The Dark and Hollow Places (24 page)

Her eyes crinkle around the edges as she stares at me, her lips pressing a little tight. I’ve stared at myself enough times that I know every expression on my sister’s face. She feels sorry for me.

She shrugs and looks away as if she’s afraid telling me will only highlight what I grew up missing.

“Please,” I whisper because I know my voice would crack if I spoke with any force.

She rubs her fingers along her lips. My own nervous gesture, except usually I trace the scars on my jaw.

“I miss her,” she finally says. “Elias told me she wanted to come up to the Dark City with him to look for me, but they
needed her in Vista. He said she was the one to lead the revolt overthrowing the Recruiters and forcing them from town. She’s in charge of it all now—in charge of making sure everyone in Vista survives.”

She looks down at her feet tracing invisible patterns over the floor. “Her name is Mary and she rescued me from the Forest. But she never told me that. I grew up thinking I was hers. I didn’t remember anything from before—nothing. When I found out …” She shrugs. “I’m sorry.” My sister’s voice is quiet as she talks down toward her tea.

I narrow my eyes. “What do you have to be sorry for?” I ask, genuinely confused.

She takes a deep breath, her fingers tightening around the mug until her knuckles glow white. She finally looks at me. “I’m sorry I had a mother when you didn’t. I’m sorry I had such an easy life growing up when you didn’t.” I’m about to interrupt her but she shakes her head as she takes a deep breath.

“I’m sorry I forgot about you. I’m sorry I didn’t even know to go looking for you. I didn’t even know to try to rescue you.” She pauses, her shoulders hitching a little. “I’m sorry Elias fell in love with me and not you.”

I wince at those last words but she’s not finished. She comes around to sit next to me, setting down my mug and pulling my hands into hers. I can feel the heat from the tea radiating off her skin.

“I see the way you look at me now, Annah. I see the resentment in your eyes.”

“Abigail—” I protest.

“It’s Gabry,” she says, her voice hardening. “And you know well enough that I can read every expression on your face the same way you can read mine.”

I pull away from her and move into the corner of the bed, tugging the covers up around me. She faces me, hands balled into fists at her sides. “I’m not perfect, Annah. I’ve never been perfect. I’ve been a horrible person many times and—”

I can’t help it; I start laughing. “You?”

“It’s not funny!” she shouts, and I’m surprised by her outburst. She paces across the room. “You don’t know what it’s like to have forgotten everything.
Everything
. To find out that the life you thought you knew was a lie.”

Her lips tremble and I can tell she’s close to tears. I never realized how much this affected her. “You really don’t remember?” I ask. “Any of it? Me? Our father? Elias and everyone else?”

She looks away from me but not before I see the way her eyes glisten. I lean back against the wall. What would it be like to lose your past like that? I try to decide if I’d be grateful to never know what it feels like to have had a place where I felt like I belonged.

If I didn’t have anything to compare my current life with, would I be content?

“I’m not an angel,” my sister says, her voice cracking. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of.”

“We all have,” I respond automatically. “That’s the nature of the world we live in.”

But she shakes her head. She opens her mouth as if to say something and then closes it, staring out toward the City for a long while. I listen to the rhythm of our breathing, the wind off the river buffeting against the building.

“Catcher told me about what happened between you two on the roof,” she finally says.

“What?” I groan and bury my head in the quilts piled up
around me. My entire body burns with a mortified heat. “Why?”

The bed shifts as my sister sits next to me again, her hand trailing through my hair. “He’s worried about you. He wanted me to make sure you’re okay.”

I squeeze my eyes closed, hoping to block all this out. “I’m fine.” My voice is muffled. I’d prefer it if the bed could just swallow me whole.

My sister takes a deep breath. “There’s something you need to know.” Her tone is so serious it sends chills down the back of my neck. Slowly, I raise my head and push myself up. Her face is drained of color, tense lines crinkling her forehead.

She stands and paces to the window and back again. “Catcher and I used to be together.”

My eyes narrow in confusion. It’s the accusation I’d thrown at Catcher on the roof but I hadn’t really believed it. I’d just been angry and wanted to hurt him the way he hurt me.

“B-before Elias,” she stammers. “Well, mostly before.” Words tumble from her lips and she keeps pacing in quick little circles as if her body can no longer contain the energy inside.

“We’d always known each other—he was my best friend’s brother—and I was fascinated by him and one night we kissed and then …” She swallows and I watch her throat tighten.

My own chest crushes with the weight of her confession. Jealousy builds up in my stomach at the thought of her and Catcher kissing. Of him running his fingers down her perfect face and how it must feel when he touches mine.

She stops moving, stares at me across the room. “And then he got infected and I did everything I could to be there for him. I disobeyed my mother’s orders, I broke the town rules, I risked my life—risked everything for him.”

What she says makes my heart pound slower, as if my blood’s become too thick for movement. I press the back of my hand over my mouth, feeling ill. “So what happened?” I dread the answer.

She’s staring out the window at the night and the reflection of her smooth skin appears warped and broken.

“He pushed me away,” she says simply, a small shrug with one shoulder. “I met Elias. He figured out Catcher’s immunity. I …” Her gaze deepens, lost someplace far away. “I got into trouble and we had to leave. We went back into the Forest and that was it.”

She swallows. “I fell in love with Elias and realized …” She looks over at me and her cheeks pinken as she shrugs.

“Realized what?” I ask her.

Her face burns an even deeper shade of red and she squirms a little. She takes a breath and holds it before finally saying, “That perhaps the feelings I’d had for Catcher weren’t that strong after all.”

I frown. “Why?”

“Because I was willing to let him push me away. I was willing to let him go and I know now that I’d never be able to let Elias go.” She hesitates and then adds in a firmer voice, “I’d fight for Elias in a way I was never really willing to do with Catcher.”

