Unravel (39 page)

“She thinks I'll hurt her.” Another sob choked Lin as she spoke. “Lissa—she thinks I could hurt her. I
couldn't
—couldn't
ever
—”

“Lin,” Elissa said, despairing and exhausted, left without any of the right words or thoughts . . . or
anything
 . . . to make things better, to fix the damage she—they—had caused each other and themselves.

“Okay,” said Felicia. “Just hang on a few minutes.” Then, as Lin began to choke out something else, “Just a few minutes,
okay, Lin? Give yourselves time to breathe. Let Ivan work his magic on the nutri-machine.”

She took a breath herself, leaning her head back against the padded surface of her chair. “I didn't ask to see you so I could make you cry, by the way. I wanted to say thank you. And good work. Both of you.” She grinned. “Not that I noticed at the time, but afterward, when they'd patched me up . . . Oh, and I don't know what the malls are like on Philomel, but I hope they're halfway decent, at least. I owe you each a hoodie.”

The nutri-machine hissed steam, and the smell of chocolate rolled out into the room. Ivan twirled the cup he was holding, forcing the foaming stream of hot chocolate to make a curly shape on the surface of the drink.

When he brought it over to Lin, Elissa saw the shape he'd made was a looped
L
. Lin put her hands around it, her shoulders still shaking with sobs, bending her head as if to breathe in the steam and heat and scent of the sugar-laden chocolate. Her hair swung forward so Elissa couldn't see her face.

Ivan handed the next cup to Felicia, and the third to Elissa. Elissa's had another
L
drawn in the foam. She was an
E
really, of course, but she'd been Lissa to everyone on the ship for nearly as long as she'd been on board. Had been Lissa to friends and family most of her life, too. It was the name Lin had known her by, the name Lin had based her own name on, back when all she had was a numerical code. She'd called herself “Lissa's twin.” As if that in itself were a name. As if she only existed as a real person through her connection to Elissa.

Then, when she'd escaped, she'd come to find Elissa. Not asking for anything, not even expecting to be allowed to stay
with her. Just wanting to see her, the twin sister whose existence had formed so much of her life.

Elissa had lifted the cup to her lips, but not yet taken a sip. Which was just as well, because as the thoughts came to her, her throat closed too tight to let her swallow.

She looked at Lin through the wisps of steam. “I do trust you not to hurt me.”

Lin's head came up. Her face was tear smudged and muddy-pale, her eyes looking bruised.
Really?
Her lips formed the word, but Elissa wasn't sure if she actually said it or if, once again, she heard it through their link.

“Yes. Like Ivan said, it's not like I can lie to you even if I wanted to.”

Lin's bruised eyes fixed on hers—and for an unnerving flicker of a moment Elissa was reminded of Zee's blank, blind stare. “I wouldn't
ever
hurt you.”

“I know. I know. It's okay.”

“You had to think about it.” Her fingers tightened, bloodless, on her cup. “You shouldn't have had to think about it. You're supposed to
know
.”

“I do know. I wasn't thinking about it, not really. I was just . . .” She shook her head. “God, Lin, it's just so much to deal with, you know?”

Over at the machine, Ivan turned a knob to clean the drinks nozzle, and steam hissed. Elissa found herself staring kind of blankly at what he was doing, tiredly glad of something to focus on that wasn't words and emotions and the impossible, heartbreaking complexities of a relationship that mattered more than anything and yet that she couldn't seem to see how to handle.

“But when you did think about it, you did know?” Lin's
voice sounded as tight and bloodless as her fingers had looked, drained of everything but the need for reassurance.

Elissa reached out and put her hand over her twin's. “Yes. Of course I knew. Of course I knew you wouldn't hurt me.”

Lin's hand turned, and her fingers curled around Elissa's. “And you don't . . . hate me?”

