Chapter 4: Tell No One

I read the five words until the wind made my eyes water.

"Stay there," I said. "As if I was planning to leave."

"He's frightened," Echo said.

"Of what? Of me?"

"Not of you."

"Then of what?"

She didn't answer.

She did that. She'd go quiet in the middle of things.

I folded the paper back into the box and put the ring on.

Then I took it off again and put it in my boot.

That night I lay on my bunk and held the phone Harker let us keep for one hour on Sundays.

I typed "Declan."

I typed "Why."

I deleted both.

He'd said don't call.

For the first time in a year, one of them had asked me for something.

So I didn't.

Winter came up the mountain in one night.

We ran in it anyway.

We learned to climb a wall with a rope and no rope.

We learned to read a contract in four languages and find the clause that would start a war.

We learned to sit at a table with two people who wanted each other dead and keep them eating.

Echo taught me things the instructors didn't.

How to close my ears, so the whole barracks didn't pour in at night.

How to open them one person at a time.

In the second month, I heard a quartermaster thinking about his sick daughter.

In the third, I heard an instructor lie about a score and knew it before he finished the sentence.

I never told anyone.

The Vanguard trained people who noticed things. They'd notice a girl who heard too much.

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