Burn (Pure #3)(15)

Lyda walks over to the table and puts her hand on his. “I want the detonated world. I want the truth of it,” she says. “Will you make it for me? Wind, ash, dirt, dark clouds, everything burned and charred and broken.”

“I don’t know,” he says, glancing at Foresteed on the TV screen. He’s just finished his address and is stepping off the platform. “I don’t think I’m supposed to…”

“I think you’re supposed to do what I tell you to do,” Lyda says. She’s not sure if this will work. Is this repairman above her social standing because she’s ruined, or is he below her because the baby is a Willux? The hierarchies of the Dome are strict, but this is uncharted territory for her. She flattens her voice, trying to make it sound more detached, less shaky. “Do you know who I am? Do you know who’s in charge?”

Partridge is going to speak now. He’s going to give his remarks, which will end as they always do: I hope we can all move into the future with confidence and hope. Lyda helped him with those lines. She might have to point this out to Boyd. She walks to the television and turns up the volume.

But Partridge isn’t saying what he usually says. He’s telling the people that his father’s a mass murderer; he’s calling them sheep. No—not sheep. Audience members. He’s telling them they’re complicit. He wants them to acknowledge the truth. How else can we move forward into the future? Lyda’s heart starts thrumming in her chest. We owe the survivors…ourselves. We can do better. He’s still talking—about New Eden, being forgiven… The screen goes blank.

Lyda can barely breathe. Partridge did it. He told the truth. She’s thrilled and stunned. This is a vindication. She wants to tell the mothers and all of the wretches outside of the Dome. She wants to shout to Bradwell, Pressia, and El Capitan and Helmud, He did it!

But, too, she’s scared. This means change—huge sweeping change. The future. She spreads one hand on her stomach. She’s started into her second month of pregnancy. She feels puffy, the first hint that her body’s going to start to swell. The future, the world their child will live in—it just shifted into a new shape.

She walks back to the table and looks at Boyd. “Did you…?” She can’t finish the sentence. She just wants to make sure that she has a witness. She hasn’t gone crazy.

Boyd says, “Yes.”

“Everything’s going to change,” she tells Boyd, though in the pit of her stomach, she isn’t sure if it will change for the better or for the worse. “Can you believe it?”

Boyd stands up. He looks uncomfortable with his height, his lanky arms. He covers his mouth with his hands and shakes his head.

“What is it, Boyd?”

He doesn’t move.

“What is it?” He’s a stranger, but still she reaches up and grabs his wrists and pulls his hands from his mouth. “Tell me.”

He closes his eyes slowly and then opens them. “It was too soon,” he whispers. “We weren’t ready.”

“We?”

He reaches into his pocket with his right hand and then shakes her hand, as if they’re just meeting. She feels the pressure of something he’s pushed into the center of her palm. She takes it, hiding it in her folded hand, and then sits down in one of the dining room chairs. She hunches over slowly, and through the glass of the tabletop, she sees a small piece of paper—an origami swan.

She looks up at Boyd. He’s one of them. He’s part of the revolutionary movement on the inside, the sleeper cells that were aligned with Partridge’s mother—those who wanted to take down the Dome. It’s as if some silent prayer has been answered. She feels connected to something larger than just her and Partridge, alone.

She closes her hand over the small paper swan. She thinks, Too soon? We weren’t ready? Has Partridge just made a terrible mistake? She feels shaken.

“But it’s good,” she says. “He’s going to tell them about us too. This is what he was supposed to do. He had to tell the truth.”

Boyd looks down at her hand in her pocket.

She’s scared of the swan now. She turns it over in her hands, and sees the edge of a word under one wing. She unfolds it. And there’s a message. Glassings needs your help. Save him.

Isn’t Glassings the one who’s supposed to be helping Partridge? Partridge has been hoping to get in touch with Glassings. He needs Glassings, but now he’s going to have to save Glassings first? The network that, just moments earlier, seemed like it could help them now feels fragile.

Lyda says, “He promised me that he was going to…” tell everyone about her and the baby. He promised that they would be able to be together—publicly. But she knows that everything’s changed now. He told the truth—it was too soon. But was there ever going to be a good time to say what he had to say? She’s angry now and scared. What’s happened to the future?

Boyd doesn’t ask her to finish her sentence. He knows there’s nothing he’d be able to do to help.

Lyda puts the swan in her pocket. She looks at Boyd. “I’ll take care of this when I see Partridge again, but you have to do something for me in return.”

“Of course.”

“Program the orb the way I asked you to,” she says to Boyd. “Will you do that for me?”