In the end, the term didn’t matter, but the chance meeting with a boy and his golden hair did.
CHAPTER 28
When Summer made it to Edison’s door, she stood for a moment and adjusted her clothes. Edison wouldn’t care what she looked like, but she did—maybe for the first time ever. Was it because of her recent encounter with the boy or was it because of her guilt? A good question, one that she wasn’t prepared to answer. Not yet anyway.
Regardless, there was only so much she could do with the drabness surrounding her, but she decided it couldn’t hurt to try.
Pride might have been one of the seven deadly sins, but laziness was worse. So was self-loathing, she decided, her mind charging into an area of her psyche she’d had never let it venture before.
Her mind flashed another image of Nick Simms and his adorable face.
She couldn’t help but let another smile take over her lips. Smiles were hard to come by the last decade in the silo, but maybe that was all about to change.
She knocked three times, feeling a surge of energy across her body. Perhaps today wouldn’t suck as bad as all the others that came before.
“Come in.”
Summer turned the knob and sauntered in, feeling like she could conquer the world.
Edison pointed to a chair in front of his desk, his face stern, without a hint of emotion. “Have a seat. We need to talk,” he said in a terse voice.
The redness in the old man’s face was just as noticeable as the pinch of his eyebrows—a combination Summer had never seen before.
Whoever this man was, he wasn’t the one Summer knew and loved. This was someone else, an imposter, and he was pissed, his downturned, beard-covered lips twitching.
Her worry returned with the force of a tsunami. A thousand words lined up on her tongue, but she wasn’t sure which would be the appropriate response.
She decided to go with ignorance until she knew more. “Is something wrong, Professor?”
“I think you already know the answer to that, young lady.”
She did, but the problem was, he could be upset about a number of things. She hadn’t exactly been forthcoming since she’d returned from her Seeker Mission, nor had she followed many of the rules while she was out.
So many failures.
So much bad luck.
Where does a girl start?
She decided to begin at the end, focusing on the most recent. “Uh, well, I’m guessing this is about what happened with Krista and her pervert friend, Wicks.”
“Maybe you should try again,” Edison said, his forehead creased across the middle. “This time, try a little honesty. With yourself and with me.”
Perhaps Edison knew about her self-inflicted head injury. There was only one way to find out.
She pointed a finger to her forehead.
Edison shook his head.
She moved her finger to the bandage on her cheek.
Edison folded his arms but didn’t respond, his face turning an even darker shade of red.
Summer wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no. Could be either. All she knew was that it looked like his head was about to explode.
“I’m waiting,” Edison said, his teeth clenched.
She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Professor. I don’t understand. What did I do? I know I was really late, again, but—”
He didn’t let her finish her sentence. “The necklace, Summer. Where is it?”
Her hand went to the collar of her sweatshirt before she could stop it. The lump in her throat doubled in size. “You know about that?”
“When were you going to tell me?”
Summer’s mind tore through the events of the previous day, looking for answers. One came roaring to the top of the list: Liz. She must have noticed it was missing when she tended to her wounds.
Liz ratted me out?
Summer forced a fleshy bulge of mucus down her gullet, wishing she had a glass of water. She wasn’t sure her lips would work properly, not with a long overdue confession peeking over the horizon. “My plan was to tell you this morning, but then I walked in here and you looked like you were already mad about something. I was scared. I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“When did you lose it?”
“Yesterday. One minute it was there and then it was gone.”
“How did you lose it?”
“Not sure exactly. Could have been a couple of places.”
“Give me your best guess.”
“My best guess?”
“Yes, as if your life is on the line and you only have one chance to find it.”
Summer hesitated, thinking it through. “Probably when I tripped over some pallets.”
“I see,” he said, uncoiling his arms before leaning forward on his desk. “How does that happen, exactly?”
Was he being sarcastic or genuinely interested? She wasn’t sure. “I ran around a corner and there they were, all over the place, like the wind scattered them or something. Didn’t see ‘em until it was too late. I got up and never noticed it was missing. Just bad luck, Professor. Could have happened to anybody.”
“I would think that necklace was important enough for to you to check that it was still around your neck. I guess not.”
“It is important to me. In fact, I cried when I realized it was gone. It’s all I have to remind me of June. I was crushed, Professor. You have to believe me.”
“Why didn’t you go back and look for it?”
“Couldn’t. By the time I realized it was gone, it was too late. Plus, the pallets weren’t the only place I could have lost it.”
“Where else?”
“Might have been when I fell through the floor of this old building and was buried under a bunch of snow and other stuff. Had to dig myself out. I almost died in there, Professor. Like I keep telling everybody, there was a lot of bad luck yesterday. That’s why I was late.”
He nodded in a methodical manner, his upper lip tucked under. It took a few seconds before he spoke again. “Someone was chasing you, weren’t they?”
She took a second, then gave him a head nod, sensing that he already knew the answer.
“Who?” he asked.
“Uh—”
“The truth this time,” Edison said.
She wanted to tell him everything, but she couldn’t. She had to pick and choose some of the facts, avoiding the stuff about her breaking the treaty and crossing the No-Go Zone. He would never forgive her for that. “Frost’s men.”
“Liz told me it was Scabs. So which is it?”
“Frost’s men.”
“Why did you tell Liz it was the Scabs?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just did.”
He flared his eyebrows, the redness in his cheeks still burning. “Why do you do that? You don’t have to lie. Not to us.”
She wanted to crawl away and hide in her room, where nobody would ever find her. “Not sure. I just get this feeling inside and I can’t stop it.”
“Which is it? You can’t stop the lie or the feeling?”
“Both, I guess. It’s like they’re the same thing.”
“I just don’t understand, Summer. Why do you continue to do this? Are you scared? Is that why you always lie?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s more like a storm inside me. It’s full of fire and it hurts until I let it out. I’m not sure how else to describe it. But it makes me say things that aren’t true.”
“It’s called guilt. Trust me, we all have it. None of us are immune. When that happens, the first instinct is self-preservation. That’s why we lie, Summer. Everyone does.”
She nodded her head yes. His explanation made sense. Mostly.
“But lying isn’t the answer. You need to give people a chance. Not everyone will judge you like you think. Can you do that? Can you please just give me a chance to understand?”