Crash (17 page)

“Really?”

“A salad,” he continues without missing a beat. “A sandwich. Something healthy. With whole-grain bread and avocado and shit.”

“Avocado and shit?” I give a little laugh. “Appetizing.”

His smile is tight. “Thirty minutes, tops. We go down. We eat. We come back.”

I shake my head and dig my heels in. “You go. Bring me back something if you want.”

But I have nothing on Jackson when it comes to digging in my heels.

Seven minutes later, we're in the hospital cafeteria. Jackson isn't exactly the type to sway from his course once he has his mind set. Neither am I, but after a bit of back and forth, common sense told me to let him win this time.

“What do you want?” he asks.

I stare at the offerings. That's another thing about depression; making a decision is like scaling a sheer cliff with no handholds.

Jackson gives me another minute, then loads up a tray: a salad, three sandwiches, two apples, a banana, chocolate milk, water, and cookies.

“Are we expecting company?”

He pauses and studies the tray, then adds a bag of chips. “Did you want anything?” he asks, brows rising above the frame of his glasses.

I roll my eyes. When we get to the cashier, he won't let me pay. “Let me do this,” he says. What he means is:
Let me do this small thing because there's so little else I can do to make any of this better, and that's killing me.

And he thinks I'm the one with control issues.

We head to the far corner of the cafeteria, which isn't exactly crowded thanks to the fact that it's too late for the lunch rush and too early for dinner.

“We need to talk.”

“If we talk, you won't eat.” He unloads the salad, a
sandwich, and an apple and sets them in front of me. “You eat, then we talk.” He holds an apple to my lips. “Bite.”

My heart stutters. I remember the day we sat at the top of the bleachers behind the school and shared my lunch for the first time. He held my apple to my lips and I closed my hands around his wrist, his skin warm beneath my fingers as I held his hand steady and took a bite. Then he turned the apple and took a bite from the same spot, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Remember?” he asks, his expression turning wistful, telling me he's thinking about the same day, the same moments.

“Yeah.” I take a bite.

He opens one of the chocolate milks and offers it to me. “Drink.”

“I—”

“Drink it. The sugar will help the shakes.”

Only when he says it do I realize my hands are shaking. I take the chocolate milk and drink about a third of the container.

“More,” Jackson says, taking a bite from the apple, then holding it out to me again.

“You're exasperating.” I bite.

“You love it. More chocolate milk.”

I drink a bit more in slow sips, then set the container down. Of course he had to be right. My hands aren't shaking anymore.

I pry the plastic lid off the salad and stare at the
contents. It's a hospital cafeteria. I expected wilted lettuce and a couple of strips of shredded carrot. Instead, there's baby spinach, seeds, cranberries, feta.

Jackson hands me the packet of dressing he picked up. Low-fat raspberry vinaigrette. My favorite. I cut him a glance through my lashes.

“Eat,” he says.

“I know you're a monosyllable kind of guy, but at this point I'm half expecting you to haul out your club and start grunting.”

He grunts and shoves my salad another few inches toward me.

I take a forkful just to make him happy. The plastic bowl's empty before I know it, half my sandwich has disappeared, and the apple's just a gnawed core. And of course Jackson was right; I do feel a little better—partly from the food, but mostly from knowing how much he cares.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THE CLEAR PLASTIC WRAPS FROM TWO SANDWICHES, COOKIE wrappers, an empty chip bag, a banana peel, and an apple core are piled on the otherwise empty tray in front of Jackson. He jerks his thumb at the remaining half of my sandwich. “You going to eat that?” He's already reaching for it before I answer.

I slap his hand. “I thought this was about you taking care of me. Feeding me.”

His lips curl, baring white teeth. “You're fed.”

I shove the rest of the sandwich in his direction. It disappears in two bites. I finish my bottle of water. He finishes his second carton of milk.

“So . . . ,” I say.

He fishes out a pack of gum, offers me a piece and takes
one for himself. “Talk,” he says.

I want to. I need to. He needs to know about the Drau who spoke to me and about the way Lizzie taught me to keep the Committee out. Right now, he's in the dark, and that could put him at risk. Plus, I want—need—his input on all of this. I feel like I'm flailing alone and I don't like it.

No more secrets. Secrets won't keep us safe.

But I'm scared to say it out loud. Since I first got pulled, I've been told that talking about the game is risky, that the Drau could somehow overhear. But what if they aren't the only ones who might listen in?

What if the Committee's listening to every word we say? I believe that they knew about Jackson's plan to have Kendra stockpile the thousand points. Oh, they never came right out and said they knew, but the implication was so blatant they might as well have hung out a pair of bright red boxers at the top of a flagpole.

I can't risk saying anything out loud. I can't risk writing anything down because the Committee might somehow be able to see it. Call me paranoid, but I'm convinced they watch us all the time. I just fought so hard to keep these secrets, let myself descend into the darkness to keep them safe. I'm not about to throw the information out there lightly.

So how am I supposed to communicate with Jackson?

I'm caught in an Ouroboros circle: Tell him. Don't tell him. I need a third choice, and I think I know how to make it work. But it's a risky and frightening move and I
don't even know if it's possible.

I glance around. There's no one sitting anywhere near us. Still, I lower my voice until it's barely a whisper. “If you say something to me . . . inside my head . . . can”—I don't want to say
the Committee
out loud—“anyone else hear?”

“The only one who can hear it is you.”

