Once: An Eve Novel Part 8

Harper threw his head back and laughed. "Old man yourself," he grumbled, landing his fist into Caleb's arm. Then he looked at me, pointing at the ceiling for emphasis. "There are millions of stars, each one shining and burning out at the same time. They die like everything else-you have to appreciate them before they're gone."

"I won't forget," I said.

The wide office was empty except for the table and a stack of boxes. A hole nearly three feet across gaped open in the floor. I stood there, waiting for the other two to speak, but they were still perched over the paper, their faces half-lit by the lanterns. "No progress with the collapse?" Caleb asked them.

The man was tall and thin with cracked gla.s.ses. He wore the same uniform shirt as I did, except the sleeves had been ripped off. He shook his head. "I told you, I'm not discussing this in front of her."

Caleb opened his mouth to say something but I interrupted. "I have a name," I said, surprised at the sound of my own voice. The man kept his eyes on the paper, studying sketches of different buildings throughout the City, notes scribbled next to them in blue ink.

"We are all well aware," the woman said, glaring at me. Her blond hair was rolled into thin dreadlocks, her pants spotted with mud. "You're Princess Genevieve."

"That's not fair," Caleb jumped in. "I told you, you can trust her. She's no more the King's family than I am." My stomach tensed as I remembered this afternoon. I hadn't pulled away when he'd hugged me, had felt close to him when we'd spoken of my mother. A sinking part of me wondered if maybe I was guilty of something.

The couple returned to the sketches. "Give 'em time," Harper whispered, patting Caleb on the back. Then he looked at me. "If Caleb says I can trust you, then I trust you. I don't need any more proof."

"I appreciate that," Caleb said, grasping Harper's arm. "Harper was the one who started building the tunnels out of the City. He realized we could use the flood channels as a starting point. Parts of them have collapsed or are too unstable, mostly from all the King's demolitions. We're constantly digging through rubble, or finding parts of them blocked off. We've nearly gotten under the wall on this one, but then we hit a whole section that had collapsed."

Harper hiked up his belt. "It's too dense to dig through. We need to figure out an alternate route through the flood channels. Without maps of the drainage system we're just feeling our way in the dark."

"This is the entrance to the first tunnel," Caleb said, gesturing to the hole. Behind us, the couple hovered over their work. "We try to keep the hangar the way it was when we found it, just in case any troops come through. The rubble is taken out at the end of the night, a little at a time, and then the construction starts again the next evening-or at least it used to."

"Where are the other two tunnels being built?" I asked. "Who's working on those?" The man and woman raised their heads at the sound of my voice.

"Please don't answer that," the man said, his voice flat. He smoothed down the paper with both hands.

Every muscle in my body tensed. "You know I was an orphan," I said. "Up until a few days ago, I believed both my parents were dead. I'm not some spy. I have friends who are still locked up in those Schools-"

"You sat in that parade, didn't you?" the man with the cracked gla.s.ses interrupted. I could see my shadow in his lenses, a black figure against orange lantern light. "Were you not on that stage, in front of all the City's residents, that stupid grin on your face? Tell me that wasn't you."

Caleb stepped forward, raising his hand to shield me from the man's accusations. "Enough, Curtis. We're not going into this again, not now."

But I ducked under his arm, unable to stop myself. "You don't know me," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. I leveled my finger at his face. "Have you been in the Schools? Please, since you seem to know so much, tell me what it's like there." The man stepped back, but his eyes were still locked on mine, refusing to look away.

We could have stayed like that for hours, staring each other down, but Caleb took my arm, pulling me away. "Let's get out of here," he whispered. He gave Harper a little half salute, and then we were back in the hangar, the door clicking shut behind us. "I shouldn't have brought you here. Curtis and Jo have been good to me since I've arrived-they were the ones who found me a place to stay, who backed me when the others were unsure about letting me lead the digs. They're not usually like that. They've just seen what can happen to dissidents who are discovered."

"I hate the way they looked at me," I muttered. We moved through the silent warehouse, under the rusted bellies of planes.

