I pushed it aside and focused on my reply. “That’s not what I said.”
His chin jutted out. “But it’s what you meant.”
“Oh, is your power to read minds? No? Then don’t tell me what I meant.” I looked back at him with a gut full of defiance. I’d likely be blaming myself again later for the deaths, but I wasn’t going to let him burn me with it; not now. “If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t have gone back. But I can’t and I have to live with what happened. And you can take your rage and fire it up your ass.”
He didn’t say anything, but his jaw hardened and his nostrils flared. I realized that the pretense of standing there if I wasn’t looking for a fight was pretty flimsy, so I made my way to the table. I sat down and looked out the window, trying to ignore all the stares from behind me.
A figure came up from behind a few minutes later and slid the chair out without asking. I was ready to gripe when I looked up. “Oh, it’s you.”
Zack sat down. “What are you doing here?” He cast an almost furtive look around. People were still staring. “It’s not the most comfortable environment to be eating your lunch in, is it?”
I took another forkful of beef and chewed it while I pondered my response. “You mean because everyone in the room hates me?”
“That’s not true,” he said. “I don’t hate you.”
“Kudos to you for being the only one.” I feigned applause for a couple beats before reaching down with my fork and spearing a bite of stray roast with unnecessary force. “So this is what being the school outcast would have felt like. I didn’t really miss much being locked away all these years.” My voice quavered and came out much lower. “Not that it matters.”
“It doesn’t matter if anybody likes you?” His voice carried a hint of skepticism.
“Nope. I’ve lived my entire life without the approval of any of these people. I suspect I can live the rest of it the same.” I stabbed another piece of beef. “Especially considering how short it’s likely to be.”
“We can protect you from Wolfe if you stay,” he said, his tone soothing.
“Oh boy,” I said with mock enthusiasm. “I can spend the rest of my life wandering the halls of this place, feeling useless and listless and trapped, just like when I was at home – except here I’m surrounded by people who hate me.” As if to punctuate my statement, I pushed my tray away. I was done.
“At least nobody here will lock you in a metal box for days at a time,” he replied, a touch defensive.
“My entire life is boxes.” I twirled the fork before setting it down on my discarded plate. “First I was trapped in my house or in the box; now I’m trapped on your campus. Most people are trapped in their towns, or their jobs, or their way of life. We go through life in our little boxes until we find ourselves in the last one, buried in the ground.”
My tone was rueful, and I didn’t care how general I was being. I was in a foul, depressive mood. I suspected that this guy, the only one in my life to ever show an interest in me (other than Reed, I guess), was doing it to spy on me for his boss, and I found myself longing for the simplicity of my house, where at least I knew where I stood. Act out, Mom gets pissed and I get stuck in the box. Simple.
He pushed back from the table. “That’s a bit—”
“‘A bit’ what? Accurate? Morbid?” I laughed. “It’s a bit irrelevant. I’ll stay here, milking the security of your Directorate for all it’s worth, because I’ve got nowhere else to go and there’s no way I can beat Wolfe. So I’ll wait, and bide my time, and hope that when your much vaunted M-Squad comes back they can find a way to kill him so I can at least have the luxury of deciding where I want to go and what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.” His voice was soft, almost lost in the din of the cafeteria conversations. “You could work with us here, build a life at the Directorate.”
“And what? Join M-Squad? Be a test subject? Hang out like all these other