Comatose

Ana Darling

My head snaps up. "You're kidding. I can't ask her that."

"Why not?"

"It's intrusive. And irrelevant. What do her reason for leaving make any difference to us?"

"Trust me," he says with a liar smile. "You'll want to know. All your many questions will be answered. Promise."

Ask the new girl why she ran away from her probably horrible past? Yeah, no way. Anything wrong in the life of such a fresh-faced darling is going to turn out either shallow and trite or hideously terrible, and I'm not too eager to prove that. "Who says she'll even want to talk to me?" I protest. "We literally met five seconds ago. No runaway is going to be that trusting."

"Jane."

I look away, down the stairs and out of his line of influence. "What, Pan?"

"Trust me."

Trust me. Of course. That's all Pan ever asks of us, and it's all we're expected to give. Trust, unending trust, but what does he offer us in return? My thoughts stray to Kamryn Parker's file of my leader's secrets. Trust him? After all he's lied about?

"Don't expect anything to change here," I warn him, brushing past to reenter Ana's sanctuary. "You know I don't tear up over sob stories."

The moment I close the door on him, the fight goes out of me. I can't ask her that. It's against every rule I've set for myself. Besides, why would she tell me anyway?

I hesitate long enough to hear her sigh. "You don't like me. Is that what you're arguing about? I'm really sorry to cause trouble."

Oh, please. "It's no trouble, kid. Just something else, far as I can see."

"But you still don't like me." She breathes out again. "I'm sorry about that, too."

"Don't be. I don't really like anyone." Inwardly, I cringe at my own bluntness, but outwardly, it doesn't faze me. I'm like this with everybody, and I feel I have a right to be after the day I've had. Little Miss Ana shouldn't expect my sympathy strings to be pulled just because she's new and alone.

Nobody wants to sit with the new girl, nobody wants to be seen with the pale girl in the too-big clothes on the playground. Who would want a friend like that, a friend who wouldn't be much of a friend anyway because it's not like she can have playdates ever...

"What?" I say sharply, stiffening my whole form at this new set of thoughts. They certainly can't be mine; of course, they can't logically be anyone else's. Where did they come from and what are they doing in my head?

New...and alone...

"I said you like Pan." Ana's voice barely skims my radar, quiet as she is. "That's why you don't like me, because he's your friend and you don't want me putting everyone at risk."

"For the last time, kid, you're not a danger. This isn't a war zone and you're not a detonator," I scold irritably. "Why do you keep saying that, anyway?"

"That I'm dangerous?" She shrugs like it's a familiar question. "Because I am, and I prefer letting people know right off so they don't think I've lied to them later on."

I can't stop myself from laughing harshly. "No offense, dear, but you don't look much like a threat to me."

Another shrug, exactly like the first. "Not now. Looks can be deceiving."

That, at least, is something I can relate to. Nobody I've met in this new life is who they seem. Pan was one I always thought I could trust to be himself, but clearly I was wrong about that. Which reminds me...