The Unbound

TWENTY-TWO

“IT’S A HEAVY burden to bear,” says Roland, handing the picture back, “but Crew is worth it.”

I look down at the picture of Da and his partner, Meg. I can’t imagine fitting with someone the way they do, so close they almost touch, even though they’re not wearing silver bands. Is that what love is for people like us? Being able to share space? Without our rings, we wear our lives on our sleeves. Our thoughts and wants and fears. Our weaknesses. I can’t bear the thought of someone seeing mine.

“How?” I ask. “How can it be worth it?” I run my thumb over Da’s face. This isn’t the Da I knew. My Da had far more wrinkles and far less ease. My Da has been in the ground six months. “Letting people in, loving them—it’s a waste. In the end it just hurts more when you lose them.”

Roland leans back against a shelf, a History’s dates printed just above his shoulder. He looks out past me, his gray eyes unfocused.

“It’s worth it,” he says, “to have someone from whom you hide nothing. The weight of secrets and lies starts heavy, and it only gets harder. You build walls to keep the world out. Crew is the small part of the world you let in.

“It’s worth it,” says Roland again. “One day, when you’re surrounded by those walls, you’ll see.”

Wesley is gone by the time I wake up.

It’s a good thing, because Mom is bustling around my room, closing the window, tidying stacks of paper, gathering up pieces of laundry from the floor. Apparently privacy went out the window with trust. She tells the desk it’s time to get up, tells the laundry in her hands that breakfast is ready. We seem to have taken a step back.

The Archive list is tucked under the phone on my bedside table, and when I go to check it, I see there’s a text from Wesley.

I dreamed of thunderstorms. Did you dream of concerts?

In truth, I didn’t dream of anything, and the feeling of dreamless sleep on my bones is glorious. No nightmares. No Owen. I look down at my arm and wonder how it went that far. I feel so much closer to sane after a few hours of rest.

I’m about to reply when I see a conversation with Lyndsey. One I never had. It’s from Saturday night, when Mom spiked my water and Wes first stayed over.

Earth to Mac!

Earth to Mac!

The HOTTEST boy is in this coffee shop.

I need you to be awake so you can vicariously appreciate it.

And he has a violin case. A VIOLIN CASE. *swoon*

Sorry, Mac is sleeping.

Then how is she texting?

Is she a sleep-texter?

GASP.

IS THIS GUYLINER?

The very same.

She charged her phone for you. I hope you’re worth it.

I hope so, too.

I almost smile, but then a knot forms in my stomach. Worth it.

Crew is worth it, echoes Roland.

I put the phone away and begin to get dressed. The cut on my hand is healing well. My forearm, on the other hand, is killing me after last night’s adventures; I’m worried I might have ripped the stitches. I flex gingerly and wince, then check my list. There’s already another name on it.

Penny Ellison. 13.

“Mackenzie.” Mom’s standing in the doorway. Her eyes get as close as my cheek. “We’re going to be late.”

“We?” I ask.

“I’m driving you to school.”

“Like hell—”

“Mackenzie,” warns Mom. “It’s not negotiable. And before you go running to your father, you should know that it was his idea. He doesn’t want you using the bicycle with your arm in that condition, and I agree.”

I obviously shouldn’t have left them alone at the table last night. So much for clearing Penny before heading to Hyde.

I get ready and follow Mom downstairs, and we’re through the front doors when Berk shows up on the patio and waves her over, spouting something about an espresso emergency.

My eyes go to Dante, leaning up against the bike rack. “I could—”

“No,” says my mom. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

I sigh and sink against the patio wall to wait, picking at the tape on my palm. Someone casts a shadow over me, and a moment later, Eric sits down on the low wall a few feet away, resting a Bishop’s to-go cup on his knee.

“I didn’t know about Roland,” I say.

“I didn’t tell you,” he says simply. I look over. He looks tired, but otherwise unscathed. “Agatha is running out of Crew.”

I swallow hard. “How much time do I have?”

“Not enough,” he says, sipping his coffee. “Are you innocent, Miss Bishop?” I hesitate, then nod. “Then why would you refuse her?”

“I was afraid I’d fail an assessment.”

