The Marked (22 page)

I passed Esther in the hall; she was flirting with some junior I barely knew and I didn’t even bother to say hi. She caught up with me a moment later.

“Way to ignore me,” she said, pulling out a compact and peering at herself in the tiny mirror as we walked.

“Who’s that guy, Esther? I thought you were with David.”

“That’s Alex. Isn’t he cute? He stopped me in the hall to talk to me. He said he’s been watching me all week.” Her lips tightened. “And you know I’m not serious about David. We were just hanging out together.”

I shook my head. “Whatever you say.”

“David and I are friends,” Esther said. “It isn’t like I’m cheating on anyone.”

“Of course not,” I said sarcastically.

“You’re in a foul mood,” she observed. “What happened? And where’s Cam been lately? I haven’t seen him around.”

“I don’t know. We’re taking a break.”

“What?” She snapped her mirror closed and grabbed my arm. “Are you serious? When did this happen?”

“A week ago.”

Her mouth fell open. “You broke up with Cam a week ago and didn’t tell me?”

“We’re taking a break,” I repeated. “We didn’t break up. There’s a difference. And how was I supposed to tell you? Every time I look for you you’re wrapped around a different guy.”

She pulled me to a stop. “It’s been a month since spring break and I’ve dated two guys. You make it sound like I’m some kind of slut.”

I immediately felt bad, but I was too upset to reverse myself completely. “Of course you’re not a slut. It’s just hard to get your attention these days.”

Esther adjusted a barrette in her hair. “That’s rich, coming from you. How many times have you blown me off this semester because you had to make time for Cam?”

I thrust my hands deep in my pockets and stared down at my old sneakers. It would be the perfect ending to my day if I managed to destroy my friendship with Esther. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just been a rough week.”

Her voice softened. “Can we talk about it?”

“I don’t think so. Not right now.”

“Then we’ll just sit around and make fun of Catherine. How does that sound?”

I smiled reluctantly. “You know, she’s actually been okay lately.”

Esther stumbled back dramatically. “What? She’s been
okay
? Did anything else in your life change in the past few days? Did you grow a third arm or become a saint or something?”

I laughed. “Her parents are splitting up and she’s going through a hard time. I don’t think she has a lot of other people she can talk to about it.”

“Of course not,” Esther said. “She’s a freak. And she was mean to you for the first eight months of school, so don’t expect me to forgive her so quickly.”

For a minute, with her hands on her hips and a look of maternal irritation in her eyes, Esther resembled her old, sturdy self.

“I appreciate the loyalty. But seriously, you have to be nice.”

“Hmph.” She narrowed her eyes. “We’ll see. She says one mean thing and I’m back to hating her.”

“Deal.”

We headed down the marble steps on the way to the Res and were immediately pelted by rain. Esther held her backpack over her head. I started running, and she followed a few paces behind, panting by the time we reached the door.

“You can’t be out of breath from a two-hundred-yard run,” I said.

“Yes, actually, I can. That’s the most I’ve run since cross-country season ended, you know.”

We laughed, and I realized how much I’d missed her. We walked up the stairs arm in arm, and for a moment, it almost made up for everything else in my life being so rotten.

“Can you believe there are only three more weeks of school?” Esther asked as she opened the door to her room.

I collapsed onto her bed. Unlike me, Esther had a fancy matching comforter and pillowcase. I buried myself in the soft material and blocked out all thoughts of Barrett. “I can’t,” I said. “And the camping trip is next week. Do you think there’s any way I can get out of it? Tell them I’m allergic to the great outdoors or something?”

Each year, the freshmen took a four-day trip to the San Juan Islands. It was supposed to provide a little break before the final push to the end of school. We would drive out on Monday and return on Thursday. The team leaders from orientation and a few other juniors came along to lead groups on kayak trips and nature walks. Cam would be there. So would Anna and Trevor.

