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She shakes her head. “I fell asleep on my bed. It was so weird.” She’s picking at the carpet again. Faster. Rougher. A thread pulls free and she throws it down, then pulls out another and another. “One second I was getting ready for the dance.” She pauses, her whole body motionless; then she starts pulling out threads again, even faster. “Then I was waking up on my bed. I don’t even remember lying down on the bed. I came in here. Washed my face. Looked in the mirror, and—”

I need to see her eyes.

“Look at me,” I order. And when she doesn’t, my unease ramps to full-on fear.

What if this isn’t Carly? My Carly. What if this is a different Carly, a shell?

No. That’s not possible.

Could they even have cloned her and made a shell so quickly?

Or maybe it wasn’t quick. Maybe the whole time-jump thing worked in their favor. Time passes differently inside the game and out.

But she’s acting like Carly acts when she’s upset. Would the Drau know that? Would they be able to program it into a clone?

Adrenaline spikes, sensitizing my skin, making my pulse gallop, my breathing harsh.

She balls her hand into a fist and presses it against her stomach, like she’s feeling sick.

That’s my opening. Only one way to be sure.

“Feeling queasy?” I ask, laying my hand just below hers.

I need to know if Carly’s a shell.

I curl my fingers a little, searching for proof. My index finger finds her navel.

She slaps at my hand. “What are you doing poking in my belly button?”

“Sorry,” I mutter, grinning like a Cheshire cat because the spandex clings to her and I can still see the indent. Shells don’t have umbilical cords, so they don’t have navels. One question answered.

“Freak,” Carly says without venom. She nods and sniffs, then scrubs her nose with the back of her hand. I unroll a few squares of toilet paper and hand them to her.

“I’m scared to look at my eyes,” she says.

Yeah . . . I might have a harder time explaining that away. I need to see them. See how bad they are. I don’t even want to begin trying to figure out how or why her eyes are Drau gray.

Is it because Jackson healed her? Fixed her? And now she has some connection?

But then why didn’t my eyes go gray when I healed him?

Because the flow of energy was in the opposite direction?

And if Jackson healed her, why hasn’t the Committee pulled him to face the repercussions of that?

My brain’s hurting from trying to figure this out.

One thing at a time.

“That’s why you locked yourself in? You didn’t want your mom to see your eyes?”

She gives a harsh laugh. “You’re giving me credit for actually thinking of a reason. I didn’t. I just freaked out and hid in here.”

“Show me,” I say.

“I’m scared,” she says, sounding young and lost and forlorn.

“I know. Let me see.” I cup her cheeks, tipping her face up so I can see exactly what she saw.

Carly’s hazel-green eyes look back at me, mascara streaking her cheeks in lurid black stripes.

Relief is like a hydrogen-filled balloon, floating up, up, up. “You’re nuts, you know that, right?” I ask.

“What?”

Laughing, I bound to my feet, grab her makeup mirror off the shelf, and hold it up so she can see.

“There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. It was just part of the nightmare.”

“Oh.” She moves closer to the mirror and stares at herself. Then she smiles. “Oh!”

I put the mirror down and hold my hand out to her. “You freaked yourself out for no reason.”

She huffs a short laugh. “I swear I’m never going to eat a giant Hershey bar in one sitting again. Ever.”

She grabs my hand and I yank her to her feet.

And for a millisecond, I swear her eyes flash Drau gray.

WE DON’T GO TO THE DANCE. CARLY JUST WANTS TO COME TO my place and chill, so she heads into her room to change while Jackson and Luka and I sit on the front step, waiting for her. The screaming match between her and her mom carries to us through the walls and the glass of the closed windows, muffled but still audible.

None of us says a word. I can feel the tension radiating from Jackson like heat from a fire.

Luka glances over at me, lifts his brows. I lift mine back. I’m not sure what message he takes from that, but he says, “I can’t sit here.” He slaps his palms against his thighs and stands. “I’m just gonna walk to the end of the block.”

I watch him go.

“Thank you,” I say to Jackson, once Luka’s out of earshot.

“For what?” He doesn’t look at me, just hunches forward, his forearms on his thighs, his hands loose between his spread knees.

