The Unquiet (24 page)

So I do what Cecily would.

I wrap my arms around him. It is so strange and awkward to stand behind a boy in the dark and hug him. He startles at first, but then he relaxes. His bunched muscles loosen up under my arms. “I'm not exactly sure what this is,” he says, and I can hear his smile. “Thank you.”

“Yes. Well.” I can't think of anything else to say. I might be blushing. I feel stupid. I drop my hands.

I am not a very good person, but does that mean that there isn't any good in me? I hope not.

I say, “You're welcome.”

I go back to bed.

“I
s Gray our friend?” Cecily whispers, nudging me. I open my eyes and find the sun barely risen, the living room still half dark. We have spent the last four days in Gray's apartment. We haven't talked about going back to our place, and I don't know when we will. Cecily is sitting on the couch by my head, balancing a bowl of cereal on her lap. The handle of a wooden spoon pokes out of her mouth. “Is Gray our friend?” she asks again. “And how come he's our friend? How do we know him?”

I blink at her, trying to understand what she is talking
about, and more important, why we're talking about it. “It's barely six o'clock,” I croak. “Did you have a bad dream again?”

She shakes her head. “I just want to know some things.” When I say nothing, she tries again. “Where do you know him from?”

My brain fumbles, the wheels not turning quite right. “I don't know him from anywhere,” I whisper. “I just—”

She rolls her eyes. “Right. How
else
do you know him?” She holds up her hand before I can answer and glares at me. “Don't tell me I'm asking too many questions.”

So I don't.

I tell her Edith was his sister. After our first meeting at the café, I met her again in line at the pharmacy when I was buying Gigi's medicine. She was nice, and we became friends. The lies roll easily off my tongue. At the end I don't know whether Cecily buys it, but she turns back to her cereal. I turn back to my pillow, but the scent of shampoo perfumes the air. I turn to squint at her. “You bathed yourself?”

She shrugs. “It's scissors day,” she says, and when I don't buy it, she bends in demonstration, so her hair is actually dipping into her cereal bowl.

She reaches underneath the couch, pulls out a pair of metal scissors and waves them at me.

“Okay,” I say. I snuggle into the couch even more, though. “But give me one more hour.”

An image of Cecily alone with a pair of scissors suddenly flashes across my mind. I reach out and grab the scissors from her before she can react. I put them under my pillow and close my eyes again.

“Older people”—she sighs, and I imagine her shaking her head—“are so stupid.” Somehow I think what she really means to say is: “You're always lying to me. I don't believe you about Gray and Edith
.
” Behind my eyelids, I imagine I get her killed by telling her about the cottages.

“H
e shouldn't be alone,” Gray says when I tell him about Jack. “It's better if we're all together, especially now. I'll go and bring him here.” But he is gone for hours. In that time I do everything I can think of, twice. I clean (and break a plate). I cook (and burn two pots). I cut Cecily's hair perfectly with the scissors but then take to my own hair as if I were using shears. I tell myself nothing is wrong. I tell myself to stop pacing because it is making my sister afraid. At some point she turns on the radio and makes me twirl around the room with her. “It's our special dance,” she says as I turn to
find Gray entering the apartment, looking grim.

“You cut your hair,” he says, shaking the snow from his coat.

I immediately feel self-conscious. I am surprised that it matters that he noticed. “Oh, yeah.” I clench my hands at my sides to keep from touching it. “It grows too quickly.”

“She cut mine, too,” Cecily says, shaking her head. “And now I look like a boy.”

“You look—” He pretends to search for just the right word, and then he says, “
Insanely
beautiful. I almost didn't recognize you.” He lets her tackle him, but he turns back to look at me. “That's my sister's dress?”

My heart sinks. “I was doing the laundry. So. But I can take it off if you want.”

“No, it's . . .” He shrugs. “I forgot I brought her boxes here, that's all. You can have them.”

