Sea of Stars (25 page)

“Here, let me try,” Trey says, holding out his hand for the comb.

Moving nearer to him, I place the comb in his hand and then turn around. Gently, he lifts my hair and begins combing it from the bottom up, carefully working out the snarls without pulling too hard on it.

“How did you learn to do that?” I ask him suspiciously.

“We own spixes. They sometimes wander into briar patches and get burrs entangled in their manes.”

“You took care of the spixes.”

“Every day for most of my childhood. I could train a spix from wild to tame faster than anyone we knew—even Charisma.”

“Really?” I murmur, trying to envision his life as a teenager. It was completely different from mine. “And Victus? Could he train spixes as well?”

Trey snorts. “He could, but he wasn’t very interested in them. He’s more of a thinker than a doer. He would come with me and talk to me for hours while I took care of things. He’s a philosopher—a dreamer. He dreams things up and I make them.”

“You sound like the perfect team—in some ways—opposites. I believe you’re a thinker too, though. If you weren’t such an extremely good planner, we’d be dead inside the city now. And your skills as a hacker are ridic, you know? Reprogramming drones can’t be as easy as you made it look.”

He pauses in combing out my hair. I glance at him over my shoulder; he leans forward and kisses me hard on the mouth.

“You make me happy,” he says in a low tone.

I have to blink a couple of times and look away. “Well, Trey, I think you’re the first person who has ever said that to me.”

“That’s impossible,” he says honestly.

“It’s the truth.” Not wanting to explore my past, I instead nose into his. “And what is Charisma? A thinker or a doer?” I ask.

“She’s a doer.”

“And me?”

“You are the rare person who is good at everything.”

“I can’t swim.”

“Yet.”

In no time at all, Trey manages to unknot my hair. I weave it in a fishtail plait.

“Are you hungry?” Trey asks.

“As a matter of fact, I was just about to talk to you regarding your penchant for starving me.” I smile at him, wrapping the blanket around me. “It’s really getting out of hand.”

“There are still some treats left from our commitment announcement.” Trey reaches for his gear, finding the sack full of goodies. He places them between us; the blanket he has wrapped around him is riding low on his hips. He also adds a few items that I’d rather ignore: namely, the kind of protein bar that I was forced to eat in the Forest of Omnicron.

“Umm . . . blak,” I say, holding up the meal from hell.

“Jax thought it’d be a good idea if we had these—just in case it becomes necessary to leave Rafe.”

“Do you think that could happen?”

He doesn’t want to answer me, but he does anyway. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because at the moment, we’re outlaws.”

“We’re Bonnie and Clyde?”

“We’re who?”

“Never mind.”

I eat a few of the treats. Trey nudges the protein bar toward me. I ignore him. He sighs. “You know you have to eat it.”

I give him a puzzled look. “Do I know that?” I look upward, searching my mind. “Hmm . . . no, I don’t think that I do know that.” I tap my chin with my index finger, and then shake my head. “Nope. That’s not something I know.”

He grins and leans forward, reaching out and grabbing me. He starts to tickle me mercilessly. “Trey!” I giggle before laughing hysterically. When he doesn’t let up, I have to gasp in deep breaths between peals of laughter. “Trey!” I laugh. “Trey!” I say as sternly as I can. “You . . . have . . . to . . .
stop
!”

“Do I?” he asks while he continues to tickle me before looking upward, searching his mind. “Do I really have to stop tickling you?” His evil grin is turned on me when he looks down again. “Nope. That’s not something I have to do.”

“Okay!” I acquiesce.

He smiles, leans forward, and kisses my temple. “Thank you.”

I wipe tears from my eyes, before I narrow them at him. “You shouldn’t do that! I have to pee as it is.” I take the gross protein bar from him and lie down, looking up at the blanket covering the trench.

Trey’s expression is immediately contrite. “I can take you up. It’ll be all right.”

“No. I can wait,” I assure him.

I take a bite of the protein bar and just about gag.
Ugh, cat poop
, I think.

As I chew, Trey studies me. He frowns, resting with his forearm on the ground propping him up. “You said some things,” he says cryptically, in a very un-Trey-like way.

I finish chewing and swallow. “I say lots of things. Anything in particular you’re referring to?” I smile at him.

“Who’s Astrid?” he asks.

