Summer Ruins (6 page)

I put my hands on my hips, summoning bravado because the gravity of the moment threatens to break me into pieces. “I can take care of myself, Lucas. Don’t be an ass.”

Deshi’s eyebrows shoot up and he barks a short laugh. He stops as though the noise shocks him, then does it again. The astonishment on Lucas’s face makes me laugh, too, and after a moment Deshi and I are doubled over with giggles.

Lucas looks amused now, arms crossed over his chest. “Are one of you going to explain the joke here? What’s an ass?”

That only makes Deshi laugh harder, and the sound of his mirth fill me with hope. “It’s another word for butt. Deshi taught me.”

“Hilarious.” Lucas’s mouth twists into a wry smile, deepening his dimples and making me want to kiss him all the more.

“Okay, okay. We really have to go.” Deshi stands up, wiping his eyes and wrapping his fingers around Lucas’s wrist.

After they’re gone, the image of Deshi’s honey skin wrapped around Lucas’s paleness sticks in my mind. Then I think about tomorrow, and try not to cry.

Chapter 7.

Deshi brings me back to my smelly mess of a temporary home. I can’t talk because it’s taking all of my concentration not to break down into tears.

He drops my hand and turns over the movie player to check the battery compartment. I shove all of my terror and loss into my stomach, where it makes me a little nauseous. “So what do we do now?”

“Well, there’s still a couple hours before the meeting and training is over. I thought maybe we could watch my movie.” He looks away, almost shy as if he’s asking me to a Gathering and is afraid I’m going to say no.

Except there’s nothing between Deshi and me that suggests romance or courtship. Not even warmth. I wish I felt something more than pity, but perhaps after everything that’s about as much as can be expected.

Even so, I give him a small smile and nod. “Okay. Can I see it?”

“My note? Sure.” He picks a plastic case up off the floor, where it must have been underneath the DVD player, and hands it to me.

The cover is black and white. A handsome, tall man with a little girl hanging off his back smiles down into a pretty woman’s face. The title, scrolled across the top, says
It’s a Wonderful Life
. The back confuses me a little bit, because, like Deshi said, the story seems sad to me even though the words and the title make it seem as though it’s happy.

The note inside is exactly like mine, except the words are fading. Frantically, I pry my own message loose from inside my star-shaped locket. It’s disappearing as well.

Grief threatens to climb out of my center, but a couple of deep breaths get it back under control. My hand clenches so tight around my locket that it leaves a star mark in the center of my palm, kind of like the red mark that decorates each Warden’s neck just under their ear. Regular Others have red star outlines—the Elements have black ones that look like stamps.

Deshi sets the DVD player in the corner farthest from the one I’ve been using as a wasteroom, then wrinkles his nose. His eyes close for a moment, and his lips move with silent words.

“What are you doing?”

He holds a hand up in my direction, silencing my question and irritating me more than a little in the process. Not long after he opens his eyes, though, the Goblert who brought me food appears outside the marble bars separating me from the rest of the Underground Core.

Deshi lets him inside and even though we’ve met, the Goblert doesn’t acknowledge my presence. He goes to the corner stinking with my waste and blows a handful of glittery dust into the air the way he did to take Lucas away to the Harvest Site. When it settles on the ground, everything underneath it disappears.

The room smells better before the Goblert’s steps even disappear into the darkness, and the small kindness relights my faith. Not much, but enough.

“Thank you,” I tell Deshi for the second time tonight.

He shrugs. “It’s a long movie. I didn’t want to sit here for three hours in that stench.”

Fair enough, but his disinterested tone worries me. It makes me feel like he’s slipping further away instead of slinking closer. I ignore the urge to beg, even though it grows stronger with every moment closer to tomorrow. “What’s the Goblert’s name?”

“What? Why?” Suspicion pinches his eyebrows together.

“I don’t know. I’d like to thank him the next time he brings me something, I guess. Not that there’ll be a next time.”

“It’s D-A-X-K but no one can say it so we call him Dax.”

“How come he has a name no one can say? Didn’t the Others name him since he’s half-Other?” The questions escape, for a moment toppling my insecurity over Deshi’s allegiance and my fear over my looming death.

“The Others allow the half-breed creatures to retain names from their culture. Since they’re not pure, they can’t have Deasupran names, anyway.” He sounds as though he’s quoting a textbook, not saying something he believes.

Another smidge of hope returns. “You mean like Griffin and Greer not having Other—Deasupran—names. Their mother gave them Sidhe names.”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” A realization ignites pride and fight within me. I look up and catch Deshi staring at me with his lips pursed in an annoyed expression, but it only makes me grin through the happy tears pricking my eyes.

“What?” he snaps.

“It’s just… so our parents named us, too. What they wanted. And probably something indicative of where we’re from.” I shuffle through my memory to the night Cadi told Lucas and I who we are and where we come from. When I remembered where Pax was from, I couldn’t recall what she said about Deshi, but now I do. “You’re from a place called China, Deshi. Your name must come from there.”

I’m not sure whether it makes Deshi feel the same wonderful sense of family that’s crawling over me, but the expression on his face isn’t annoyed anymore. It’s maybe a little bit confused, but also pleased.

He shakes it off. “Let’s just watch the movie.”

“Sure, okay.” When he presses a button, pictures accompanied by music pop onto the screen.

“That! The sound. That’s music,” I crow, grinning again at Deshi. “You know what it is.”

Wonder lights his face. “I never had the word for it before now.”

The volume is low, making me strain to hear, but it’s probably not wise to turn it up any higher. When Deshi sits down beside me I scoot closer, breathing in the light scent of spring. He gives me a look out of the corner of his eye, making me shrug. “I just don’t want to feel alone.”

He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t pull away. “You mean I’ll do since you can’t have Lucas or Pax.”

