Eve Silver: Push

Nothing important there to see, so why did he want me to look?

Luka scoops his keys from the table and walks toward us. His gaze holds mine, his expression intent, and he lowers his brows like he’s doing a Mind-Meld thing. Problem is, the connection’s down at my end.

“Earth to Miki.” Carly snaps her fingers near my face. The faint scent of cigarettes carries from her fingers, a reminder of the distance that’s been building between us. She knows my history and she’s been smoking anyway. A lot of people who get lung cancer aren’t smokers, but Mom was. A pack a day. And now she’s dead.

Like Gram and Sofu and Richelle. And Jackson.

Everyone leaves.

I swallow, but the lump in my throat stays exactly where it is.

“Miki.” Carly tightens her hold on my arm as Luka steps up on my other side. “Breathe. Just breathe. You know what to do. You’ve done this a million times,” she says.

I have. In the two years since Mom died I’ve had tons of panic attacks. I know the signs, and I’m experiencing a bunch of them right now: the feeling that a sword of doom’s about to cut me down, the urge to escape, get out, run. The trembling. The shaking. The vise squeezing my chest.

They’re known and familiar enemies, and that’s why I recognize the subtle differences. This is no simple panic attack. It has extra special layers: it’s me battling for control, trying to balance the game with my life, locking the door against the agony that’s scratching to get in.

Jackson.

I can’t think about him yet.

“Outside sounds like a plan,” I say.

Carly wraps her arm around my waist and I cling to her, aching to spill it all out. The lobby. The battles. The aliens. The scores.

Her pupils are dilated, huge and dark, leaving only a thin rim of hazel green. Because of me. I’m scaring her.

I’m scaring myself.

I feel like I’ve been through a wood chipper and the slightest puff of air will scatter all the bloody, raw bits of me across the floor. And there, at the edges of my mind, is the numbness that’s shrouded my every moment since Mom died. It’s crawling back like a swarm of maggots to rotting flesh. Part of me wants to let it, to say: Yes. Welcome. Wreathe my world in fog. Make me numb. Make me feel nothing, nothing at all.

But I don’t want to be that girl anymore. I’ve worked so hard to be normal.

You were never just a normal girl. I hear his voice in my head, but it’s just a memory.

Jackson’s gone. Forever.

I thought I could save him like he saved me.

I failed.

I can’t bear it. I can’t mourn again, can’t do it, not right now. Not anytime soon.

The guy in the back is singing off-key while he makes the pie. The woman behind the counter plants her fists on her hips. Her expression’s pretty clear. She’d like us to find the exit, like . . . now. Thanks for the concern, lady.

The few steps it’ll take me to get to the door stretch like an abyss before me. I’m not sure that my legs won’t buckle before I hit the sidewalk.

Carly shifts my arm from her waist and drapes it across her shoulders. Like she’s afraid I’ll crumble. I won’t. I refuse. I won’t let this break me.

“Miki, it’s okay,” Luka says, drawing out the last word like he’s trying to tell me something. I watch the key ring spin round and round and round his index finger.

“Slow breaths. You know the routine,” Carly says, and shuffles us both a couple of steps closer to the front door.

My thoughts are a series of cyclones churning destruction wherever they touch down, then moving on, spinning out of control.

From the corner of my eye, I see the keys go around again. The leather fob angles toward me so I can read the word on the round medallion at the center: JEEP .

And then everything stops. No confusion. Just clarity.

Those keys in Luka’s hand: they aren’t Luka’s; they’re Jackson’s. I remember him throwing them down on the table when we first settled in the booth.

My gaze shoots to the table. Four plates. Four.

I stop dead, despite Carly’s less-than-gentle urgings toward the door.

“Find Jackson,” Carly orders Luka. “Where is he, anyway? We need to go. Like, now.”

Go. We need to go. We need to! . . .

“Wait!”

I break from Carly’s hold and turn to stare at her. She just said his name. Jackson. She remembers him. Remembers that he was here at the pizza place with us. My heart stutters, then starts to race double time. He’s not here now, but . . . he’s not dead.

Because if he were, Carly would have no memory of him at all. That’s what happens when you die in the game. Your entire existence from the moment you were conscripted gets wiped out as if it had never been.

When Richelle died in a Drau-infested warehouse in Vegas, everyone in her real life forgot all their interactions with her during the months from the time she was first pulled to the time her con went red. According to her memorial page, she died seven months before I even met her.

The only people who remember those months are the ones who knew her in the game—me, Luka, Tyrone, Jackson. For some reason, our memories of her remain.

If my con turns full red, I’ll go back to the moment where I’m lying in the road, my blood smeared on the truck’s bumper and pooling underneath me, warm and sticky. I’ll go back to my heart beating slower and slower until it stops. That will be the moment that all I am in this reality ends. My friends, my family will all forget everything about me from that second on. Like I’d never lived the intervening days, weeks, months at all. Not even memories of me from that time left behind. Just . . . nothing.

For Jackson, his life would be snuffed years ago when he died in the real world in a car crash with his sister at the wheel. In that fraction of a second somewhere in the past, he would cease to exist.

That would mean Carly never would have met him.

He wouldn’t have been here with us, out for pizza.

So while Luka and I would remember him from the game, Carly wouldn’t even know his name.

But she does. In fact, she thinks he’s here somewhere, not gone at all.

A tiny, terrifying seedling of hope unfurls. I clutch Carly’s forearm. “Did—” My voice is little more than a croak. I swallow and try again. “Did you see where Jackson went?”

“Would I be asking Luka to find him if I had?” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “It’s like he disappeared into thin air. Check the can,” she orders Luka.

My gaze shoots to his. He smiles a little, holds up the keys, and jangles them. This is what he wanted me to figure out.

Jackson’s alive.

Tears sting my eyes, threatening to fall. I didn’t cry when I thought he was dead, but now that I think he’s alive I’m about to collapse in a sobbing heap. I bite the inside of my cheek hard until I feel like I can keep it together.

Jackson’s alive.

Which doesn’t make sense because his con was red. He was dead.

I need to find him.

“We need to find him,” Luka says.

“That’s why I told you to check the can,” Carly says.

But Luka wasn’t talking to her. We need to find him, which means I need to get Luka alone so we can figure out a plan.

“Luka! Go check.” Carly sounds exasperated. “I’d do it but, hey”—she waves her fingers in the general direction of her fly—“missing some equipment here. . . .”

“He’s not—” With a shrug, Luka gives up and heads off to do as Carly ordered.

But we both know Jackson isn’t in the little boys’ room.

He’s . . . somewhere else.