Del got right in her face. “It’s all your fault,” she snapped. Her hands were clenched in fists. Lucy planted her feet. She felt a surge of anger, and it gave her confidence.
“What are you talking about?”
Del snorted. She paced back and forth, her hair streaming over her shoulders. Her silver bracelets jangled, and she pushed them up her arms impatiently.
“Aidan,” she said. Her hand rubbed at her nose, and Lucy saw tears in her flashing eyes.
“What? I didn’t… What?”
“I think he’s either gone to the Wilds or he’s trying to find Leo. Either way, you’re to blame, Lucy Holloway.” She practically spat the words out. Her finger came up and jabbed Lucy in the chest. Lucy slapped her hand away. She didn’t understand this at all. She’d thought Del was going to give her grief over almost kissing Aidan, but instead it was these riddles.
“You’re crazy!”
Henry moved forward to stand between them. They both glared at him and he stepped back.
“He likes to climb trees in the Wilds. It has nothing to do with me. And he said he wouldn’t go after anyone who’d been kidnapped by the Sweepers.” Not even you, she thought to herself. “He said we weren’t prepared.” Her toe scuffed the dirt. “And he was right. I get that now. We can’t just storm in there with no idea of what to expect.”
Del frowned and the accusatory finger rose again. “But that’s not what you told him, is it, Lucy Holloway? You said that if he really cared about his friends, he would go anyway, right?”
“I didn’t tell him to go anywhere. I just said that, if it were me, I wouldn’t wait around for the next bad thing to happen. And besides, I was mad and I was just shooting my mouth off.”
Del’s shoulders slumped. The anger seemed to drain out of her. She shook her head. “Don’t you get it? He can’t stand that you think of him that way. Like he’s some kind of a coward. God, don’t you know anything about boys?!”
Lucy cleared her throat. She couldn’t remember what she’d said to Aidan. She’d yelled. He’d yelled. She tended not to watch her mouth when she was angry. “Are you sure that’s where he’s gone?” Her voice was hoarse. She grabbed Del’s arm. Del stared at her fingers, but she didn’t brush them off.
After a moment, Del said impatiently, “No, I don’t know. I think he’s headed to the lake. I hope that’s where he’s gone. It’s where he always goes when he needs space. He won’t let me go with him, and he’d never say what he was doing.” She looked down at her boots. “I followed him once.” Her chin came up, as if she was daring Lucy to say something about it.
“He liked to climb to the top of the elm tree and look north,” Lucy said, dropping her hand. “He said he wanted to travel up there one day.”
“Yeah, that’s what he said.” Del sighed. “He probably just needed time to think, but he talked about the argument with you, and Leo and the kids, and then I got so mad at you for picking on him that I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was saying.” She raised her eyes to Lucy’s face. They weren’t snapping with fire anymore, but there was still something hard in them.
“Aidan can look after himself,” Henry said. “He’s been running wild since he was thirteen, right?”
Del drew a deep breath. She glanced at Lucy again. “Why did you have to come here?” she said. Her tone was strange. It seemed less angry and more tired. She rubbed her hand over her face and eyes, leaving smeary wet trails mixed with dirt. Her mouth twisted. “We’re not friends, Lucy Holloway,” she said in a voice that was no more than a whisper.
“Hey now, Lady Del,” Henry said softly. He slung an arm around her shoulders. For a moment she collapsed into him, and then, with another shake of her head, she pushed him away.
She strode off. Lucy stared after her. She didn’t understand Del at all. One minute she was spitting like an angry cat; the next, she was as emotionless as a robot.
“That was intense,” Henry said. “Why’d she keep saying your name in that weird way? It was like she was putting a curse on you or something.” He laughed nervously and wiggled his fingers in her face. “Voodoo magic.”
Lucy shook her head. How could Del hate her so much?
“Maybe she got too much sun?” Henry said. He rubbed his chin with his gloved hand, staring in the direction Del had taken. “I’ve got to say, though, all that passion she’s bottling up sure makes me wonder. I mean, it’s got to find an outlet, right?”
“Oh, for God’s sakes, Henry,” Lucy said, trying not to laugh.
Sammy tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to face him. His hood was pulled forward, and he was wearing a different mask. This one was painted a glossy red with a broad, upturned smiling mouth and little red horns. Holes were cut out for his mouth and eyes. His red-tinged irises gleamed behind it. “He used to watch you and wonder about you. In your camp. He used to say you were the bravest person he knew.”
Lucy raised surprised eyes to his face. “Me? Why?”
“Because you were alone and you were surviving,” Sammy said. “Because you just did what needed to be done.”
“Half the time I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Yeah, but you kept on anyway.”
She looked at Sammy properly for the first time. He was shorter than Aidan, probably a shade under six feet. His shoulders were broad, and his gloved hands were wide. He seemed a little clumsy, like he’d recently had a growth spurt. Under his hood she glimpsed a shock of the same dirty blond hair his brother had. And then the gruesome contrast of charred skin. It was smooth, though, not cracked and oozing as she had thought before. The surface was whole. It was underneath that great patches of black and red covered his body, like giant bruises. She thought she could see some hazel in his irises within the bloody whites, and the lobes of his ears were pink, like new skin after a bad sunburn. She thought about what Henry had said and wondered if he was right about the body fixing itself.
He returned her gaze. “You are brave,” he said with the hint of a smile. She caught a flash of very white teeth. “Look at you right now. Not worried I’m going to crack your head like a walnut and eat your brains?”
She blushed. “That was so dumb. I just—”
“—believed the propaganda and the news reports.” He nodded. “You’re not the first.” He shrugged. “They just didn’t know what to do with us. Didn’t know where to put us. It was like we were nonhumans or something just because we got sick. Ralphie still won’t talk to anyone but me and Beth.”
Lucy was trying to understand her fear. “I think it’s because you survived. You’re sort of like a living, walking reminder that there was a plague.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I can’t do anything about that.”
“Hey,” said Henry. “Hate to break up the tête-à-tête, but I’m hungry, and if you guys don’t help load and dump the rest of this, Grammalie Rose is going to personally see to it that I starve.”
Lucy and Sammy exchanged a grin.
“Pretty please?” Henry said.
“With sugar on top?” Lucy said.
“I just can’t resist a whiner,” Sammy said.
Henry tossed a shovel at him. Sammy caught it.
“I’ll give you a kiss,” Henry said to Lucy, puckering his lips and opening his arms wide.
“Henry!” Grammalie Rose yelled from the camp.
Suddenly, a jumble of shouts and cries rose from the direction of the square. Something had happened. Lucy’s heart started pounding.