When we reached the door Caleb stopped, resting his palm on the side of my face. "I know," he said, pressing his forehead to mine. "I'm sorry. They may never completely trust you. But I do-that's what matters."

We stayed there for a moment, his breath warming my skin, his thumb grazing my cheek. "I know" was all I could manage. The tears were hot in my eyes. Here we were, miles from the dugout, from Califia, and there was still no place for us. We were bouncing between worlds, he in mine, I in his, but we'd never be able to truly be together in either one.

Caleb looked down at his watch, its gla.s.s face split in two. "You can take the second street parallel to the main strip. Turn through the old Hawaiian marketplace to get back. It's empty at this time of night." He looked into my eyes. "Don't worry, Eve," he added. "Please don't worry about them. I'll see you tomorrow night."

I pressed my lips to his, feeling his fingertips against my skin. I held them there, wanting the awful, uneasy feeling to subside, wishing we could be back on the dock, those three words floating between us. "Tomorrow night," I repeated as Caleb slipped another folded map into my pocket. He kissed me good-bye-my fingers, my hands, my cheeks and brow. I stayed there for just a moment. The rest of the world seemed far away.

But when I started across the City, alone but for the sound of my footsteps, Curtis and Jo's words returned. I found myself arguing my case to an imaginary room, explaining away my place in the Palace-something even I wasn't completely certain of. It wasn't until I pa.s.sed the wide fountain, its surface gla.s.sy and still, that I thought of Charles. I saw his face in the conservatory that afternoon as he pointed to the gla.s.s dome, describing all his plans for the restoration.

I ran up the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time, ignoring the burning in my legs. Fifty flights went by quickly, my body energized by the sudden thought. Finally, there was something I could do.

twenty-four.

"THE BUILDINGS THAT ARE TO BE RESTORED ARE FIRST determined by your father," Charles said, spreading the photos over the table. "We tour the place, take measurements, see what kind of shape it's in. Then I go through all the information I've recovered from before the plague-floor plans, blueprints, photos-to learn about the building's original condition, decide what can be restored and what we want to do away with."

I nodded, my eyes darting to the long drawers on the other side of the room. The suite on the thirtieth floor had been converted into Charles's office. The bed and dressers had been replaced with wide cabinets, and the desk sat in front of a gla.s.s wall overlooking the main strip. A long wooden table was set up with models, miniature versions of some of the sites I'd seen in the City center: the domed conservatory, the Venetian's gardens, and the Grand's zoo. A smaller room held more models, some piled one on top of another. I'd asked him for a tour of his office at breakfast that morning. Charles's face had brightened. The King had urged us to go, even though our plates sat on the table, the food still hot.

I picked up another photo of the roller coaster and arcade in the old New York, New York compound. "It's fascinating," I offered. The worn snapshot showed people strapped into the car, screaming, their cheeks blown back by the wind. It was fascinating to see the world as it once was, so many years before. But it was impossible to look at it without thinking of how we got here, now-of the boys in the dugout or the scars that crisscrossed the top of Leif's back.

"I'm relieved to hear you say that," Charles said. "I could talk about this for hours. Sometimes I worry I'm boring you."

I let out a low laugh, remembering one of Teacher Fran's sayings. "Only boring people get bored," I said softly. I turned a photo over in my hands, trying to decipher the smudged writing on the back. When I glanced up, Charles was looking at me. "The Teachers used to say that." I shrugged. "It's silly, I know."

"The Teachers," he said. "Right. I just realized we've never talked about your School."

"If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," I added, pointing the photograph at him. "That was another thing they used to say." I looked through the doorway behind him. This one room contained so many doc.u.ments-papers piled high in corners, blueprints of most of the buildings in the City center. There had to be more information here, something that would be useful to Caleb-I just had to find it.

"But you were the valedictorian." He plucked the photo from my grasp and set it down. I suddenly felt awkward, exposed even, now that I had nothing to do with my hands. "You must've enjoyed it somewhat."

