The Color of Rain

by Cori McCarthy

  “I thought he’d be out of it all day. He’s been out of it for full days lately.”

  “He’s getting to the end fast, Rain. You can’t hide him from the cops forever.”

  I glare up at the starships. “I should have done it. All that money . . .”

  “Hallisy said you were late. Why?” Lo knows me too well. “Rain, you didn’t . . . not Simon! Didn’t we talk about this?”

  “It was stupid.”

  “Yep,” she agrees. “He’s the wrong sort of boy for anyone to love, let alone you. He’s got just enough coin to make it to tonight.”

  “I don’t love him. I just liked him . . . a lot. And I wasn’t thinking about his pockets.”

  “You were thinking about the way he always flirted with you and made you feel like you weren’t on the most forgotten planet in the universe.”

  “Little good it did. You were right about him.”

  She nudges me with her foot. “Wish I wasn’t, Rain. Really.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re far wiser than me.”

  “Only when it comes to the opposite sex.” Lo crosses her thin legs beneath her and sifts through a pile of coins from the previous night’s work. She sells herself cheap these days, and the more she sells herself, the cheaper she gets. Walker wanders through the missing door, and she leans out to watch him round the side of the ship. “He’s just staring off into nowhere.”

  “Tell me if he moves.” I dig out Hallisy’s ten-credit note and hold it out to her. “For looking after him.”

  She shakes her head. “Did a zero job, didn’t I? Besides, I was the one who said Hallisy would be fine and that one is clearly not fine. And how’re you supposed to save up enough to jump planet if you give away what you earn?”

  Earn. I remember Hallisy sucking on my collarbone and crumple the note in my fist.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll find another. With your looks and clean record, someone will spill their banks to have you. You just got to find the right guy with the right offer.”

  I shove the wadded money in my pocket. “Walker’s only got a few months before he slips away for good. Maybe less.” I try to see around Lo. “What’s he doing?”

  “Told you, he’s just staring.” Lo shines her biggest coin on the edge of her skirt. “You know I love you gingers like my adopted family, but you’re blind to the facts. He’s a goner. If you wanted to jump planet, live your dreams, I’d take care of him here and—”

  “If I get him to the Edge, the Mecs could cure him.”

  She sits up. “You don’t know that freak Mecs could sort him. And I still think they eat their dead’s brains. It’s what gives them freak intelligence.” I don’t have to tell her that she’s being ridiculous; my grimace says it all. “Well, you do only know rumors about a cure. So, don’t go putting store in stories.” She pauses to grin. “Hey, that sounded clever, didn’t it?”

  Lo makes me smile, but even rumors have hope if you let them. And hope isn’t something that I’m ready to trade in. Not yet. Not ever. Just the thought of that distant planet—a technological paradise, people say—is enough to keep me going.

  “We’re getting out of here, Lo. I won’t lose him like I lost the rest of my family.”

  Lo sighs. “Okay, Rain. If that’s what you want, I’ll say . . . okay.”

  I give her a smile, but it fades fast. “You don’t think Hallisy will call the cops on Walker, do you?”

  “Nah, he’ll want another shot, and he won’t have it if he gets the kid hauled away with the rest of the nutsos.” Her shoulders sag. “Sorry, I’m a tad nasty today.”

  “Only today?” I tease. Most people, like Simon, wouldn’t give Lo a second thought. Her body has that worn-through look that doesn’t match her twenty years, and she drowns herself in drink a little too often. But she’s real. And she found me on this very pier when I was on the edge of jumping into the rocks and waves with Walker. She was like an angel. An angel in pink spandex.

  Lo pulls a rolled-up scrap of paper from her cleavage, gazing at a photo of her mom. Lo spent years trying to hide her from the cops, but then one day, the Touched woman wandered out of their apartment and was never seen again.

  At least I got to say good-bye before they took my mother.

  “What are you thinking about? You’re looking weird,” Lo says.

  “Just when I met you out here. When I first saw you. I bet you thought I was nuts.”