A few weeks ago, this had sounded like a delicious opportunity for Cam and me to sneak off into the woods together. Now it just sounded depressing. I couldn’t help noticing that they were bringing all the juniors from the Program, probably as Watchers. A camping trip would be a great opportunity to stress people. They probably planned to dump us all into the frigid waters of Puget Sound to see how we reacted.

“So what’s Alex like?” I asked. “Isn’t he on the Model UN team with Hennie?”

“I don’t know,” Esther confessed. “I’ve barely talked to him. It was just flattering, you know, that he was interested in me.”

“A lot of guys are interested, Esther.” I indicated her new look. “Wasn’t that the whole point of this?”

“I guess.” She stared into the mirror beside the door and then pulled her makeup bag out of her backpack and began touching up the eyeliner at the corner of one eye. “But to tell you the truth, it’s getting a little old. I have to focus all the time on my hair and clothes and trying to be cute and flirty. And these guys only got interested in me because of how I look—so what happens if I can’t keep it up?”

I couldn’t disagree, so I just nodded sympathetically.

Esther gave herself one more long look before turning back to me. “You think I need to give it all up, don’t you?”

“Esther, I want you to be happy. If this makes you happy, then I’m all for it.”

“Why do I hear the word
but
at the end of that statement?”

I hesitated, trying to think of a way to tell her what she needed to hear without betraying Delcroix. “I think you have a gift. You can become whoever you want. But that means you’ve got to fight to keep a hold of who
you
are. I think if you aren’t careful, the real Esther could get lost under all of this.”

Esther nodded sadly. “I hate to say it, but I think you’re right. At least now that I’ve spent all this time being someone else, I have learned one thing about the real Esther: she is
not
a boy magnet.”

“She’s something much better than a boy magnet,” I said softly. “She’s my best friend.”

Esther sat beside me in her desk chair. A framed picture of her and her mother stood on the windowsill beside her; it showed the old Esther with her round face, frizzy black hair, and huge smile. “Thanks,” she said, “but enough about me. Tell me what happened with Cam. Last I heard, he showed up at your house after spring break and made out with you in a car for an hour.”

“It wasn’t an hour,” I said. “And it’s hard to explain. We had a fight.”

“About what?”

I struggled, as I always did, when trying to figure how much I could say to Esther. “I never told Cam about how Jack and I had hooked up last semester. Somehow, Anna found out and told him. He was pretty upset.”

“But you two weren’t even going out then. What was he so mad about?”

“He was hurt because I hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him. He said he’d always trusted me and it wasn’t right that I didn’t do the same.”

Esther patted my shoulder gently. As we talked, some of the curl returned to her hair, which she took such pains to straighten these days, and something in her face softened. It was hard to describe exactly what changed, but it made me feel much more comfortable. “I can sort of see his point. Why didn’t you tell him?”

“Because of stupid Anna.” I pounded my fist into Esther’s flowered pillow, imagining it was Anna’s face. “She got me all nervous and worried that Cam would be upset if he found out. I should have known better than to listen to her.”

Of course, I couldn’t explain the significance of Jack—or my fear of being thrown out of the Program. But I didn’t have to, because at that moment Hennie came in and threw herself down at my side, her long braid falling over her shoulder and catching me on the chin.

“What happened?” she demanded. “I had a weird feeling.…Are you okay?”

“Dancia and Cam broke up,” Esther announced.

“No!” Hennie turned to me, shocked. “I can’t believe it. He’s so into you—and you’re crazy about him. How could you possibly break up?”

“He found out that Jack and Dancia were more than just friends last semester,” Esther said, before I could respond.

“It was just one kiss,” I said, flipping onto my back and throwing the pillow over my face. “Why does everyone want to make it into something more?”

“It wasn’t just a kiss for Jack,” Hennie said. “He was in love with you.”

Esther rubbed her forehead thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, every boy you hang out with seems to end up that way.

You’d better stay away from Alex. And David.”

I moved the pillow so she could see me roll my eyes. “Esther, you have a very active imagination.”

