Gifted (23 page)

“I'm not?” he asks. “Is it against the Corp X rules?”

I sit back on my heels. “No, of course not. I just mean … You know … It might look … weird. You. Me. Nonda in the MediPlex.”

“Oh, right.” He cringes and sits on the side of the bed with the pillow between his knees. “I didn't think of that.”

“Me either,” I say, blushing. “Until now.” I get up and shuffle toward the ladder to my loft. As I'm climbing up, I stop and look at him fluffing the pillows on the bed and turning back the covers. I have no idea where he's from. Who his family might be. What he did before he got here. But I'm not as afraid of him as I am of me. I don't entirely trust myself with him because there's an image that hovers in my mind. What if the knock hadn't come? What if when our bodies were so close with the pillow pressed between us, instead of turning away, afraid of who was at the door, we had moved closer? And what if we had kissed? What would have happened next?

“You okay?” He looks up from straightening the covers and smiles. I see the tiredness around his eyes and the gratitude of relief across his face.

“Um.” My cheeks grow warm. I force the image of kissing him from my mind. “Do you have everything you need?”

“Yes,” he says and slides into bed with a long, delicious sigh. “I haven't been this comfortable for a long time.”

I climb up into my loft bed and command the lights off. Then I lie there, silently. Uncomfortable at first. Wondering what he's thinking. Wondering what it will be like in the morning when we both wake up. Will it be awkward? Both of us have the day off, which could be fun. Or weird. I could take him to Black Friday so he can get new clothes. And I need to visit Nonda.

Night sounds fill the room. The whoosh and whirl of the MicrobeZappers cleaning the dishes and laundry. The low-level buzz of delivery drones overhead. The faint and faraway rushing of the river. Aimery's rhythmic breathing. Then the forlorn cry of a whippoorwill, too far from its riverbank home, drifts in through the open window.

“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will.” Aimery mimicks the cry perfectly, starting high on the “whip,” then down a few notes, trilling the
r
on the “poor,” and ending on a shrill little cry of the “will.” He repeats the loop over and over like the bird crying for its lost mate.

“You're good at that,” I say.

“I know lots of bird calls,” he tells me. “Want me to do another?”

“Sure.” Hearing his voice in the dark calms down my spinning mind.

“Jee-eeb! Jee-eeb! Jeeb, jeeb, jeeb!” he sings. “Do you know what that is?”

“Sounds familiar, but I don't know its name.”

“Wood duck. How about this one: chit-here-here-here, chit-here! Chit-here-here-here, chit-here!”

“What's that?”

“Eastern bluebird.”

“Never heard of it.”

“They may have gone extinct. Check this one out. Yank-yank-yank,” he sings through his nose.

“Sounds like a frozard.”

“Nope, a nuthatch.”

“You're a nuthatch.”

“No, I'm not, you are,” he says, which makes me snicker. “How about this one: Frawnk! Frawnk!”

“I know that! Great blue heron.”

“That's right. The old man of the river.”

“Do you have those where you're from, too?”

“I doubt it. I'd never seen one before I came here, much less heard its call in the wild.”

“How do you know so much about birds?” I ask. Somehow the darkness makes my question feel less intrusive than if we were facing one another in the light.

“My sister,” he says quietly. “She has a clock. Every fifteen minutes a different bird sings.”

“So she likes birds?”

“She likes…” He sighs. “Singing.”

“Me, too,” I say through an enormous yawn. I burrow into my covers, feeling sleep begin to shroud me. “Are you a lot alike, you and your sister?”

“I don't know,” he says, which seems strange but then he adds, “She'd like you.”

“I'd like to meet her,” I tell him, my voice going warbly with exhaustion.

Aimery is quiet for a moment. I think that he's probably fallen asleep, but then he says, “I'd like that, too.”

*   *   *

“Zimri! Zim!” I wake up to Aimery shaking me. The POD is filled with light, so it must be morning, but I can't figure out why he's waking me up.

