Meridian. Josin L McQuein
Cherish leaks through, assigning Ms. Johnston a Fade-name that encompasses steam for her temper, mixed with something diamond hard and bright.
“Trouble?” Tobin asks, to shift the conversation off dreams.
“Anne-Marie claims it’s normal, but it started with a countdown and progressed to an ultimatum, so I’m not sure I believe her.”
“No, that’s pretty much normal,” he says. Everyone’s moving toward the table, so we join them.
Anne-Marie’s mother and Mr. Pace—her father—tote the last of the food out with Col. Lutrell bringing a large tray to set in the center.
This doesn’t smell like dinner in the Common Hall. It’s not wilted or reeking of vitamin supplements, and the plates aren’t flat squares broken into sections. They’re round and made of glass with blue flowers at the edges to match the blue glasses beside them. The plates sit on plastic mats with the silverware set out on each side instead of rolled into a napkin that smells like bleach.
“Nique’s stuff is great,” Tobin says when he realizes I’m staring at the food.
He’s said before that if it wasn’t for Anne-Marie and her mother, he’d have starved the first few days after his dad went missing. They even tried to make him move in with them, but he wouldn’t leave his apartment, or the Well it conceals. It seems a silly secret now that the stars are there for everyone to see, but neither we nor Tobin’s father have shared the knowledge of the door in their closet that leads to the Arclight’s tunnel system.
Another shiver goes down my arms, acknowledging another clue. If the colonel’s been here since before, it would explain why his room has access to the tunnels that others never knew about.
“Why isn’t Jove here?” I ask Anne-Marie. “I thought you invited him.”
“Uninvited,” she snarls. “I only eat with people I like.”
Oops . . . I missed another fight.
“And I don’t like people who tell me I look like a dandelion stalk with the fluff blown off now that I’ve cut my hair.” She stabs her table mat with her fork.
I would have thought getting his jaw broken for running his mouth once would have made Jove more careful.
“Trey!” Anne-Marie’s mother leans back in her chair to shout down the hall. This time, the scowl doesn’t ease when she turns her attention to the rest of us. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with him. Do you know he wanted me to invite the Fade who healed him to dinner? I mean I’m grateful for what it did for him, but dinner? Do they even eat?”
I cringe at the it and find myself mumbling an answer to her question, though I wish I’d remained silent. Cherish is fuming.
“They’re vegetarians,” I say. At least the ones who began as humans; it’s a little more complicated for the ones who are born Fade. Either way, their bodies need fuel.
“Oh . . . Marina, honey. I’m sorry. I don’t mean it like that. Trey’s just been so odd since, well, you know.”
“I know.” I nod.
“It’s driving me crazy—and it’s only getting worse,” she says. “Maybe I should invite that Fade over and see if it knows what’s going on in his head—Trey! That’s it.”
“Uh-oh,” Anne-Marie says as her mother runs out of patience. The countdowns are done.
Mr. Pace leans over and whispers something, but it doesn’t help.
“No, what I’m going to do is drag him out of that room and down the hall by his collar. I’ve warned that child. . . .”
She throws her napkin onto her empty plate, storming off down the hall, still demanding her son come out. The shouts stop, replaced by a beep loud enough that we can hear it at the table. Tobin glances down, embarrassed, and the two men snicker.
“Parental override,” Anne-Marie says. “Trey’s too old, but his door hasn’t been rewired, yet. She can still open it.”
Just as I’m debating whether or not to crane my neck and see if Anne-Marie’s mother makes good on her threat to haul Trey to dinner despite her diminutive size, a shriek from the hall stops the laughter around the table. It’s the same sound Anne-Marie’s mother made the night she thought the Fade had taken her children.
“Stay—” Mr. Pace starts.
“Here,” adds Tobin’s father.
They’re on their feet and running in nearly perfect sync, the way the Fade do, and I’m the only one who notices. None of us obey. We rise as though we all have the same disobedient thought at once and race after them, in time to catch the last of what Anne-Marie’s mother tells them.
“His eyes . . . his face . . .”
She’s got her back to the wall, outside Trey’s room, and then slides down so her weight’s on the balls of her feet. Her hands are to her mouth, holding in another scream. She doesn’t move until we try to pass her. One of her hands shoots out to grab Anne-Marie’s.
“Don’t, baby. Don’t go inside.”
Anne-Marie’s the picture of silent terror, probably as sure as I am that her brother’s dead. Dead eyes and a corpse’s face, what else would make her mother act this way? She gives me a panicked look that’s very clear: find out what’s going on.
Listen, Cherish says suddenly. Hear .
But what good is it to listen if no one’s speaking?
They are speaking, she says. You haven’t heard . He hears .
I enter Trey’s room slowly. Mr. Pace, Col. Lutrell, and Tobin stand on the other side of the threshold, with a wide gap between them and Trey’s bed. He looks fine.
Trey’s sitting cross-legged on his bed with a pad of paper in his lap. His room’s full of discarded pages—on the walls and floor, haphazard piles of them on the desk and chair.
He drew home, Cherish says. He sees home. Sick .
She doesn’t mean homesick. Trey’s pictures are all sickened versions of the Dark, even though he’s never seen it. The buildings are strange and unfamiliar, the animals menacing. Fade I don’t recognize with distorted bodies, and horror-stricken people I don’t know. Trey’s still drawing in a frenzy when his mother finally collects herself enough to come inside, holding Anne-Marie behind her.
“Trey, honey, can you look at me?” she asks. “It—it’s dinnertime. Please stop.”
“Almost done, Mom, I swear.” He sounds normal enough. It’s like he doesn’t know he has an audience, and he didn’t hear her scream.
“Trey, are you okay?” Anne-Marie asks.
I’ve crept closer to Tobin, leaning my cheek against his arm; his fingers twine between mine as the air compresses from the weight of worry flowing off so many people. I could choke from the stench of it.
“And . . . done !”
Trey’s answer is the final flourish of whatever he’s working on. He turns to face us, beaming and displaying the image of a ferocious tusked pig surrounded by ominous shadows.
“Any idea what this is?” he asks. “Wait, what are you all doing in here?”
No one answers. No one even breathes.
Trey’s face is swirled with Fade-marks, and his eyes are gleaming metallic gold.
TOBIN
“Get