"I did while I was there," I said, knowing I couldn't tell him the truth right now. About how our Teachers had twisted our lessons. About my friends who were still trapped inside. I walked over to his desk, pretending to look at a baseball resting on a stack of loose-leaf notebooks. Every surface was covered with maps. Scribbled notes were taped to the window.

"You like my paperweight?" he gestured at it. "You can still see the gra.s.s stains if you look closely. It's one of the few things I have from when I was a kid."

I held it for a moment, studying the faded red st.i.tching that was coming undone in places. "Where did you grow up?"

He opened his hands, signaling for me to throw it to him. "A city in Northern California. There were government transports during the migration, trucks that made the trip here week after week. It took us nearly two days with stops. Everyone had to be cleared by a doctor beforehand."

I tossed it across the room in a slow arc. I thought of the quarantine wing at School, how lonely those first weeks were. The Teachers would only speak to us through a window in the door. I was so young, but I still remembered how I'd check myself every morning, searching my skin for any sign of the bruises symptomatic of the plague.

"They gave us these masks to cover our mouths," Charles went on. "I remember being fifteen and looking around at all these faceless people, most of them traveling to the City alone. It was surreal." He threw it back to me.

"What was the City like in those first years?" I turned the ball over, rubbing at the gra.s.s stain with my thumb.

"Depressing," he said. "Still so run down. People had come from all over. Some of them literally walked for weeks, risking their lives to get here. It wasn't the glimmering place they'd imagined. At least not then."

He walked over to the cabinets on the other side of the room. I followed behind, thankful when he opened one of the wide, flat drawers, exposing all the papers inside. "Those first few years we were here, all I saw was possibility. I knew I wanted to do what my father did, to work with him one day. The City center changed, building by building. You could feel the sadness lifting as people settled in, as the City began to look more like the world before. Obviously, it's still a work in progress. We're still putting the life back into it with restaurants and entertainment. But I've been tossing around some other ideas ..."

Each drawer was labeled. A few read OUTLANDS with different directions beside it-northeast, southeast, northwest, southwest. Others were named after old hotels: two drawers each for the Venetian, Mirage, Cosmopolitan, and Grand. "When they started construction, they turned every lawn and golf course in the City into usable gardens. Which we needed, yes," Charles said, riffling through a stack of papers in the drawer. "But the public doesn't have access to those. We have clean water now, the ability to sustain plants. I wanted to create outdoor s.p.a.ce for everyone." He spread a sheet of paper down on the table.

I stared at the wide expanse of green, broken in places by winding pathways. Trees were drawn in intricate detail, their limbs spread out over ponds and rock gardens. The giant lake in the center was surrounded by three stone buildings. I ran my fingers over the light pencil marks. It was as good a drawing as any of the ones I'd made in School. "You sketched this?"

"Don't be so surprised." Charles laughed. "It'll be four hundred acres if it's ever built. The largest park inside the City's walls."

Every tree and flower was carefully drawn. Boats floated along a pond. Red and yellow blooms were cl.u.s.tered around the sh.o.r.e. One of the buildings was labeled RECREATION CENTER; another, NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM. A third had a patio and chairs. "A library," I said, unable to stop from smiling. "There's none in the City?"

"We restored one off the main road, but it's small and always overcrowded. This would be four stories, with a view of the water. It's just a matter of sorting all the recovered books. There's a whole building full of them just three blocks east." Charles pointed to the room behind him. "I have the model somewhere-would you like to see?"

He stared at me, his blue eyes wide. He looked like one of the dolls on Lilac's bed in Califia, with his square jaw and strong features, his mop of black hair perfectly in place. I knew he was objectively handsome. It was clear from the way Clara stole glimpses at him, or how cl.u.s.ters of women whispered when he pa.s.sed. But every time I saw him I was reminded of my father, of the City walls that rose up around us, locking us in. "I'd love to," I said.

As soon as he disappeared into the cramped room, I walked over to the cabinets, running my finger down the labels on each drawer. The first one contained papers from the old hotels. The next had blueprints from a hospital building, another from the two schools that had been restored inside the City. There were ones marked for something called Planet Hollywood. I knelt down, studying the last few drawers. Charles shuffled around in the other room, searching through the stacked models, his footsteps quickening my pulse.

