The TV set turned off with a hiss of static. Footsteps.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes,” I whispered. My throat felt sore, my tongue swollen.
The bed dipped as Clancy sat down beside me. I tried not to wince.
“What happened?” I asked. The sound of the voices below grew louder, getting trapped between my ears.
“You passed out,” he said. “I didn’t realize…I shouldn’t have pushed so hard.”
I raised myself up on my elbows in a vain attempt to pull away from his touch. My eyes were fixated on his lips, the white teeth gleaming behind them. Had I imagined it, or had he—?
My stomach clenched. “Did you find anything out? Did it prove your theory?”
Clancy sat back, his face unreadable. “No.” He stood again and began to pace between the window and the white curtain. I caught a glimpse of the other side of the room, and was unsurprised to find that it was awash in the blue light of the open laptop.
“No, see, I’ve been going over this again and again in my head,” Clancy said. “I thought maybe you erased their memories intentionally because you were angry or upset, but you didn’t go all out and erase their entire memories, just…you. And again, with that girl Samantha. Samantha Dahl, age seventeen, from Bethesda, Maryland. Parents Ashley and Todd. Green, photographic memory…” His voice trailed off. “I’ve been thinking around and around and around in circles, trying to understand how you do this, but walking through your memories doesn’t tell me what’s going on inside of your head. No cause, only effect.”
I wondered if he even realized he was rambling, or that I had managed to get myself off the bed, with my only thought to get the hell out of that room and away from him. The pain came back to me in pieces.
What did he do to me? I brought a hand to my forehead. My head ached like all the other times he had been inside of it, but the pain was sharper. He hadn’t just looked in, he had made me want him—made me want to kiss him.
Hadn’t he?
“It’s late,” I said, interrupting him. “I need to…I need to go find the others.…”
Clancy turned his back on me. “Find Liam Stewart, you mean.”
“Yes, Lee,” I said, taking a few slow steps back toward the door. “I was supposed to meet him. He’s going to be worried.” The white curtain caught in my hair as I passed it.
Clancy shook his head. “What do you even know about him, Ruby? You’ve known him for, what, a month? A month and a half? Why are you wasting your time with him? He’s a Blue, and not only that, but he—he had a record, even before camp. Even before he killed all of those kids. A hundred and forty-eight. Over half of their camp! So you can cut all of your bullshit and hero worship, because he doesn’t deserve it. You’re too valuable to be screwing around with him.”
He whirled around just as my hand touched the door, and slammed it shut.
“What is your problem?” I yelled. “So what if he’s a Blue? Aren’t you the one that keeps going on about how we’re all Black and how we should respect each other?”
The smile that curled his lips was as arrogant as it was beautiful.
“You need to accept the fact that you’re Orange and that you’re always going to be alone because of it.” A measure of calm had returned to Clancy’s voice. His nostrils flared when I tried to turn the door handle again. He slammed both hands against it to keep me from going anywhere, towering over me.
“I saw what you want,” Clancy said. “And it’s not your parents. It’s not even your friends. What you want is to be with him, like you were in the cabin yesterday, or in that car in the woods. I don’t want to lose you, you said. Is he really that important?”
Rage boiled up from my stomach, burning my throat. “How dare you? You said you wouldn’t—you said—”
He let out a bark of laughter. “God, you’re naive. I guess this explains how that League woman was able to trick you into thinking you were something less than a monster.”
“You said you would help me,” I whispered.
He rolled his eyes. “All right, are you ready for the last lesson? Ruby Elizabeth Daly, you are alone and you always will be. If you weren’t so stupid, you would have figured it out by now, but since it’s beyond you, let me spell it out: You will never be able to control your abilities. You will never be able to avoid being pulled into someone’s head, because there’s some part of you that doesn’t want to know how to control them. No, not when it would mean having to embrace them. You’re too immature and weak-hearted to use them the way they’re meant to be used. You’re scared of what that would make you.”
I looked away.
“Ruby, don’t you get it? You hate what you are, but you were given these abilities for a reason. We both were. It’s our right to use them—we have to use them to stay ahead, to keep the others in their place.”
His finger caught the stretched-out collar of my shirt and gave it a tug.
“Stop it.” I was proud of how steady my voice was.
As Clancy leaned in, he slipped a hazy image beneath my closed eyes—the two of us just before he walked into my memories. My stomach knotted as I watched my eyes open in terror, his lips pressed against mine.
“I’m so glad we found each other,” he said, voice oddly calm. “You can help me. I thought I knew everything, but you…”
My elbow flew up and clipped him under the chin. Clancy stumbled back with a howl of pain, pressing both hands to his face. I had half a second to get the hell out, and I took it, twisting the handle of the door so hard that the lock popped itself out.
“Ruby! Wait, I didn’t mean—!”
A face appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Lizzie. I saw her lips part in surprise, her many earrings jangling as I shoved past her.
“Just an argument,” I heard Clancy say, weakly. “It’s fine, just let her go.”
I burst outside, completely out of breath. My feet were drawn toward the fire pit, but I forced myself to stop and reconsider. There were so many people still out, gathered around the food tables. I wanted to find Liam and explain why I hadn’t been there, to tell him what had happened, but I knew I was a mess. I needed to calm down, and there was no way I could do it here. There were too many potential questions. I needed to be alone.