HOW MANY ANSWERS YOU SEEK ARE JUST A PART OF YOU, WAITING TO BE FOUND?
The game has changed.
Fresh from her first brush with mortality, a fragile Sadie Matthau is playing human in New York while the Survivors endure unimaginable tragedy. Wrought wit...
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Questions flipped through my mind at warp speed. "Why did you guys get a bulwark against me?"
"To protect you," he said.
"Details," I insisted.
He sighed. "Our main goal was to keep you from learning how to kill yourself and to keep you from knowing what we were."
"So you do know how to kill me?" I asked.
"That's two questions, but no. We thought we did, but as you recall, in our first skirmish with the rogue Survivors, we figured out our knowledge was faulty. And now that you know what we are, it doesn't have the same purpose anymore," he said.
"So why do you keep it?" I asked.
"That's three questions. Because it scares me to think about you knowing my every thought and feeling. I mean, ask Cole, I'm sure it unnerves the hell out of him," he said.
"Cole doesn't know I can read minds or emotions," I said.
Everett raised his eyebrows and then burst out laughing. "Oh man. Please let me be there when he finds out."
I smacked him. "He won't find out. No one would tell him, right?" I had been trying to protect Cole when I decided to leave out this tiny detail about myself. Wouldn't he have been more stressed if he had to police his thoughts as meticulously as he policed his actions?
Everett smiled. "Right. My turn. I get three."
"Shoot."
"Have you tried any more experimental death methods since you promised me you wouldn't?"
"No," I said truthfully.
"Were you in New York the whole time, or did you go elsewhere?"
"Only New York," I said.
"With Cole the whole time?" he asked.
"Strangely, yes. I was sitting still, for once. Corrina came to visit once, and we had a superficial shopping excursion. We never spoke of what happened in Dallas. My turn."
"No, I have another. That was just a compound question," he said. "What do you see in him? Really?"
I hesitated. "Everett . . ."
"No, I want to know. I want to know what you don't get from me that you need to get elsewhere. I want to know what I can do to be better for you. If I promise to be there for you, I need to know how to be," he said. But I said nothing. This was too touchy, too weird to talk about. My feelings for Cole were . . . complicated.
But he persisted. "Just tell me one thing he does that you like. Just one. We'll start there."
I thought about it honestly. "I don't know . . . Sometimes he explains stuff."
" . . . explains stuff?" he asked incredulously. He wasn't expecting that.
"Yes. About the human world," I said. "Sometimes there are things I don't understand. Little things that I miss or references that don't make sense to me. He explains them."