"Where is it?" I whispered, reading the labels. Three of the lower drawers were marked EMERGENCY PLANS. I pulled the first open and started flipping through its contents, papers showing the gates in the walls, inventories of the warehouses in the Outlands-medical supplies, bottled water, canned goods. None of them showed the flood tunnels.

Charles's footsteps stopped for a moment, then started again, growing louder as he came toward the door. I pulled the last drawer open. I didn't have time to think, simply rolled the whole stack of papers up as tightly as I could and squeezed them down the side of my boot. I slid the drawer shut and stood just as Charles came back into the room.

"This," he said, setting the model down on the table, "should give you the full idea."

I wiped at my forehead, hoping he didn't notice the thin layer of sweat that had settled on my skin. The miniature version of the park took up half the table, the buildings crafted out of thin pieces of wood. Blue paint had hardened to form the still ponds. A green, mosslike fuzz covered the ground. Charles kept looking at me, then at the model, as if waiting for some kind of approval.

"It's great, it really is," I said, trying to keep my voice even. But with the plans tucked away, I just wanted to be alone again.

"There's more," he added, pointing over his shoulder, at the side room. "I used to build these with my father. I can show you the others-"

"That's all right," I said quickly, stepping away. "I should really get back."

Charles's face changed, his smile suddenly gone. He looked stricken. "Right. Some other time then," he said, taking a deep breath. His eyes searched mine, looking desperately for something more.

"Another day," I finally offered, giving in to the lingering guilt. I tried to remind myself that he worked for my father. That we'd only spent a few hours together-if that-and that he probably had his own motivations for seeking out my company. "I promise."

I started out the door, leaving him there, his face half lit by the sun streaming through the blinds. A soldier waited for me in the hallway. He followed me into the elevator and up to the top floors of the Palace.

When I was alone in my suite I sat down on the floor and pulled off my boots. As I sorted through the thin sheets, any guilt I felt about deceiving Charles disappeared. There, just ten papers into the stack, were sketches of tunnels. LAS VEGAS DRAINAGE SYSTEM typed across the top in beautiful, perfect print.

twenty-five.

"YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO DO THIS," CALEB SAID WHEN WE reached the top of the motel stairs. He grabbed my hand, pulling me to him, his arms wrapped around my shoulders. "But I'm glad you did."

The faint sounds of music drifted from a room at the end of the corridor. We'd traveled through the Outlands to Harper's apartment, looking for Jo and Curtis. Now we stood on the upper landing of the run-down motel. Faded plastic chips were strewn everywhere. Broken chairs covered the patio. A man bathed his small son in the half-empty hot tub below, using an old juice carton to rinse the soap from his hair.

Caleb led me through the corridor. We stayed close to the wall, hidden below the awning. A few lights were on in the other rooms, visible through windows covered with tarps and ripped sheets. Caleb knocked five times on the last door in the hall, the same way he had at the hangar. Harper was inside, his hearty laugh breaking the silence.

"You two again." Harper grinned, opening the door. He wore a long blue robe, a tight gray tank top visible just underneath it. "What are you doing out here?" He ushered us in, checking to make sure no one had seen. The room was crammed with worn mattresses and stacks of the City's newspapers. Curtis and Jo were sitting on warped wooden boxes, drinking from a jug of amber liquid. Curtis set the jug down when he saw me. His eyes were tiny black specks behind his thick gla.s.ses.

"I have a present for you," I said, unable to stop from smiling. I kneeled down and unzipped my boot, handing the roll of papers to him.

Jo helped Curtis spread them out on the floor. "Are these what I think they are?" she asked, flipping through the pages.

"Where did you find them?" Curtis pulled one from the bottom of the stack, tracing his fingers over the sketches. He glanced sideways at Jo, his face breaking into a smile. He covered his mouth as if trying to hide it. "I don't believe this."

"I think what you mean to say is *Thank you,'" I corrected. Harper let out a little laugh and winked at me in approval.

