The Variables (48 page)

“I’ve been out there, too,” Ethan said as he walked down the steps. Step, wait. Step, wait. His careful maneuvering drew their attention upward. His hands slid down the bannister and when he reached the landing, he walked straight to his sister and enveloped her in a hug, holding her tighter and for longer than he had ever hugged her before. When Ethan pulled back, he turned to his parents.

“I’ve been out there for longer...and with others who have survived. And the biggest threat we had collectively were the people in this building.”

“You would have died without us intervening,” Scott said. “It’s simple.”

Ethan scoffed. “Maybe I would have. Or maybe I wouldn’t have. That’s the thing that
you
don’t seem to understand. It’s really not as simple as you’d like to believe. It’s a complicated mess...and it’s a mess that everyone in this room is responsible for. There’s no one right thing to do.”

“We should all go,” Lucy said. “As a family.”

The offer stood. Maxine looked at Scott, and Lucy thought she saw the eagerness in her eyes, but maybe it was wishful thinking. Her mother had made her views on Kymberlin clear during their date.

“Am I invisible in my own house?” her father shouted. “I can’t listen to this.” And Scott, still in his pajamas, walked past everyone and out into the hallway, slamming the door behind him. When the echo of his exit had died away, Maxine went to her children. She didn’t say a word for a long moment and then she took Lucy and Ethan’s hands and held them tightly. Grant stayed off to the side, watching and waiting.

“I used to hold your hands like this when you were little. One hand for Lucy, one hand for Ethan. Ethan always pulled forward, so eager to get wherever we were going, and Lucy never pulled. She would hold my hand until I let go first.” Maxine closed her eyes.
 

“Mom—” Ethan started, but she silenced him.

“You will allow me this. I have earned my right to tell you exactly what I think. Whether you listen or not, I have earned that much. If you leave this place, you will leave me broken, it will leave
us
broken...”

“You’re leaving?”

They all turned to the left. Galen stood shivering in a flimsy pair of shorts and his Beatles t-shirt. His arms were crossed over his chest and he looked at his sister and brother, and then his mother, with his eyes narrowed. He looked on the verge of tears, his bottom lip quivering.

“You can’t do that,” Galen said when no one answered him. “You can’t. That’s not fair.”

Maxine rushed to Galen and put an arm around his shoulder, but he shrugged her off and ran back downstairs. They watched him go, unable to stop him, unsure of what to call after him.

Lucy and Ethan exchanged a look. It was Lucy who spoke. “No one can know that it’s a possibility. Not even Galen...we’ll have to talk to him.”

Ethan nodded with authority. “Huck will come after anyone who leaves...escaping serves no purpose if we spend our entire lives being hunted.”

“Our?” Lucy repeated. “Ethan...”

“Lucy,” Ethan said. “You may not know what the future holds for you...and that’s okay. But I’m getting out of this place. I’m going with Grant...I’m taking Teddy to Darla. I’m going to see Ainsley…to my friends. That’s where I belong.”

Maxine took a step back toward her children and she watched them without interrupting.

“Mom...” he continued. “I...”

She put both her hands up and tried to get him to stop. “No,” she said from several feet away. “You don’t have to explain it to me.”

“I’m working on a plan...I have some ideas,” Ethan said, turning his attention back to the task at hand. “Things that would assure us a clean break. They aren’t foolproof, but they would buy us a chance to escape without a trace.”

Then, as if it was slowly dawning on him, Grant frowned. “So, then, wait. The only way we get off Kymberlin safely...would be...”

They turned to look at him. “If they think you’re dead,” Lucy finished.

From downstairs they heard a door slam and then the sounds of the other kids roused from sleep. Time was running out to discuss the plan freely. In that moment, as Lucy looked around the room at the worn and anxious faces, she saw the reality of their actions. Broken, her mother had said. Escaping Kymberlin would leave her broken, bereft.

“Mom.” Lucy walked over to her mother and buried her head into her chest. “You should leave. You know this place isn’t safe...don’t stay here...”

“I have to stay,” Maxine replied. “It’s not easy for me to let Ethan go, but there are the little ones to think of. Lucy, I can’t. This is a decision you have to make without me by your side. No matter which choice you make, there will be goodbyes.” Her mother turned from her, unable to say more.
 