Hennie arranged her legs under her. She ignored Esther and pinned her eyes on me. “When did it happen?”

“A week ago.”

“I can’t believe I missed this. And nothing in particular happened today? You’re sure?”

I kept my mind focused on Cam. Things with Barrett were too complicated. I didn’t want Hennie figuring out how upset I was at the thought that he wouldn’t be around for me next year. “It happened on Wednesday. But I did just see him in the hall talking to Anna. Maybe that’s what you felt.”

Hennie stopped and thought a moment. “Wednesday? Oh, that’s what that was! I was so depressed that day, and I had no idea what was going on. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to talk about it. Besides, you’ve been busy with Yashir.”

A pained look crossed her face. “No, I haven’t been busy with him. I’ve been
avoiding
him.”

“Avoiding Yashir? Why?”

“Because I have to break up with him,” Hennie said miserably. “And I can’t do it. I need your help. You’ve broken up with lots of guys, Esther. You’ve got to tell me how to do it.”

Esther came over to the bed and climbed onto it, worming her way between the two of us. “Wait a minute,” she said to Hennie, “you still like him, don’t you?”

Hennie nodded sadly.

“And I know he still likes you,” Esther said, “so I hardly think there’s any reason to break up. Unless…wait, did your parents say you had to?”

“My parents don’t even know about him,” Hennie said.

“That’s the whole problem. They think I’m going to marry Rashid. I know that sounds crazy to you, but my mom got married when she was sixteen, and our families are so close she thinks it’s the perfect match. Now every time I see Yashir I can hear him thinking about how much he likes me and how worried he is that I’m going to break up with him for some boy my parents like. But then, over spring break, all I heard was how much my father liked Rashid, and how impressed his family would be that I’m going to Delcroix and doing so well at school.” She pulled her knees against her chest. I’d never seen her so upset. “And my teachers are all thinking how important it is for me to focus on my talent. I don’t even know what they mean by that, but I think there’s some special program they’re considering me for that they haven’t even told my parents about. What if I missed my chance to be in it because I was too busy with Yashir?”

My spine began to tingle. “When you say you keep hearing Yashir and the others thinking these things, you don’t mean literally, do you?”

Hennie dropped her forehead to her knees. “No,” she said, her voice muffled. “It’s just a figure of speech. You know how I can guess what people are thinking. It’s just, lately it’s been so obvious, sometimes I can practically hear their voices in my head. But I’m not crazy, I swear. I’m just overwhelmed. If I listen to music and focus on the songs, it goes away. I think I just need some space.”

So they’d cracked Hennie, too. She had no idea that she truly
was
hearing voices in her head. Righteous anger welled up in me. It wasn’t right to leave her tormented like this. There were probably techniques they could teach her to use to quiet the voices, but because of their insistence on watching, she wouldn’t learn those for months.

“You definitely aren’t crazy,” I said. “But you are empathetic. Maybe too empathetic. You need to decide what you want—not what your parents want or what Yashir wants.”

“I want to go out with him,” Hennie said, “but my mom will be so disappointed, and when I spend too much time with him, I can’t study as much, and—”

“Hennie!” Esther interrupted. “Did you even listen to what Dancia just said? We’re talking about you, not your parents or your teachers.”

“Right.” Hennie’s eyes shone with tears.

“Hey, I have a great idea,” I said. “Why don’t we forget all about boys for the next couple of weeks, or at least until we get back from the San Juans? My boyfriend just dumped me, Hennie needs some time away from it all, and Esther’s had enough of boys to last a lifetime.”

Esther nodded slowly. “You know, that’s not such a bad idea. We’re all going to be a mess anyway, because we can’t shower while we’re camping.”

Hennie grabbed the pillow away from me and tossed it at Esther’s head. “So you’re agreeing to hang out with us because you’re going to be smelly and unwashed? Thanks.”