“But you just said—”

“A mental assessment,” I clarify. Silence falls between us. “Do you ever wish you’d gone a different way?” I ask after a minute.

Eric gives me a guarded look. “I’m honored to serve the Archive,” he says. “It gives me purpose.” And then he softens a little. “There have been times when I’ve wavered. When I thought maybe I wanted to be normal. But the thing is, what we do, it’s in our blood. It’s who we are. Normal wouldn’t fit us, even if we wanted to wear it.” He sighs and gets to his feet. “I’d tell you to stay out of trouble,” he says, “but it just seems to find you, Miss Bishop.”

Mom reappears with two to-go cups, and there’s this split second as she hands me one when she finally looks me in the eye. Then she sees the man standing beside me.

“Good morning, Eric!” she says brightly. “How’s that dark roast?”

He gives her his best smile. “Worth crossing the city for, ma’am,” he says before heading off down the sidewalk.

“Eric’s become a bit of a regular,” explains Mom as we walk to her car.

“Yeah,” I say drily. “I’ve seen him around.”

Mom has the decency to drop me off a block and a half from school and out of the line of sight of the parking lot. As the car pulls away, I look down at my arm, hoping I can get through one day without an incident. Maybe Eric’s right. Maybe normal doesn’t suit us, but I’d be willing to pretend.

I catch sight of Cash, resting against the bike rack with coffee and a smile. Cash, who always makes me feel normal. But the moment I reach him, I can see something’s off.

His dark hair trails across his cheekbones, but it can’t entirely hide the cut beside his eye or the bruise darkening his jaw.

“Looks like I’m not the only one to get into a scrape,” I say. “Soccer? Or did you and Wes go a few rounds on the mat?”

“Nah,” he says. But he doesn’t seem eager to say any more.

“Well, come on,” I say as he hands me a fresh coffee. “I told you my clumsy story. It’s only fair you tell me yours.”

“I wish I could,” he says, furrowing his brow, “but I’m not exactly sure what happened.”

I frown, taking a sip. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I was heading back from your place yesterday—I was going to take the bus, but it was a nice day, so I decided to walk. I was almost back to the school, when all of a sudden there’s this crashing sound behind me, and before I can turn to see what happened, someone pulls me backward hard.”

The coffee goes bitter in my mouth.

“It was insane,” he says. “One minute I’m minding my own business, and the next I’m laid out on the sidewalk.” He brings his fingertips to the cut beside his eye. “I caught myself on a bench on the way down. I couldn’t have been out for more than a minute or two, but by the time I got up, there was no one else around.”

“What did it sound like?” I ask slowly. “The noise behind you.”

“It was loud, like a crash, or a tear, or a whoosh. Yeah, a whoosh. And that’s not even the strangest part.” He curls his fingers around the cup. “You’ll think I’m crazy. Hell, I think I’m crazy. But I swear there was a guy walking maybe a few strides behind me right before it happened. I thought he might have been the one to grab me, but by the time I got back up he was gone.” He straightens and chuckles. “God, I sound like a nut job, don’t I?”

“No,” I say, gripping the paper cup. “You don’t.”

A ripping sound, a force hard enough to slam Cash backward, and no visible trace? All the markings of a void. Was the man behind him Crew? Or a fourth victim?

“What did the other guy look like?”

Cash shrugs. “He looked normal.”

I frown. It doesn’t make sense. If someone was trying to attack Cash, they missed, and I don’t see why they’d attack him in the first place—not while I was under lock and key. There would be nothing to tie me to this crime, so why do it?

“Did you see anyone else besides the other guy?” I ask, stepping closer.

He shakes his head, and I grab his arm, his noise singing through me. “Can you remember anything about the moments before it happened? Anything at all?”

Cash’s gaze goes to the ground. “You.”

I pull back a fraction. “What?”

“I wasn’t paying attention, because I was thinking about you.” My face goes warm as he gives a small, stifled laugh. “Truth be told, I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Then, out of nowhere, Cash takes my face in his hands and kisses me. His lips are warm and soft, and my head fills with jazz and laughter; for an instant, it feels sweet and safe and simple. But my life is none of those things, and I realize as the kiss ends that I don’t want to pretend it is, and that there is only one person I want to kiss me like this.

