Inheritance (27 page)

The real world swam before Reese as she blinked her eyes open. Eres was still sitting across from her, regarding her steadily, but it was too confusing to see with her physical eyes while also touching the teacher. Reese closed her eyes again. She tried to relax, to let Eres access the knot of emotions inside her, but as Eres began to lay those emotions out one after the other—anguish, longing, a bitter wash of guilt—Reese pulled her hand free, heart pounding.

“I can’t,” she said out loud, her eyes wild.

“Are you okay?” David asked. He reached for her, but she shook her head and his hand hung in the air for a second, motionless, before he pulled it back. His face reddened slightly.

“I’m sorry,” Reese choked out. “I can’t do this today. I’m not ready.”

Eres sat back, the folds of the teacher’s robes falling to the floor in pearlescent ripples. “I’m sorry to have pushed you. It may take longer for you to adjust to this ability. I’ll work with David for the remainder of our lesson. Would you like something to drink? Water?”

Reese shook her head, feeling as if she had narrowly escaped from a trap. She sat in silence, legs and arms crossed defensively, as Eres took David’s hand and began the process with him. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him twitch from time to time, his breath accelerating and then calming. Reese dropped her gaze to the floor so that she couldn’t see him anymore. She was embarrassed and disappointed in herself, and she wished there were some way she could make the time pass faster. Now that Eres had shown Reese the shape of her own consciousness, she was hyperaware of the chaotic nature of her thoughts. She bent over, clutching her head in her hands, and willed herself to breathe more slowly. Inhale, exhale. She heard David shift in his seat. She heard her own heartbeat. She gazed down at the floor, noticing every tiny, precise groove in the matte black material. There was a pattern in the floor that she had never seen before, like some kind of maze.

Finally David and Eres broke apart, and David whispered, “That was crazy.”

Reese sat up. David’s eyes seemed haunted as he looked at her. “You’re all right?” Reese asked.

“Yeah.”
But I know why you stopped. That was intense.

Eres stood. The lesson was over. “It may take several weeks or months for you both to fully adjust to your abilities, especially since you’re coming to this much later than an Imrian child
would.” Reese moved toward the door, but Eres said, “Reese, may I speak with you?”

Reese paused. “Sure.”

“David, will you wait in the corridor? It will only be a moment.” After he left, Eres closed the door behind him.

“What is it?” Reese asked nervously.

“I believe that you have been trying to hide some things from me,” Eres said gently.

Reese crossed her arms. “I’m not ready for this.”

“I know. But it serves no purpose for you to hide your emotions from yourself.”

Reese’s first instinct was to deny it, to say,
I’m not hiding anything.
The words caught in her throat as she saw Eres watching her. Reese said nothing.

Eres nodded. “You must face it. I should also tell you that I know that you and David are sharing these lessons with your teacher, the one who is a spy. And I know that you and David have abilities that differ from what we Imria have.”

Reese went pale. “You know?”

“You cannot hide these things from me.”

“Are you going to tell?”

Eres looked disappointed. “Everything I learn from you is learned in confidence. You must understand that. David has not tried to hide these things from me. Only you have.”

Reese colored. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You and David must decide when you’d like to discuss these things openly. I suggest that you decide soon.”

Eres walked over to the door and opened it. David was standing on the other side, his back to the room. He spun around as
the door slid open, his dark eyes seeking out Reese’s face. She shoved her hands into her pockets as she exited the room.

“I will see you both next week,” said Eres. “And, Reese, think about what I told you.”

Eres knows about Mr. Hernandez
, Reese thought to David as they drove back to the ferry.

Is that what Eres was talking to you about?
David asked. They were sitting in the backseat of the SUV while Reese’s mom made small talk with Nura Halba in the front.

Yes. Eres also knows that we have different abilities, but I don’t think she knows exactly what they are.

Eres said our lessons are confidential. Do you think she’ll tell the other Imria?

She said she wouldn’t.

The SUV turned down the road that circled the harbor, and Reese’s mom twisted in her seat to look at them. “David, your parents know you’re going to the Arenses’ with us, right?”

“Yeah. They’ll pick me up from there later.”

Reese and David were getting together with Julian under the pretense of working on a physics lab, but they were actually planning to record interviews for Bin 42. Reese had told David about Julian’s secret investigations earlier in the week. She had thought up a whole speech to persuade David to do the interview, but he had agreed almost immediately.

“More insurance,” he said to her after school on Wednesday. “Now that we have to deal with Hernandez, we need as much of that as we can get.”

As the SUV pulled up to the closed information booth beside the dock, David thought to Reese:
If Eres keeps our secret, that will be one reason to trust the Imria.

Reese opened the door.
Well, it will be one reason to trust Eres.
She still wasn’t ready to trust the rest of them.

When they arrived at Julian’s house, he had tacked a
black cloth over the closet doors in his bedroom to create a backdrop, and he had set up a camera on a tripod. He angled several lamps straight at the backdrop and motioned for David and Reese to sit down on two crates he had arranged in front of the camera. “I’ll shoot you from the waist up,” Julian said. “It’s not fancy, but it’ll work fine. I’ll be behind the camera but I have a bunch of questions to ask. My voice will be edited out of the final interview, so I need you to answer the questions by restating them, if you know what I mean? Like a reality TV–style confessional.”

His questions were thorough, drawing out every last detail of their experiences beginning with the June Disaster and ending with their lessons on Angel Island. It wasn’t until Reese and
David began to explain the purpose of
susum’urda
, though, that she realized how little Julian—and other humans—knew about it.

“
Susum’urda
isn’t about reading others’ thoughts,” she said. “It’s not about getting people to reveal their secrets against their will. It’s about connection.”

“What does it feel like?” Julian asked.

“It’s… hard to explain,” Reese said, and glanced at David.