Esther giggled. “No, Dancia’s right. We need some girl time. We’re all on the verge of insanity, and when we get back from camping we’re going to need to buckle down and study for exams. And then we’ll be apart all summer. We might as well enjoy our time together while we have it.”

Hennie leaned her head against my shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do without you guys.”

“Me too,” Esther said fervently.

I snuggled in and closed my eyes. “Me three.”

Suddenly, things didn’t look so bleak after all.

PROJECT GIRL TIME
got under way immediately. I think Esther was relieved to be back to her old self. She didn’t have guys swarming around her, but she laughed a lot more, and she and I quickly fell back into our old routine of lounging on each other’s bed during free time. I was pretty sure she still had a thing for Trevor—I caught her gazing at him longingly across the cafeteria, and when they bumped into each other in the halls, she could barely speak. But he was keeping a safe distance since I’d threatened him. He still stared at Esther a lot, but his watching was less noticeable now.

I don’t think girl time was as fun for Hennie. She still looked sad and walked around with her earbuds in a lot when she wasn’t with us. Yashir was always watching her with worried eyes. She hadn’t broken up with him, but she had taken a page from Cam’s book and told him she needed a break. I didn’t know what to do for her. I just hoped the voices in her head were a little quieter now that she’d put some distance between herself and Yashir.

Then, at nine on Friday morning, hell froze over.

Catherine and I were studying in our room. Suddenly, she stomped over to my desk and put a form on top of my physics book. “I could probably request a single, but I figured you might not have anyone, if Esther and Hennie are rooming together.”

The top of the form read, roommate request. We’d gotten them from our advisers earlier that week, but I’d shoved mine into my backpack without looking at it. Thinking about the following year still made me shiver.

“Seriously?” I asked. Catherine had the look on her face she usually reserved for telling me I’d left a sock on her side of the closet. “You
want
to room with me again?”

I guess it shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. As far as I could tell, Catherine still believed I was well beneath her in terms of intelligence and overall value to society. But we had discovered we made decent roommates. We both liked to keep the room tidy, neither of us liked loud music, and we preferred to shower early and get to breakfast ahead of the crowds. We also discovered we liked talking to each other. She had a way of cutting through all the nonsense and emotion to strike right at the heart of an issue. And I gave her something she’d never really had before: sympathy and attention.

“Yeah, well, if you have other plans, it’s fine.” She snatched the paper back. “I’ll get more done in a single anyway.”

“No, wait,” I responded. She looked oddly fragile in her white button-down shirt and navy skirt, gripping the sheet of paper so hard it wrinkled up at the edges. Somehow in the past few weeks, Catherine’s veneer of toughness had worn away; at least it seemed that way to me. “I’d love to room together. As long as you quit messing up my desk and taking all my good pens.”

I grinned. She stared at me for a moment and then slowly smiled back.

* * *

And as the days passed, with Hennie and Esther and Catherine beside me, I went from feeling like I was completely alone to finding myself surrounded by friends. I spent time running with Allie and hanging out after dinner with Hector and Alessandro. They couldn’t solve all my problems, of course. I still had to resign myself to life without Cam. That hurt, but deep down I knew that breaking up—or taking a break, or whatever we were doing—was necessary. As long as we stayed together, my thoughts about Delcroix would always be colored by my fear of being disloyal to Cam. Being apart let me see things more clearly. There was something rotten in the Program. The Irin might have been dangerous, but if Jack were telling the truth, someone wanted to make them seem even worse—someone who became more powerful every time the Irin struck out against the Program and the Governing Council voted to increase the size of the Watcher army.

And I had a good idea who it was.

Grandma drove me to school on Monday morning. She didn’t look well—her eyes were more watery than usual, and she had to keep dabbing them with a tissue. She hadn’t bothered to put on her makeup and matching tracksuit, but she still insisted, as always, on getting out of the car to give me a hug good-bye.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, worried. “You aren’t sick, are you?”