Her mind wandered to Cass’s Guedeh card that day in the fortune teller booth back in the System. The card had not told her which heartache she would choose, but one thing was certain: the cost was high. How could she walk away, forever, from the family she had fought to find?
 

It already felt like their funeral. A deep and sudden sadness enshrouded them as they left the confines of the King house and ventured out into Kymberlin tower. Ethan, Grant, and Lucy walked in silence. It wasn’t the awkward silence of people unable to strike up any semblance of a conversation, but the deep and penetrating silence of people who knew that whatever they said would be wrong.

When they reached the elevator, Ethan hesitated.

“I’ll meet up with you two later,” he said and started off toward the sky bridge. Lucy knew where he was headed.
 

“Wait,” Lucy said, she hopped to catch up. “Will you tell her?”

“Should I?”

Lucy shrugged. “Would she come with us?”

Ethan shook his head. “No.” He scratched at his cheek. “I think she likes it here. She can live with a foot in both worlds. Cass knows what she’s doing, Lucy... on Kymberlin, she’ll always have everything she wants. The thing about Cass is that she plays well in this world. She moves fluidly between everyone, and the outside world has no draw for her...”

“But she won’t have you,” Lucy said, baiting him.
 

“She never had me,” Ethan replied lowering his chin. “It wasn’t like that.”

“You definitely have a type,” Lucy teased. “Cass was too smart for you.” She felt Grant at her elbow and she turned. “So,” she looked back at her brother, “you’re not telling her?”

“I’m not,” Ethan replied. “It’s better that way. Safer for her.” Then he added, “But I want to make sure I see her again...she was good to me, Lucy. She was a good friend…and I needed a friend.”

“I know,” Lucy replied and she smiled sadly.

He left them standing there and walked off toward Cass. Lucy knew that Ethan must have a plan, but she didn’t want to push for details. The moving pieces of an escape were beyond Lucy’s imagining. At the moment, all she knew is that it had to happen. And that it would have to be final. Once off Kymberlin, they were off forever. Beyond that: nothing. Crickets and cobwebs, and daring ideas cut short by logic and logistics.

“Come on,” said Grant. “Take me somewhere cool. I need to get out of my head for a minute. I don’t know if I can handle another second of dwelling on what’s going to happen next. I just need someplace…for us.”

Lucy knew just the place.

Everything was there. Every song ever recorded, every album ever released. Mozart to Michael Jackson; Etta James, the B52s, and Neutral Milk Hotel. Every genre across the decades, organized into various categories, and available within seconds. Lucy walked Grant over to the soundproof booth and sat him down on the cushioned seat. Then she shut the door and smiled. Slipping into the booth next to him, she could see Grant’s head against the neighboring glass. The world was silent—everything outside had disappeared. The din of people talking, the echo of voices up and down the floors, the buzz of the elevators carrying people about their day.

She didn’t want to listen to music. She just wanted to listen to the empty, shallow sound of nothingness.
 

But Grant had quickly gotten to work pushing the computer screen into action, dialing up artists and songs. While Lucy couldn’t hear what was going on in his booth, she could see Grant’s fingers swiping through categories, adding songs to his playlist, his head bopping along to something upbeat.

He turned and looked at her and broke into a grin. From beyond the glass, he broke into song: He closed his eyes and crooned upward, a mighty grin on his face. Lucy just watched him, giggling. Filled with inspiration, Grant darted out of his booth. She tried to see where he went, and then he reappeared holding a pen and several sheets of white paper. He scribbled.

Good thinking
, he wrote, pushing the paper to the glass.

She bowed and broke into a grin.

When he turned back to the screen, she popped her head out. It was disorienting to suddenly hear the sounds of life.

“Excuse me?” she called. “Hello?”

“Is there a problem with the computer?” a young man with a thick Australian accent asked, and he rushed over to her booth. She didn’t recognize him and he didn’t seem to recognize her, so he must have been a Kymberlin transplant from another EUS. “They’re still a bit glitchy.”

“No, no,” Lucy said and she smiled conspiratorially. “Do you have a master control to the boxes?”

