Take Me Tomorrow (7 page)

I gaped at my empty hand,
knowing my violence was wrong. “I—” my voice trembled as I told myself to look at Broden, but I couldn’t move. “I don’t know what’s happening,” I explained, “but I don’t like this.”

Broden’s eyes saddened. “None of us do.”

“But—” I gestured to Noah who stood by me, silent.

“Noah doesn’t either,” Broden
promised.

I looked over, but Noah
was staring out the opaque window, his expression blank. I wanted to know what he was thinking, but I wanted more to be able to take back what I had done. My father had always taught me never to take out a weapon unless I was positive I was going to use it, and I had gone against that. I had gone against almost all of his rules in one week.

“Noah isn’t my enemy,” Broden continued,
“Trust me.”

My stomach twisted, knowing that Noah would hear my next words,
“I can’t.”

Broden sighed, and then
, we stood there in silence. The broken pieces of art were scattered around us, but the house hummed as the air-conditioning turned on. A car drove past, and Noah tensed until the car pulled into the driveway across the street. It wasn’t a cop. Broden’s neighbor was returning from a late night at work, but Noah never took his eyes off of the car.

“I have a pla
n, you know. I’ve always had a plan,” Noah said, “but you need to trust me, too.”

Broden st
udied his childhood friend before he handed my knife back. The flickering of the blade gained Noah’s attention. I hesitated, but I took it back. When it was safely in my grasp, Broden spoke, “Is your plan safe?”

Noah grimaced. “It never is.”

Broden nodded as if he expected this answer.

“I really—” Noah’s eyes didn’t move from my blade as he spoke to Broden, “I need your help
like old times.”

At the mention of their unmentionable history, Broden managed a meek smile. “What about
Sophia?”

Noah sighed. “I only brought her
because I had less of a chance at being questioned if I was with a citizen,” he said. He had planned everything. “She wasn’t very hard to find. I figured you two met when you transferred out of military school.”

My gut sunk, but Noah’s gaze moved up to my eyes.
“I’ll admit that you surprised me,” he said light-heartedly, somehow sounding dangerously flirtatious. My heart pounded for reasons I didn’t want to admit. “And,” Noah continued, naïve to my racing heart. “I’ll get you home safely if you’ll allow me to.”

“What?” I gasped,
glancing at the window. It was darker than I had expected. More time had passed. I had planned to leave immediately, but I had stayed. I wouldn’t make it home in time for curfew. My shoulders dropped. “Just fantastic.”

Noah grinned.
“It’s not every day that someone successfully pulls a weapon on me.” If I wasn’t mistaken, Noah had thoroughly enjoyed my attack. “I can get you home safely and meet Broden at the ravens in an hour.”

B
roden’s thick eyebrows furrowed, but he looked at me as if he were waiting for my answer. When I didn’t respond, Broden took it as an agreement, “I’ll see you at the ravens, then.”

My jaw dro
pped. “I’ll go with you, Broden.”

“You need to go home, Sophia,” Broden
’s lecture sounded like my father. “Noah knows these streets better than me. He’ll keep you hidden,” he said. “Plus, you seem to be able to handle yourself.” Now, his lecture had turned into a lesson. I hadn’t listened, and I would have to deal with the repercussions.

I glared at my best friend. “
I’m not against him taking me,” I argued. I was against Broden helping him.

Broden understood my tone. “I have to.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“I want to.
” Broden worsened the situation. “I’ll be there soon,” he stated to Noah. “Just get Sophia home.”

Noah opened the door and waved his arm as if he were directing me into a carriage.
“Let’s go, Sophie,” he teased, still using his stupid nickname.

“Don’t call me that,” I said as I stomped past him.

He returned my words with a chuckle, but his chuckle sealed the deal. Everything had changed, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Ask What You Want

We walked for an hour in silence, dipping in and out of the trees. We crossed one field before we darted across a parking lot
, only to meet another field. I hadn’t even known the fields existed. They were tucked away between neighborhoods, mainly used for untouched backyards. As much as I hated to admit it, Noah knew what he was doing, and he knew Topeka better than I did. By the way he paused at intersections, I had to bet that he even knew other ways to walk around undetected. He was just picking the best one for his uniform’s green color. If it weren’t for the fact that he was wearing a uniform, we wouldn’t have had to hide the entire time, but I was trying not to think about it. If I did, I would be too tempted to ask questions, and questions would only lead me to frustrated half-truths, so I bit my tongue and followed.

