“I wasn’t sure you’d want me to tell him about us.”
“What is wrong with you? That’s ridiculous,” Thea says. “Call him back. He already knows I was in a coma. You should at least explain to him how we’re connected. Then he and I can put our heads together. He’ll be a brilliant ally. He knows all about computers. You know, I bet he could even break into the Forge computers if he tried.”
I switch the phone to speaker and rest it on my knee. Then I start up the car and shift into gear.
“He did try,” I say.
“What?!” she exclaims.
“He tried and failed, just a couple days ago while you were locked in the vault at Forge. In fact, the whole thing backfired,” I say. I turn the car around and head back toward the highway. “The point is, for the very first time, I might actually have an edge over Berg. This address could be the key to the vault of dreamers in Miehana, and he doesn’t know I have it. I have to be careful who I tell and what I do next.”
“We have to be careful,” she says. “Don’t you dare try to do this on your own. Imagine how I feel. I care about Ma and Dubbs as much as you do.”
I notice she doesn’t mention Larry.
“And Larry,” she adds. “Besides, we don’t know anything about that address. It could be a trap. Why don’t you come to Holdum instead? We can work together and figure out a plan.”
“I think we’re both safer apart,” I say.
She lets out a laugh. “What are you talking about?”
I hesitate, not certain how she’s going to take this. “Berg told me your parents want to buy more of my dreams for you.”
I aim around a pothole.
“They probably think you’re dead,” Thea says, her voice low. “They wouldn’t want to mine you if they knew you were alive.”
“No? Have you told them about me?”
“I have, obviously, but it didn’t do much good,” she says. “They won’t believe I’m you inside. They know Rosie Sinclair was a star on The Forge Show, but they think I’m just obsessed with you. They don’t realize Sinclair Fifteen comes from you.”
“What are they? Stupid?” I say.
“You know what?” she says calmly. “Sometimes you sound just like you used to when you were a little voice in my head and you said the sort of thing I knew not to say out loud.”
“And sometimes you sound like a superior butthead.”
“I’m trying to be rational here,” she says. “Madeline and Diego are very shrewd people, but they’re not cruel. They must think the original source of my dream seed is dead. Or a volunteer. A dream donor or whatever.”
Thea’s deluding herself, but I keep my opinion to myself this time.
“Did they tell you to invite me there?” I ask.
“They suggested it,” she says. “When I told them how you helped me deliver my baby, they said you would always be welcome here.”
“I see,” I say, coming to a stop before the highway. I crack my window to let in a little air. “I hate to point out the obvious, but having me nearby would be awfully convenient if they ever needed to mine me.”
“Rosie, they wouldn’t. I promise you. That would never even be a possibility.”
“No? What if you fall into a coma again? What if your headaches get worse?” I say. “Why not tap old Rosie? She’s got dreams to spare.”
From her end of the phone, a muffled shuffling happens.
“I’d give you my dreams in a heartbeat,” she says.
I laugh. “Oh, great. Now I’m a selfish jerk.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No?” I say. “I guess I’m not as generous as you. I wouldn’t sacrifice my dreams for you. I already did that when it wasn’t my choice, and I’m not doing it again.”
I’m surprised at how vicious I sound. But they mined me and mined me until I was a pathetic shred of myself. I barely survived. I’ve never been the same.
“Rosie,” she says sadly. “You know I had to leave you.”
“Don’t.”
I already feel ugly and bad enough as it is. I don’t need her bringing up her justifications again for why she abandoned me, and sure as I live, I don’t need to think any more about what it was like in the dream hell of Onar. The simple, bitter truth is, I’m never letting anyone mine me again, ever.
“You said you’re sorry. We’re done,” I say.
A little squawking noise comes over the line, and then a guy’s murmur. It’s disconcerting to think Tom might have been overhearing her end of the conversation.
“Valeria’s awake,” Thea says. Another shuffling noise follows. “She needs to nurse. Listen, will you call me later? We’ll figure out what to do about Berg, okay?”
“I’ll try,” I say.
“Don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad,” I say. I am, obviously, fuming mad.
“Then will you please tell Burnham about me, really? Please?” Thea says. “He’d never believe me if I tried to tell him myself.”
“I will.”
“Call me after you talk to him.”
She’s off.
I ease onto the highway and get up to speed. She thinks we belong together, like we’re still halves of the same whole. She’s wrong, though. We aren’t the same. We have completely different lives now. What’s more, we don’t even really think alike. We never did, actually, even when we were part of the same mind. That’s why we could disagree with each other before. You have to be separate to disagree.
And yet. We still have fifteen years of shared memories, and she helped me find the lemon juice clue. I hold the note above the steering wheel and take a moment to memorize the address. For the first time, I wonder how Dubbs got it.
Then I touch Dubbs’s note to my nose again and breathe in the lemony, smoky fragrance. It’s a small, churlish comfort to think that Dubbs will recognize me rather than Thea if we ever all meet together.
6
LINUS: HALF BLIND
HE HATED DOCTORS and doctors’ offices and hospitals. He couldn’t stand being asked to undress, or feeling a paper gown against his skin, or knowing he’d be touched with impersonal, efficient hands. His mum had died in hospital. His dad, too, an ocean later. The slimy guy who’d photographed him at age thirteen, Floyd, had divined this revulsion somehow. He’d worn a stethoscope around his neck while he took the shots of Linus, posed half-naked on the brown, carpeted podium. The hidden tension was what gave the photos their power, Floyd had said.
Sweating in his suit, Linus sat in the waiting room of the top eye surgeon in the country and tried not to think about the past. To look at his eye, they weren’t going to make him undress, that was for sure. He could keep it together. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He wasn’t subject to Floyd’s sick power.