I look past him. “Gray, where is Jack?”

He hesitates, looks at Cecily. “I couldn't find him,” he says. “I found this, though.” He hands me a large envelope, but that's not what interests me. Gray's hands are muddy. I stare at them.

“Hey, Ceilie,” he says. “I need to talk to Lira about something for a second.”

“You can say it in front of me,” she says, looking at me. “Right, Lira?”

I shake my head. “Oh,” she says. She goes into his room but doesn't close the door. Gray steps closer. He whispers in my ear so Cecily won't hear, and then he covers my mouth to muffle my scream. I don't know how he knew I would scream when I didn't. I try to leave, reaching for the door.

“I have to go,” I keep saying.

“There's nowhere to go, Lira,” Gray tells me. “There's nowhere to go. It's done. It's over.”

Jack is dead.

I wasn't there.

I couldn't do this one thing for him, this one thing he asked me for.

Later, when the tears have stopped, I am surprised to find that it is dark and that Gray is still sitting on the ground with me. Cecily is snoring softly on the couch next to us. The moon past the shades turns everything in the room silvery. “It doesn't matter to me that he's gone,” I say.

“Stop it,” he says.

“I don't care. Why should I care?”

“Lira—”

“Nothing works out the way we plan it.” My voice breaks. “What are we supposed to do with that?”

“People die. We can't really change that.”

I stand, walk away from him. “Is that supposed to make it okay?”

“Never,” he says, standing, too.

I am so tired I feel like I am relearning how to walk. My bones creak; my knees clang against each other. Gray follows me around the room, and eventually I realize that somehow, at some point along the way, I started holding his hand. His hand is firm, warm in mine. Friends hold hands all the time. I tell myself this. But when our eyes meet in the dark, I know something is wrong. We both stop, and I am suddenly more terrified than I have ever been in my life. But I am not afraid of Gray. He is only Edith's brother. He is only a boy from the cottages. He is only my friend.

I am afraid of myself.

I snatch my hand out of his as if it were on fire. I wrap my arms around myself. “I don't know why I did that.” My voice comes out a croak.

Gray says nothing, doesn't accept my apology. He stares at me for a long moment, and then he steps back. He turns around and goes to his room, the door clicking softly behind him.

I stand there.

I feel young. I feel as if something I don't fully understand is happening. Or has happened already.

I
keep imagining Jack's funeral. The things I might have said, the poetry I might have read as the coffin was lowered into the ground. I don't ask Gray for any of the details about what he found, how he found it or even how long it was there. Jack is gone. I will never see him again. I will never hear his stories or criticize the things he wears.

Sometimes I tell myself that this is okay. Other times I can't hear what I am telling myself.

His book sits inside the envelope, his note crumpled. “All this is missing are your illustrations,” he wrote. “I'm sorry I'm
not brave enough to wait for you, Lira.” The words smudged, as if he'd been crying. And perhaps he held a gun in his other hand.

This, too, is okay,
I tell myself,
at least as close as can be.

But not really. Not at all.

Outside, spring has come, but you would not know it. Nobody remembers to wear color or extra-bright lipstick anymore. No one wears flowers in their hair, and very few people laugh. Despite the violence, which the police try desperately to contain, this city is not yet as bad as others. The bombs have not come here yet. The murders are not nearly as many as in Tokyo, Moscow, Abuja, New York. On the radio, we hear about a city where hundreds of citizens go door to door and kill anyone they find the least bit suspicious. The innocent and guilty alike, slaughtered. Paranoia has overcome the world. Our city is barricaded, a fence that also encloses some of the closest surrounding towns. No one can leave, and no one can enter. Gray and I console ourselves with the fact that the sleeper war hasn't actually started yet. That we have not yet been called to do what we were trained for. But we will be soon. The clock is ticking.

