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  Captain Bob narrows his eyes at me. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Miss Nara,” he says. “But at the moment you need us as much as we need you.” He motions down the hallway, where the linen room stands waiting. “So I suggest we all keep walking, hmm?”

  Just then Britta breaks from the back of the group and grabs Cole by the arm, stopping him dead in his tracks. I pause as well to see what the hubbub is. The rest of the group hurries on ahead after Bob.

  “What the—?” he starts, but when he sees who’s grabbed him, his face grows soft. “Britta, I—”

  “This Code seems pretty serious,” she hisses into his ear, loudly enough so that I can hear too. “So what do you think your buddy up there would do if he knew you broke it with her?”

  With that she pushes him away and turns to look at me. “What?” she snaps when she sees my gaping mouth. “You really thought I didn’t know about you two?” She sneers, the look on her face cold and dangerous. “Bitch, please.”

  And she rejoins the group ahead, the slight limp in her stride reminding us of her wounded ankle. For a moment we remain behind, silent in her wake.

  • • •

  When we arrive at the linen room, it’s mostly untouched by damage, although there are dozens of towels—once neatly stacked and ready to be distributed in the locker room—tossed all over the place. They got off easy, if you ask me. In the back is the object we’ve come all this way for—the dumbwaiter. The entire thing measures less than one and a half meters across and just as high, and it’s barely a meter deep. Heavy steel doors meet horizontally in the middle.

  “Looks like a tight squeeze,” Bob says once he has disengaged the lock and swung the doors open. The bottom door doesn’t pull all the way down when it opens, meaning that we’ll have to climb up and over the fifteen-centimeter lip in order to get inside. “We’ll need to go one by one. I’ll go first to make sure it’s operating safely. Archer, you bring up the rear.”

  “Naturally,” Cole mutters. His eyes dart to Britta, but she hasn’t said anything to anybody since her little outburst. For the moment at least, Cole’s secret seems safe.

  We spend the next twenty minutes loading one girl in, then sending her down, then calling the dumbwaiter back up for the next passenger. It’s like waiting in line for the world’s slowest roller coaster. For the first time all day, everyone is mostly quiet. It seems no one has much of anything to say.

  Finally we’re down to Ramona, Natty, me, and Cole. When the waiter dings its way back to our level, Cole slides the doors open, and Natty looks inside, terrified.

  “Do I have to hold my breath again?” she asks.

  “Just think of how you could incorporate this into your next installation,” Ramona says.

  Slowly Natty breaks into a grin. “I’ve been trying to think of a way to create a series of rotating shoehorns,” she explains to me and Cole. And with that she climbs inside. Cole slams the doors shut, and we send her on her way.

  Ramona offers me one of her cigarettes while we wait for the dumbwaiter to go down and come back up again. I’ve never really liked cigarettes. The only pleasant memory I have involving smoking was the time at Louie’s Pizza Palace when Ducky rolled a combination of oregano and parmesan cheese into a napkin and tried to light it, getting a lungful of burning cheese embers for his efforts. So I mutter a soft, “No, thanks.” Ramona shrugs and lights her own.

  “You know, you probably shouldn’t smoke,” Cole tells her. “It’s bad for the ba—” He stops talking as Ramona blows a puff of smoke into his face, glowering.

  And so we just stand there, the three of us, in silence. Cole and I keep almost looking at each other, then jerking our eyes away at the last moment. Finally the dumbwaiter comes back up. Cole slides the doors open, and Ramona climbs inside.

  “Get a room, you two,” she tells us with a wink.

  And she’s gone.

  “Well,” I say, finally breaking the silence. “We’re almost done, I guess. One way or another.”

  “Yeah,” Cole replies, continuing our stellar verbal exchange. “Strange day.”

  I can’t help but snicker at that, causing him to raise a curious eyebrow at me.

  “If it’s been strange for you, imagine how bonkers it’s been for me,” I say.

  “You know,” Cole says slowly, staring at the wall, “this was my very first combat mission.”

  That’s enough to send me into a full-out fit of the giggles.

