She grins. "Only a favor." She reaches over and flips the light off over the sink. "The Network has something they'd like you to do."
A favor. I had almost forgotten. I owe a lot of them. I hang the pot on a hook over the stove and lay the towel on the counter. "And what happens to me if I don't do it? Do they break my legs?"
She sighs, the dim light from the hallway illuminating the side of her face. "A lot has changed, Locke, but not everything. A favor is still a favor. You choose to give it or not. That's how the Network works. No one is going to force you to do anything."
"But?"
"But nothing. There's a Non-pact who needs help back in Boston. The Network thinks you have some special abilities that could do the job."
Boston. I lean back against the kitchen counter. I remember how I felt when I stopped the cheating baker and helped the Non-pact. Power. It's a mighty drug. And so is justice. It can consume you if you aren't careful. It's a dangerous path to navigate.
"You're considering?"
I look back at her. I can't imagine not being with Jenna. Walking in the woods. Talking. All those years I never dreamed I would see her again.
"I can't leave." I step closer. We've danced around this for weeks. I can't dance any longer. I put my hands on her shoulders. "What about you? What I really mean is, what about us? Jenna..." I lower my head, but just before my lips meet hers, she turns away. I grab her chin and turn her face back to me. "Jenna, you know how I feel about you."
She shakes her head and pulls away. "Locke, it just isn't right."
"How can it not be right--"
"Just because someone looks the same on the outside, it doesn't mean the inside hasn't changed. I may look like the Jenna you knew so long ago, but I'm lifetimes from that girl. I'm two hundred and seventy-seven years old now."
"And what do you think I am?"
"It's not the same."
She starts to walk away. I put my hand up against the wall to block her. "Says you. You have no idea what it was like spending two hundred sixty years trapped in a box."
"You're right. I don't. But I know it wasn't living. It was only existing." Her words grow softer and slower. "Locke, you need to experience the world on your own terms. You deserve the chance to live a life."
There is distance in her voice, like she is already pushing me away. My chest tightens. "I'm not the sixteen-year-old boy you used to know, Jenna! The past two hundred sixty years have changed me too! This last year has changed me!"
"Then tell me, Locke! What are you? A boy? A man? Something else?"
I stare at her. Her chin is lifted, almost mocking, waiting for me to answer. My hand slides away from the wall. "I don't know."
"And that's what you need to find out," she whispers.
We stand there, silent seconds ticking past us.
"I'll still be here in ten or twenty years, if you want to come back," she says. "But I can't take this away from you. You've already lost too much."
Words stick in my throat. I'm losing everything at once.
"Father Andre needs to know by the end of the week. Think about it. Let me know." She leaves to go to bed.
I go to my room, but I lie awake the whole night, staring at the ceiling. It doesn't matter that my room is dark--I see every dimple, every uneven plane, every hairline crack that travels across the plaster and vanishes into nowhere.
She's willing to let me go. She almost made it sound like a sacrifice. I can't take this away from you. Does she see something in me that I can't see myself? That there are only so many trenches to dig, so many rock walls to build, so many chairs I can throw against walls? She has lived three lifetimes. I haven't lived one.
You deserve the chance to live a life.
I can't imagine a life without Jenna, but I can't deny that when she said Boston, something inside me jumped. Home. A place where some remnant of my life might still exist, or if nothing exists, maybe it's a chance to move on. You need to experience the world on your own terms. That's what Kara and Jenna and I had just started to do when we were cut short. I had only a small taste, and Kara and Jenna are what made it happen. They made me braver. How can I do it without them?
My eyes travel over the hairline cracks again and again, like I'm following the lines of a map. They all lead me back to Boston. Someone needs help. A favor. The choice is mine. But it's more than just a favor. It's a purpose. Not my parents' purpose, or Gatsbro's, or even Kara's. It's a purpose that makes sense to me, and it is my own to choose--or not. It would be safer, maybe even wisest, just to say no, but then I think about Bone, the other Non-pacts, Kara, Bots like Dot who become something more--they're all the same. All nonpersons, like me. Change doesn't happen overnight--it's molded by people who don't give up.
I roll over on my side and face the dresser. My pack rests on top. Change may not happen overnight, but I can't wait ninety years for it to come to me. I kick back my blankets and wrestle with the sheets that have become tangled around my legs, and just before dawn, I finally fall asleep.