Lyra shook her head—a quick, spastic movement, like an animal trying to shake off a fly. “He was already gone. I saw them come, and I hid until they left.”
“They’ll be back,” Gemma said. She could barely understand what Lyra meant—Caelum gone, but not taken, and Lyra now alone. But she knew for sure they would come back. “They’ll be back any second. You have to come with us.”
“I can’t,” Lyra said abruptly. And then, an afterthought: “Thank you. I’ll be careful.”
She turned and started walking again. For a second, Gemma was so stunned she could only stare after her. Then she registered the red backpack Lyra had on, bulging with belongings. Where was she going, at just after six in the morning? Where had Caelum gone?
“Wait,” she called out. Lyra turned around, still with that same blank expression, a little bit patient, a tiny bit irritated, too. Unexpectedly, Gemma was furious. That was the good thing about anger: it was always bigger than fear, always bigger than guilt or disappointment. You could count on anger. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
“And where’s Caelum?” Pete was on Gemma’s team again, bound to her by exhaustion and frustration. “Where did he go?”
“Home,” Lyra said, as if that made any sense at all. “I’m going after him.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Gemma said. The long night was starting to catch up to her. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw starburst colors, quick explosions in the dark. “The people who came here won’t just quit. They’ll look until they find you, wherever you are.”
“They’re looking for Caelum and me,” she said. “They won’t expect us to split up. And they won’t expect us to get far. They don’t think we’re smart enough.” Her expression changed, just for an instant, like a plate shifting deep undersea and causing ripples at the surface. “Besides, what other choice do we have?”
“You could come with us,” Gemma said. But she knew that Lyra had made her decision. Gemma was fumbling for a way to convince her, hauling at a line stretched thin to a breaking point. “We could drive you somewhere far away,” she said. “Maine. The Oregon coast. Canada. Wherever.”
“Not without Caelum,” Lyra said simply.
“You’ll never find him,” Gemma argued. “Do you know how many people there are in this country? Millions and millions.” But there was no way to explain to Lyra how big the world was, and how far it went. Until a few weeks ago, her world was by the water, by a fence that ringed her off into a few square miles.
“You just said the people who came from Haven will find us.”
“That’s different,” Gemma said. “They’re . . . bigger than we are. Do you understand that? They have cars. They have drones, and money, and friends everywhere.”
Lyra’s face changed again. A new current swept away all the feeling, shutting her down to a perfect blank. “You forget what they made us to be, though,” she said—softly, gently, as if Gemma were the one who needed to understand.
Gemma shook her head. Her heart was beating through her whole body. Every minute the sun leeched away more cover.
“Invisible,” Lyra said, so softly Gemma almost missed it.
Then she smiled. Gemma thought it was the first time she had ever seen Lyra smile, and the effect was dazzling, like watching the sun slide behind a prism and light it up in various colors. “Thank you, though. I mean it.”
“Please,” Gemma said, as Lyra turned away. “Take this, at least.” Gemma took her wallet from her back pocket. It was cheap, plastic, and covered in smiley faces, and April had bought it for her as a joke their sophomore year. There were probably sixty bucks inside, plus an Amex tied to her parents’ account, a debit card, a nondriver state ID, a folded-up note April had given her on their first day back in school after break—This note certifies I give zero fucks—and, in the little coin pouch, a nest of unspooling thread she’d picked off Pete’s pocket the first time she’d worn his sweatshirt to school. She could get new cards, and even an ID wasn’t that difficult, especially since she didn’t drive. She had only a few hundred dollars in her bank account, anyway. She mostly regretted that bit of thread. “You’ll need money. You know how to use an ATM card, right, to get money? The code’s easy. Four-four-one-one. Can you remember that?”
“Thanks.” Lyra managed to smile again. Then she did something funny: she reached up and placed two hands on Gemma’s shoulders. “See you,” she said.
That was it. She turned and disappeared. At least, to Gemma it seemed like she disappeared, even though of course Lyra was actually visible for a while, moving between cars, heading in the direction of the highway, and finally passing into a thicket of disease-blighted trees. The sun had finally come up for good, and Gemma found her eyes watering in the sudden bright. She should run after Lyra. She should beg her, or scream at her, or force her to come with them.
But she knew it wouldn’t do any good, and she didn’t move, and couldn’t breathe. She knew they would never see each other again. Lyra would be cleaned up, like Jake had been. Caelum too.
“Gemma?” Pete found her hand and held it tight-tight, as if she was in danger of falling off a ledge. “You tried, okay? You did everything you could do.”
Gemma said nothing. It didn’t matter if she’d tried. She’d failed. And that was the only thing that counted.
“You can’t feel guilty about this, okay? You can’t save her. You can’t save any of them. I want you to say it.”
She was surprised when Pete pulled her into a hug. His shirt still smelled a little like the tiki smoke, his skin like the sweet punch they’d been drinking. She felt like crying again. But she kissed his collarbone through his shirt, and tilted her head to catch his Adam’s apple, too.
“I tried,” she said. “I can’t save them.” As quickly as the urge to cry had come, it was gone. It wasn’t that she believed it, exactly, but that it didn’t matter anymore. What she had said to Lyra was true: the people working against them were too big. They were too strong.
Lyra and Caelum would die by their will, just as Gemma had lived.
The hand of misery that had been squeezing her for weeks unclenched. She felt light. Free. She saw now that her only mistake had been in thinking she had a choice.
There was evil everywhere in the world. Liars outnumbered truth tellers, probably by three to one. So what did it matter, one more or less? She might even be able to look at her father again. “Let’s go home,” she said.
For the first time since they’d left the party, Pete smiled. “Now you’re talking,” he said, and kissed her hand even as he interlaced their fingers. He seemed happy. He thought she was happy.
She didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. There was no need, anyway. Happiness never lasted, because happiness didn’t pay dividends.
That was just the way the world worked.
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 5 of Lyra’s story.
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