“No.” She held my face between her hands and peered intently into my eyes. Then she hugged me tightly. “You’re strong,” she said against my chest. “You can handle this.”

I drew back slightly. “Grandma, what on earth are you talking about? Of course I can handle this. It’s a kayaking trip, not an expedition up Mount Everest.”

She laughed and wiped her cheek. “I’m proud of you,” she said. “Don’t forget that.”

Esther yelled to me from across the parking lot. I looked at her and then back at Grandma. “Are you sick? If there’s something going on, I’ll stay home. It’s not a big deal.”

Grandma pushed me away. “Of course I’m sick—I’m seventy-eight years old. But I’m not dying this week, and don’t think you can get away with something just because I’m getting maudlin in my old age. Now, get on that bus.”

She waddled back to the car in her sturdy orthopedic shoes and pulled out of the lot. I watched until her car disappeared. With a strange sense of foreboding, I threw my backpack over my shoulder and headed across the parking lot.

We took two buses out to Anacortes—the Silver Bullet and another yellow one they must have rented for the event. Hennie, Esther, and I sat in the back and amused ourselves by singing annoying songs like “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” and throwing crackers at Hector and Alessandro. We were all dressed for camping. Esther had tied a bandanna over her hair, Hennie wore a pair of neatly pressed khaki shorts, and I had locked my curls down in a pair of pigtails. Catherine sat one row ahead, and to my amazement, occasionally joined in our obnoxiousness. Cam was on the other bus with Anna and Trevor. He’d nodded in acknowledgment when he saw me that morning, but that was it. I figured that was all I could hope for at this point.

At Anacortes they drove the buses onto the ferry that went to Lopez Island. The ferry looked like a cruise ship, or at least it did to me—tall, white, with big windows and decks wrapping around the sides. But unlike a cruise ship, the boat had a big open section where they packed the vehicles in bumper to bumper, and steep metal staircases connecting its four floors to the various observation decks. We couldn’t see much of the takeoff, because they made us stay in the buses, but I felt a jolt and heard the boat’s horn blast. After we were under way, we spilled out as quickly as we could. The first two decks were enclosed; most of our group went there. I climbed all the way up. It was drizzling and cold, but I’d never been so far from home before, and I wasn’t going to miss it by sitting inside.

I hauled myself up the last few steps and took a deep breath of salty air when I got to the top. The water stretched flat and gray around us, islands rising like huge green turtles in the distance. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out where Mount Baker would have been visible if there weren’t any clouds, and then started looking for whales. If Tara had been there, she could have sent a message to a nearby orca and gotten it to shake a flipper at me. It was hard to believe that in just a few weeks she and Barrett and all the other seniors would be gone.

I zipped up my parka and relaxed as the ferry hummed beneath me. There wasn’t much opportunity for solitude at school, and it felt good to be alone for once. We passed a few fishing boats. I saw another ferry in the distance, but other than that, everything was quiet and still. A soft rain fell from the sky; I pulled up my hood.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

My coat partly obscured my peripheral vision, but I didn’t have to turn to know it was Cam. A familiar warmth stole into my stomach. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I guess he’d been busy or something, because he hadn’t gotten a haircut in a while, and hair curled around the tops of his ears and fell over his eyes. He rested his forearms against the railing, and we stared out at the horizon, side by side.

“I like it when it rains,” he said. “Less traffic out on the water.”

“How cold is it?”

He laughed. “The Sound? Very. Why? You thinking about going for a swim?”

I shook my head, not wanting to seem foolish. “No! But it would be nice to say that I’d done it.”

“You’ve never swum in the ocean?” he asked, amazed. “But you only live a few hours away. How’s that possible?”

“The opportunity never came up,” I said lightly.

Cam frowned. “I guess I didn’t think about it. Your grandma doesn’t like to drive far, and how else would you get there?”

“It’s not a big deal. I’m here now.”

We stood in silence.

“I’ve missed you,” he said finally.