  “What?” Cole says, finally turning to me. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” I reply with a laugh. “It’s just, well, dur.” He laughs with me. I try to gain control of my breathing again, half-wishing I’d said yes to that cigarette, if only to have something to keep my hands occupied during this ridiculously awkward conversation.

  “You think Britta will really tell Bob?” I ask. Cole stops smiling.

  “I don’t know.” He looks at me, very seriously, and for the first time since the exam room I don’t mind looking into those eyes. “But I do know that whatever happens, it was worth it. I mean, I’m going to have a son pretty soon, right?”

  I flinch slightly at that but try to smile. Next to us the dumbwaiter dings.

  “Well,” Cole tells me, “looks like it’s your turn.” He hoists me up, one foot at a time, and gently helps me inside. He slides the top door halfway down and then stops, looking in. “Elvs, I’m sorry I got you into this. All of it. I never meant . . . I guess with you I just lost my head.”

  I study the faint constellation of freckles on his left cheek, the last remnants of his Almiri birthmark. Despite everything that’s happened, I can’t say I’m sorry to know Cole Archer.

  “Kiss me,” I say softly. And he smiles again, his kind eyes crinkling, and he leans in. I grab hold of his tunic and pull him in for a deep kiss. Then I put my mouth to his ear and breathe softly. “I’m sorry too,” I whisper.

  “Sorry for what?”

  He’s leaning in at such an awkward angle for our kiss that it’s a cinch to yank him violently forward, smashing his head into the heavy half-closed door. He rebounds off with a CLANG! and looks at me with a puzzled and decidedly blurry expression on his face.

  “Sorry! Sorry!” I squeal as I tighten my grip on his collar and yank him hard a second time, clanging his forehead and producing another resounding thunk. Now fully dizzy, Cole offers no resistance as I pull him into the dumbwaiter, then squeeze my way back out. I snatch his gun from his side and then jam the doors closed and send him on his way down to the group.

  “Sorry,” I whisper one more time as the steel waiter descends. Because I really am. But as much as I care about Cole Archer, I can’t trust him right now. It’s only a matter of time before he or Bob looks at those patient records more closely and learns the truth about the baby inside me. And even though I know Cole would defend me with his dying breath, he can’t protect me from Bob or any of the other Almiri. Which is why I’m not going with them to the yacht. And I’m not going with them to Almiri headquarters. Nope, in order to make sure I’m well safe from both groups of crazy parasitic hottie pants, I’m going to have to make it on my own. I’m going to make use of what I saw on that schematic Bob asked me to look at, a detail that caught my eye and planted an idea in my brain that blossomed quickly. A detail that I never would have paid any attention to normally but that now screams out to me like a neon sign that says THIS WAY IF YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR ASS, ELVIE!

  Not twenty meters from the linen closet, there’s another set of sliding doors in an adjoining corridor. But this isn’t a pristine dumbwaiter for transporting linens. No, sir. I won’t get off this bucket that easily.

  I’m going out with the trash.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IN WHICH OUR HEROINE GETS IT ON, FLASHBACK-STYLE

  “You’re leaving already?”

  I don’t mean for it to come out so needy. But it does. It’s just Cole and me, again, in my garage, and after installing his routers, upgrading his C
PU, calibrating his mag spheres, and changing the Kuiper fluid, I’ve run out of things to fix on his car. It’s purring like a kitten. And it’s only now starting to occur to me that I like having Cole come over for more than just the joy of peering into the engine of his Kia.

  “I, um . . .” He shuffles his feet, suddenly looking years younger. Like we’re in middle school, even. Definitely not hot, but somehow I find it completely endearing. His eyes dart to the door of the house. “I guess I could stay a little longer.”

  I smile. “Want to watch a flat pic?”

  “Sounds good.”

  • • •

  We do not watch a flat pic. Instead we kiss. Cole kisses me, right there in the kitchen while I’m pouring him a glass of water. I’m just standing at the sink, glass in hand, and I hear him say, “Elvie?” And I turn, and it’s—I didn’t realize how close he was, how he was standing right there, right behind me. He gazes into my eyes, takes a deep breath, and without another word he kisses me.