And I realize something at her words: I wasn’t willing to fight for Elias. Hadn’t ever been. I’d let him walk away from me and join the Recruiters and I never said anything to stop him.

I stare at the way my sister holds herself as she watches me think, her body rigid, face strained. And I realize that she’s actually afraid of me. Terrified she’ll lose Elias to me. That he and I share something that she never could.

She’s right, of course. He and I share a past of struggle and loss. We share the same guilt for leaving her in the Forest. We share the same memories and pain.

And we both share a love for my sister. Would Elias give her up for me if I asked? Could I ever ask it of him? Of her?

I think of Elias the night years ago that he made me feel beautiful. I think of the feel of his fingers along my skin. The words he whispered in my ear. I wonder if I could have said something to make him stay.

All these years I’ve wondered if I’d done something wrong. I’ve played that night over in my head a million times, willing it to end differently.

It’d never occurred to me that the years in between could change us so irrevocably. That I not only became a different person when he was gone, but that I also don’t know who he is anymore.

And if I wasn’t willing to fight for him then, when I thought he meant everything to me, why would I ever fight for him now when he’s a stranger? When he loves my sister and she loves him?

“I’m not interested in Elias like that,” I tell her. “He loves you, and even if I did have some kind of say in the matter, I’m not sure I could ever care for him the way you do.”

Her whole body relaxes and tears glisten in her eyes. Her bottom lip trembles slightly. “Thank you,” she whispers.

Just having said the words makes me feel lighter, as if I’ve let go of some dark gray burden.

“What about Catcher?” she asks, coming to sit next to me, the bed groaning under our weight.

“What about him?”

“Are you going to fight for him?” She tilts her head as if sharing a secret, a glint of mischief in her eyes.

I think about the look on Catcher’s face when he told me I was beautiful. The horror and want and need. The agony. And then I remember what he said when we first met. “He told me he’s broken. I don’t know if he even wants me, or anyone else, for that matter.”

My sister slips her hand into mine. “The broken ones need someone to fight for them even harder,” she says, her thumb tracing over the scars on the back of my fingers.

“I
don’t know,” I tell her, remembering how it felt when he pushed me away. I don’t want to risk feeling that hurt again.

My sister shrugs as she stands from the bed. “You’re the one who told me that we can’t live our lives in fear,” she says as she walks from the room. She pauses in the hallway. “By the way,” she adds, “if you were wondering, Catcher told us he’s heading to the City tonight. Said it would be a while before he made it back. He’s probably already down at the cable-car platform by now.”

It’s a few seconds before I can move but I finally jump from the bed and hurry to the window, staring down at the river. Little bonfires burn along the wall, Recruiters huddled around them as they rotate off shifts protecting the shore.

I see Catcher making his way toward the cable car and my heart lurches. I wish I could be sure that he wouldn’t reject me—not again. But I know I have to risk it—I have to see him
before he leaves. I have to tell him I’m sorry for being so angry on the roof.

I have to fight for him.

Quickly, I pull on my damp coat and run through the flat to the stairs and out into the night. I race toward the platform, watching as Catcher strides to the car that will take him away.

“Catcher!” I scream, not caring that I’m drawing attention to myself. Not caring about anything but seeing him. Touching him. But he’s already in the car, pulling the door shut. I stoop and grab a handful of snow. As hard as I can, I throw it at him and it explodes against the side of the car.

I grab another. “Catcher, wait!” But the Unconsecrated in her little wheel is already lumbering forward, grinding the gears that will propel Catcher away from me. I climb up to the launch platform as the car hovers over the middle of the river.

He stands looking out the broken back window, his hands tucked into his pockets and a small sad smile on his face. My breath hitches. I still have the remnants of a snowball in my hand, a streak of red from my thumb smeared across it where I somehow cut myself. I take a few steps toward the ledge and then I let it go.

It sails through the air and Catcher doesn’t even try to dodge it but instead lets it hit square on his chest. Where his heart is. He doesn’t move or do anything but stare at me. In the darkness his cheekbones look sharper under his skin and dark shadows fan around his eyes.

He looks exhausted and lonely and I ache wishing I could leap across the distance between us. To pull him to me and let his heat devour me.

I hold my arms out wide. “I’m sorry,” I scream at him,
but I don’t know if he hears me. Instead the car just continues to take him back to the Dark City, the cables jolting. I can see when it lands, see him stepping out among a sea of Unconsecrated.

“Catcher.” My voice breaks. I want to tell him to wait. To come back. To simply let me touch him and look at him and make sure he’s okay. I need to know that everything’s all right with him and me and this world.

I just need to feel the heat of him.

But I don’t know how to tell him all this. That I’m scared and I don’t know how to be normal. I’m broken, just like him, and I’m not sure I can fix myself.

“Catcher.” This time my voice is barely a whisper. “Please,” I add.

He looks up at me, his face gaunt and oh-so sad and lonely. I want to know if he’s been eating and sleeping and taking care of himself. I reach out a hand to him but he’s so far away. He stands there, a rock in the river of Unconsecrated undulating around him. It’s like he doesn’t exist to them.

And then he raises one hand to his mouth, fingers touching his lips. I raise my own hand to my lips as he fades into the wash of death and disappears.

I stand there shivering, wishing he’d come back, but there’s nothing. Just the dead struggling out onto the partially frozen river before the ice cracks and swallows them, lifeless fingers clambering for the stars.

“Doesn’t look like he’s too interested in you,” a voice says. I turn to find a Recruiter climbing the platform steps. He weaves toward me. “His loss.” His
s
s come out as a slurred hiss. He stops out of reach, his mouth breaking into a slow grin, then adds, “My gain.”