When we reached the edge of the tree line, he stuck his head out instead of me. He didn’t even ask for my help. In fact, he ignored it, and I ignored him. Noah was someone I wanted to hate but someone I had yet to gain the ability to hate. One second, he was an outlaw, and the next he morphed into the boy next door – quite literally. We didn’t just have the same friends. He lived on the same street as them at some point.

The sound is what gained my attention. The rumbling of the road, the exhaust of an older engine, the squeak of a thrown off axis. I grabbed Noah’s shoulder before he could jump out in front of it. “Wait,” I hissed right as the vehicle drove by in a slow crawl. How he hadn’t heard it or seen the headlights was beyond me. When it passed, I let him go with a slight shove. “Be more careful.” My reputation was on the line, too.

He glanced over as if that was a good enough of a thanks, but then
, he started a conversation by asking, “Who trained you?”

My dad did, but I wasn’t about to talk about illegal activities with him, even though he had clearly seen how I had
borrowed a government Jeep. If we had been caught, it was a felony. It was only a ticket to the lumberyards because I was a minor.

“My mom trained me,” he stuttered over the word “mom” as if he hadn’t said it in a long time. I understood the feeling.

“Why are you telling me this?” I muttered as I marched out of the tree line to cross the street.

When he caught up with me, he explained, “Because I know how painful it can be to know enough to ask
what
but not enough to ask
why
.”

“Really?” The sarcasm in my voice was impossible to control. “Because it seems you know everything.”

“Except that you were going to attack me,” he pointed out. “I didn’t even see that coming with tomo,” he chuckled like the entire incident was part of a comedy routine. He hadn’t been on tomo at the school, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t taken it beforehand.

I had yet to put my knife away. When Broden handed it to me, I took it as a sign. He still didn’t want me to trust Noah, and I was mad at myself for even attempting to reason with the boy. “Don’t think I won’t do it again,” I threatened.

“I hope you do.”

I glared at him through the darkness, but I felt like I was glaring at someone else entirely – Nate Harper, an innocent military student. “What’s with your attitude?” I bit back.

His smile only grew. “Coming from you, that’s an ironic question.”

“Can you stop deflecting everything I ask you?” I groaned. “Please?”

He stopped in his tracks, and I had to mirror him to look him in the eye. His brow was creased, and for the first time, I noticed the slight sweat on his hairline. He was worn out. “I can do my best,” he said after a moment, “but I honestly can’t tell you everything. Not yet.”

Yet. The word stuck out.

He kicked the ground as he started to stride forward, slowly this time. “So, ask what you want,” he dared.

I knew I had to start small. That’s how successful interrogations began. You had to build a bond first. You had to make them think you weren’t going to move into important topics, and you had to move into vital topics with care. “How did you get out
, anyway?” I asked, focusing on the sage color. If it weren’t for the forest, I would’ve hated the color green. It represented everything in the State that I hated.

“Starting small, aren’t you?” he asked, revealing that he knew everything I was
thinking, but he didn’t fight it. “Getting out is easy. It’s allowed,” he said. “Getting back in after curfew is the hard part.”

I sighed. “So, how do you plan on getting back in?

“I know someone.”

“Name?
”

He was hesitant. “Tasia,” he admitted a name. “She’s one of the night watchers.”

The information wasn’t something I could take lightly. He had revealed a comrade, someone I could expose with a simple call to the police. He had told me something that could get another person killed, but the fear came from something else entirely. Tasia, whoever she was, had to be a government worker. It seemed like everyone was in on it somewhere.

“Does she know who you are?” I managed as I saw my property appear on the horizon.

“Not exactly,” he said, surveying the same land where we met. “To some people, it doesn’t matter who I am. It just matters what I’m doing.”

“And what are you doing exactly?”