“For what you did for Carly,” I say.

“I didn’t do it for Carly,” he says.

I nod. He did it for me.
And
for Carly, though he’s not the type to admit the last part.

“Truth is, I don’t think I did anything at all,” he continues, straightening and tipping his head back, his face toward the night sky. “There wasn’t time for me to do any kind of energy exchange. And if I’d succeeded, the Committee would be having a field day with me right now.” He drops his chin and turns his head a little toward me. “I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”

Everything he says is true, but hearing it out loud makes me afraid. Because if Jackson didn’t fix things . . . “You think
they
saved her?” The Committee.

“Something did.” He offers a hint of a smile. “I don’t get to take credit for this one.”

I take a deep breath, hating myself for what I’m about to ask, needing to ask it. “Do you get to take credit for lying to me again?”

The smile vanishes. He’s quiet for a bit; then he asks, “Which lie are we talking about here?”

“There’s more than one?” I shake my head. “No, don’t answer that. Of course there’s more than one.”

“I don’t consider them lies.”

“Because they’re omission rather than commission?”

“Something like that.” He rests his forearms on his thighs again and dangles his hands between his legs.

“You knew, didn’t you? You knew while we were in the lobby that we were going to respawn at Glenbrook.”

“We didn’t respawn at Glenbrook.”

“Not at first, no, but somehow that’s where we ended up. And you had forewarning. You knew.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know the Drau would be able to hurt people?”

“The Drau always hurt people.”

I exhale in a rush. “That’s not what I mean. Did you know they would be at the dance, that they would
be
there, really be there, in the same reality or dimension or whatever? Did you know that they could hurt people
at the dance
? Answer me, Jackson. The truth, not one of your versions of the truth.”

“I knew when we were in the lobby that we were going to Glenbrook. I knew before Luka went into the dance that worlds were about to collide.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“I did what was best for the team. Kendra was already losing it. Lien’s focus was on her. You were freaked that we were at Glenbrook, never mind that the Drau were about to attend the Halloween dance with us.” He turns his head toward me and continues in a flat, even tone. “When we’re there, on a mission, I can’t be Jackson, the boy trying to work things out with Miki. I have to be Jackson who gets everyone in, then gets them out. It’s the only way I can do this, Miki.”

“When—” I begin, then pause, trying to figure out exactly what I want to say. “You said you had to do what’s best for the team. That’s the key word.
Team
, as in collaborative effort. You aren’t a lone gunman, Jackson. When we’re on a mission, I can’t be the girl who blindly follows orders, no questions asked. You should have told me.”

“And if you freaked out? Drew attention to us? Jeopardized the mission?”

“Because telling me would have been so much more likely to freak me out than letting things blindside me, letting me see it all happen right in front of me?”

“Miki, you’re a control freak. If I’d told you in advance, you would have second-guessed yourself, seen each scenario before it played out. Tried to twist it to conform to your mental plan. And that could have gotten you killed.” He pauses. “The way it panned out, you were confronted by a situation; you reacted without overthinking. You’re trained for battle, Miki. That’s what kendo did for you. So I let your training take over.”

Anger flickers and flares. I hate that he did this. That he high-handedly made decisions for me. But that’s his job—at least, it is when we’re in the game. He’s the leader. He’s supposed to make decisions.

I doubly hate it that I know he’s right about the control thing.

“So you did it because I’m not capable of knowing the truth and thinking it through?” I snap, not even meaning to. It just comes out. “Because I’m just a bundle of raw nerves? Is that what you think of me? Is that who you think I am?”

“No.”

I push to my feet, pace away, then back again. He’s not totally wrong. I do get panic attacks. I do have anxiety. But not when we’re on a mission. On every mission, I’ve done what I had to, done it with a cool head and a fair amount of logic.

Because I’ve been dumped right into the thick of things. No forewarning, no time to agonize and second-guess.

Which backs up Jackson’s claim that his way was the right way. I ball my fists, angry with him. Angry with myself.

He catches my hand and draws me back down next to him on the step.

“It isn’t just about me. Or you,” he says. “It’s about the rest of them. Was I supposed to tell them, too? Drag you aside and whisper it in your ear?”