  It is only the third time I’ve ever been kissed in my whole life. Only the second by Cole Archer, and only the first by Cole that actually counts. Really, let’s just say I’ve never been kissed before. Because I haven’t, not like this. It is wet and warm and wonderful, and it’s Cole.

  Somehow we make it up the stairs to my room, and I’m sure our lips never leave each other’s the whole time, although I guess they must, somehow. We sit on my bed and continue the kiss.

  I’m not going to pretend like things just happen suddenly, like I have no idea where it’s all going until it’s over, in some sort of cut-to-the-fireplace flat pic cheesefest. I have every idea what’s happening. Every second lasts an hour. The kissing, the serious kissing, the feel of Cole’s hands against my back, him pushing my arms out of my cardigan sweater. I’m aware of every bit of it. And that whole time, it’s both excruciating and exhilarating, both the best and most terrifying time of my entire life. As the kisses get deeper and Cole creeps a finger against the skin of my bare stomach, there are a thousand and one thoughts running through my head. There are your standard IsthisreallyhappeningholyshitIhopeIdon’tcrap myself sort of thoughts—the kind you’d expect in this sort of situation (not that you ever expected this situation, not really, not in your wildest dreams). And then there are the thoughts of the more nonstandard variety, such as suddenly freaking out about all that stuff from health class—pregnancy, disease, fire, brimstone—not to mention that stuff from your dad—the cow and the milk and what have you—and wondering if Cole really wants to do what you’re pretty positive he wants to do, and wondering if you really want to do what you’re pretty positive you want to do. And thoughts about how amazing Cole’s lips feel on your neck, and about that weird mole above his ear you might tell him he should get checked out later, and how you’re a slut if you go any further than where you are right . . . where you were a split second ago, and how no way is this happening, and how you should stop this right now, and how no way would you ever stop this, and the weird occasional wonderment about whether or not you remembered to take the garbage out this morning. And then Cole whispers into your ear how gorgeous you are, and you know that should be the sexiest thing you’ve ever heard, but you can’t tell if he’s being honest or just trying to get into your pants. But either way, it works. And you do a mental check to be sure you took your Preventra vitamin that morning, so that just in case you did do—I don’t know, something—you wouldn’t get knocked up or explode with warts in the down-below region, or any other unmentionable thing that the little green capsule is meant to protect against. And you did, you took it. So you look at Cole, and you just know—you know that this is the instant when, as much as you’d like to think that things are just sort of happening of their own accord, you need to make a decision. You need to decide if you want this, or if you don’t, and take whatever consequences come either way.

  So, yeah, anyway, we do it.

  Sex, I mean.

  In case that wasn’t clear.

  And it’s not half bad. I mean, not that I have anything to compare it to. It feels good, obviously, although I don’t exactly feel like my head’s going to explode off my body the way those chicks in the movies carry on. Some of it is better than good, even—let’s go with “resplendent”—and some of it not so much. Awkward and weird. Really, for all the poetry in the world on the subject, when you get right down to it, it’s mostly just boom! penis vagina.

  My favorite part—and here I risk sounding like a lovesick adolescent, but I guess I don’t care—is afterward. Lying with Cole half under and half over the covers, tracing the constellation of freckles on his cheek and having him kiss the tip of my nose as we hold each other close, skin against skin. He smiles at me, in this way that I can tell he’s utterly happy in that moment, and he snuggles my head into the hollow between his neck and his chin. And we lie there for a long time, enjoying the sound of each other’s heartbeats.

  Yeah, that’s pretty nice.

  • • •

  “Uh, Earth to Elvie.”

  “Huh?” I look up. Sitting across from me at the lunch table, Malikah is waving her hand in my face.

  “You alive in there?” she asks me. “Ducky’s been boring us with blow-by-blow Jetman recaps for the past ten minutes, and you haven’t even tried to save us once. Jennie and I are dying over here.”