“What's the matter? What are you doing? It's my day off!” I pull the covers over my head.

Aimery grabs my shoulder. “Someone's at the door!” he whispers.

I hear the knock, light but persistent. “Oh, no,” I hiss and kick off the covers. “What should we do?”

“I don't know. Do you want to hide? Want me to answer? I could say you're not here.”

The knocking comes again. “That won't work. They'll just come in and look for me.”

“You could get inside the bed. I could put it inside the wall. Or the shower. I could spin it around.”

“That's the first place they always look.”

“Right,” he says and looks stymied.

“Zimri?” someone calls my name quietly from the hall. “Zim, you there?”

“That doesn't sound like security,” I say, relieved. I follow Aimery down the ladder then we tiptoe toward the door.

“Hello?” I call softly with Aimery close behind. “Who's there?”

“It's Dorian.”

My stomach drops.

“Let me in? Are you okay? I was worried about you all night.”

“Uh, um, just a sec.” I look at Aimery, who points to himself and then to the closet.

I nod, then shake my head and grab his arm. “This is silly,” I whisper. “It's okay. We didn't do anything wrong.”

But Aimery doesn't look convinced. He scoots away from me and stands with his back against the fridge as I unlock the door.

Dorian charges in and wraps his arms around me. “I hardly slept. I was so worried all night. I was afraid…” Then he stops. His body stiffens and he steps away from me. “What? Why is he here?”

I move aside. “You remember Aimery, right?” I say and realize just how idiotic that must sound. “He needed a place to stay, so since Nonda's gone, I—”

Dorian shakes his head. He isn't listening to me. “You let this guy stay with you?”

“Hey, man!” Aimery steps forward and holds out his hand like I've seen him do a hundred times at the warehouse when he's trying to make a good impression. “I was in a bind. Zimri let me crash.”

Dorian looks down at Aimery's hand like it's filthy. Then he cuts his eyes to me. “What the hell, Zim?”

“What?” I say stupidly because I know what the whole thing must look like. “He's been sleeping in his car and—”

“Down by the riverside,” Aimery adds with a halfhearted laugh. “It's been rough. Zimri took pity on me.”

Dorian looks at me and shakes his head, then he says, “No way. I won't do this, Zimri. I won't be that guy for you.”

“What guy?” I ask, but he doesn't answer because he's bolted into the hallway.

“Dor!” I call after him. “Dorian, wait. Come on!” I chase him down the stairs. “Slow down!” He slams through the exit door into the bright morning light. I run to catch up and grab his arm before he crosses the Y.A.R.D. “Hey! What's going on? You're acting like a lunatic.”

He yanks away from me. “That guy?” he yells. “That's the guy you bring home? Nonda's in the MediPlex. I'm up all night worried that you're going to get nabbed. And you bring home the idiot who could have gotten both of us arrested?” He shakes his head again in disbelief. “Then you call
me
the lunatic?”

I cross my arms and look straight at him. “He just needed a place to shower and sleep. I was being nice. You would've done the same.”

“No,” says Dorian with conviction. “Not for a guy like that.”

“A guy like what?” I ask, genuinely bewildered.

“Who is he?” Dorian shouts. “Breezes in one day, acting like Mr. Charming, but not giving anyone any information. Where's he from? What's he doing here? He's not like us.”

“That doesn't make him a bad person.”

“I don't trust him, Zim.” Dorian steps closer and wraps his fingers around my upper arm. “And neither should you.”

“I make my own decisions about people.”

He leans over me. “I've seen you on breaks at the warehouse with him. Sharing drinks out back by the river.”

“Oh, big deal,” I say and jerk my arm away from him. “You could have come and hung out with us.”

“You never invited me!”

“Do you need an engraved invitation to hang out with me?”

“I'm not doing this,” he yells.

“Doing what?”

He walks in circles, ranting. “It's our parents all over again. My dad loved your mother for years. Did everything for her. Followed her around like a damn dog since they were kids, waiting for her to feel the same about him. She's the whole reason he learned to play drums. She's the reason he built Nowhere. He was trying to impress her!”