“We’re not that good at it yet,” David said. “We’ve really only done it with our teacher. With Eres, it’s like seeing someone’s interior identity. Who they actually are, beyond what they look like on the surface. It’s incredible, and incredibly scary at the same time.”

“Why is it scary?” Julian asked.

“Because—” David hesitated, his gaze going beyond the camera to the UFO photos on Julian’s walls. Julian waited, and when David looked back at the camera, he was focused. “It’s scary because it opens you up to someone else too. It makes you vulnerable. In order to have that connection with someone else, you have to be willing to show them who you really are.”

“What about you, Reese?” Julian prompted.

She looked at the camera self-consciously. “For me, it’s mostly just scary.”

“Why?” David asked softly.

She looked at him. His dark eyes reflected the lights that Julian had pointed at them. Reese said awkwardly, “I’m just… I’m not the best when it comes to feelings and stuff.” Her emotions seemed to rear up inside her, both affirming her statement and rejecting it, and her face heated up with everything she had
left unsaid. She turned to Julian, who was standing behind the camera watching her. “Do we have to put this in the interview?” she asked.

“No, it’s okay,” Julian said.

“Thanks,” Reese said, relieved. “Could we maybe take a break?”

Julian glanced at his watch. “Sure. My parents are going to make us come down for dinner soon anyway.”

“Great.” Reese got up. “I’m going to the bathroom.” She fled Julian’s bedroom and crossed the landing to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. There was a window in the wall that overlooked the backyard, and the sash was pushed up to let in the warm evening air. She could hear the sound of her mom’s voice floating up from below, and Celeste’s answering laugh. Her mom was staying for dinner, and her dad was going to show up soon too.
One big happy family
, she thought dourly.

She used the toilet even though she didn’t need to and flushed, then turned on the taps to wash her hands. Her face was grim-looking in the mirror, as if she had gotten bad news and hadn’t shaken it off yet. She tried to smooth out the frown that was dragging down the corners of her mouth, but her eyes still looked agitated. She felt like an idiot. David could speak so directly and honestly about
susum’urda
. He could tell the world what had happened to the two of them and make everyone believe. In comparison, she probably came off as a dork. An emotionally stunted, freaked out dork with secrets.

There was a knock on the door. “Reese?” It was David.

“Just a minute,” she called. She dried off her hands and took a shallow breath before opening the door.

He looked concerned. “Can I come in for a sec?”

She hadn’t expected that, but she let him in. “What’s up?”

He entered the room and pushed the door shut. He had a strange expression on his face—like he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to word it.

“What is it?” She began to imagine all sorts of horrible possibilities. He probably thought she was ruining the interview. Or maybe he was going to—she couldn’t think about it. Nervous sweat broke out on her skin.

He seemed to make up his mind. “You sure that’s all it is? That you’re not good with feelings and stuff?”

Her cheeks turned pink.

“I mean—” He waved his hands as if he were trying to gather up all his thoughts into a coherent sentence. “What happened with Eres today, and then what you said to Julian… I feel like something’s wrong.” His face reddened. “Is something wrong?”

She backed away, crossing her arms. Were they having a talk? The kind where people said, “Can we talk about something?” but actually meant “This isn’t working out”? She scrambled for something to say to stave it off. “I was a little overwhelmed at our lesson today, that’s all. You said it yourself—it’s scary.”

He nodded, but doubt was still written clearly on his face.

Her stomach sank. “Really. There’s nothing wrong.” She felt like a liar. She
was
a liar. She held her breath, as if that would prevent him from knowing.

His hands had been stuffed into his pockets as if to avoid touching her, but now he lifted a hand to her arms, pulling one of her hands free. She stiffened. “Do you not want me to touch you?” he asked, his face darkening.

She forced herself to let him hold her hand, but her anxiety shivered between them like a steel sheet in a gust of wind. On the other side, she felt his mounting sadness, and she couldn’t bear to feel it. Before she knew what she was doing, the words began to spill out of her. “I don’t want to do anything wrong, and I’m afraid you’ll—you’ll see something in me that you hate or that will make you hate me, like that night at Eric’s party. I can’t control what I’m thinking of, and I don’t know how to deal with the fact that you can see it. I really—I really like you.” She felt as if her face were on fire, but she kept going. “I don’t want you to hate me, and yeah, I really suck at feelings and stuff. You should ask Julian! Ask anyone. I just—I wish we could be normal, you know? Like not have to do these interviews and explain everything, even though I know it’s important. Nobody gets it except for us. Humans don’t understand the Imria, the Imria don’t understand humans, and nobody understands us. We’re stuck in the middle, and we have to explain it to everyone. I know that. But I suck at talking about this stuff, and I—” She ran a hand through her hair, unable to stop talking. “I wish we could be normal and go out without being followed, and I don’t know, I wish we could make out in your car or something instead of being so
restrained
or whatever Eres wants us to be.” She finally ran out of words, halting abruptly as a smile reached David’s eyes.

He laced his fingers through hers. She felt his heartbeat through his skin, a regular percussion that echoed her own.

“You can close yourself off, can’t you?” he said. “Try it.”

“You mean—”

“We can be normal for five minutes. I’ll try it too.”

She sensed him folding away his consciousness, as if he were closing the panels of a puzzle box one by one. She tried to do the same thing. She focused on her own heartbeat as Eres Tilhar had taught her; she centered on her own inhalation and exhalation. She closed off the third eye that opened every time David touched her, and he bent down, letting go of her hand so he could cup her face, and kissed her. His lower lip slid across hers, slightly dry. Even though she had kissed him before, she had never kissed him without being able to sense his internal self, and he felt so different now. Separate. A physical form she did not understand. She felt inordinately clumsy, and she wondered if being divorced from his consciousness made her a bad kisser.