The Unbound

ELEVEN

I TAKE A LONG, cold shower.

Wesley’s touch lingers on my skin. His music echoes through my head. I remind myself as I scrub my skin that we are both liars and con artists. That we will always have secrets, some that bind us and some that cut between us, slicing us into pieces. That we will never see each other whole…until we become Crew. But I don’t know if I want to be Crew with Wesley. I don’t know if I’m willing to let him see all the pieces.

I try to put his promise from my mind. It doesn’t matter right now. A world stands between me and Crew: a world of nightmares and trauma and Agatha. How do I tell Wesley that I might not make it to the ceremony, let alone the naming? Crew are selected. They are assessed. They are found fit.

If Agatha got her hands on my mind right now, I would never be found fit. Which means I need to keep her from getting her hands on me until I find a way to fix whatever’s happening.

I have to hope there is a way to fix it.

A way that doesn’t involve letting the Archive inside my head to cut out memories. If I let them in, they’ll see the damage Owen did. The damage he continues to do.

I snap the water off and begin to get dressed. The lockers have emptied out by now, but as I slip the key back over my head, shivering a little when the metal comes to rest against my sternum, Safia rounds the corner, focused on the braid she’s weaving with her hair. Until she sees me. Her eyes narrow even more than usual.

“What’s that?” she asks as I pull my shirt on over the key.

“A key,” I say as casually as I can.

“Obviously,” she says, finishing her braid and crossing her arms. “Did he give that to you?”

I frown. “Who?”

“Wesley.” Her voice tightens a fraction when she says his name. “Is it his?”

My hand goes to the metal through my shirt. I could say yes. “No.”

“They look the same,” she presses.

They don’t, actually. Wesley’s is darker and made of a different metal. “It’s just a stupid trinket,” I say. “A good luck charm.” I hold her gaze, waiting to see if she buys it. She doesn’t seem convinced. “I read it in some book when I was a kid. This girl wore a key around her neck, and wherever she went, the doors all opened for her. Maybe Wesley read the same book. Or maybe he kept losing his keys so he put them around his neck. Ask him yourself,” I say, because I can tell she won’t.

Safia shrugs. “Whatever,” she says, tugging on one of her earrings. They look like real gold. “If you guys want to wear ratty old keys, that’s your choice. Try not to get tetanus.” With that, she turns and strolls out.

My stomach growls, and I’m about to follow her when a sliver of metal catches my eye from beneath the bench. I kneel down and find a necklace: a round silver pendant on a simple chain. The pendant has been rubbed so much that the ornate B etched into its front is barely visible. I weigh it in my palm, knowing I should just leave it and hope whoever it belongs to comes looking for it. It’s not my problem. But the level of wear on the pendant suggests that it’s important to someone. It also means there’s a good chance a memory or two has been worn in to it. Object memories are fickle—the smaller the object, the harder for memories to stick—but they’re usually imprinted by either repetition or strong emotion, and this kind of token sees a fair amount of both. It can’t hurt to look.

I glance around the locker room, making sure I’m alone before I pocket my ring. Instantly, the air in the room changes—doesn’t thicken or thin, exactly, but shifts—my senses sharpening without the metal buffer. Curling my fingers over the pendant, I can feel the subtle hum of memories tickling my palm, and I close my eyes and reach—not with my skin, but with the thing beneath it. My hand goes numb as I catch hold of the thread, and the darkness behind my eyes dissolves into light and shadow and, finally, into memory.

A girl—tall, thin, blond, classically pretty—sits in a parked car in the dark, face wet from crying, with one hand wrapped, knuckles tight, on the wheel and the other clutching the pendant at her throat. As I roll time back, the memory skips from the car to a marble kitchen counter. This time, the girl is on one side of the counter clutching her pendant, and a woman old enough to be her mother is on the other, gripping a wineglass. I let the memory roll forward, and a moment later the girl shouts something—her words nothing more than static—and the woman pitches the wineglass at the girl’s head. The girl cuts to the side and the glass strikes the cabinet behind her and shatters, and I swear I can feel the anger and the hurt and the sadness worn into the surface of the pendant.

I’m about to rewind further when the sharp slam of the locker room door causes me to drop the thread. I blink, pulling myself out of the past just as Amber rounds the corner. I frown and straighten, slipping the necklace into my shirt pocket and sliding my ring back on as she says, “There you are! We were beginning to wonder if you’d snuck out a back door.”

And before I can ask who we is, she leads me out into the lobby, where Wes and Cash and Gavin are waiting.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize anyone was waiting for me.”

