Rise

fourteen

I WAS AFRAID TO TURN MOSS OVER, WORRIED THAT MOVING him might cause more damage. The wound in his back barely bled. Instead his lips lost color and his chest swelled, as if he were taking one long, permanent breath. I undid the top buttons of his shirt and took his tie off, trying to create space for air. His mouth opened and shut, again and again, slower each time, like a fish without water.

It felt surreal, like a strange scene I was witnessing but not a part of. I tried to breathe into his lungs, as I'd seen at School when one of the younger girls had had a seizure. Nothing worked. The bullet had entered in the center of his back, breaking something inside him.

By the time we reached the bottom of the tower Moss was dead. I knew I had to leave, but I couldn't pull my fingers from his wrist, as if his pulse would return if I held them there long enough. I felt the cold dampness in his palms. I noticed the way his eyes stayed open, his limbs tense and still. When I finally started out of the elevator, I waited until the doors closed behind me, locking his body inside.

I kept my eyes down as I passed the row of soldiers by the entrance. The Palace workers still hovered just beyond the glass, watching as the last prisoners were executed. I pulled the sweater around my hands, trying to hide the blood smeared on my skin. I had minutes, if that, before they were all alerted, before the Lieutenant was at the base of the tower, searching the main road.

I wound down the long driveway, moving south until I reached the street. I kept imagining what would've happened if we had turned right, not left, out of my father's suite, if I had been the one who reached the elevator doors first. What did it mean for the Trail with Moss gone, how would the-

"Eve-stop!" a familiar voice yelled. "I've been calling you. Why didn't you turn around?" I flinched as Clara's hand came down on my wrist.

Her face was a mess of tears, the tip of her nose light pink. "You're leaving, aren't you?" she asked. She glanced behind me, where the crowd was dispersing into the Outlands. The sky above was a smothering gray, which rolled and cracked with thunder.

"I have to go," I said. "They're after me." I swiped at my cheeks, for the first time noticing that I was crying. I squeezed her hand, feeling the warmth of it in my own, and then turned away, back down the main strip, moving south along the road.

I lost myself in the shifting current of the crowd. I caught glimpses of the fountains outside the Bellagio, of two older women in front of me who were holding hands, of the man who pressed his cap to his chest, against his heart.

I was just beyond the Cosmopolitan tower when Clara found me, her breaths slowing as her steps synched up with mine. "I'm coming with you," she said.

I glanced over her shoulder, but there were no soldiers in view. The sky rocked with thunder, and the clouds let loose their first heavy drops. Ahead of us, people held their jackets above their heads to shield themselves from the coming rain. I pulled my hair down around my face, trying to hide from a soldier standing to the east, just beyond the metal barricades. "Now that the siege is over, you won't be hurt. You don't have to come; you-"

"I won't live here," she said. "Not like this." She glanced back at the Palace, where the wooden platform was still visible. Two more bodies were being cut down from the ropes.

"You can't," I said. "They know about what I did. If you're found with me, you'll be killed, too." I hurried my pace, turning right, crossing the main road, where the crowd thinned out. The tunnel couldn't be more than two miles off. I could leave the City within an hour, even if I wound through the Outlands, avoiding the stretches of open road.

"What's the option?" Clara asked. She kept along, not taking her eyes away from me. "Stay here? Wait until there's another attack? Wait until they tell me they've found you? You can't go alone, Eve." The last part of her sentence somehow held a question, as if she were asking me: Why would I let you do that? I pressed my face into her neck, clinging to her for just a moment before breaking away.