Chapter 13: What He Couldn't Remember

Gabe's POV

I had Brett Maddox by the collar before I knew I had moved.

My hands were still shaking from the weight of her, and his feet left the dirt for a second.

"She slipped!" he said again, high and fast. "Everybody saw. She slipped!"

"A hundred thousand people saw your hand," I said.

I walked him backward across his own cracked patch until his heels hung over the black.

Kelsey screamed at me to stop, and she did not move from where she stood.

The chat above us went white with words.

A player: [DROP HIM]

A player: [DO IT DO IT]

SkyDragon: [Gabe. Gabe, honey. Look at her.]

I looked.

Lacey was on her knees at the far end of the patch with one hand pressed to her mouth.

She was not looking at Brett.

She was looking at me.

"Not like him," she said. "Please. Not like him."

I had no idea why that stopped me, but it did.

I set Brett down on the dirt, hard, and he folded onto his hands and knees and was sick over the edge of nothing.

"The Tribunal can have him," I said. "Everyone saw."

I took her hand, and she let me, and we walked back across the plank together.

Nobody spoke on the way.

Dee was waiting at the wall with a blanket already open in her arms.

"Sit," she said to Lacey, and to me, "You too. Both of you. I'll watch the street."

We sat on the blankets in the gold light.

Lacey held a cup of Dee's broth in both hands and did not drink it.

I had known her nine days.

I knew she took her ooze in a straight line, that she hummed when she was counting, and that she hated being thanked.

I knew she had looked at me on the first night, across the dark between our patches, for a long time, and then looked away.

I had asked myself a hundred times why.

"Gabe," she said. "I have to tell you something, and you're going to think I'm crazy."

"Try me."

"I died on Day 9."

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