  “I’d seen you lots before. Did I never tell you that?” She had, but I want to hear it again. “You used to come out here with that whole lot of a family. And I used to watch you with your dad and your brothers. Looking at stuff in the surf. Pointing out trash.”

  “Fish,” I correct. “My dad gave us biology lessons. He was always trying to get us to look at things, but my brothers and me just wound up looking at the starships. We used to pretend to be Runners. Even Jeremy did, until he got old and cranky.”

  “Yeah, well, I ain’t never seen something like your matching-head family. All together and looking like you loved each other. You just don’t see that. Not on Earth City, anyway.”

  “Yeah.” The memory fractures into little, lost pieces, just like my family. My mom and Jeremy taken. My dad murdered. Walker and me, the last of the Whites.

  “You know what?” She scoots forward, her gray eyes growing sharp. “A guy I banged last week heard some space Runners say that the Touched are sold off planet and sacrificed to some kind of Void god. A black hole or something.”

  “Don’t be gullible. There’s no such thing.”

  “They go somewhere, don’t they? And it’s not to an asylum in the south or whatever the cops say.” She pokes her photo back into her cleavage. “Don’t get itchy. I’m just saying.”

  But I am itchy, and I have been since that girl almost fell on us all those weeks ago. I slip off the command panel, fixing the torn part of my shirt toward the back. I’d rather think about being in that alley with Hallisy than the whereabouts of thousands of missing Touched people, my mother and older brother among them. “I can’t worry about what happens to the rest, Lo. I’ve got my hands full with just the one,” I say. “Speaking of, what’s he doing?”

  “He’s fine.” She leans out the window. “Wait, I take that back. He’s made a run for it.”

  I sprint from the ship, almost losing my footing on the pier’s loose boards. I scan the walkway, but Walker isn’t where I thought he’d be.

  He’s dangling over the edge.

  A man in a black suit holds his small body by his jacket while his feet jerk in the air. I run faster, screaming, “STOP! Don’t hurt him!” I yank his arms, bringing my brother’s struggling torso against mine.

  “The boy was trying to jump. I stopped him,” the man says. He’s lean and striking, and his flinty eyes examine me chest to face. Face to feet.

  “Well, I’ve got him now, and I’d thank you if it weren’t for the blatant ogle.” I pin Walker’s squirming wrists in my hand. “You can go your way.”

  “He’s Touched.”

  “He’s my brother!” I wrestle Walker farther from the edge. “And he still has lucid periods, so if you were going to call him in, you can save your breath.”

  The man’s laugh is slick. “I don’t bother with this earth’s laws.”

  This earth?

  Walker twists free, sprinting toward the ship where Lo tackles him. I turn back to the man and pull at the windblown hair crisscrossing my cheek. He’s younger than I thought. Simon’s age—and with the same sort of wave to his hair. But he’s better looking than Simon by far.

  “You’re a Void traveler?” I force my stare away from the spot where his throat slides beneath the unbuttoned V of his collar. “You’re a Runner?”

  “Yes.” He picks at a curl on my forehead, and I’m mesmerized enough to let him. “And you’re a redhead. A true red.”

  His fingers skim my bare shoulder, and I lean away. The rip in my shirt was tossed to the front when I dashed to Walker and no
w reveals more side-cleavage than I thought possible.

  I straighten it. “You’ve never seen a redhead before?”

  “Natural red is considered extinct in the known universe.” The slightest scowl twists his lips. “It’s less of a flame color than I imagined . . . more of a perfect rust. No one’s told you that before?”

  “Extinct? I’ve never heard that one before, but I don’t know many Runners.” I fold my arms over my chest to keep them from twitching through my hair. “Not many of you wandering these parts of Earth City.” We glance around at the rundown pier and the horizon of chipped skyscrapers as though we’re sharing a thought. What is he doing here?

  “True,” he says. “I’m a little lost. Maybe you can help me.” His hand slips into his pocket, bringing his jacket away from his trim waist. I wish that the move didn’t make me glance at his belt . . . and a little lower. But it does.

  “Do you know the Blackstar Bar?”