"That's where the collapse is," Jo whispered, pointing to a spot on the map. She moved her finger across to the other side. "We need to access this tunnel to the east. All this time we've been thinking we should keep digging north."

A pot was boiling on a hot plate next to the refrigerator, the steam filling the air with a strong, spicy scent. Harper moved around the makeshift kitchen, taking another jug and emptying it into gla.s.ses for Caleb and me. "You did good," he whispered, handing me one.

"Eve stole them from Charles Harris's office," Caleb added, as if that provided some greater understanding.

Even Jo laughed. "The Charles Harris? The King's Head of Development?"

I nodded, taking a sip of the drink. It tasted similar to the beer they made in Califia. "I brought them to you as soon as I could." I stared at Curtis, waiting for him to respond-to say thank you, to apologize, anything-but he kept his eyes on the papers, studying the new route. It was a long while before he even looked up.

We were all watching him. He glanced around the room and shrugged. "You're the King's daughter," he said, adjusting his gla.s.ses on his nose. "What do you expect?"

Jo looked up at me, her eyes rimmed with thick black eyeliner. "We made a mistake." She glanced sideways at Curtis. "It's hard to know who to trust. We just lost some of our own because of leaked information."

Harper sat down beside me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. "That's their code for *sorry,'" he whispered. He took another swig of his drink.

"With the new plans, it can't be more than a week off," Caleb offered. He kneeled down beside Curtis and traced the distance to the wall. "I've already alerted Moss to let him know that construction will move forward tomorrow. He's contacting the Trail."

"I can get thirty workers by the afternoon," Jo said, looking at her watch. Her blond dreadlocks were tied back with a strip of red fabric. "I'll get the contacts coming off the night shifts."

"Curtis, I'll trust you to run construction while I'm at the other site tomorrow morning," Caleb added. Curtis rolled up the papers and tucked them in his knapsack. He nodded, his eyes moving from Caleb to me.

"Which means," Harper said, jumping up from the mattress, "instead of commiserating, we should be celebrating." He went over to a stereo on the dresser and popped in a disc like the ones I'd seen at School. The room filled with low music, a silly song with a man speaking the lyrics. He did the mash, it played. He did the Monster Mash. The Monster Mash. It was a graveyard smash!

Caleb laughed. "What is this, Harper?" he asked.

Harper kicked a few crumpled shirts out of the way to clear a dance floor. "This is the only CD I have that works. Halloween songs or not, it's still music."

Harper spun around, his beer sloshing in the gla.s.s as he pulled Jo along in his wake. She sidestepped some crumpled newspapers, laughing the whole way. I sat on the mattress, watching as Caleb joined in, halfheartedly shaking his hips, to Harper's delight. "Woohoo!" Harper yelled. "Atta boy!"

It took me a moment to realize Curtis had sat down beside me. "I doubted you," he said, so low I could barely hear it over the music. "We've been working on that tunnel for the last three months and because of you, we just might finish." He offered his hand. "You're one of us now."

I took it in my own. "I always was," I said. "The King may be my father, but I've been in the wild, the Schools. I know what he's done."

The music filled the small room. Curtis was quiet for a moment, considering what I'd said. "It just takes me a long time to trust someone. Most people in the Outlands don't even know my real name."

"Enough of your yapping!" Harper interrupted us. He grabbed my arm, pulling me up from the floor. He twirled me once, quickly, his limbs loose from all the beer. "Let's enjoy ourselves for one night. Come on, Curtis-on your feet, man! Otherwise I'll do it-I will," he threatened, grabbing the straps of his robe, ready to open it.

Curtis held up his hands in surrender. He joined in, shuffling awkwardly around the cramped room. Caleb took my hand, spun me around, and dipped me so fast my stomach felt light. His green eyes met mine, our faces just inches apart as we stayed there for a second, listening to the silly chorus.

He leaned in, his lips brushing against my ear. "Do you want to go?" he asked.

He smiled at me, the same smile I'd seen so many times before. I loved every part of him. The smell of his skin, the scar on his cheek, the feel of his fingers pressing into my back. The way he could tell what I was thinking just by looking at me.