“You mean...can we override the playlists and pump in any song we select from our mainframe?”

Lucy nodded with her eyebrows raised in expectation and excitement. “Yes! That! Can you do that?”

“Can we do that?” the young man called to a second young man behind a big counter. Just like in some music store in a big city, the counter was covered in famous concert posters. They were relics now; artifacts of the old world, stored in this place as a reminder. “Yeah, we can do that,” he said nonchalantly.

Lucy jumped and whispered a song into the young man’s ear. He raised a single eyebrow, smirked and started to walk away.

“And can I have paper, too?” She clapped her hands.

He obliged, handing over a small stack and a pen.

“You two kids on like a date or something?” he asked with a smile.

“I think so,” Lucy replied with a blush. “Okay. Play my song next.” She slid back into her booth and shut the door.

Grant still bopped along; he turned when he saw her and wrote something down.

Welcome back! Listening to Elvis Costello.
And he had drawn a wobbly smiley face.

Then he pulled the paper down and his face went neutral. He looked up to the ceiling, confused. She watched as he stared at his computer and tapped it with a finger. When he realized he had been hijacked, he smiled at Lucy and saluted her. He poised his pen above the paper, but didn’t write. Lucy could tell he was listening to the lyrics, decoding them as they poured into his booth.

Wow
, he wrote.

Eels
, she wrote back.
Daisies of the Galaxy.

He closed his eyes, a smile still plastered on his face. When he opened them he wrote:
You knew this would get to me. I
will
be far away soon. But I’m not the one who’s sad, Lucy. Not about that.
He was listening to the words she chose for him. Really listening.

She nodded.

Why are you sad, then?
she wrote.

His hand hovered over the paper and he wrote down,
I’m sad because it’s unfair to ask you to choose.
He showed her. She read it again and again. He took the paper down.
I love you
he wrote next.

I loved you first
she wrote back instantly.
 

LIES!
Grant wrote next. The song must have ended because he put his finger up and she saw him leave the booth. When he came back, he wrote a new note:
Your turn.

With a sudden burst of drums and twangy guitar, Lucy’s booth erupted into song. Even though she was expecting it, the music overwhelmed her. It was so loud and rich, as if nothing else in the world existed except for this one song, played for her by a boy she loved.

Then the singer began. A moody, melancholy voice. Lucy listened and listened. Like Grant, she tried to decode. It sounded so familiar and so unfamiliar at the same time. Then the chorus hit her.

She wrote:
Whoa.

He wrote:
Yeah.

She wrote:
Seriously. Whoa.

He wrote:
You know it?

She shook her head. So, he wrote:
The Smiths. There is a Light That Never Goes Out.
 

Resting back against the booth, Lucy closed her eyes and let every chord and strum and beat rush over her. It was a message, loud and clear. She wiped away a tear before Grant could see. Then she stood up and put her hand flat against the glass; Grant reciprocated. They stood like that until the song was over...the lyrics still echoing as Lucy realized and internalized their significance.

He didn’t have to ask her to choose between a life on the shore and a life on Kymberlin. He made it clear that the choice was a life with him or a life without him. And he deemed it a privilege if she chose him, but one thing was clear: both paths were littered with heartache.

Grant slipped out of his booth and joined her inside hers. It was a tight fit and Lucy squeezed against the edge, her hip pushing into the computer console. Grant leaned down and kissed her, slow and purposeful. She could feel the questions on his lips, the worry of goodbye on his tongue.

Here they were on their first real date. A bona fide, old-world date. Perhaps the last one they would ever have. Because soon Grant would be dead to her. His life on the Island would end. Soon he would leave Kymberlin. Forever.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Ethan knocked once. Cass answered in a nightgown and black fuzzy slippers, and she held the door tight against her body, opened just wide enough to let her head pop out and Ethan see her in her state of undress. He smiled, but she looked stern, impatient, and anxious. Instinct kicked in and Ethan moved to try to peer beyond her doorframe, but she slipped out into the hall and shut the door behind her, crossing her arms around her and grabbing at the small open fabric at the top of her chest. Her legs were dotted with goosebumps and she jumped slightly to warm up.