  “Huh?” I’m too distracted by the warm color of his skin to follow. “Wait, how can you live in the black of space and have more color than me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I just meant—” I feel heat in my cheeks and speak fast. “I don’t have a door between my brain and my teeth, at least that’s what my dad used to say. Everything just kinda falls out.”

  His smile is the open kind, revealing rows of polished teeth. “What’s your name?”

  “Rain. . . . Who are you?”

  “I let my friends call me Johnny.”

  “Johnny.” The name slips from my tongue to my thoughts and back again before I remember the original question. “Well, the Blackstar is up on Trade Runners Row.” I point to the street beyond the pier. “That way about three blocks, but don’t pass through the alley with the wire mesh. That’s where the Bashers set up camp, and you’d be a rich surprise. And keep clear of the girls on the corner of Downer and Glam Streets. They’re not prostitutes; they’re bait, if you catch my meaning.”

  His eyes are on me intensely. “Why don’t you show me? I’ll buy you a drink and tell you about my skin.”

  For a second, he’s so tempting that I almost forget where I am. Simon could do that to me, too—make me forget everything—and that embarrassment is still fresh enough to sting.

  “I have to take care of my brother. And if you’re looking for a date, I’m not interes—” I stop and take a leveling breath as I reassess him. A Void traveler. “I’m not cheap.”

  “I wouldn’t guess so,” he says without missing a step. The darkness of his eyes reveals a deep brown, and I swear he’s suppressing a pleased smile. “And I bet you’re just desperate to jump planet.”

  I fight to hold my shirt together as the wind picks up. “How do you . . .”

  “You’re not the only one who can throw the truth out there. Besides, everyone on Earth City would love to leave, wouldn’t they?” He brings a stone-handled knife from his pocket and snaps it open. In a flash, he’s cut tabs in my ripped shirt and ties the pieces together. He flips the knife closed and returns it to his pocket. “Better?”

  I adjust the now mended neck of my shirt but can’t keep the question out of my voice. “Thanks?”

  He points above himself to the starships in the sky. “Rain, that is my ship, Imreas. I take passengers of all sorts. Think it over and bring your deal to me by tomorrow.”

  “My deal? What kind of deal?”

  His lips twitch with a frown. “Whatever you have for whatever you need. You’ll find that I’m open to all sorts of worthwhile trades.” He lifts his sleeve and glances at a strange silver communicator on his wrist. The metal gleams like a shining mirror. “But now I’m late. I hope to see you before tomorrow. Remember, the Blackstar Bar.”

  I find myself nodding. I’ve dragged a drunken Lo out of that seedy joint more than a few times.

  “And Rain.” He says my name like he’s already paid for it. “Remember, I have whatever you need.”

  I open my mouth, but he’s turned, his black outfit cutting against the pale cityscape. I glance at the ship he pointed to; it’s shaped like the head of an arrow with three of the largest blue thrusters that I’ve ever seen. A fast ship, no doubt, but his ship?

  “Who was that tasty tower?” Lo tugs Walker along behind her by the front of his jacket.

  “He said”—my tongue feels thick as I watch Johnny turn a corner and disappear—“he’s a Void captain.”

  “No shit,” Lo swears. “Wouldn’t that be freakin’ sweet!”

  I wet my lips. “I think he made me a kind of offer. He said, ‘I have whatever you need.’”

  “Screw Hallisy”—she says with a laugh—“that’s the right guy for you.”

  I glance over my brother’s vacant face. “I don’t know, Lo. A young, rich guy like that doesn’t need to bargain for a girl, does he? And how would he have his own ship?” I finger the knotted tabs of my shirt, the proof that he was just here. That he chose to touch me. “People don’t just run into you and happen to offer what you’ve been dreaming about.”

  “Rich people do. They can have anything.” The wind picks up, and Lo and I grip each other’s shoulders while Walker stands immobile. “Don’t overthink this one, Rain. Work what you want from him.” Her voice is twisted high with emotion, and the sudden thought that she will miss me, should I escape, makes me cold.

  I slip off Walker’s too-big jacket—Jeremy’s old bomber—and pull it on. Then I tuck my brother against me and fold the material over him as well. Lo is right. Can I really afford to doubt whether I should bargain with a Void captain? A sexy Void captain, no less . . . even if he was a little . . . off?