Someone by the gate whistles, another cheers, and I pull away sharply.

“I can’t,” I say, my face on fire. It feels like everyone in the lot is looking at us.

Cash immediately retreats, trying not to look stung. “It’s Wes, isn’t it?”

Yes. “It’s life.”

“Way to be broad,” he says, slouching back against the bike rack. “It’s a lot easier to hate a person.”

“Then it’s me. Look, Cash, you’re amazing. You’re sweet and clever, and you make me smile.…”

“I sound pretty awesome.”

“You are,” I say, stepping away. “But my life right now is…complicated.”

Cash nods. “Okay. Understood. And who knows,” he says, brightening, “maybe one day it will be simpler.”

I manage a thin smile. Maybe.

And then someone calls Cash’s name, and his face lights up as he turns and shouts back, and it’s like nothing happened. I have to wonder if he has masks he wears, too. Maybe we all do.

Wes shows up a few minutes later in his senior black-and-gold, looking like he spent the weekend lounging by a pool instead of scaling Coronado walls and warding off my nightmares. Cash gets dragged into a conversation with a nearby group, and Wes knocks his shoulder against mine and whispers, “No nightmares?”

“No nightmares,” I say. And that’s something to be thankful for. That is progress—small, fractional, but it is something. It is me clawing my way back to sanity.

The bell rings, and we all head through the gate. Whatever Fall Fest is, it’s starting to take over campus. The bones of it are scattered in the stretches of grass between buildings, massive ribbons in black and green and silver and gold are rolled and waiting, and everyone seems oddly cheerful for a Monday morning.

Every moment without the watch and the warden and the constant reminders that I’m not okay makes me feel closer to normal. By ten thirty in Lit Theory, I’m feeling positively mundane. And then Ms. Wellson drags her chalk across the board and the sound is too sharp, like metal on stone.

Metal on stone, I think. And as I think it, my body stiffens and stops. The rest of the room doesn’t. Wellson keeps talking, but her voice seems suddenly dull and far away. I desperately try to move the pen in my hand, but my hand refuses. My whole body refuses.

“Did you really think,” comes a voice from behind me, “that a little sleep could fix the ways you’re broken?”

No. I close my eyes. You’re not real.

But a moment later I feel Owen’s arms wrap around my shoulders, feel his hand brush the line he carved into my arm.

“Are you sure about that?” He presses down. Pain flares across my skin, and the air catches in my throat as I jerk to my feet, my body suddenly unfreezing. The entire class turns to look at me.

“Miss Bishop?” asks Ms. Wellson. “Is something wrong?”

I murmur something about feeling unwell, then grab my bag and race into the hall, reaching the bathroom just in time to retch. My shoulders shudder as I forfeit breakfast and two cups of coffee, then slump back against the stall, resting my forehead against my knees.

This shouldn’t be happening. I’m supposed to be getting better.

Did you really think that a little sleep could fix the ways you’re broken?

My eyes start to burn and I squeeze them shut, but a few tears still escape down my cheeks.

“Hangover?” comes a voice from the next stall. Safia. “Morning sickness?” I force my eyes open and drag myself to my feet. She walks out of the stall and over to the sink as she adds, “Eating disorder?”

I rinse my mouth out as she joins me, hopping up onto the counter. “Food poisoning,” I lie blandly.

“Less exciting,” she says, producing a small container of mints and offering me one. “I’m always telling Cash he shouldn’t buy that cheap coffee from the corner store. Honestly, who knows what’s in it? I guess it’s a nice gesture, though.”

“I’m sure he’s just doing his job,” I mutter, splashing water on my face.

Safia rolls her eyes. She hops down off the counter and turns to go.

“Safia,” I say as she reaches the door. “Thanks.”

“For what?” she asks, crinkling her nose. “I offered you a mint. That’s, like, common decency, not social bonding.”

“Well, thanks for being commonly decent, then.”

The edge of her mouth quirks, and then she’s gone.

The moment the door’s shut, I slump back against the brick wall beside the sink and wrap my hands around my ribs to keep them from shaking. Just when I think things can’t get worse, I feel the scratch of letters in my pocket. I dig the Archive paper out as a second name—Rick Linnard. 15.—writes itself below Penny Ellison. 13.

