Robin Wasserman - Frozen

Especially since, when you think about it, he was the one who should have been apologizing. I wasn’t the one making unreasonable demands or throwing a temper tantrum when I didn’t get what I wanted.

But I’d lost the moral high ground when I’d given in to Jude. Even if Auden didn’t know—could never know—I knew.

“I’m sorry about before,” I said. If he really wanted to talk about it, then fine. We’d talk.

“You don’t have to—”

“I wish it hadn’t happened.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said.

“No, I’m glad you did.” Lie. “We should be honest with each other.” Lie number two. “And what I said? About wishing I could go back to the way things were before? I can’t… I can’t take that back. But, Auden, you have to know, you’re the only good thing that’s happened to me since the accident. The only thing.” Truth.

Except for yesterday, some rebellious part of my brain pointed out. Except for Jude. Except for what he did. And what he gave me. But that was nothing. That was already forgotten.

Lie number three.

“You don’t have to say that,” Auden said.

“I do.” I smiled nervously. “Are we okay? I really need us to be okay.”

“Me too,” he said, and gave me a tight hug.

Now or never, I decided. “So, now that we’re friends again… any chance you want to do me a favor?”

Auden let go, laughing. “Now I get it. That wasn’t a gift, it was a bribe.”

“No! Well… maybe a little.”

He sighed. “What do you need?”

“Jude and the rest of them are going out again tonight.” I winced at the expression on his face, stranded somewhere between suspicion and disgust. “I want to go. I thought maybe you’d come with me.”

“Back to the waterfall? Are you crazy?”

I shook my head. “They’re doing something else tonight. I don’t know what. It’s some kind of big secret.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time: Are you crazy?”

“You’re the one who talked me into going last time,” I pointed out. “Remember all that stuff about facing up to my fears, meeting people who were like me and could understand what I’m going through?”

“Remember how it turned out that Jude was an asshole and all his little followers were daredevil nut jobs who thought killing themselves might be a fun way to pass the time?”

“They weren’t trying to kill themselves,” I said.

“They were doing a pretty good imitation of it.”

“Auden, you know it’s different for us.”

“ Us? Since when—”

“You know what I mean,” I snapped. “It wasn’t that dangerous. They were just having fun.”

“Exactly. What kind of person thinks that’s fun?” He scowled. “A seriously messed-up person. Or a person who can’t think for himself.”

“Or maybe a person who’s not a person at all. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“No!” Auden sighed. “You know I don’t think that way about you. I just don’t get why you’d want to go back. What’s the point?”

I wasn’t sure why I wanted to go back.

It wasn’t because I wanted another dose of whatever Jude had to give me. I’d promised myself it wasn’t because of that.

“They’re trying to test their limits,” I told him, “and to explore the possibilities of this thing. To enjoy it a little. Is that so bad?”

“When did you start talking like that?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“Like… I don’t know. Like him .”

“Look, if you don’t want to go with me, I’ll go by myself,” I said, annoyed. “No big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” he said. “Whatever they’re doing, I’m sure it’ll be dangerous. And stupid. I’m not letting you go by yourself.”

“I don’t need you to protect me,” I said, even though that’s exactly what I’d asked of him—and I’d asked knowing he would never be able to say no.

“Too bad. That’s what you’ve got.”

“What’s the point?” Auden asked.

“Because we can ,” Jude said. “Because why not?”

Auden pulled me away from the group. He was still carrying his hideous green bag. “This is a bad idea.”

“You’re the one always talking about the people stuck living in the cities,” I said. “Don’t you actually want to see one?”

“Not like this,” he mumbled. “Not by ourselves. At night. ” But I knew I had him.

There were ten of us, including me and Auden. Again, no one had wanted him to come along, but I’d insisted, and Jude had gone along with it. As before, everyone else went along with Jude.

“You can leave, if you want,” I offered, and I was almost hoping he would take me up on it. I wanted him there, I did. But even I knew he didn’t belong.

Auden shook his head. “You know the city people; they hate mechs more than anyone,” he said. “Most of them die before they hit forty, and you’re going to live forever. You really think that’s a good combination?”

“I think Lia trusts me,” Jude said, appearing behind us and resting his hand on my shoulder. I shook it off. “Maybe you should give her a little more credit.”

I glared at him. “Don’t touch me.”

He just smiled. “I’ll give you two a minute,” he said. “We’re leaving in five. Stay or go.”

Once he was gone, Auden gave me a weird look. “What was that?”

“What?”

“The two of you.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He headed back toward the group of mechs waiting for their field trip to begin. “Let’s just go.”

We took two cars. Jude and Auden sat in the front seat of ours, not talking. I squeezed into the back with Quinn and some guy whose name I didn’t hear the first time—and didn’t get much chance to ask a second time, since he spent most of the ride with his tongue down Quinn’s throat. I looked out the window.

The skyline carved dark, jagged chunks out of the sky. The car sped along swooping bands of concrete, a purposeless, unending sculpture of roads that dipped over and under one another, splitting, merging, crisscrossing; so much space and all of it empty. Even without the curfew no one would be stupid enough to enter a city at night. And no one who lived there had a car. That would have guzzled too much fuel; that would have made it too easy to get out.

We parked on a narrow street. Without a word Quinn and the other mech began collecting armfuls of debris from the gutter while Jude pulled a stained beige tarp from the trunk and draped it over the car. The gutter trash went on top.

“Best way to keep it safe,” Jude explained. Across the street the passengers of the second car were doing the same.

It was eerily quiet. The dark buildings shot up on all sides, and I reminded myself that at least some of them were full of people, staying warm, staying dry, staying off the streets after curfew. But everything was so still and empty, it was hard to imagine that anyone was alive here. The group moved stealthily, stepping lightly, staying clustered in a pack. Only Auden breathed.

“What now?” I whispered.

“We look around,” Jude said. “And we try not to get caught.”

Caught by who? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t really want an answer.

This city had been lucky. No major bombings, so no radioactive debris. Too far east for the Water Wars, too far north for the flooding. They’d gotten hit by the Comstock flu strain, but no worse than any of the other population centers, and in the last bio-attack, before the cities cleared out for good, they’d lost less than a million.

They’d been lucky.

Not lucky enough for anyone to stay, at least voluntarily, but that much was true for all the cities. Who would be crazy enough to stick around an energy-poor, germ-ridden death trap if they had enough credit to get the hell out?