought about what Eres told her at the end of their last lesson. She was determined, today, to let the teacher see everything; she wanted to know how to use this adaptive ability. She didn’t expect to see Amber sitting in one of the chairs when the door to Eres’s room opened.
“Good morning,” Eres said, standing up. The teacher’s gray robe hung down to the floor in one long column. With white hair and a pale face, Eres was almost ghostly.
“Hi,” Amber said, standing as well. She was dressed in jeans and a baby-blue T-shirt that had MISSION stamped on it, her face bare of makeup, a lock of her hair held back with a plain clip. She looked so utterly ordinary in the triangular space with its luminous walls that Reese found it completely jarring.
“Hi,” David said warily.
“What are you doing here?” Reese asked. She had finally begun to forget about Amber—hadn’t she?—and now here she was, biting her lip and looking like a nice girl. Reese’s feet planted in the doorway; she couldn’t move any farther into the room. She wouldn’t.
“We’re going to do something different today,” Eres said. “David, I’m going to work with you individually. And, Reese, you are going to work with Amber.”
“What? Why?”
“I spoke with Amber since the last time you were here,” Eres said. “I believe it will be helpful for you to spend some time working with her.”
Reese glanced at David. He didn’t look happy. “I don’t think working with Amber will help,” Reese said to Eres.
Amber’s face
darkened, but she didn’t speak.
“How will you know if you don’t try?” Eres asked.
Reese couldn’t answer the question. I just know sounded too much like something an impertinent kid might say, but that was the only thing Reese could come up with.
“Amber, the two of you should go somewhere private,” Eres said. “David and I will stay here.” Eres sat down again, clearly waiting for Amber and Reese to leave.
Amber headed for the door. Reese backed away so that Amber didn’t touch her when she passed. “Come on,” Amber said, waiting in the corridor.
Reese looked at David, hoping for a way out, but his expression was guarded. He shook his head very slightly as if to say It’s your decision, and then he sat down to face Eres. Reese realized the only options she had were to go with Amber or to throw a temper tantrum and refuse to do as Eres asked. The stern expression on Eres’s face made Reese think the teacher would definitely not take kindly to the latter. So she turned away from Eres and David and stiffly followed Amber into the corridor. She wished that Amber didn’t still affect her so strongly.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” Amber asked tentatively. “We don’t have to stay inside. It’s a beautiful day.”
The corridor was dim and claustrophobic, and the idea of going outside seemed like a lifeline to Reese. “Yes. Let’s go outside.”
Amber led the way through the ship, and Reese kept her eyes on the floor. Amber was wearing her purple Converse sneakers. Reese flashed back to the first time she had noticed them, the day they’d had coffee at the café across from the park. She shoved the memory away angrily. Stop it, she told herself. Everything is different now.
As they exited the ship, walking down the ramp, Amber pointed at the yellow Victorian houses across the road. “Those were the officers’ quarters. There’s a building up there with a sign that says ‘Bake House.’ Apparently the soldiers liked their fresh-baked bread.”