“I can’t tell you that,” he answered quickly.

I crossed my arms, and my steps turned into angry stomps. The dried twigs cracked under my feet as he ran to keep up with me.

“But I will,” he added.

I hadn’t been expecting that response. “When?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Once I get permission.”

“From who?”

“From someone I deeply respect,” he was starting to sound annoyed. “It wouldn’t be my business to tell you without asking him first.”

“Him?” I repeated, knowing about our mutual friends. “Broden doesn’t care.”

Noah tilted his head back and laughed toward the stars as they began to appear. “I respect Broden,” he said, “but he isn’t about to tell me what to do.”

Whoever he was getting permission from was not someone I knew. “Who
, then?” I pressed.

“We’re going to have to end this lovely interrogation here,” he said, stopping in his tracks. He pointed through the trees to the flickering lights my house gave off. I could see Lyn in the living room. “We’re home.”

My face heated. “This is my home.”

His hand dropped to his side. “Has it always been?”

When I looked at him, his eyes sliced through me. Even though the four-worded sentence was simple, it was filled with a meaning I couldn’t comprehend. I knew he was laying the clues out for me to see, but he might as well have put a blanket over them. I glanced at the house I had spent the majority of my life in, but I didn’t see anything but my present. Living in the Albany Region was too distant of a past to recall. I barely remembered my mother, but I found my hand on the necklace she had given me through Lyn.

“I’ve lived here for a long time,” I said.

His gaze landed on my exposed neck. “How long?”

“Why’s that your business?” I snapped, dropping my jewelry into my shirt. I didn’t want him to see the only part of me I couldn’t see for myself.

“I shared information that could get me arrested, “he pointed out. “What’s wrong with you sharing information with me?”

My hip cocked to the side. “This isn’t an exchange, Noah.” If anything, it was a trap, and he had expected me to fall into it like last time. I wouldn’t, and he didn’t like it.

His brow scrunched, and his lips contorted into an unpleasant grimace. I didn’t wait for him to come up with a one-liner that stumped me.

“Why did you have my address
, anyway?” The words slipped out, but it looked like I had slapped him as I said it.

His bottom lip hung open, “You read the paper.”

The paper he had dropped was now safely tucked away in my desk, saved under two notebooks and a stack of notecards for history class. “Why wouldn’t I?”

He glanced at the house in that infuriating way that he always looked away. I fought the urge to grab his face and force him to look at me. “So, this is that address,” he said it more as a statement than a question.

“I am standing right here,” I said.

He turned back as if I had to remind him. “Listen, Sophie—”

“I hate that name.” There was only one person on this planet that used it, and he wasn’t allowed to be the second.

He flinched, “Just,” he sighed. “Just listen to Broden for now, and everything will be okay in the future, and you’ll know everything, and—”

“Stop talking to me like I’m a child,” I snapped.

“I’m not,” he defended quietly. “I talk to you like a comrade, someone who I trust to trust me.”

I ignored his words. “Put it however you like, but I’m not falling for it.”

Noah ignore
d my tone. “You can believe whatever you like, but you’re already a part of this.”

“I helped you once. That does not mean I’m a part of your mystery team,” I argued. “You heard Broden. Keep me out of it.” I spun on my heel to storm away, but he reached out and grabbed my arm. When I whipped around, he had his arm up like he had expected me to hit him. I wasn’t going to, but his reaction made me freeze.

His expression dropped at the same time that he let me go. He rubbed his face before he spoke, “You really believe that you’ve only recently fallen into this?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it doesn’t matter what Broden or I or you think,” his rushed voice teetered on the edge of desperation. “You’re involved, and you have been since way before I came back into town,” he said. “How can you not see that?”

“I don’t take drugs,” I said, knowing that my anger controlled my harsh comment. Too many people had died over tomo, and now I was seeing my friends fall into it.

Noah’s mouth hung open like he was preparing to yell at me, like he was going to expose everything, but his jaw snapped closed. Instead of responding, he resorted to his favorite gesture − he turned his back to me.

“I have my orders,” he said as he dipped into a collection of trees. “You’ll get yours soon.”