  “Lo, he looked at me like he’d already bought me.”

  “They all do that.” She licks her chapped lips. “Besides, what if you were being tricked into something? Isn’t any trick worth jumping planet?”

  CHAPTER

  3

  The rain is acidic on Earth City. It appears without warning, without lightning, biting into the skin on my forehead and leaving the backs of my hands itching and red. I lead Walker through it, trying to get him home before he goes completely catatonic.

  All the while, Lo’s words circle through me: Isn’t any trick worth jumping planet?

  I steer Walker around the spot on the square where that Touched girl almost fell on us, her blood halo already bleached into a pale stain by the rain. She was the exploding sun that made me see Walker’s headaches for what they really were: the first symptom of the disease. Somehow I had deluded myself into believing that it couldn’t happen to us because we were all we had left.

  I turn a corner and, like a thunderclap, run into the angry block letters on the streets’ endless graffiti of water-damaged billpostings.

  KNOW THE TOUCHED!

  Symptoms:

  1. HEADACHES

  2. SHAKES

  3. MENTAL FOG

  If you see an afflicted, call 999. Abettors are criminals.

  Do not sorrow. Fear the infection.

  My dad used to scribble the word “feel” between the “DO NOT” and “SORROW.” If they’re going to tell us how to think, they might as well use words we understand, he’d say. This always made my brothers and me laugh, but looking back, I’m not sure why.

  Still, I shouldn’t have missed Walker’s first symptom. We were working at Dex’s then, making enough money to fill our bellies, and I thought he was just not used to the long hours. Had it come on the same way for my mom? I couldn’t say. I was barely seven when the cops came for her, Walker clinging to my knee, and all I remembered was that when I tried to hug her good-bye, her eyes were empty.

  But I’ll never forget when they came for Jeremy.

  He wasn’t afflicted but had been caught hiding a Touched man in the basement of our apartment building. I was twelve then. Old enough to do something when they locked him in a belted jacket and hauled him away. Old enough to do something when my dad threw himself at the cops and they beat him to death in our stairw
ell—the sounds echoing up the flights. Crashing, screams, and pounding.

  Echoing, still.

  Still.

  I tighten my hold on the back of my little brother’s neck and rush past a crowd of sketchy men who yell slimy words.

  That night in the stairwell, Walker became my only family, and like hell will I give him up. There’s always hope. There’s always some chance. To forget that is to become one of the factory worker drones, and I won’t bow to that life.

  My dad didn’t lose hope when my mom became sick. He read poetry to her, and he held on long after she was taken, working wicked nightshifts and then still staying up all day to take us on history walks through what he called old Manhattan.

  “Dad would be doing exactly what we’re doing. He’d get you to the Edge, to your cure, Walker,” I whisper. My dad was the one who told me about the Edge, that settlement on the other side of the known universe. And he told me about Mecs, the evolved people who live there. I remember the shining silver communicator on Johnny the Runner’s wrist. What I wouldn’t give to touch it . . . to know how and where he got it. . . .

  The Blackstar Bar is several blocks away, and getting farther with each step, but I have to see Walker home and settled first. And then, I will go to Johnny. But what will I say?

  I lead Walker around a corner—and right into a trap.

  “No moving, missy,” a squat woman says. She’s the same one with the hook through her ear from earlier. Two muscle-backed men creep to surround me on either side.

  I was right: reward chasers.

  “No fussing, missy. It’s got to go before it infects the rest.”

  It. She means Walker.

  I force my hand between my brother’s stiff fingers, my pulse pounding against my ears. The men get closer. They’re going to take him for the reward, and then Walker will disappear forever like the rest of the Touched.

  No way.

  I bring my brother’s thumb from between our clenched hands and wrench it back. His body stiffens with pain, but I pull harder and harder until the tendons are about to snap. Finally, my brother’s body shakes like a chill is rippling through him, but then he lifts his head. He arches his neck and then launches it forward, shooting a huge glob of saliva right into the woman’s eye. She yowls.