“I don't hate you.” Her eyes met Lin's. “I swear.” She swallowed, afraid to hurt her again, needing to say it all the same. “But that doesn't mean everything's okay. You deciding that people don't matter—that's not okay with me. Letting those people die, not helping me when I asked you—that's not okay either.”

Lin's face went tight again. “I can't change. You're not fair to expect me to. Those people—” A sudden shudder went through her. “If it had been me in danger, they'd have let
me
die. If they'd seen me, back when I was in the facility, they wouldn't have cared what was being done to me—”

Elissa felt the shudder, not just through Lin's hand into hers, but through her mind. The memory of pain was showing in Lin's face, in the tense lines of her body, but as that mental shudder echoed through Elissa's brain, she remembered something she'd once read about the experience of abuse survivors, and she realized something she hadn't realized before.

It wasn't just memory. Lin wasn't just remembering those years of SFI-sponsored torture; some part of her was
reliving
them.

Horror tipped Elissa's stomach over.
Oh God, she's so right. I haven't been fair. The
Phoenix
—it was a little safe haven for the past few weeks. Of course Lin seemed to be recovering while she was on it. Of course she seemed normal.

Then, an underneath thought:
It was a haven for me and Cadan, too. This is the real world now. If we can't survive the real world, then what we had was never real to start with.

But this, right now, wasn't about her and Cadan. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind. “I'm sorry,” she said to Lin. “I was wrong. I know you can't change.”

“But you said—”

“Yeah, I know. Listen, Lin. I said it wasn't okay with me, and it's still not okay. People—they need to care about other people. They—they just
need
to. And one day you'll need to as well. But you can't do it now. And that
is
okay. It's not your fault and I don't blame you, and I don't think that it means you'll end up hurting me, or Cadan, or any of the people you
do
care about.”

Lin nodded, slowly, biting her thumbnail. “But one day . . .”

“One day you'll need to care. Just because”—she fumbled to put into words what she felt so clearly but had never had to articulate—“because that's what people are
supposed
to do.”

“They don't all do it,” said Lin.

“No, I know. But that's because there's something wrong with them—or because they've chosen to
let
there be something wrong with them.” Without planning it, without realizing it was going to happen, her voice became suddenly definite—both definite and defiant. “There's nothing wrong with you, Lin, and we're not going to let anything
be
wrong with you.”

This time Lin's nod was less uncertain. A faint flush had come back to her cheeks, making her eyes look less bruised. “Okay.”

“Okay,” said Elissa, and, suddenly worn out, took a sip of her hot chocolate. The underneath thoughts returned.
I have
to talk to Cadan. If we're going to make this work, we have to talk.
Her shoulders slumped.
It's not like I'd want us to be telepathic too, but with not knowing what his parents have said to him, not knowing exactly what he's thinking . . . I
don't
want telepathy with him, I really don't, but . . .
But this was her first real relationship ever, and although she didn't want telepathy, she
would
like a cheat sheet.

“You have to talk to Cadan,” said Lin.

“Yeah.” Elissa took another sip of the hot chocolate, too tired to feel resentment that Lin had picked up another of her thoughts that she hadn't intended to share, one that was supposed to be private. “I . . .” Her shoulders slumped farther. The idea of
that
talk seemed too daunting to even attempt.
And if he really does think I'm not good enough for him . . . God, he's probably right.

“He's not.”

Elissa gave a little laugh. “It's nice that you still think so.”

Lin shook her head. “No. I don't mean he's not right. I mean
he
doesn't think that.”

Alarm went through Elissa like a snap of electricity. Surely Lin hadn't started reading
Cadan's
thoughts? “How can you know?”

Lin smiled a tiny bit, responding either to the alarm on Elissa's face or the shock waves reverberating from her mind. “Not that, I swear. I can't read anyone else's thoughts—I can't read his. It's . . . It's just that, God, Lissa, haven't you seen the way he
looks
at you?”

From her chair, Felicia held her cup up to Ivan. He gave her a look, but took it all the same, then went back to the nutri-machine to refill it, moving quietly.