“Wouldn’t be much of an ambassador—” starts Cash, but Wes cuts in.

“Thought you should probably know where they keep the food.”

“The pizza yesterday was my treat,” adds Amber. “First day tradition. But the rest of the time we have to make do.”

Gavin chuckles, and a few minutes later, once they’ve ushered me across the lawn to the cafeteria—or the dining hall, as Hyde prefers to call it—I understand why.

“Make do”? Hyde has one of the most extensive kitchens I’ve ever seen. Five stations, each with a course—each course with a regular, healthy, vegetarian, and vegan option. Appetizer through dessert, and a station dedicated to drinks. The only major failing, I realize as another yawn escapes, is the lack of soda. The lack, in fact, of anything caffeinated. My body’s beginning to slow, and as I load up my tray I can only hope there’s some kind of black market caffeine business happening on campus. I ask Cash as much while we’re waiting to check out.

“Alas,” he says, “Hyde School is technically caffeine-free.”

“What about the coffees you brought yesterday?”

“Swiped them from the teacher’s lounge. Don’t tell.”

Looks like I’m on my own. It’s not so bad, I tell myself. I’ll be fine. I just need to eat something. And eating helps, for a little while, but half an hour later, when our trays are stacked on the Alchemist’s outstretched arms and I’m wading through a chapter of precalc, Owen’s voice begins to whisper in my head. It hums. The song reaches up from the back of my mind, out of my nightmares and into my day, wrapping its arms around me in an effort to drag me down into the dark. I close my eyes to clear it, but my head feels heavy, Owen’s voice twisting the melody into words and—

“Is that today’s homework?”

My head snaps up, and I find Gavin taking a seat on the step above me. I look down at the open math book in my lap and nod.

“I take it that’s not,” I say, gesturing to the book in his hands.

He shrugs. “You learn to work ahead here whenever you can. Because at some point, you’ll invariably fall behind.”

I hold up my own work. “Does that point usually come in the first week?”

He laughs. It’s a quiet, gentle laugh, not much more than an exhale, but it brightens his face. He pushes the glasses up his nose, and my chest tightens when I see a set of numbers drawn in Sharpie on the back of his hand. It’s such a stupid little thing, but it makes me think of Ben. Ben who drew a stick figure on my hand when I dropped him off at the corner near his school the day he died, who let me draw a stick-figure me on his hand to match before I let him go.

So many students make notes on their skin; so few of them look like my brother. “Mackenzie,” says Gavin, articulating each syllable.

“Yeah?”

“It’s not a big deal or anything, but you’re kind of staring at me.”

My gaze drops down to my work. “Sorry. You just remind me of someone.”

He cracks open his book and takes the pen from behind his ear. “Well, I hope it’s someone nice.”

Ben takes shape behind my eyes—not the way he was before he died, but the way he was the night I brought him back, the night Carmen opened his drawer and I woke him from his sleep. I see his warm brown eyes turning black as he slips, see him shoving me away with the strength not of a boy, but of a History. I see him crumple to the floor, a gold Archive key gleaming from his back, before Roland returns his small body to its shelf. I see the drawer closing and me on my knees, begging Roland to stop, but it’s too late, and the bright red Restricted bar paints itself across the drawer’s face before the wall of the Archive swallows my brother.

The math problems on the page blur a little. Fatigue is catching up with me, weakening my walls. Everything is beginning to ache.

“Mackenzie?” presses Gavin softly. “Is it someone nice?”

And I somehow manage to smile and nod. “Yeah,” I say softly. “It is.”

I can’t breathe.

Owen’s hand is a vise around my throat.

“Hold still,” he says. “You’re making it worse.”

He’s pinning me to the cold ground, one knee on my chest, the other digging into my bad wrist. I’m trying to fight back, but it doesn’t help. It never helps. Not here, not like this, when he’s taking his time.

And he is. He’s carving lines across my body. Ankles to knees, knees to hips, hips to shoulders, shoulders to elbows, elbows to wrists.

“There,” he says, dragging the knife from my elbow down to my wrist. “Now we can see your seams.” If I could breathe, I would scream. My uniform is dark and wet with blood. It shows up red against the black fabric, like paint—splashed across my front, pooling beneath my body.

“Almost done,” he says, lifting the blade to my throat.

And then someone scrapes her chair against the floor and I snap back to English.

Only a few minutes have passed—the teacher’s attention is still on the essay she’s reading aloud—but it was long enough that my hands are trembling and I can taste the blood in my mouth from biting down on my tongue.