“No…”

“It's true. He told me. And then she went off and chose your father—some crazy, dark and brooding painter!
He's so talented,
she'd always say to my dad as if his music wasn't enough. So he got on with his life and married my mom, but he always loved Rainey.”

“You're exaggerating,” I say, but there's something inside of me that thinks he could be right. Why else would Marley have been so devoted to my mother? Why else would he and my father never have become good friends?

“I won't be that person for you, Zimri! I won't follow you around, pining away like my dad did for your mom.”

“I never asked you to,” I tell him, then watch his face crumble. He drops his hands to his sides. They hang heavy like dead branches. “Dor!” I reach out. “I didn't mean…”

He steps away and shakes his head, then he turns and runs. I stand there, watching helplessly, as he hops the low wall with
Nobody from Nowhere
scrawled across the stone, and disappears among the PODs.

 

ORPHEUS

By the time
Zimri gets back upstairs, I've put the bed away and changed into my clean clothes. I figure my time with her is up and I don't want to be more of a nuisance.

“So…” I say when she comes in the door. I rock back and forth on my heels. “That was awkward.”

At first she looks like she's going to punch me but then she lets loose a loud and almost painful laugh as she yells, “Understatement! Jeez. I don't know what got into him.” She drops down on one end of the sofa.

“Come on, now. He adores you,” I say. “Anyone could see that.”

“Doesn't matter.” Zim hugs a pillow to her chest and looks away from me. “It would never work anyway. We've known each other since we were little.”

“Where I'm from,” I say and slowly walk toward the couch, “we have this thing called a carapace that we wear on the back of our hand. You enter a bunch of information, all your likes and dislikes, and you rank stuff like whether you prefer dark hair or light or which celebs you think are attractive and what music and movies and books you like, and it tracks all of your purchases. Then it takes all of that info and turns it into a color. You compare your carapace to other people's to see how compatible you are.”

“Why? That sounds stupid.”

“It's like a shortcut.” I sit at the opposite end of the sofa. “A time-saver. You know right away if you have a chance with someone. So, things like your predicament with Dorian don't happen as much because maybe his carapace would be green and yours would be another color, like, I don't know…” My stomach clenches. “Purple.”

“Yeah, well, there might be such a thing as too compatible,” Zimri says. “Like with Dorian, everything's the same for us. We both grew up here. Our parents were friends … or something. We work the same job. We both love music.”

“I never thought of that.”

“And what about all the things that carapace-thing can't measure? Like whether you want more out of life than you have? Or how much of a risk-taker you are? Don't you think that's more important than whether you both like the same dumb songs or bought the same kind of socks?”

I sit back and think of Ara's matching carapace, and how our kisses were always wrong.

Abruptly, Zimri turns to face me. “Why are you here?”

“I can leave.” I start to stand, but she reaches out and pulls me back down.

“That's not what I meant. I want to know why you left the City and came here. Mr. Fancy bashed-up car. Mr. Fancy torn-up pants. Mr. Fancy glove thingamabob I've seen on your hand. There's more to your story than you're letting on.”

My mouth goes dry and I start to sweat. “Yes, you're right.” I debate about how much I can safely tell her. How much she might already know. I start slow. “I had a fight with my family. Mostly with my dad. Although my mom didn't help things.”

“And you ran away?”

I nod.

Zimri bites her bottom lip. “Do they know where you are?”

“Let's put it this way: if they want to find me, they can, but they aren't trying.”

“I know how that feels,” she says quietly.

“You do?”

“My mom,” she says but doesn't elaborate. Then she says, “Do you like it here?” and cocks her head to one side like she's contemplating the same question for herself.

“Do
you
like it here?” I ask her.

She shrugs and picks at lint on the pillow between us. “Doesn't matter because I have no place else to go.”

“There's always another place.”

“Yeah, yeah, another crap job in another crap warehouse or factory in some other corporate complex. But I can't leave my Nonda.”