“What? How do you—” I feel the blood drain from my cheeks.

Trey hurriedly explains, “It’s something you kept saying over and over—when you were being interrogated. You kept asking, “Where’s Astrid? Where did Astrid go? I have to find Astrid.”

My chest is in agony. I sit up and pull on my blouse over my head and see him frown at me, as if I’m taking away his toys. “You don’t have to get dressed, yet,” he says.

“I have to—to—I have to—”

Hurriedly, I dress beneath the blanket, pulling on the black legging pants from yesterday. I get to my feet and go to a shell-coated wall. Jumping up, I try to grasp the lip of the trench so that I can pull myself out and escape.

“Who’s Astrid, Kricket?” Trey probes, disturbed by my behavior.

I turn around and face him, covering his mouth with my hand. “Shh—don’t ever say that name to me again,” I hiss with a sick kind of desperation.

He pulls my hand from his lips. “Why?” he counters, not letting it go.

I turn away from him, jumping up again so I can get away. “Help me get out—please,” I beg him, still facing the wall, unable to look at him.

Without saying another word, he pulls the cord attached to the camouflage blanket. It slides away, revealing the faint twilight. Trey hoists himself out of the trench, but he doesn’t pull me out right away. Instead, he moves away quietly to scout the area. I pace the trench, walking in circles on the mats.

“It’s clear,” Trey says, reaching his hand down to me. He grasps my wrist, pulling me out of the hole. Refusing to look him in the eyes, I snatch my hand away from his, moving away to the trees where I’d been the night before.

After I take care of my most basic needs, I don’t return to the camp right away. Instead, I walk alone along the division between the high grass and the tree line, holding out my hand so that the tall grass slips over my palm.
Why am I still looking for Astrid, after all this time? Maybe it means nothing, just a reaction to a terrifying situation.
But the loss is there. I have that ache in my chest again for something that doesn’t exist.
I keep holding on to nothing as tightly as I can . . .

“Tell me who Astrid is,” Trey says behind me, causing me to jump halfway out of my skin.

“Don’t sneak up on me!” I hiss.

“You don’t walk away from the camp in the middle of all this mess!” he hisses back. “You were fine, and then I said that name and you completely changed.”

“It’s nothing.” I try to feign a casual shrug.

“It’s not nothing. Not the way you said it when you were drugged. It’s like a piece of you had gone missing and you needed to find it. You were begging your tormentors. It was gut-wrenching!”

“I was on drugs—people on drugs say weird things. I once knew this guy, everyone called him Tweeker Tony—” I murmur.

“Don’t redirect me. I’m starting to know your tactics very well. Explain who she is because I want to understand why she’s so important to you.”

“Astrid is not important to me. It’s no one! One caseworker described Astrid as my imaginary friend—and don’t give me that look, Trey,” I say, straightening.

“What look?” he asks in surprise.

“I’m not some broken thing you need to fix. Just because I wasn’t raised in the Valley of Thistle with a perfect family doesn’t make me broken.”

“What does it make you then?”

“Resilient.”

“You can act like this is nothing. You can walk around with a mind full of secrets, but if you want to let me in, I’ll be here for you.” He takes my hand and starts to walk in the direction that we came from, saying, “It’s not safe for you out here alone. You need to come back to camp—”

I squeeze his hand tightly and blurt out. “I don’t know who or what Astrid is.” Trey stops, but he doesn’t turn around. “Maybe it’s someone I used to play with, or a neighbor, or a stuffed animal—maybe a babysitter. All I remember is that I would cry every night for Astrid.” Laughing humorlessly, I add, “I can’t even picture Astrid in my mind. Isn’t that crazy? To need something you can’t even remember?”

Trey turns back to look at me and waits for me to continue.

“Remember I told you when there’s little left to lose, the consequences for one’s actions don’t carry the same weight, painful or otherwise?”

“I remember,” Trey says.

“I learned that early—just after I was placed—that’s what they used to call it when they’d find you a home:
placed
. I hardly remember anything about being placed the first time. I remember the apartment was small—cramped—tidy but poor. It had this awful smell, though—mildew, urine, and pine cleaner. I’ll remember that smell for the rest of my life.”

Trey nods, but says nothing.