Right now all we have to worry about is staying hidden. It's too risky for any sleeper to complete any more missions.
So it's not so bad that we haven't been to the flower shop in a while. All we have to do is avoid the crazy citizens marching around with their knives and their rifles. Gray and I might be safe. We can pretend to be as normal as they want us to be. In fact, I suspect that some of the very people pretending to be citizens, marching door to door, are sleepers themselves. That is the best way to win. The question is: Are we willing to stay here and chance that? Should we find a place to hide and wait until we are called? Should we find a place to hide even
after
we're called?

We need more time.

I borrow Cecily's headphones and listen to the reports for hours. After I am done, Gray takes over. He drums his fingers on the table so Cecily will think he is listening to music. We are worried without letting it show on our faces. “We have a frequency in our wrists,” Gray tells me. “I can't turn them off completely. It's impossible to take them out.” He holds up his left hand. “They own us with this.”

“How much time do you think we have?”

He shakes his head, and I lower mine.

The mob inches closer and closer to our side of the city every day. We have a few weeks left if we're lucky, but then this place will be overrun. Even the police officers with their
riot gear cannot prevent it. We can hear them on the streets, the officers and the angry crowds, and it doesn't sound as if the officers are winning.

One morning I wake up to a dull pain in my wrist. I want to think nothing of it, but it is the same hand as my tracker. I hold it under the tap and run the cold water until the pain goes away. Just a few minutes later I catch Gray rubbing his own wrist. We lock eyes and quickly drop our hands.

The signal has finally been sent. Our handlers are calling us.

We are supposed to report to the flower shop. A lot of others probably already have and are hiding, getting ready to strike.

When I look in the mirror, I am surprised to find that I am older than the girl I was in the cottages. Surprised that I am not as eager to grab my gun and my knife as I once was. I am not nearly as focused. I am still me, and I want to live, but my head is spinning now. It is making it
difficult
to live.

Edith's dresses are loose on me; I make sure never to wear her prettiest ones. I wear only the ones that look the oldest and most ragged; seeming beautiful still doesn't matter to me. Each time I wear a dress I imagine the look of horror Gigi would give me, and I miss her, and that's what the dresses start to mean to me. They make me think of everyone—
Edith, Jack, Da, Gigi, the original Lirael—all at once.

Gray goes out and brings back books. For Cecily, the colorful kind. For me, anything that's on the lists of books to read before you die. I could paint, but supplies are expensive, and I am afraid of what would show up on my canvas. I'd rather send my mind away to a different world, and Gray understands this. There are so many books; I know I won't read them all before I die. But I sit in the bathtub and read as much as I can, and this is how time passes. Sometimes I find Gray sitting in a corner of the apartment, tinkering with watches like the one Edith gave me. “I didn't know you made them,” I say.

“I started a few months after I became a Safe,” he confesses. “I hated how easy it was for them to control us. The one you have is going to die soon.”

I nod.

We are talking around it. The pain in our wrists.

I am about to go back to the bath when something catches my eye. I turn around again. Crouch in front of Gray. “Your hands are shaking,” I say, grabbing his hand and holding on to it until he stops working.

He nods without looking up. “I don't have any pills left. I'm taking care of it. I'm going to pay a guy to make more, but first he has to figure out what exactly they've put in it. He'll
make you some, too.” He didn't tell me because he knew what I would do. I first glare at him, then count the number of pills I have left, plus the ones among Edith's things. I divide them evenly between us. Enough now to last nineteen days for both of us.

“It'll be terribly inconvenient if . . . you know . . . ,” I say, “something happens to any of us right now.”

“Right,” he says, and I can feel his eyes on my back as I walk away. Back to the bathroom, where Cecily sits also in the bathtub. I round the corner, but then I poke my head out again.

“Right,” I echo firmly, Madame style, but with an exaggerated accent.

His lips twitch.

These moments are rare. There is absolutely nothing to smile about, but we smile anyway.

I tell myself this is all a game.