I held my breath when he covered my hand with his.

“Me too,” I said. I pushed back my hood so I could look at him. Misty raindrops began to cover my hair and face. His touch was somehow both familiar and painfully new.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened. About you and Jack and—”

“You were right to be upset,” I interrupted. “I should have told you I’d talked to him.”

“Hang on,” he said gently. “Let me finish.”

I smiled reluctantly and nodded for him to continue.

“I knew you and Jack were close, and the truth is that I was always a little jealous of him. I hate to admit it, but part of the reason I let him go was because I thought, with him gone, I’d have a clearer shot at you.”

I leaned back, shocked. I’d imagined a lot of reasons for why Cam might have let Jack go, but that one had never crossed my mind.

“Jack and I were just friends,” I said firmly. “He wanted more, but I didn’t.”

“I guess I’m just going to have to trust you on that,” Cam said. “And I do. But it’s not easy. You’re pretty amazing. I never know where my competition will come from next. It isn’t surprising that Jack is still hoping you’ll change your mind about him.”

I lowered my face in embarrassed pleasure. “What about all those things Anna said about me protecting him and working with the Irin? You don’t think any of that is true, do you?”

“No,” Cam said. “I never did. But I admit I was surprised to hear you’d been in contact with him. To be honest, I can’t stop thinking about the things you said. I know I should tell Mr. Judan about it, but…”

“But what?” I prompted him.

“I’m worried,” he admitted. “I don’t know what he’d do if I told him.”

“I don’t know, either.” I figured that was as much as I could say. The rest, Cam had to come to on his own.

He squinted at the horizon. “I should tell them, just in case there’s any chance the information could help the Program. But if I told Mr. Judan and he thought you…If he told them you…Well, you know what I mean.”

“I do.” I twirled my watch, not wanting to meet his gaze. Part of me wanted to tell him everything I’d heard and thought about since we broke up, and part of me knew I had to keep this distance between us.

There was a heavy silence.

“If it makes you feel any better, I stopped talking to Jack after that paintball thing,” I said. “I thought he’d come around if I waited long enough. But now I know that’s not going to happen.”

“I can’t say I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

We shared a halfhearted smile.

Cam shifted his stance as the ferry hit some choppy waves. The wind got stronger as we moved farther into the channel, and the rain began to sting as it blew into my face. Cam laced his fingers through mine.

“Maybe we can forget about it for a little while,” Cam said. “I know it doesn’t solve anything, but for the next few days, can we pretend it didn’t happen?”

“Pretend what didn’t happen?” I asked softly. “Pretend I didn’t call Jack? Or pretend I didn’t question the Program?”

Cam looked out over the water, the muscles in his jaw working as he struggled with something deep inside. “I know we’re different, and I know you don’t always agree with what I do. But the way I feel about you—well, it’s different than what I’ve felt for anyone before. I’m in love with you, Dancia. I can’t let that go.”

Heat surged through me, from my heart right down to the tips of my fingers. I closed my eyes and gripped him tightly with one hand. “But what do we do about all this?” I asked. “As much as I want to pretend nothing happened, it did. We can’t make it go away.”

“You’re right. It’s not perfect, and it’s never going to be. But I’m not willing to let that destroy us.” He touched my shoulders and turned me gently to face him. One finger found my chin, and he tipped my face up toward his. Rain touched my eyelids and rolled down my cheeks.

I felt the warmth of his breath and then his mouth touching mine. One kiss and I was lost.

“Hey, look at that,” we heard someone shout a moment later from the deck below us. A group of people had gathered at the front of the boat, and they were staring and pointing at something a few hundred yards away.

We broke apart just in time to see a black fin slice through the choppy surf, and then we saw another. A white, misty spray shot into the water as the distinctive black-and-white bodies became visible. The orcas crested the water, dived deep, and then surfaced on the other side of the ferry. The crowd followed as a voice came over the ship’s loudspeaker, announcing the sighting.