At least I didn’t scream, I think as I grip the desk and try to shake the last of the nightmare off. My heart is slamming in my chest. I know it’s not real. Just my imagination—today the role of Mackenzie Bishop’s fears will be played by the History who tried to kill her in a variety of ways. I still spend the rest of the day picturing Roland’s room in the Archive—the daybed with the black blanket, the violin whispering from the wall, the promise of dreamless sleep—and digging my fingernails into my palms to stay awake.

By the time school lets out, there are red crescents across both palms, and I shove through the doors of the building and onto the path, gasping for air. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. I feel like I’m cracking. Everything aches, the pain drawing itself into phantom lines.

Ankles to knees, knees to hips, hips to shoulders, shoulders to elbows, elbows to wrists.

“Hey, Mac!”

I open my eyes to find Wesley a little ways down the path, a sports bag slung over his shoulder. I must not be hiding the frayed nerves well enough, because he frowns. Cash is only a few strides behind him, talking to another senior guy.

“All good?” asks Wes as casually as possible.

“All good,” I call back.

Cash and the other guy catch up. They’re both carrying sports bags.

“Hey, Mac,” Cash says, shifting the bag on his shoulder. “Think you can find your way without me?”

“I think I can manage,” I reply. “The parking lot is that way, right?” I point in the opposite direction of the lot. Cash laughs. Wesley’s eyes are still hovering on me. I flash him a smile, Cash knocks his shoulder, and the three head off toward the fields.

I take a last, steadying breath and head through campus to the front gate and the bike rack. I unlock Dante and swing my leg over the bike, and I’m just about to head home when I see a girl in the lot.

I recognize her. It’s the girl from the pendant I found in the locker room. The one who clutched a steering wheel in a driveway at night sobbing and dodged the glass her mother threw at her head.

She’s a senior—gold stripes—and she’s standing with a group of girls in the lot, leaning up against a convertible and smiling with perfect teeth. Every inch of her has that manicured look that so often comes with money, and it’s hard to line this girl up with the one in the memories, even though I know they’re the same. Finally she waves to the others and strides up onto the sidewalk, walking away from Hyde’s campus.

Before I even realize it, I’m following her. Every step she takes away from Hyde seems to weigh her down, changing her a fraction from the girl in the lot to the girl in the memories. I remember the anger and sadness worn into the pendant, and I will myself to call out. She turns around.

“Sorry,” I say, pedaling up to her, “this is going to sound really random, but is this yours?”

I pull the necklace from my pocket and hold it up. Her eyes widen and she nods.

“Where did you find it?” she asks, reaching out.

“The locker room,” I say, dropping the silver piece into her palm.

Her perfectly plucked eyebrows draw together. “How did you know it was mine?”

Because I read the memories, I think, and you keep bringing your hand to the place where it should be.

“Been asking around all afternoon,” I lie. “One of the seniors in the lot just now said they thought it was yours and pointed me in this direction.”

She looks down at the pendant. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”

“It wasn’t a problem,” I say. “It seemed like something someone would miss.” The girl nods, staring down at the metal. “What’s the B stand for?”

“Bethany,” she says. “I really shouldn’t care so much about it,” she adds. “It’s just a piece of junk. Worthless, really.” But her thumb is already there again, wearing away the front.

“If it matters to you, then it’s not worthless.”

She nods and rubs the pendant absently, and we stand there a moment, awkward and alone on the sidewalk, before I finally say, “Hey…is everything okay?”

She stiffens and stands straighter. I can see her mentally adjusting her mask.

“Of course.” She flashes me a perfect, practiced smile.

Smiling is the worst thing you can do if you want the world to think you’re okay when you’re not. Some people can’t help it—it’s like a tic, a tell—and others do it on purpose, thinking people will buy whatever they’re selling if it comes with a flash of teeth. But the truth is, smiling only makes a lie harder to pass off. It’s like a giant crack in the front of a mask. But I don’t know Bethany, not really, and she doesn’t know what I saw. And since she’s doing a pretty decent impression of a healthy person—much better than mine—I say, “Okay. Just checking.”

I’m about to pedal off when she says, “Wait. I’ve never seen you at Hyde.”

“New student,” I tell her. “Mackenzie Bishop.”

Bethany chews her lip, and I can imagine her mom yelling at her for such a nasty habit.

“Welcome to Hyde,” she says, “and thanks again, Mackenzie. You’re right about the necklace, you know. It’s not worthless. I’m really glad you found it.”

“So am I,” I say. I feel like I should say something else, something more, but I can’t, not without sounding trite or creepy, so I just say, “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she says, “see you.”

