S-o-r-r-y.
He shifted a little so they could see one another.
What’s wrong?
I think I need to leave.
She pulled her bra and T-shirt back on.
Did I do something?
No, like, leave Colson.
What are you talking about?
My parents, they want to implant me again.
What? After…
Austin gestured to her stitches and she nodded.
That’s what I’m saying. They won’t stop and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.
A sliver of Eliot appeared in the doorway. He looked relieved that he had not interrupted.
Hey. Sam says they’re doing checks on east side.
Shit, thanks.
Eliot nodded and sat back down on his bed. They finished dressing and Austin opened the door to his wardrobe and swiped his clothes to one side. Charlie just looked at him.
You have a better idea?
She climbed in and he repositioned his row of hanging shirts neatly in front of her, then closed the door. They never checked closets but his heart was still pounding, so hard that he was afraid the dormkeeper might see it through his shirt. He held his history book up against his chest as armor.
Smooth, said Eliot when they’d gone.
What?
Eliot laughed.
Nothing. You just looked squirrelly is all.
Whatever, they left, didn’t they?
Austin opened the closet. Charlie climbed out and returned to his bed.
You o-k?
Fine. I mean, besides not knowing what to do with my life.
Austin wanted to tell her not to leave, that he would find a way to protect her, but he knew it wasn’t true. Worse than that, in a few months, none of them would be safe.
Where would you go?
I don’t know, maybe stay with Slash and them until I figure things out.
I’ll go with you.
What? No way. I’m gonna have to drop out.
S-o?
S-o? You can’t leave.
He dug at the carpet with his toe.
I have to tell you something.
It was difficult to get his hands to move now, but he was propelled by the expression on Charlie’s face. She looked terrified, almost like she worried he was about to turn her in.
What is it?
River Valley is closing.
What? said Eliot, jumping up from his bed.
Austin had forgotten Eliot was there, but it didn’t matter anymore.
What? When?
End of the school year. My dad was interpreting a district meeting and they announced it. It’s why they want to implant Sky.
And you’ve known this since—
Since break.
Jesus.
Fuck.
Charlie ran a hand through her hair, her usual nervous habit, but it caught on her wound and she recoiled.
What are we gonna do?
What can we do? They don’t listen. No one listens.
We could make them listen.
Here Charlie paused. It was almost dramatic, the way she froze midsign, her hand beside her eye the way he’d taught her, not by her ear like hearing people signed it. In retrospect, he realized this had been the moment for her, that for years people in power had overrun her body, and this was the shutdown, the hard reset. At the time, though, he worried something bad was happening, a complication from the surgery, a seizure maybe. He ran to her and took her hand in an attempt to guide her back to the bed.
You o-k?
I’m fine, she said.
And then he saw the smile, a grin so wide he could see a fleck of silver filling in a back tooth. So much strength behind it, it crinkled her nose.
You’re beautiful, he couldn’t help saying.
I have an idea. Let’s go into Colson.
O-k…right now?
She nodded.
We’re gonna stage a protest. Deaf President Now–style.
But it’s dark out. No one will even see us.
That’s the point.
I don’t get it. DPN was a huge march. It only worked because it was all over the news.
She shook her head.
It wasn’t the marching, she said. It was the takeover.
Austin’s cheeks were tingling, which sometimes happened when he was very nervous. Still, he already knew whatever it was, he was in.
Besides, if we do it right, we will make the news.
Should I check the bus schedule?
Forget it. I have a car.
Charlie and Austin both looked at Eliot, startled.
All right if I join?
If you want, but—
Eliot wrenched his own phone from his pocket, held out his hand for theirs.
I’m leaving them in the common room.
Charlie and Austin each switched their phones off, handed them to Eliot.
Wait, said Charlie, grabbing Eliot’s arm. Why are you helping us?
I’ll tell you on the way, he said.
these are the things that had happened to Eliot Quinn:
The summer before his junior year, on the side of I-64 east, Eliot first met death. Colson was in full scorch, and he and his parents had taken a day trip down to the national forest to escape the heat. It had been idyllic—he’d been in a good mood, free-floating between school years, far enough from either end to distance himself from the teen angst that sometimes overtook him, the fretting over SAT scores and football practice, and that most neuroses-addled subject of all: girls. He didn’t even have a thing for one girl in particular, but that was worse somehow—he couldn’t stop thinking about them, all of them, eleventh-grade girls on a conveyor belt in his head on repeat, making him crazy. But that day, all three of them had been happy. They’d picked up a giant tub of buffalo wings, drowned them in bleu cheese, and ate them on Pendleton beach. It was humid, but the breeze off the lake was mollifying, and Eliot had been content to sit and let the sun eat away at his farmer’s tan. Later, he and his father had thrown the ball around at water’s edge and joked about celebrity crushes—some real picturesque 1950s shit.
Even when it started to rain, their spirits were high. They returned to their car in the tepid drizzle, cooled and satisfied by the day.
By the time they made it back to the highway, the rain was a torrent. And this was the part where, in retrospect, Eliot knew it was all his fault. His father had kept the map lights on in front so Eliot could see, so they could all sign. It was slippery, there was a glare, his father should have been concentrating on the road.
Did someone cut them off? Had there been an animal, an orange construction cone? Eliot wasn’t sure. He hadn’t been paying attention—none of them were paying attention—probably because he was absorbed in saying something inane and his parents were busy being such good fucking parents. Whatever it had been, his father pounded the brakes but the car didn’t stop. They skidded through a puddle, hydroplaned across a lane. Then they flipped.
None of that “it happened so fast” bullshit. It happened in real time. Nothing but the excruciating awareness of the moment and its inescapability. Dulled only when Eliot smacked his face against the window as they corkscrewed over the shoulder and deep into a ditch.
The adrenaline when he came to upside down, seatbelt cutting into his windpipe. He unstrapped himself and climbed up and out the opposite window, came round to his mother in the passenger seat. She was screaming, he saw when he got there, but the sight of Eliot snapped her out of it, and he peeled back the misshapen metal of what had been her door and steadied her while she pushed free.
With his mother out, Eliot stuck his head back into the car, but his father wasn’t inside. His mother said something with her mouth he couldn’t see, then took off running back up to the road. Eliot pulled his phone from his pocket and tried to make it dial.