“Some people who take in foster children are borderline saints—selfless and dedicated. These people they placed me with made fun of those people—they were career caregivers. I call their type ‘the hangers-on.’ They keep hanging on to poverty with both hands, receiving money from a broken system by taking in kids they don’t want.”

“They didn’t want you?” he asks.

“They hated kids. They wanted a paycheck. They wanted me to shut up and do what I was told. And as you know, that’s not something I’m good at.”

Trey’s jaw clenches, but otherwise he doesn’t react to what I said.

“I remember asking them, ‘What about Astrid? We have to find Astrid.
’
”

“No one would listen to me, so I ran away to look for Astrid where I used to live—I think I was five, maybe? I don’t think I was gone long—some concerned older woman on the bus followed me and then took me to the police station. The police brought me back.”

“What happened then?” Trey asks when it looks as if I won’t continue.

The palm of my hand feels sweaty in Trey’s; I’d pull it away from his, but he’s holding my hand so tightly that I don’t think I’d be successful. Instead, I exhale a deep breath. “It’s the first time I remember ever being hit. It’s not smart to make a hanger-on look bad like that with the police. That’s like threatening his livelihood. It’s dangerous. But it didn’t matter what they did to me; for whatever reason, I couldn’t let it rest. The next time the police brought me back, my foster father hit me so hard that my foster mother had to take me to the clinic. I don’t know what her name was, but she probably saved my life. I don’t remember much for a while after that—a couple of years are just gone. I can’t tell you what Astrid was or why it was so important to me. I just know that sometimes I still wake up calling that name.”

I think Trey is afraid to react to what I said. He’s not sure if he should show me how he’s feeling. He’s angry about what happened to me and sympathetic, but he knows how I feel about sympathy, so he’s trying not to show it. He’s even a little remorseful for insisting that I tell him something that is obviously painful for me—all of that is there on his face. What he does, though, takes me by surprise. He gathers me to him and kisses me fiercely. What starts off as an angry kiss between the two of us, turns into the all-out desire to possess each other completely.

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t want you, Kricket. Or why they would do those things they did to you. All I know is that
I
want you—so much more than I ever wanted anything in my life.”

My desire for him is insane. He’s not sentimental—neither of us is—and yet he says things to me that strike at the core of my being and speak to the fighter in me. He makes me crave him in the most vulnerable way. I can’t lose him—ever.

Reaching up, I twine my arms around the nape of his neck. I jump up, wrapping my legs around his waist. His hands cup my bottom, pressing me to him. He leans me against a nearby tree. We fumble with each other’s clothes, trying hastily to free ourselves of everything that lies between us. With the bark of the tree at my back, Trey makes love to me again, and it takes us a lot longer than expected to return to camp.

When we do get back, the gear has already been loaded up. Trey helps me mount our spix. Seated behind me, his arms around my hips and his masculine scent are a constant reminder that I’m not alone in the dark.

Our night begins as we gallop across vibrant fields adorned with grazing animals that sort of look like a cross between sheep and pug dogs; they have the white, woolly bodies of sheep, but their faces are googly-eyed and without long snouts. I find them cute and creepy at the same time. When I ask Trey what they are, he calls them skoolies.

The barrage of aircraft overhead is nearly constant now, but it’s not all enemy ships like last night. Dogfights break out as the Rafe Air Brigade engages the Alameeda. Their battles light up the sky with colorful laser fire and smoking, orange-flamed explosions. It’s easy to spot the E-Ones that are looking for us. They’re low-flying and have adopted the same formation as the first night. Each time they come near us, I have to close my eyes. I get the sense that if I were to open them, they’d know where I am. It’s silly, but I can’t stop.

The next day is spent in the shelter of a dilapidated barn. We’re grouped together under the falling-down rafters, which affords no privacy for any of us. I’m so exhausted from the hard ride, however, that when I fall asleep next to Trey in the shadow of the loft, I sleep all the way until sundown.

We spend our time the next night hurrying from one copse of trees to another until the landscape turns hilly. The change in the terrain to dense trees climbing in a gradual slope signals a change in our pace. It becomes a steady clip, neither pausing nor running, but with the underlying urgent need to be somewhere else. We move through paths in between gray stones where water trickles down over the rocks in petite waterfalls. In the distance, mountains rise with smoky peaks covered in green and white trees.