Burn (Pure #3)(93)

Iralene tugs at his jacket. “Don’t let Pressia ruin it! She’ll get to know me, and she’ll like me. You didn’t like me at first either,” she says.

Iralene starts to pull him toward the dance floor. He stops her and looks into her eyes. He remembers what it was like when he first met her. She was stiff and awkward—almost like a foreigner. And she was a foreigner. She’d lived so long suspended. “I’ve messed everything up.”

She wraps her arms around him, holds him tightly. “No, you haven’t. You’ve done the right thing. I saw you do it. I know it’s the truth. You’ll explain it all to her. She’ll understand.”

“I don’t think she’ll ever understand.”

“I know what you’ll do, Mr. Partridge Willux.”

“What?”

“You have the greatest gift in the world to give her, and once you do, she’ll forgive everything.” Iralene smiles at him. “Right?”

Partridge has her grandfather. Alive. The fan lodged in his throat was taken out, and he was stitched up, suspended. He might even have her father, though he can’t access that chamber—not yet at least. For now, he can give her grandfather back. He can try. But he feels like he’s drowning. He’s failed. Pressia knows it. She probably doesn’t even know the worst of it.

“In the end, you’ll look back and it will all make sense.”

Will it ever make sense? Will anyone ever look at this series of events and know that he tried so hard to do the right thing—while it all crumbled down around him? “What else can I do?” he says.

“You could dance with Mrs. Partridge Willux.”

Still dazed, he lets Iralene lead him to the dance floor, confetti filling the air, dusting the floor like pink snow.





PRESSIA





JUMPERS




I’m usually the one dressed as a guard,” Beckley says. “Mind if I take off the tie?”

“What do I care?” Pressia says. She’s furious. It’s like two fists pounding together in her chest. Bradwell was right—about the Pures, about Partridge. She’s ashamed that she bought into the joy, love, and emboldened hope of a wedding—even if for a second. She misses Bradwell more than ever. He says what he means—even if he knows she’s not going to like it. He’s screwed up—all human beings are—but at least he’s real. El Capitan and Helmud too. She wonders if she should have come at all. But she can feel the metal box cutting into her hip. She has to try to save people. She has to give it a shot—even if Partridge is a lost cause.

They’re walking down the empty street. The storefronts are pasted with pictures of Partridge and Iralene in various poses. She stops at one of Partridge pushing Iralene on a wooden swing. “Look at him.”

Beckley stuffs the bow tie in his pocket and stops. “I was there,” he says. “He didn’t want to pose for the pictures.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to pose for them, but the fact is that he did. He let someone take that picture.” She stares up at Beckley’s face. He’s older than she is by a good bit, looks a little hardened. “What’s it like?” she says. “To live in this place?”

“What do I know? It’s been so long I don’t have anything to compare it to anymore.”

“You don’t remember the Before? I don’t believe you.”

“Maybe that’s your first lesson. You shouldn’t believe anyone in here.” He starts walking again.

She walks after him quickly. “Is it always as awful as it is beautiful like that?”

“It’s not usually so brightly lit, but yeah.”

“Partridge says he’s bringing my grandfather back. My grandfather’s dead, Beckley. Does Partridge think he’s God?”

Beckley shrugs.

It was cruel of him to say that—to promise Pressia her grandfather. Partridge knows what it would mean to have her grandfather back. He was the only real parent she ever knew. He wasn’t her real grandfather, but that only made what he did all the more remarkable. He saved her life.

“Tell me—whose side are you on?” she asks.

“There are no sides.”

“And is that the second lesson?”

“I guess it could be.”

“I think that there is a good side,” Pressia says. “And you’re on it or you’re not.”

He glances at Pressia then up into the stale air. “What’s it like out there now anyway?”

How can she describe the world outside the Dome? It’s impossible. “I don’t know,” Pressia says. “Real.”

Beckley stares at a spot on the narrow sidewalk that’s splotched whiter than the rest.

“What’s this?” Pressia asks.

He stops, looks up at a building, and points out one of the windows that’s been capped with thick plastic. “Jumper.”

“Jumper?”

He nods.

“You mean someone jumped out of that window?”

“Yep.”

“And the sidewalk is white because…”

“They cleaned up the blood and bleached it.” Beckley stuffs his hands in his pockets and walks on.