For two days, the tunnel has sloped gently downwards, which should make the hike easy, but it doesn’t. It’s as if gravity has reversed itself, pitting even the laws of nature against us, making the downhills feel like uphills. We haven’t spoken for at least three hours, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
Recently I’ve had Tristan on my mind, but before that I thought about my mom. Is she okay? Although I rescued my sister, Elsey, and my dad, I don’t dare to hope that my mom is still alive. How could she be? There are no happy endings in my world. Not even happy beginnings. And the middle parts, they are the saddest of all.
“Can we rest?” Tawni asks, snapping me out of my grim mood.
I nod, lick my dry, chapped lips, try to swallow. The water is running low, so we’re rationing. I sling my pack in the corner between the wall and the floor, sit down next to it, lean my back against the rough stone.
“Why haven’t we seen anyone?” I ask.
Tawni sits down next to me, her long blond hair shimmering across her face, illuminated by the flashlight I’m holding.
“I don’t think the star dweller troops are going home anytime soon,” she says. “Not until they get what they want, anyway.”
Just before we entered the tunnel we are in, two days earlier, we saw thousands of star dweller troops pass by. They looked rough and weary, but determined. Determined to get the moon dwellers to join their rebellion…or die trying.
“So many people will die,” I say.
“Not if your dad and Tristan can get the moon dweller leaders to listen. I mean, they will get them to listen. I know they will.” Tawni is just being herself. Optimistic by nature. Despite all she’s been through, still optimistic. I marvel at her character.
“I’ll agree with you the second the sun dwellers invite us all up for a big Tri-Realms unity party,” I say.
Tawni smirks, but tries to hide it.
“I meant never.”
“I know,” Tawni says, laughing.
I figure if Tawni is an optimist, I should be a pessimist—we need to stay balanced. Ideally, I’d prefer to just be a realist. Hope for the best, but expect the worst, perhaps.
I open my pack and take a thin swallow from our only non-empty canteen. I hand it to Tawni, who does the same. She looks at me curiously.
“What?” I say.
“I’ve been thinking—”
“Always dangerous,” I comment.
“And…” Tawni says, ignoring me, “I think Tristan and Roc were hiding something from us.”
“Like you think one of them might be a woman?”
Tawni cracks up. “Not what I was thinking, but good guess. I’m thinking something more important, like about the meaning of life.”
“You don’t think Tristan being a woman is important?” I say, smiling broadly.
Tawni laughs hard, and then recaps the canteen as if she’s afraid she might spill the few precious drops of liquid we have left.
“I guess that would be pretty important to you.”
“You guess?”
“Okay, yes, that would be important. But I’m talking important on a world scale, not just a personal level.”
I’m giving Tawni a hard time, but I know exactly what she means. I felt it, too. A couple of times I thought Tristan was about to tell me something big, but then he would make an offhanded comment, a joke usually. It’s as if he was waiting for the perfect time to tell me something, but that time never came. Or maybe he was debating whether he could trust me with some secret. I guess if I were him, I wouldn’t trust me either, not after having only just met me. It’s not like I completely trust him yet either. I mean, I want to, especially because the fate of the world seems to be resting precariously on his shoulders. Oh, yeah, and because we held hands for like two hours one night. Which was a big deal for me, who doesn’t know a slide into first base from a base-clearing homerun.
“I think so too,” I say.
“You do?”
“Yeah. Remind me to ask him about it on our next date.”
Tawni laughs again, her face lighting up, the laugh reaching her pale blue eyes. I’m happy I can make her laugh. She deserves some measure of happiness. I know I complain a lot about the hand life has dealt me, but Tawni has it bad, too. At least I know my parents are good people, even if I may never see them again. At least I want to see them again. Tawni, on the other hand, has told me numerous times that seeing her parents in a million years would be too soon.
And then…Cole.
He was the only family she really had left. I mean, maybe he wasn’t tied to her by blood, and certainly no one would mistake him for her brother, what with his dark skin against her white. But he was her family—there is no doubt about that. But now he’s gone. Laid low, like the dust on our shoes. Torn from this world with the same ferocity that his entire family was taken from him by the Enforcers.
I realize I’m gritting my teeth and Tawni has stopped laughing. Nothing like my dark thoughts to bring down the mood.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I lie.
“Cole.”
“Maybe.”
“Yes.” We haven’t talked about Cole since we tearfully entered the tunnels. I’ve heard Tawni’s muffled sobs both nights, but when I whispered to her they stopped, and she didn’t respond. Maybe she was embarrassed or something. She shouldn’t be. Her tears are only showing what we’re both feeling.
“Yes,” I admit.
“I’m not sure I can cope.” Her face is blank, unreadable. Her laugh lines have disappeared, her cheeks and forehead smooth once more. One of her hands is unconsciously tugging on her single lock of blue hair.
“You will. We both will,” I say, trying to imbue confidence in my shaky voice. It’s a lie. Maybe we will find a way to cope, but I don’t know for certain.
Tawni looks at me, but I can’t tell if she believes the lie. Her words don’t give me any clue either. “It’s weird,” she says.
“What is?”
“Death.”
I just look at her, wondering where she’s going with this, wondering if we’re both headed for a breakdown.
“It’s like, one moment a person you know and love is there, right next to you, and the next they’re gone, taken. Their body is still there, but you know that they’re not. Does that make sense?”
It does. I don’t know how to respond. Her words seem so calm, so rational, so well thought out. Free of emotion. Almost.
“He’s gone forever,” she says, her voice quivering slightly.
“Deep breaths,” I say, stopping to heave in and out a few times, taking my own advice. It’s what my mom used to say when I got upset about something that went wrong at school. She was always a master of controlling her emotions. I never saw her lose her temper, or even cry, not once.
Tawni follows suit, crosses her arms, closes her eyes, breathes in deeply, holds it for a second, and then releases it. When she opens her eyes, the tightness in her lips is gone.
“Thanks,” she says.
I try to remember any other advice from my parents that might apply to our current situation. One thing springs to mind. “My grandmother was my best friend,” I say slowly, trying to get my words right, make them perfect. Tawni is watching me closely, her head leaned back against the wall. “She used to tell me stories, read me books, treat me like an adult and a child at the same time. She was…she was…” My voice catches in my dry throat.
“She sounds like an amazing woman,” Tawni says, coming to my rescue.
I force down a swallow, nod my head once. “Yes, she was. Amazing. She died when I was six.”
“I’m sorry,” Tawni says.
“It’s okay. At the time I was a wreck. I wouldn’t leave my room, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t speak. I didn’t even want my dad to teach me how to fight anymore.”