We head our separate ways. When I reach the main road, I think for a second I see the golden man standing at the corner, but by the time I cross the street and steal a glance back, there’s no one there.

I’m just parking Dante in front of the Coronado when I feel the scratch of letters in my pocket and find a new name on my list, but I don’t get the chance to hunt it down, because Mom heads me off in the lobby.

“Oh, good, you’re home,” she says, which is never a good opening line, because it means she needs something. Considering she’s got a bakery box, a slip of paper, and a frazzled look, I’d say it’s a guarantee.

“I am,” I say cautiously. “What’s up?”

“Last-minute delivery,” she says.

My bones groan in response. “Where’s Berk?”

She blows a stray chunk of hair out of her eyes. “He’s got some kind of art opening, and he already left. I know you’ve got homework and I wouldn’t normally ask, but with the business being so new, I really need every order I can get and…”

A headache is starting to form behind my eyes, but the way I see it, anything that convinces Mom I am okay and normal and a good daughter is worth it. I take the box and the slip of paper from her hands, and she responds in the worst way possible. She throws her arms around my neck, engulfing me in a hug full of breaking glass and twisting metal and boxes of plates being pushed down stairs and all the other piercing sounds that make up her noise. My headache instantly gets worse.

“I’d better get going,” I say, pulling away.

Mom nods and bounces back toward the coffee shop, and I drag myself back toward Dante, reading over the slip of paper. Beneath the order name, Mom has drawn a rudimentary map. The delivery is only a few miles away, if her chicken scratch can be trusted, but I’ve never been to that part of the city before.

For the first time in ages, I get lost.

I zone out a little while riding and end up overshooting the apartment complex by several blocks, and I’m forced to double back. By the time I’ve found the right building, climbed several flights of stairs—the elevator is broken—dropped off the bakery box to a housewife, and gotten back to my bike, the sun is sinking. My whole body is starting to ache from fatigue.

I swing my leg over the bike and hope Mom’s on the phone with Colleen right this moment, telling her how okay I am.

But as I speed toward the Coronado, I don’t feel very okay. My hands are shaking and I just want to get home and through tonight and back to Roland’s room, so I take a shortcut through a park. I don’t know the park, but if the map in my head is even close to correct, it’ll be faster than the streets.

It is faster, until I see a guy crouching in the middle of the path and have to hit the brakes hard to keep from slamming into him. I nearly lose my balance as the bike comes to a jarring stop a few feet in front of him.

The moment I put my foot on the ground, I know I’ve made a mistake. Something moves behind me, but I don’t dare take my eyes off the guy in front of me as he straightens and pulls one hand from the pocket of his hoodie. I hear a metal snick sound, and a switchblade flashes in his fingers.

“Hey there, pretty thing,” he coos.

I bring my foot back to the pedal, but it doesn’t move; I twist in my seat to find a second guy with a pipe threaded through my back wheel, pinning it still. His breath smells like oil.

“Let go,” I say, using the tone Da taught me to use with difficult Histories. But these aren’t Histories, they’re humans—and they’re both armed.

One of them chuckles. The other one whistles.

“Why don’t you come off that toy and play with us instead?” says the one with the knife. He saunters forward, and the one holding the wheel reaches for my hair. I’m at enough of a disadvantage without straddling a bike, so I dismount.

“See?” says the one with the pipe. “She wants to play.”

“There’s a good girl,” coos the one with the knife.

“Good schoolgirl,” chimes the other.

My pulse is starting to race.

…residual trauma and extreme fatigue, paired with the influx of adrenaline…

“Get out of my way,” I say.

The one with the knife wiggles the blade back and forth like a finger, tsk-tsking.

“You should ask nicely. In fact,” he says, taking another step forward, “maybe you should beg.”

“Get out of my way, please,” I growl, my pulse thudding in my ears.

The one with the pipe chuckles behind me.

The one with the knife smiles.

They keep shifting so I can only see one of them at a time. When I try to cheat a step to the side, the pipe appears, barring my path.

“Where you going, sweetheart?” says the one with the knife. “The fun hasn’t even started yet.”

They’re both closing in.

My head is pounding and my vision is starting to blur, and then the one with the pipe shoves me forward into the one with the knife, and he grabs my bad wrist hard, and the pain shoots through me like a current—and then it happens.

The world stops.

Vanishes.

Goes black.

A long, lovely, silent moment of black.

And then it comes back, and I’m standing there in the park, just like before, and my head is killing me and my hands feel damp, and when I look down at them, I see why.

They’re covered in blood.