I step back and examine the wall. Lines snake from one victim to the other, but no line connects them all. Mr. Robertson and Mr. Kennedy are both male, but Amy’s not. There’s at least a decade in each of their age differences. None of them were born in the same month. The similarities that are there are weak. I add a line from Emma Bledsoe’s Marine experience to William Robertson’s. Both Amy and Mr. Kennedy are from Colorado. I hesitate at Amy’s chart, the thick black paint dripping from my brush and down the wall before I can make myself draw the line connecting them. It feels wrong to paint this line. It’s weird to see Amy’s name connected to the dead man’s. But nothing connects all four victims. From the scribbles and crossings out that Amy has streaked the wall with, I can see she’s come to the same conclusion I have, that it all might just be random. There is both too much and too little. Too many insignificant details line up, but nothing important enough for murder.
I turn to ask Amy what she thinks.
But she’s still staring at the ceiling.
I’ll ask her when she’s better.
If.
Replacing the paintbrush on Amy’s desk, a flash of blue catches my eye: the notebook Amy took from her father’s trunk. Bells jangle in my mind when I reach for the book. Privacy is valued on this ship of limited space, and I’ve never consciously violated someone’s privacy before. I smirk. Except when I broke into Eldest’s room.
Amy seems to inspire me to be all kinds of different.
Eldest’s lesson reverberates through my mind: Difference is a cause of discord. Fine. This ship could do with some discord.
On the first page of the book is a list of names. At the top is Eldest’s. She’s written over that name repeatedly, making it stand out in bold, and she’s underlined and circled it dozens of times. Under it is “the doctor” and a question mark, followed by several tiny streaks on the paper, as if she tapped the end of the pencil against the page while thinking. Beneath Doc’s name, a hasty list of names and descriptions of people is scribbled: me, Harley (although his name has been crossed out), Luthe (underlined so hard that her pencil ripped through the paper), “that mean girl” (surrounded by question marks and a doodle of a frowny face), and Orion (also crossed out).
I stare at the list of names, wondering at their importance and why Amy would bother writing them down in her special notebook.
Then it hits me.
This is her list of suspects.
My lips tighten as I stare down at it. She’s eliminated Harley and Orion, and seems unsure about “that mean girl” (Victria? Maybe). But she hasn’t marked me off. She still thinks I might be a suspect, or at least she did when she wrote her list.
I wonder what Harley’s done to get his name marked off, what I need to do to have that same honor.
When she wakes up, I’ll prove my worth to her.
If.
This is just another test, one which I have failed. I have proven myself, somehow, as unworthy in Amy’s eyes, just as Eldest always sees me as unworthy to be a leader.
“Uhr…” Amy moans.
I drop the book and pencil onto her desk and rush to her. Her fingers pinch the bridge of her nose between her eyes, and when she drops her hand, I can see that the light has returned to her eyes.
“I’ve got a killer headache,” Amy groans, shutting her eyes. There is more expression on her face now than I’ve seen from her all day.
“What happened?” she asks.
“What do you think happened?”
“Lord, I don’t know. I remember when you got that all-call. And we rode in that tube thing. That was fun. But by the time we got to that big room with the lights, I was starting to feel kind of… woozy.”
“Doc said that you’ve had a reaction to the ship. He’s put you on ment — on the Inhibitor pills.”
“Inhibitor pills? The same pill you and Harley and everyone ‘crazy’ takes?” Amy pushes me aside to sit up straight.
“Well — yes.”
“Gah!” Amy screeches. She leaps off the bed, pacing, her hands curling into fists. “This ship is so effing messed up! I’m not crazy! You and Harley aren’t crazy!”
I don’t say anything because I half believe her. She takes my silence, however, for contradiction.
“What happened to make you and everyone else on this stupid ship think that things like — like screwing around with anything that walks, like being mindless drones — what made you think that—that—was normal!?”
I shrug. It’s the way it’s always been. How can I explain to this girl, who was raised among differences and lack of leadership and chaos and war that this is the way a normal society is run, a peaceful society, a society that doesn’t just survive, as hers did, but one that thrives and flourishes as it hurtles through space toward a new planet?
Amy marches to the desk and picks up the floppy. “How do you make this freaking thing work?” she demands, fiddling with it. “This thing is like a computer, right? Doesn’t it have information on Earth? Let me show you what real people, normal people, are like! Let me show you how weird this place is!”
She’s not doing it right — she’s swiped her finger across the screen and brought up the wi-com locator map I showed her before, but she doesn’t know how to access anything else. She taps it, then jabs it, then balls her hand into a fist and pounds it against the table. I stand, walk to her, and gently take the floppy from her hands. There are tears in her eyes.
“I can’t stand it,” she whispers. “I can’t stand these people, I can’t stand this ‘world.’ I can’t live here. I can’t spend the rest of my life here. I can’t. I can’t.”
So. Enough of Eldest’s speech on the Keeper Level penetrated into her mind. She knows how trapped she — all of us — are.
I want to take her into my arms and hold her tight. But at the same time, I know that is the exact opposite of what she wants. She wants to be free, and all I want to do is hold her tight against me.
“I think I know something that will help,” I say.
57 AMY
AS WE WALK ALONG THE PATH LEADING AWAY FROM THE Hospital, Elder is very mysterious. He won’t tell me anything, and I suppose that’s what really lifts my mood — he is like a little kid, eager to show his friend a new toy. That alone is enough to make me forget about the weird, fuzzy, slogging-through-water feeling of the day.
A couple sitting on the bench by the pond wave at us as we pass. The woman’s face is aglow, and she leans against the man’s chest with a look of utter bliss. Her right arm is wrapped around her stomach, and the man’s arm cradles hers.
The woman bends her head down, and I realize she’s talking to her unborn baby, not the man she’s leaning against. “And the stars all had streaks of light chasing them, all shining down on us, on you.”
“Eldest told me it wasn’t for me,” Elder says under his breath as the couple’s chatter fades behind us.
I give Elder a confused look.
“The star screen in the Great Room. Eldest told me it wasn’t there for me when I found out they weren’t real stars, just lightbulbs.” He looks away from me and says in a very small voice, “That was the day you woke up.” His words hang in the air between us. It feels like a long time ago, for both of us.
Elder motions back at the happy couple on the bench. “Eldest said the fake stars were for them.”