by K. Weikel
Chapter 13
The moon shines through the leaves overhead as Becca shifts the backpack’s weight on her shoulders. The weapon inside seems to make it even heavier as she walks. Who would give her a gun? Who would want to give anyone a gun?
Her mind drifts to the moment where Banshee had held her at gunpoint, just before she knew she would die—thought she would die.
Becca shudders.
Ahead, Eduard is planning something with Nixon. She thinks it’s strange how she’s the so-called “leader”, and yet everyone mostly turns to Eduard.
Maybe he’s the brains, she thinks. And then, with less seriousness, Maybe I’m just the Face.
She chuckles and shakes her head.
Just when she thinks they can’t go any deeper into the trees, they take a hard right and the trees get even denser than she thought they could.
“Careful,” Mikey says to her, a grin on his face. “There’s some vicious animals out here.”
Becca’s eyes go wide under her mask.
“He’s just kiddin’,” Nixon chimes in. “Nothing’s gonna eat you.”
Becca nods and looks at the forest floor, suddenly feeling like every movement around her is amplified.
“Let’s stop here,” Eduard says as he turns around and drops his stuff to the dry earth. “We’ve only got a few hours to sleep. So get on it.”
The rest of them follow suit as Becca watches, not knowing where to place her stuff.
She eventually makes her way over to Eduard, who has just finished placing his sheets down and covering them with his blanket from his room. He’s digging in his bag for something as she walks up.
He looks up at her, still rummaging through his backpack. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Becca says a little too quickly, glad she has her mask on to cover her blushing face. “Um… where should I set my stuff?”
Eduard looks at her for a moment longer and shrugs. “Right there if you want.”
She nods slightly, feeling awkward. “You wouldn’t mind?”
Eduard shakes his head. "Go ahead."
She nods and kneels down to set her stuff on the leaves. The zipper seems to echo off the bark of the trees as Becca moves it down the top of the bag. She almost wishes it were silent, considering Mikey could be right about the animals.
She looks through the open part and down at the black box with the letters on top.
“What’s that?” She hears Eduard ask.
Becca jumps and closes the backpack really fast, afraid to see what would happen if he knew what was concealed inside that box.
“Nothing,” she says, again too quickly.
Becca pulls out everything from her bag and pushes the box down to where her broken, melted, bloody mask lies. She copies Eduard with how she makes her bed and sits on top of the blanket, touching the cool zippers of the backpack while the thoughts of the gun antagonize her. What if she needs it? Will she need it while she’s out here? Will an animal attack her?
“Hm.”
Becca looks up to see Eduard looking at her closely. His mask is off and his eyes are full of thought and his face is filled with concern.
“What?” She asks, suddenly embarrassed. “Is there something on my mask?”
A small smile appears on the left side of his mouth, but it’s gone almost as soon as it appears.
“Take off your mask,” he says hypnotically.
Becca’s hands fly to her face. “Why?”
“Because. You don’t want it on.”
Becca knows he’s right, but she’s just so afraid…
Why be afraid when you have nothing else to lose? She thinks to herself.
“But I—”
“Here,” he says, scooting over to her and reaching up for the knot behind her head. Becca’s heart flutters and her hands press lightly against the cool material of the mask so that it doesn’t immediately fall to the ground.
She feels the ribbons go slack and dangle around her face as the knot comes untied. She slowly moves the mask from her face and takes a deep breath of air, the cool feeling of something missing becoming more and more familiar to her skin.
“There,” Eduard smiles. “Beautiful.”
She looks at him suddenly, something moving inside of her that she thought she’d never feel. Could it be the thing called love? The thing talked about so much but never really felt inside of the city? She believes her parents were in love, but they never saw each other’s faces. They never had the chance to know each other before getting married, before having her. Not like this.
Could this be it?
Becca looks away as Nixon calls Eduard over to talk to him. Becca’s face is on fire as she looks down at the mask she holds, the one that gives her a whole different personality and name.
Her eyes move back to Eduard, who stands above Nixon in the shattered moonlight that filters through the leaves above. She’s not even sure if love is a real thing, or how it’s possible she could feel this way quite suddenly…
He turns back towards Becca, heading towards his sheets, and she jumps, afraid he’d seen her staring. She places the mask beside her pillow and starts to put her legs underneath the comforter. Eduard moves his sheet back too and slips underneath them, placing his head on his own pillow.
What if these feeling aren’t sudden? What if she’s felt this way since the day she met him, since the day he was banished from the Light Clan? What if that’s why she remembered him after all of these years?
Don’t be silly, she tells herself as she looks at him. The only thing she felt towards him was pure shock and sadness when Quill sent him to the Dark Clan. And then a bit of curiosity when he had been writing in that journal…
“Hey, Eduard?” She finds herself asking.
“Yeah?” He asks, looking over his shoulder at her.
She swallows nervously. “What is it that you wrote in your journal that day we had that assembly?”
He pauses.
“I wrote—”
A growl cuts off his words. Becca’s blood runs cold as she turns around, coming face-to-face to an animal that could rip her to shreds.
