Crossed

CHAPTER 39 KY

I see Cassia first, and then Hunter behind her, and I know I’ve lost. Even if the map burns, Hunter can tell her where to find the Rising.

She snatches the map from me and throws it to the ground, stomping on it to put out the flames. The edges crumple into fragments of black ash but most of the map is saved.

She’s going to the Rising.

“You were going to keep this from me,” Cassia says. “If Hunter hadn’t come back, I would never have known how to find the rebellion.”

I don’t answer. There’s nothing to say.

“What else are you hiding?” Cassia asks me, her voice breaking. She picks up the map and holds it in her hands. Carefully. The way she used to hold poetry on the Hill. “You lied about Xander’s secret, didn’t you? What is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not mine to tell,” I say. “It’s his.” It’s not just selfishness that keeps me from telling Cassia Xander’s secret. I know he wanted to tell her himself. I owe him that. He knew my secret — my status as an Aberration — and he never told anyone. Not even Cassia.

This isn’t a game. He’s not my opponent and Cassia’s not a prize.

“But this, on here,” Cassia says, looking at the map, “is a choice. You were going to get rid of my — our — chance to choose.”

The air in the house smells acrid and bitter from the burning cloth. I see with a chill that Cassia looks at me as a sorter would. Sifting facts. Calculating. Making a call. I know what she sees — the boy on the screen with the Society’s list scrolling up next to him. Not the one who stood with her on the Hill or the one who held her in the dark of the canyon with the moon above.

“Where’s Indie?” she asks.

“She went outside,” I say.

“I’ll find her,” Hunter says, and he disappears through the door and Cassia and I are alone.

“Ky,” she says, “this is the Rising.” A trace of excitement comes into her voice. “Don’t you want to be a part of something that could change everything?”

“No,” I say, and she steps back as if I’ve struck her physically.

“But we can’t run forever,” Cassia says.

“I’ve spent years holding still,” I say. “What do you think I was doing back in the Society?” Then my words come out in a rush and I can’t seem to stop. “You’re in love with the idea of the Rising, Cassia. But you don’t actually know what it is. You don’t know what it’s like to try to rebel and see everyone die around you. You don’t know.”

“You hate the Society,” Cassia says. Still trying to do the math, make the numbers add up. “But you don’t want to be part of the Rising.”

“I don’t trust the Society, and I don’t trust rebellions,” I say. “I don’t choose either of them. I’ve seen what they both can do.”

“Then what else is there?” she asks.

“We could join the farmers,” I say.

But I don’t think she even hears me.

“Tell me why,” she says. “Why would you want to lie to me? Why would you take a choice from me?”

Her gaze has softened and she’s looking at me as Ky again — the person she loves — and somehow that’s even worse. All the reasons I lied run through my head: because I can’t lose you, because I was jealous, because I don’t trust anyone, because I can’t even trust myself, because, because, because.

“You know why,” I say, anger flaring in me suddenly. At everything. Everyone. The Society, the Rising, my father, myself, Indie, Xander, Cassia.

“No, I don’t,” she begins, but I don’t let her finish.

“Fear,” I say, holding her gaze. “We were both afraid. I was afraid of losing you. You were afraid, back in the Borough. When you took my choice away from me.”

She steps back. I see it on her face that she knows what I’m talking about. She hasn’t forgotten it either.

Suddenly I’m back in that hot, shiny room with red hands and a blue uniform. Sweat runs down my back. I’m humiliated. I don’t want her to see me work. I wish that I could look up to catch a flash of her green eyes and let her know that I am still Ky. Not just another number.

“You sorted me,” I say.

“What else could I do?” she whispers. “They were watching.”

We’ve talked this through on the Hill but it seems different down in the canyons. It feels clear to me here that I will never reach her.

“I tried to fix it,” she says. “I came all this way to find you.”

“To find me, or to find the Rising?” I ask.

“Ky,” she says. And stops.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Cassia. “This is the one thing I can’t do for you. I can’t join the Rising.”

I’ve said it.

Her face looks pale in the darkness of the abandoned house. Somewhere above us the sky seeps rain and I think of snow falling. Pictures painted with water. Poetry breathed between kisses. Too beautiful to last.