Eve Silver - Push

“I thought you’re not supposed to die on your dreams,” Carly says just as I’m about to fire off a question or two, “cuz if you die in a dream you die for real.”

“I think that’s a myth. Tell me about the dream.”

She takes her hands from her face and stares at the floor, pulling on alternating strands of the fluffy blue bath mat. “I was at the dance. We were doing ‘The Time Warp.’ There were these lights flashing, really bright, right in the middle of everything. Lights in the shape of people. I thought someone came up with a really cool costume. Then there were a bunch of little lights, like falling stars, and when they landed, they burned holes through people’s skin. Everyone started screaming. Running. It was crazy.”

She pulls at a strand of carpet, lets it go, pulls at another. “You were there. You and Luka and Jackson. Someone pulled the fire alarm. You ran down toward the gym instead of running out. I was scared you’d get hurt. Get killed.”

She shrugs, still staring at the carpet, pulling and pulling at the threads. “I knew I had to follow you, save you. It was like there was something driving me to follow. You went to the basement and I knew that if I didn’t go down after you, something terrible was going to happen to you.” She pauses. “It was so real . Not like any dream I’ve had before.”

I put my hand over hers and squeeze. She stops pulling at the rug, just sits there, tense and rigid.

“I found you,” she says. “I was telling you to get out. And then I died.”

My fingers tighten on hers.

She looks down and spreads her free hand over her abdomen. “It didn’t hurt. It was just sort of dull. Numb. But there was a lot of blood.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Like, a lot of blood.”

She lets her hand fall away. She tips her head back against the wall, eyes closed. “You know I hate the sight of blood.”

I wait for her to keep going, and I’m about to push when she starts speaking again.

“Then Jackson was there, bending over me, looking in my eyes. But he was a girl. And then this laser beam went right through my eyes into my brain. It hurt so bad. Like my eyes were exploding. A gray laser, silvery, really freaky. It was—”

She tips her head forward and starts picking at the carpet again.

I don’t know what to think, what to say. She remembers everything that happened in the game. But she doesn’t know she remembers. She thinks it was a dream, a really bad dream.

I want to tell her everything. The Drau. The Committee.

I want to tell her nothing.

I hope she keeps thinking it was just a nightmare, and actually, from her description it sounds like a blend of nightmare and memory.

Finally, I say, “Sounds pretty crazy. Jackson was a girl?” I laugh because I’m wound so tight that if I don’t laugh, I’ll crack. And because the thought of Jackson as a girl is pretty funny. But mostly I laugh in pure relief, because Carly’s okay. Somehow, she’s okay and I’m so damn grateful for that.

I lace my fingers with hers. “Come on. Come out of the bathroom. Your mom’s worried. Luka and Jackson are worried. Dee and Kelley must be freaking by now. Come on.”

I tug lightly on her hand, but she doesn’t move. She just sits there on the bathroom floor staring at the carpet.

“The nightmare was bad enough. But you know what’s worse?” she asks.

I stop tugging. She isn’t ready to budge; there’s more to the story. Unease slithers across my skin, raising goose bumps. “Tell me.”

“When I looked in the mirror . . .” She pulls her hand from mine. “When I looked in the mirror, the nightmare was still there. My eyes—”

I gasp. I can’t help it. I know what she’s going to say even before she says it.

“My eyes were like theirs.” She shudders. “Gray and scary. With slitted pupils instead of round ones. Not human. Like theirs.”

My turn to shudder.

Carly’s describing the Drau’s slitted pupils, but she never saw the Drau that killed her. It hit her from behind. She saw Jackson’s eyes when he did his Drau trick, but his pupils are human; they’re round.

My thoughts shift while I try to rearrange the pieces of the puzzle. I stare at the top of her bowed head, more than a little freaked out, trying to make sense of everything she’s saying.

She said she cried herself to sleep on the bathroom floor. . . . “Wait, when did you have the nightmare? Here, on the floor? After you locked yourself in the bathroom?”

She shakes her head. “I fell asleep on my bed. It was so weird.” She’s picking at the carpet again. Faster. Rougher. A thread pulls free and she throws it down, then pulls out another and another. “One second I was getting ready for the dance.” She pauses, her whole body motionless; then she starts pulling out threads again, even faster. “Then I was waking up on my bed. I don’t even remember lying down on the bed. I came in here. Washed my face. Looked in the mirror, and—”

I need to see her eyes.

“Look at me,” I order. And when she doesn’t, my unease ramps to full-on fear.

What if this isn’t Carly? My Carly. What if this is a different Carly, a shell?

No. That’s not possible.

Could they even have cloned her and made a shell so quickly?

Or maybe it wasn’t quick. Maybe the whole time-jump thing worked in their favor. Time passes differently inside the game and out.

But she’s acting like Carly acts when she’s upset. Would the Drau know that? Would they be able to program it into a clone?

Adrenaline spikes, sensitizing my skin, making my pulse gallop, my breathing harsh.

She balls her hand into a fist and presses it against her stomach, like she’s feeling sick.

That’s my opening. Only one way to be sure.

“Feeling queasy?” I ask, laying my hand just below hers.

I need to know if Carly’s a shell.

I curl my fingers a little, searching for proof. My index finger finds her navel.

She slaps at my hand. “What are you doing poking in my belly button?”

“Sorry,” I mutter, grinning like a Cheshire cat because the spandex clings to her and I can still see the indent. Shells don’t have umbilical cords, so they don’t have navels. One question answered.

“Freak,” Carly says without venom. She nods and sniffs, then scrubs her nose with the back of her hand. I unroll a few squares of toilet paper and hand them to her.

“I’m scared to look at my eyes,” she says.

Yeah . . . I might have a harder time explaining that away. I need to see them. See how bad they are. I don’t even want to begin trying to figure out how or why her eyes are Drau gray.

Is it because Jackson healed her? Fixed her? And now she has some connection?

But then why didn’t my eyes go gray when I healed him?

Because the flow of energy was in the opposite direction?

And if Jackson healed her, why hasn’t the Committee pulled him to face the repercussions of that?

My brain’s hurting from trying to figure this out.

One thing at a time.

“That’s why you locked yourself in? You didn’t want your mom to see your eyes?”

She gives a harsh laugh. “You’re giving me credit for actually thinking of a reason. I didn’t. I just freaked out and hid in here.”

“Show me,” I say.

“I’m scared,” she says, sounding young and lost and forlorn.

“I know. Let me see.” I cup her cheeks, tipping her face up so I can see exactly what she saw.

Carly’s hazel-green eyes look back at me, mascara streaking her cheeks in lurid black stripes.

Relief is like a hydrogen-filled balloon, floating up, up, up. “You’re nuts, you know that, right?” I ask.

“What?”