At any moment it will end, just as quickly as it started. Like the afternoon I first realize that there is a girl in this world who must find Gray attractive. Several, in fact, and I cannot stop thinking about that. Who she is. What she looks like. Why she might like him. His good looks perhaps, his kindness, his one-sided smiles as much as his sadness, the fact
that she can understand him. Understand where he is coming from and where he is going. He is young and old at exactly the same time, strong and vulnerable, too, a contradiction.

I am supposed to be playing hide-and-seek with Cecily, and the closet in Gray's room is our most obvious spot, but I'm so distracted that I don't care. I sit there, rubbing my aching wrist.

When Gray enters the room, I startle. He sits on the edge of the bed, takes off his boots.

“What's wrong?” he asks, frowning at me.

I realize I am sitting inside his closet in the dark. I am sitting there, thinking about him. I stand, shaking my head, and climb out. “Cecily and I,” I say, pretending my face isn't hot, “are playing . . . hide-and-seek.” As if he can't hear her counting down from fifty.

I go out to the living room. He stays in his room for a while before he comes out, and by then our hide-and-seek game is over.

I know all about this feeling. This new type of loneliness that creeps in the older we get. Suddenly the couch is smaller than it used to be, and I can feel Gray right next to me when Cecily stands. I jump up like the couch is on fire, and Gray actually looks stung. I don't know what to say. He and Cecily
both watch me like I'm crazy. I pick up my coat. “I have things to do,” I say, and pull on a hat. “I'll be back soon.”

But I only sit at the top of the staircase of our building like an idiot. I sit there and close my eyes, and I try to remember
things
. All those
things
. The things that a girl tells herself so she doesn't start to notice eyes in a different way and wish that laughter were directed at her. I imagine Edith shaking her head at me. Her brother should not be part of my game. There should be another boy, and he should be easy to toy with, and it is
his
hands and
his
eyes and
his
silences I should notice. I sit there for an hour. Only afterward do I realize that Gray could see me. His stupid cameras watch everything. He could see me the whole time, sitting there. When I come back to the apartment, I read with Cecily and catch him watching me strangely. I look down, play with my watch.

We say nothing to each other.

I fall asleep, I think, but when I wake up, the light in Gray's room is on. I walk toward it before I realize what I am doing, and even after that. I don't knock. Gray is lying on his back on his bed. I tell myself that I notice the book he is reading first, before I notice that he isn't wearing a shirt. He sits up but doesn't say anything. Neither do I. I just turn off the light and stand there in the dark.

He finds me. He finds me in the dark and pushes my hair gently from my face. I pull him toward the closet. Maybe if something happens in the darkest corner of a room, where no one and nothing can see, it doesn't happen at all. I shut the wooden door, and we stand among the shirts and coats. Not moving, barely breathing.
Still,
the voice in my head chastens.
Still. You are doing something really, really bad, Lira.
You are playing the worst game it is possible to play.

I take his hand.

I cannot tell what he is thinking in the dark. And then he surprises me by hugging me. His chest is warm against mine, and I close my eyes. I hug him back.
This is enough,
I tell myself.
The game can end just like this
. But then he is pushing my hair from my face again and leaning down. His breath tickles my ear. “I want to kiss you out there in the light, Lira.”

I flinch. I try to pull away, but I can't. “Why?” I ask.

“Because the world won't end. Because I want to see your eyes when I do. I know you, and tomorrow you're going to tell me to forget whatever is about to happen, and that's not going to work for me.”

I say, “I was going to tell you that now.”

Neither of us laughs.

He guides me out of the closet to the window without
ever letting me out of the hug. I can't breathe, but maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. I catch the reflection of the moon in his eyes as he lowers his face to mine. He kisses me with warm lips, the kind that is afraid of spooking a frightened deer, and holds his breath. When I don't run, when I lean closer, press my lips harder against his, he kisses me again as though he has been imagining this moment, this mistake, for much longer than I have.