Two names, and it isn’t even lunch. Could Agatha be doing this on purpose? Would she go that far to prove a point? I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe anymore. But it doesn’t matter how the names got there; I have to handle them. Besides, clearing this list is the only thing still in my control. My mind spins. The class bell rings in the distance. Wellness. I’ll skip. I know where the nearest Narrows door is now. The only problem is my key won’t work. It’s not my territory. And with Wesley’s access to mine revoked, even if he lets me in to his, I can’t cross the divide.

I find a pencil in my bag and spread the paper out on the sink, tapping the eraser several times against it before finally writing a message.

Requesting access to adjacent territory: Hyde School.

I stand at the sink and stare down at the page, waiting and hoping for a response. I count out the time it will take to get to the door, cross Wesley’s territory into my own, and find and return Rick and Penny.

And then the answer comes. One small, horrible word: Denied.

It’s not signed, but I recognize Agatha’s script. Frustration wells up in me, and I slam my hand into the nearest thing, which happens to be a metal tissue holder. It goes crashing to the floor.

“Mackenzie?” asks a voice from the door. I turn to find a woman standing there. She looks exactly like she did in the hospital, from the messy ponytail to the slacks, but she’s traded a name tag that reads Psychologist for one that reads Hyde School Counselor.

“Dallas?” I ask, crumpling the Archive paper before she can see it. The question and answer have both bled away, but the names are still there. “What are you doing here?”

“We had a deal, remember?” She bends down to fetch the dented tissue box and sets it back on the edge of the counter. “I figured I’d meet you at the Wellness Center, but I ran into Miss Graham and she pointed me in this direction. Is everything…?” She trails off, and I appreciate not having to answer the question when it’s obvious that, no, everything’s not. “Do you need a moment?” she asks. I nod, and Dallas vanishes back through the door to wait.

I check my reflection in the mirror. Blue-gray eyes stare back at me—Da’s eyes—but their once-even gaze is now unsure, the blue made brighter by the red ringing them. My cracks are showing. I splash water on my face to cool my cheeks and rinse away any trace of tears, then smooth out the Archive paper and refold it properly before slipping it into the pocket of my shirt.

A few minutes later, when I step out into the hall, I at least look the part of a normal junior. Dallas is eating an apple and pretending to be interested in a Fall Fest flyer on the wall. Cash is front and center in the photo, wearing cat ears, dipping a senior girl with one hand and holding a sparkler aloft with the other.

“When you had me agree to therapy,” I say, tugging my sleeves down over my hands, “I didn’t realize it would be with you.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” she asks, ditching the apple core in the nearest trash bin. “Because it’s me or a middle-aged guy named Bill who’s nice enough, but kind of smells.”

“I’ll stick with you.”

“Good choice,” she says, leading me through a pair of doors and across the quad. The Fall Fest materials are scattered everywhere, and we have to weave through them just to get to the Wellness Center.

“I just didn’t realize you worked here, too,” I say as we reach the building and go in. Instead of heading toward the lockers, she leads me down a hall to a row of offices.

“Most nights and weekends I belong to the hospital,” she tells me as we reach an office with her name on it and go inside. There’s a chair and a couch and a coffee table. “During the week, I’m here. As long as we’re meeting, I’ll be taking the place of your Wellness class, since this is, in fact, addressing wellness of another sort.”

“And how long are we meeting?” I ask.

“I suppose that depends on you.” She slumps into the chair and retrieves a notebook from the coffee table. “How are the battle scars?”

“Healing,” I say as I sit down.

“And how are you?”

How am I? Three—possibly four—people have been dragged into voids because of me, my only theory as to why is crumbling, the assessor of the Archive is determined to find me unfit, and my nightmares are becoming real. But of course I can’t tell Dallas any of this.

“Mackenzie?” she prompts.

“I’ve been better,” I say quietly. “I think I might be losing my mind.” It is the most honest thing I’ve said aloud in days.

She frowns a little. “Still having bad dreams?”

“These days, everything feels like a bad dream,” I say. “I just want to wake up.”