clothes. It’s not horrible, but I see what she means about him not caring for himself. I imagine it is hard to bathe someone who doesn’t want you to touch him.
“What else sets him off?”
“For a while, right at the beginning, I tried to talk to him about your family. I told him about your parents and he just…he lost it. Maybe that was it? Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed so hard to try to get him to remember. Whatever they did, they made him break from that.” Sam swallows roughly. “Mia…I think they really hurt him. He has these scars, all up and down his arms, like they cut him bit by bit.”
My view of him blurs. I take a second to push back against the tears. I don’t want to cry. Lucas is right in front of me. We haven’t lost him totally. We can figure this out, how to help him, but it doesn’t involve throwing another temper tantrum like I’m five, not fifteen.
“I’m sorry…” I say. “I’m real sorry, Sam. I was just…”
She holds up a hand. “Everything you said was true.”
“No—it wasn’t,” I say. “I was upset and just kind of freaked out on you, and it wasn’t fair.”
Sam can’t look at me, or won’t. It takes me a minute to work up the courage to touch her, to put a hand on her shoulder. I’m scared I messed this up, and if she pushes me away, then I really will have no one—
She doesn’t. Sam puts her hand over mine.
“He’s getting worse,” she says. “Every day. I keep thinking, did I make the right choice? Should I have let him go with the other Reds? Someone must be taking care of them…right? Helping them?”
“No!” I say sharply. “I mean—I mean yes, you should have gotten him out. You don’t know what they’re doing to the other Reds. If they did this to them—hurt them so bad—then who knows what they’ll do to them now? I wouldn’t put it past them—the PSFs, the government, whoever—to just try to…”
The unfinished thought sends me into a kind of tailspin—the smoke, the fire, the stairwell, being crushed, being knocked down, and down, and down…
I don’t realize I’m shivering until Sam stands up and wraps a blanket around my shoulders, forcing me down into her still-warm seat.
“Try to what?” she asks, crouching down beside me.
When I can, I form the words on my numb lips. “Destroy the evidence. They…the people in charge of my facility, Black Rock…they burnt the control room to try to destroy all of their records. The military guy who came for us made it sound like they’d been doing that to all of the camps since yours was closed.”
Sam’s lips part, and her face goes as gray as a thundercloud. She starts to shake her head, like she can shake the idea loose before it can get its claws in.
“You know they would do it,” I say, “you know it’s a possibility….”
“I don’t know anything anymore, apparently,” she says bitterly.
I’m not sure where she’s going with that, and I’m not sure Sam does either. She seems relieved just to be talking to someone other than herself.
“Lucas beat this before,” I tell her, and it’s good to remind myself of that, too. “He can do it again. He just needs our help.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that simple,” Sam says, turning her eyes back on him. “He doesn’t even really sleep, Mia. He just gets to the point of being so exhausted he passes out. I’m afraid one of these days he just won’t wake up.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I insist. “We have to. We have everything we need right here.”
She releases a shaky breath, taking my hand when I offer it. Her skin is freezing.
We will get through to him by persevering, by not giving up on him, by showing him love when everyone else only showed him fear and pain. And if Sam can’t have faith, then I’ll believe enough for the both of us.
Sam shakes me out of unconsciousness before the sun is even up.
“Hey,” she whispers, “sorry…”
I roll onto my back on the mattress, tugging the scratchy gray blanket down from where I’ve pulled it up over my head. It takes a second for my eyes to focus on her.
And then I remember where we are.
What happened.
Lucas.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, sitting straight up.
Sam holds up her hands. “Nothing—nothing, I promise. I just need to take the car out and find