“Okay. Good. Get ready to do your thing, because we're going to have one of those Mind-Meld conversations.”

“Security precaution?”

I nod.

“Just one problem,” Jackson says. “It won't be a conversation. It'll be a one-way street because you don't have that particular skill set. So how would this work? I do my thing and you answer out loud? Kind of defeats the purpose.”

I can't answer out loud, can't take the risk that I'll be overheard.

The risk I plan to take is a different kind.

“How did you question them?” I'm hoping I'm being vague enough to stay off the Committee's radar and specific enough for Jackson to know I'm talking about the Drau.

He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest, his posture closed, maybe even defensive. Sharing information, explaining himself, letting anyone in doesn't come naturally to Jackson.

“Full disclosure, Jackson. Tell me the whole truth,” I say. “No more secrets, from here on out.” I bump his knee with mine, then leave my leg where it is, my thigh flush
with his. “You aren't alone anymore. We're a team. We work together. It isn't every man for himself. It's all of us for each other. You have to trust me.”

“I trust you.” He pauses. “You're the only one I trust.”

“With some of your secrets, yes.” I press my palms flat on the table as I lean forward. “But you also have to trust that I can handle things. You have to stop trying to protect me, because you
can't
. No matter how much you want to wrap me in bubble wrap, you can't.” That's the crazy part about all of this. Jackson originally intended to trade me into the game in order to gain his freedom. The thing is, once I was in, things didn't pan out quite as he planned. He realized that maybe he didn't want out after all. Instead of sacrificing me and getting out, he chose to stay in the game, to stand in front of me and keep me safe. Change of plans. “Give me the tools to protect myself. Give me information. Give me the truth, Jackson.”

“Fine.” He surges forward and captures my hands. We lean toward each other across the table. “You want to know how I questioned them?” The Drau. “I did to them what
they
tried to do to me,” he says. I know he means the Committee and the way they pushed inside his mind. “I shoved my way in and foraged around until I found what I wanted. I'm fairly certain it was less than pleasant for them, and I don't give a shit. Ugly enough for you, Miki?”

He pulls his hands away and flops back again.

He thinks I'm going to reject him over this. He betrayed me into the game, turned my whole life upside down, and
he thinks that his dark side, the fact that he doesn't feel guilty for pushing his way into the Drau's minds, is what's going to finally make me bail.

I don't let him retreat. I stand and walk around the table and come to sit beside him, scooting my chair over until our knees bump.

“You aren't telling me anything I didn't already suspect. And yeah, it's ugly, what you did to them.” I look away because what I say next is hard. “Is the gray cloud that follows me everywhere ugly enough for
you
? You don't have a monopoly on dark and tortured, Jackson.”

“And here I thought I was special.” His fingers slide through my hair, his palms against my skull as he gently turns my head so I'm facing him once more.

“You don't need me to feed the fire of your conceit,” I say.

He smiles a little. “Don't I?”

“No. It's already raging out of control.” I sigh. “What you did to them . . . the way you questioned them . . . I think it's something we can use.” I gesture back and forth between us, my implication—my invitation—clear. I'm giving him permission to do that to me. Trusting him.

He tenses beside me, so still he isn't even breathing.

“No,” he says, not leaving much room for negotiation.

“Yes.”

When he just sits there staring straight ahead, jaw set, I take a deep breath. All or nothing. “Why didn't you ever give the new recruits better explanations when they
showed up in the lobby? Why didn't you give me better explanations?” I ask.

He drums his fingers on the table in a staccato beat, then lifts his head. “I got tired of explaining it every time and dealing with the
this-is-bullshit
reaction. For some reason, most people have trouble believing they've been sucked into a game where they have to fight aliens.”

“I can't think what that reason might be. But that isn't the whole truth. Come on, Jackson, you can do it. Tell me the rest.” When he doesn't offer an explanation, I keep pushing. “Luka told me about your philosophy. About learning by trial and error to figure out how to progress to the next level. But you were never talking about video games, were you? You held back on explanations for new recruits so you could see the game through fresh eyes with every new player . . . so you could try and finally figure a way out.”

“Not a way out, Miki.” The smile he offers is feral. “I was kidding myself when I thought I wanted out. I already told you, there's a part of me that loves the game. The adrenaline high. The hunt. The challenge.”

“You did tell me that. But it took almost finding a way out for you to realize that maybe you didn't want to leave. Originally, you
did
want a way out. At least, you thought you did. That's kind of how you and I ended up meeting, isn't it? Because I was your way out. Now answer my original question.”

He blows out a breath. “Fine. You're right. Every time
I got a new recruit, I hoped they'd see something I hadn't, pick up on something I'd missed. Find the ever elusive answer.”

“There you go. Was that so hard?”

“Harder than you know.”

But I do know. He's been on his own for so long, standing on one side of the divide while the team he feels responsible for stands on the other, that sharing information with anyone isn't easy for him.

He takes my hand. His fingers are long and strong, his palm broad. His hand swallows mine.

I lay my other hand atop his. “We need to do this, Jackson . . . it's the only way. Not just because I need to be sure no one and nothing overhears, but because you need to see it all, experience it through my eyes. You might make connections I miss, see things from a different perspective. I need to be sure I don't leave anything out.” I pause. “Plus, it might be something we can use the next time we get pulled. You barking orders in my head's saved me more than once. Maybe if we can get a two-way street going, I can even things up a little.”