“However you want to spin this in your own mind, whatever justifications you have, you didn’t just omit information, Jackson. You lied. When we first respawned in the hallway, you said it was like Vegas. You said no one outside the game would get hurt.”

“Did I say that?”

I stare at him, thinking back, dissecting my memories. “No,” I say slowly. “You didn’t. You said one word.
Vegas.
You let me fill in the rest. And you didn’t correct me when I filled it in wrong.”

“I made a judgment call.”

“Do you understand how wrong that is? You making decisions like that for me?”

He shrugs. “Blame it on a heavy dose of caveman genes.”

Caveman genes that have kept us all alive.
I’m torn. I see his side, but I also see mine. We’re both right. We’re both wrong. “You told me you wouldn’t lie to me anymore.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“If we don’t have honesty . . . if we don’t have trust . . . what do we have?” I whisper.

“I trust you, Miki. I trust you with my life.”

It’s my turn not to say anything. If I say I trust him, I negate all my arguments and this will never be resolved between us. If I say I don’t trust him, then I’m the one who’s lying. Rock and a hard place.

He sighs. “If you can’t forgive me”—he holds up a hand when I start to interrupt—“if you can’t forgive me, Miki, then what do we have?”

“I forgive you.”

“Do you? For what? For not telling you everything on this mission? For doling out details on a need-to-know basis? Or is it that you forgive me for tricking you in the first place? Dragging you into the game?”

I open my mouth. He shakes his head and keeps going. “What is it you forgive me for, Miki? For being the leader I’ve been forced to be for the past five years? For making the choice to risk my life so your friend could live, making that choice so you didn’t have to? For not being perfect? For not being the boy who tells you absolutely everything, and never will?”

I recoil from him, stinging like he struck me. “Is that how you see me? Is that what you think of me? That I’m so shallow, so weak . . . so foolish?”

His laugh is bitter and dark. “I see you as strength incarnate, a warrior forged of steel, the single bright light in my effed-up world. But it’s how
you
see us. It’s about what you can and can’t accept.”

He pushes to his feet, his back to me, and says, “Some buildings sway when an earthquake hits, and they’re the ones that are still standing when it’s over. Some buildings don’t. They’re too rigid. They snap. You’re lucky, Miki. You get to choose what sort of building you want to be.”

I stare at his back, feeling sick, wondering how we got to this place when we ought to be hugging and jumping for joy because he just got our whole team out alive, got me out alive, got Carly out. Sent the Drau back to the hole they crawled out of. Saved the team. The school. And for the moment, the world.

“Jackson.” I jump to my feet, lay my hand on his shoulder, feeling sick and hurt and confused, not wanting to let this conversation end like this.

“I’ll drop you and Carly at your place,” he says. “I just need some time on my own.”

“He says he’ll never be the boy who tells me absolutely everything,” I say to Carly. She’s lying on my bed. I’m lying on my back on my floor.

I didn’t tell her what my fight with Jackson was about. How could I? When she asked why he and Luka weren’t coming in, I just told her Jackson and I had a disagreement, that he isn’t always completely truthful with me.

“That is completely unacceptable,” she says in her best imitation of Mr. Shomper. “I mean, how can he not tell you what toothpaste he uses? Or what he ate for breakfast? Or . . . wait, no,” she says in a horrified tone, “if he forgot to do laundry and didn’t have any clean socks so he’s wearing the same ones as yesterday.” She tips her head to look at me. “Does he do his own laundry? Did he tell you?”

“Not funny.” But I smile anyway because she’s here, lying on my bed, eyes still puffy from her crying jag, but other than that looking healthy as can be.

Puffy eyes is a vast improvement over bone-white and bloody and dead.

“Do
you
tell
him
absolutely everything?” she asks. “Like, did you tell him about the time you pooped in the bathtub and it floated and you called it a boat?”

“I was three!”

“But did you tell him?”

“No.”

“What about the time you barfed all over Allen’s lap on the bus on the class trip to the zoo? Did you tell him that?”

“Those are disgusting and ridiculous examples. Is there a particular reason you’re choosing to be as gross as possible?”