  “Dude, let her space,” Leo says with a laugh. “So”—he turns back to Ducky—“do you use the Fuzer Field on the Mastodon King, ’cause I read online this great strat using—not kidding—the upgraded Hydro-rush.”

  As Ducky and Leo and Greg continue their nerdfest, and Malikah turns to pelting Ducky in the side of the face with Tater Tots, Jennie sets a hand on top of mine. “You okay?” she asks me in a whisper.

  “Yeah, I just . . .” I shake my head clear of thoughts. It’s been an entire day since Cole and I slept together. Nineteen and a half hours, not that I’m counting. And I want to tell someone. Everyone. I want Jennie and Malikah to weigh in the way they always do with complicated boy stuff, I want Leo and Greg to make fake barfing motions the way they always do with complicated boy stuff, and I want Ducky to . . . Well, I don’t know what I want Ducky to do, but it feels wrong to keep something like this from him. Something major.

  Only . . . I can’t tell, can I? Because I promised Cole I wouldn’t make a peep until he had the chance to explain things to Britta, so that she’d hear it all from him, and not through the LMHS rumor mill. Which sounded so sensible and considerate yesterday afternoon as we snuggled under the covers. But now it’s just excruciating.

  “No, seriously,” Ducky goes on, Leo and Greg glued to his every word. “I know it sounds idiotic, what with his resistance to ice damage, but try Hailstorm on him. When he does his Tusk-Crush, he’ll get frozen in place for two seconds.”

  The worst part of it is that Cole is here, right now, in this lunchroom. I can see him at the table by the door, where he’s sitting with Britta and all her cheerleader friends. Every time he opens his mouth, I wonder if he’s going to tell her, to finally break the news that it’s over, that he’s found someone else. But he wouldn’t do it right here in the lunchroom, would he? That seems so harsh, so un-Cole-like. No, maybe he’ll do it right after school, when they’re alone in the parking lot. Or when they’re driving home. Or . . .

  He is going to do it, right?

  My stomach flips a somersault.

  “Ouch!” I see the conjoined double tot skitter off the lunch table almost at the same moment that I realize I’ve been hit in the forehead with it. “Malikah, what the . . .”

  “See something you like, eh?” she says.

  “Huh?” I ask, stomach still churning.

  Malikah raises her eyebrows suggestively in the direction of the door. “Someone’s got a hankering for a big helping of Cole-slaw.”

  “What?” I squeal. I glance at Ducky, who is still deep in conversation with the boys. Not listening at all. “No way. I just—”

 
“I don’t blame you,” she says. “He is dreamy.”

  “Oh!” Jennie pipes up suddenly, popping a gum tab into her mouth. “Did you hear about him and Britta?”

  Flop! My stomach’s on the move again.

  “No, what?” Malikah asks. “They break up?”

  “Nah. You think Britta’ll ever let her claws out of that one? No, it’s just she started a petition for prom king and queen. Already. We’re freaking sophomores.”

  I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. I need to talk to Cole. I need to make sure he was serious, that he cares about me, that he didn’t just sleep with me and then plan on throwing me away like some—

  “Elvie?”

  It’s Ducky calling my name now, his voice full of concern. And it takes me an entire second to realize that the reason everyone is staring at me is that I’m currently standing, hands gripped on the corner of the lunch table, staring at Cole Archer.

  “You need to go to the nurse or something?” Jennie asks.

  “I . . .” I blink. Words have completely escaped me.

  And that’s when I catch his eye. Across the room Cole has noticed me standing, staring. And he gives me this look—this tiny little hint of a smile that I’m sure no one else even notices but to me speaks volumes. Soon, the smile promises. Soon.

  That is enough for me.

  “I just have to pee,” I tell the gang, snapping out of my haze.

  I’m zipping up my jeans in the ladies’ room when I see it.

  The water in the toilet is neon blue.

  Now, there are only two explanations. One, I consumed an inordinate amount of blueberry Juice Sticklers. Or two—and this is more likely, considering I hate Juice Sticklers—I am pregnant.