Three (Article 5 #3)(50)

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SOMETIME later we untangled our limbs and shyly sorted through our clothes. We took a long time to dress, as if dusting off our shirts and slowly tying our bootlaces meant that this thing—this really big, important thing that had happened between us—was over.

It was late; the moon had disappeared from the small window near the barn’s ceiling and risen in the night sky. The heavy breathing of the horses in the stalls below filtered up through the boards. I stared at the ladder leading down to the ground, and thought of the dorms, of my bunk above Rebecca and Sean, who were preparing to say good-bye, and felt a sharp pain in my chest. I didn’t want to go back.

Tomorrow Three would send us out to fight. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew we would play our part. And hopefully, that would mean more than just these stolen moments.

Chase was seated on a bale of straw beside me, and I couldn’t help but smile at the pieces of hay that stuck to him. I leaned forward, a little embarrassed, and shook out my hair, knowing it probably looked like a bird had made its nest there. He caught a piece in his hand, and as I sat up, he placed it back on my head.

“What are you doing?” I giggled. He put another piece back in my hair just as I removed the previous one.

“I like it.” Another piece. “There,” he said as if he’d completed a masterpiece. I went to jab him in the side, but his smile had softened. “You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

I swallowed, feeling my cheeks warm as all the other emotions rose up inside of me, love and fear and need and even sadness, because as much as this was the beginning of something, it was the end of something, too.

Beneath us, one of the horses stomped and snorted, and I glanced down, seeing the note he’d sent me that had fallen out of my pocket. I scooped it up.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Not a lot of options for scratch paper around here.”

I nodded, thinking of the boxes of Statutes in the north wing, and the woman at the computer who’d told me they hijacked the distribution trucks on their way from the printer.

“Very clever,” I said, unfolding it and staring at the words that had brought me here. Barn Tonight. I wondered if he would think I was silly if I kept it.

I flipped the sheet over again, preparing to fold it, but paused when I saw how the words written on the back had bled through the printed type when the sheet had gotten wet.

I thought of the Statutes posted on my door during the arrest. Posted on every door in the towns we’d passed through on our way here. Posted all over Knoxville and Louisville and every city in the country.

I thought of my mother and her magazines, the articles inside filled with treason.

And DeWitt: The people are sleeping. We needed a way to wake them up.

“What if Three doesn’t have to fight the MM alone?” I asked.

Chase’s brows arched. “What do you mean?”

“What if we could get the people to join with us?”

When a government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government. Jesse’s words echoed in my mind.

“Then we’d have a revolution,” he said.

I stood up, the note tight in my fist.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to find DeWitt.”





CHAPTER


13


THE Lodge was quiet—eerie quiet. Like something might jump out of each shadow the flickering torchlight threw across the hallway. We bypassed the first two men guarding the north wing without any trouble, but once we got to the door of the radio room we came face-to-face with Rocklin. He crossed his arms over his narrow chest and leaned against the closed door.

“Why am I not surprised you’d show up here?” he asked.

“How strange,” I said. “I was just about to say the same thing.” I mimicked his posture, sick and tired of all the suspicion.

“Looks like great minds think alike,” said Chase. “We need to talk to DeWitt.”

I tried to smile nicely, but when I glanced over at Chase I saw there was still a piece of straw in his hair. I combed a hand through my own, hoping he might copy the move on himself, but instead he only gave me a strange look. The gesture was not lost on Rocklin, who snorted, and said, “Kind of late to be cleaning stalls.”

I snatched the straw out of Chase’s hair.

“DeWitt,” I said. “Can you tell him we’re here? Please.”

“What makes you think he’s here?”

The door opened inward, and Rocklin stumbled backward, catching himself on the frame just before he fell.

“Because I am. What’s this about?” DeWitt appeared behind him. The room was dark but for a lantern resting on the table beside the radios, and the dim yellow light made his face appear gaunt, and the scars on his cheeks deeper.

None of the other techs were present.

“I … um…”

He didn’t look pleased to see us. It hadn’t occurred to me until just then that DeWitt might not hear me out.

“Sorry about the interruption, doctor,” said Rocklin.

“What are you doing here?” said DeWitt, stepping into the hall. A muscle in his neck bulged. At the harshness in his tone, my gaze dropped behind him to a picture leaning against the lantern. I’d seen it my first time here—the profile of a young girl with dirty blond hair, laughing.