Eve Silver - Push

Laughing, I bound to my feet, grab her makeup mirror off the shelf, and hold it up so she can see.

“There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. It was just part of the nightmare.”

“Oh.” She moves closer to the mirror and stares at herself. Then she smiles. “Oh!”

I put the mirror down and hold my hand out to her. “You freaked yourself out for no reason.”

She huffs a short laugh. “I swear I’m never going to eat a giant Hershey bar in one sitting again. Ever.”

She grabs my hand and I yank her to her feet.

And for a millisecond, I swear her eyes flash Drau gray.

WE DON’T GO TO THE DANCE. CARLY JUST WANTS TO COME TO my place and chill, so she heads into her room to change while Jackson and Luka and I sit on the front step, waiting for her. The screaming match between her and her mom carries to us through the walls and the glass of the closed windows, muffled but still audible.

None of us says a word. I can feel the tension radiating from Jackson like heat from a fire.

Luka glances over at me, lifts his brows. I lift mine back. I’m not sure what message he takes from that, but he says, “I can’t sit here.” He slaps his palms against his thighs and stands. “I’m just gonna walk to the end of the block.”

I watch him go.

“Thank you,” I say to Jackson, once Luka’s out of earshot.

“For what?” He doesn’t look at me, just hunches forward, his forearms on his thighs, his hands loose between his spread knees.

“For what you did for Carly,” I say.

“I didn’t do it for Carly,” he says.

I nod. He did it for me. And for Carly, though he’s not the type to admit the last part.

“Truth is, I don’t think I did anything at all,” he continues, straightening and tipping his head back, his face toward the night sky. “There wasn’t time for me to do any kind of energy exchange. And if I’d succeeded, the Committee would be having a field day with me right now.” He drops his chin and turns his head a little toward me. “I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”

Everything he says is true, but hearing it out loud makes me afraid. Because if Jackson didn’t fix things . . . “You think they saved her?” The Committee.

“Something did.” He offers a hint of a smile. “I don’t get to take credit for this one.”

I take a deep breath, hating myself for what I’m about to ask, needing to ask it. “Do you get to take credit for lying to me again?”

The smile vanishes. He’s quiet for a bit; then he asks, “Which lie are we talking about here?”

“There’s more than one?” I shake my head. “No, don’t answer that. Of course there’s more than one.”

“I don’t consider them lies.”

“Because they’re omission rather than commission?”

“Something like that.” He rests his forearms on his thighs again and dangles his hands between his legs.

“You knew, didn’t you? You knew while we were in the lobby that we were going to respawn at Glenbrook.”

“We didn’t respawn at Glenbrook.”

“Not at first, no, but somehow that’s where we ended up. And you had forewarning. You knew.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know the Drau would be able to hurt people?”

“The Drau always hurt people.”

I exhale in a rush. “That’s not what I mean. Did you know they would be at the dance, that they would be there, really be there, in the same reality or dimension or whatever? Did you know that they could hurt people at the dance ? Answer me, Jackson. The truth, not one of your versions of the truth.”

“I knew when we were in the lobby that we were going to Glenbrook. I knew before Luka went into the dance that worlds were about to collide.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“I did what was best for the team. Kendra was already losing it. Lien’s focus was on her. You were freaked that we were at Glenbrook, never mind that the Drau were about to attend the Halloween dance with us.” He turns his head toward me and continues in a flat, even tone. “When we’re there, on a mission, I can’t be Jackson, the boy trying to work things out with Miki. I have to be Jackson who gets everyone in, then gets them out. It’s the only way I can do this, Miki.”

“When—” I begin, then pause, trying to figure out exactly what I want to say. “You said you had to do what’s best for the team. That’s the key word. Team , as in collaborative effort. You aren’t a lone gunman, Jackson. When we’re on a mission, I can’t be the girl who blindly follows orders, no questions asked. You should have told me.”

“And if you freaked out? Drew attention to us? Jeopardized the mission?”

“Because telling me would have been so much more likely to freak me out than letting things blindside me, letting me see it all happen right in front of me?”

“Miki, you’re a control freak. If I’d told you in advance, you would have second-guessed yourself, seen each scenario before it played out. Tried to twist it to conform to your mental plan. And that could have gotten you killed.” He pauses. “The way it panned out, you were confronted by a situation; you reacted without overthinking. You’re trained for battle, Miki. That’s what kendo did for you. So I let your training take over.”

Anger flickers and flares. I hate that he did this. That he high-handedly made decisions for me. But that’s his job—at least, it is when we’re in the game. He’s the leader. He’s supposed to make decisions.

I doubly hate it that I know he’s right about the control thing.

“So you did it because I’m not capable of knowing the truth and thinking it through?” I snap, not even meaning to. It just comes out. “Because I’m just a bundle of raw nerves? Is that what you think of me? Is that who you think I am?”

“No.”

I push to my feet, pace away, then back again. He’s not totally wrong. I do get panic attacks. I do have anxiety. But not when we’re on a mission. On every mission, I’ve done what I had to, done it with a cool head and a fair amount of logic.

Because I’ve been dumped right into the thick of things. No forewarning, no time to agonize and second-guess.

Which backs up Jackson’s claim that his way was the right way. I ball my fists, angry with him. Angry with myself.

He catches my hand and draws me back down next to him on the step.

“It isn’t just about me. Or you,” he says. “It’s about the rest of them. Was I supposed to tell them, too? Drag you aside and whisper it in your ear?”

“However you want to spin this in your own mind, whatever justifications you have, you didn’t just omit information, Jackson. You lied. When we first respawned in the hallway, you said it was like Vegas. You said no one outside the game would get hurt.”

“Did I say that?”

I stare at him, thinking back, dissecting my memories. “No,” I say slowly. “You didn’t. You said one word. Vegas. You let me fill in the rest. And you didn’t correct me when I filled it in wrong.”

“I made a judgment call.”

“Do you understand how wrong that is? You making decisions like that for me?”

He shrugs. “Blame it on a heavy dose of caveman genes.”

Caveman genes that have kept us all alive. I’m torn. I see his side, but I also see mine. We’re both right. We’re both wrong. “You told me you wouldn’t lie to me anymore.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“If we don’t have honesty . . . if we don’t have trust . . . what do we have?” I whisper.

“I trust you, Miki. I trust you with my life.”

It’s my turn not to say anything. If I say I trust him, I negate all my arguments and this will never be resolved between us. If I say I don’t trust him, then I’m the one who’s lying. Rock and a hard place.