“I . . . I don't know,” Elissa said. “I mean, obviously I see his face when he's looking at me. . . .”

“But you haven't noticed
how
he looks?”

Felicia had her face turned toward Ivan, and Ivan's attention seemed to be solely on the cup he was refilling. All the same, Elissa found herself flushing. She picked up the stirrer that came clipped to the side of the cup and poked it into the froth on her drink. When she pulled it back out, the froth was stuck to its handle in tiny chocolate-ringed bubbles. “I don't know. I . . . How does he look?”

“Like nothing else exists,” said Lin. Her voice, uninflected and unemotional, seemed to give the words more impact than if anyone else had said them. “Like someone's turned all the lights off and you're the only thing that's left lit up.”

Oh
. Elissa's lips parted, but when no words came out, she closed them again.
Like nothing else exists. Cadan looks at me like that?

“His mother notices too,” said Lin. “She keeps looking at him looking at you. I don't think she likes it.”

“She . . . talked to me. Earlier.”

“I know.”

“Oh, right.” That feeling of being invaded,
taken over
, resurged within Elissa. “So I guess you know what she said?”

Lin shook her head. “I was talking to Cassiopeia and Jay and Samuel. I didn't pay attention until I felt you get upset . . . and then it was all blurred and I couldn't hear what she'd said to you.” Her eyes met Elissa's. “It was 'cause you were upset that I listened in to you talking to Cadan. I was . . . scared.”

That's not okay either. I'm going to have to make her see she can't do that, no matter the reason, she just can't.

But right now the need to tell someone about Cadan's
mother took over her still-present resentment of Lin's invasion of her mind.

“She's said stuff to him,” Elissa said. “She said we have nothing in common. She—
both
of them, probably—they don't think I'm right for him. They . . .” When she articulated it for the first time, the bitterness she'd been trying to suppress flooded the words. “They don't think it's going to last.
He
doesn't think it's going to last. Like I'm too young to have genuine feelings or something. Like it only happened 'cause we were on the ship together, and if we hadn't been—if life had just stayed normal—he'd never have noticed me.”

Lin was shaking her head, confused. “Which?” she said. “I mean, which one are you upset about?”

“
All
of it! They think I'm too young, and it's not serious, and it's just some temporary thing, and I'm not good enough and I'm just distracting him from what he's supposed to be doing—”

“Balls,” said Ivan.

Elissa jerked a look at him, shocked into momentary silence. “What?”

“Balls. Garbage. Nonsense.”

“It's
not
. His mother, she said—”

“Yeah, his mother said. But if you're telling us
Cadan
said those things to you, then he's not the man I thought him.”

A flush rose uncomfortably into Elissa's face. “I . . . No, he didn't
say
them. . . .”

“Then I'm betting you he doesn't think them.”

Irritation threaded through Elissa's embarrassment. “He
does
,” she said stubbornly. “He said so—he
does
think it might not have happened if we hadn't been thrown together—”

Ivan laughed. “Not really the same thing, is it?”

“I—” She broke off. “It—it
is
. If he thinks it wouldn't have happened, then it's because he thinks I'm too . . .” She trailed off this time, trying to think what Cadan
had
said, and what he'd sort of said, and what had gotten mixed up in her mind with what his
mother
had said. . . .

“That's a bit of an assumption there,” said Ivan. “You sure he thinks you're too . . . ?”

“All
right
,” Elissa snapped, frustrated. “But he did say he didn't know if it would have happened if—”

Ivan shrugged. “Well, how can he? How can you? How do you know what would have happened if things had been different? Why does it matter?”

All at once, Elissa knew she was about to burst into tears. “It
does
matter!” she said, hearing her voice go humiliatingly shrill, out of control. “It
does
! If it
wouldn't
have happened anyway, how do I know it's going to last? How do I know he's not going to get bored of me?”