At first I feel badly because maybe he’s right, and maybe there are even more people on that list of who I’d rather be with than him. But then I realize he’s not. “No. I mean we’re the same, Deshi. Even if you don’t want to believe it, and even if you let us all die tomorrow. We
are
the only people who understand you. And that makes you exactly one of the people I want to spend my last night beside.”

For the next couple of hours we watch the movie in silence. It’s nothing like the films the Others force us all to watch every Saturday. Well, I guess technically they don’t force us, since no one else seems to mind. Still. Those are ridiculous and created only to entertain.

It’s a Wonderful Life
makes me think. Which I’m assuming is why no humans are allowed to watch it or anything similar. It makes me wonder how many movies like this one were discarded, hidden away, or otherwise destroyed when the Others invaded Earth. Are they gone forever, or, if we somehow manage to win, will people be able to recover intellectual treasures of the past?

In the movie there’s a man who’s always dreamed of going on adventures. He didn’t want the things his friends wanted, which I think was just to go to Cell and get a good Career and a nice Partner. But those are the things the man, George Bailey, ends up with anyway. He’s sad at first, and frustrated that his life won’t turn out the way he wants, but eventually he learns to be happy anyway.

I think that’s the point.

There are many parts that go right over my head, though. “So what’s Christmas? And what’s an angel? And why were stars talking to one another?”

I’ve read about Christmas in other books, like
Harry Potter
, but never grasped the concept.

“I have no idea. But the rest of the story… I like it.” Deshi’s eyes are a little red; even though I didn’t look at him out of respect, I know he cried at the end.

So did I, which surprised me a little bit because halfway through I wanted George to get out of the little town and see the rest of the world.

My cell goes dark again, and I light a single sphere in my hand, holding it near my lap. Deshi gets up and grabs the DVD player and the plastic DVD container, shuffling toward the door. I don’t know how we’re supposed to say good-bye. It’s not as though we like each other, or that we’re friends… except maybe we are and he hasn’t been able to admit it yet.

And neither have I.

If I want Deshi to really trust us, to believe that the things I’ve been telling him about the world outside of the Others’ control are true, shouldn’t I trust him first?

I shoot to my feet, almost leaping across the cell to his side by the bars. He spins around, putting the DVD player up between us as though he needs to defend himself, but relaxes when he sees my arms are at my sides.

“Deshi, I’m going to tell you a secret. It’s something that could hurt a lot of people, if you decide to tell Zakej and his father, but I need to find a way to show you what’s true. This is the only way I can think of, but… please. Think about what will happen if you betray my trust.”

He stares at me, and finally gives me a nod. It’s not a promise to keep the secret, only to think about the consequences, but it’s all I’m going to get.

I take a deep breath and raise up the light in my palm until the shadows fall away from both of our faces. “There’s a cabin that’s hidden from the Prime. I don’t know how—Griffin and Greer’s mother did it somehow when they were children. We have friends there. My dog is there, too.”

“Wolf.”

Tears fill my eyes before I can stop them and I nod, unable to speak for a moment. “Yes. Go meet him. Scratch him behind the ears. He likes that.” I clear my throat. “There’s a girl, too. A human girl. She… shed her veil, so she knows what’s happening to Earth.”

Deshi jerks, his eyes going wide. “How?”

I pause. This is the moment where I decide whether or not to trust him with everything. I’ve already given up the cabin. Maybe our last chance. But I have to give up more. Everything. He’s one of us.

If I believe it, maybe he will, too.

“We can unveil people. The four of us. It’s the only thing the Prime doesn’t know. It happened on accident at first, but together we have more control over it, and we unveiled Brittany—the girl at the cabin—on purpose. So that if we die tomorrow, people will at least have the chance to fight for themselves.”

A shell-shocked, wrecked expression crumbles Deshi’s features from the top down as I tell him how to find the cabin, until finally it drops his jaw open. “That’s what they wanted me to tell them. All those days before they finally believed me that controlling the elements is all I can do. But I didn’t know.”

It’s almost like he’s talking to himself, as though he’s forgotten I’m here. I reach out and take his hand; it’s cool against mine, and I tug on it a little to get his attention. “None of us knew, Deshi. I found out when I accidentally unveiled my Danbury mother. She Broke and the Others disposed of her. Lucas unveiled a girl at school and she went banana balls for a while. Pax… his family in Portland died, Deshi. None of us knew.”

“So, we hurt people.”

“No. I mean, we
have
hurt people, but this thing we can do… it also might save them. If the four of us pool our power, Cadi believed we’d gain strength the way the Elements do. We could unveil a lot people. Everyone, maybe. Let them decide what’s best.”

“No.” Deshi jerks his hand out of mine, stumbling back until he bumps into the marble bars. He turns, waves his hand, steps outside, and replaces the bars in one fluid movement. From outside, his eyes lock onto mine.

I see nothing but fear.

“People are better off this way. In a few months, the Others will move on. The veils or whatever they are will disintegrate and humans will be fine. There’s no need for us to do anything, and the planet doesn’t need help.” His words tremble, banging around in the air like blocks. Like someone had stacked his beliefs into something solid and I just scattered them all over the ground.

“Deshi. You’ve done a lot for me already. You healed my burns, you kept me from going insane in here. You let me say good-bye to Pax and Lucas.” I swallow the pain that flares with their names. “One more thing. Please. Go to the cabin. Meet Wolf. Talk to Brittany. If you still think letting us die in here is the right thing to do, fine.”

“How do we know the ‘right thing,’ Althea? No one has ever been honest with us. Not ever.”

The desperate ache in the words hit a familiar longing inside me, but now that I’ve seen Deshi’s film, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s not true. “Ko has. Our notes, they’re true. And he wrapped them in gifts that explain this world we don’t understand.”