The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)(114)

Liam tensed. “That’s not—” he began, angrily.

“Well, what about the kids who followed you before?” He slapped around the pocket of his trousers before pulling out a familiar folded piece of paper. Chubs’s grip on the letter nearly crushed it. “What about Jack, and Brian, and Andy, and all of them? They all followed you, too, but it’s easy to forget about them when they’re not around, isn’t it?”

“Chubs!” I said, stepping between them when Liam advanced, his right fist swinging up.

I’d never seen him look so perfectly furious before. A wave of crimson washing up from Liam’s throat to his face.

“Can’t you just admit you’re doing this to make yourself feel better, not to actually help anyone else?” Chubs demanded.

“You think…” Liam almost couldn’t get the words out. “You think they’re not in my head every goddamn second of every goddamn day? You think I could ever forget something like that?” Instead of hitting his friend, Liam hit himself, banging his fist against his forehead until I finally caught his arm. “Jesus Christ, Charles!” he said, his voice breaking.

“I just…” Chubs stalked past us, only to stop and turn back again. “I never believed you, you know,” he said, his voice shaking, “when you talked about us getting out of camp and getting home safely. That’s why I agreed to write my letter. I knew most of us wouldn’t make it, with you in charge.”

I stepped forward the same moment Liam did, holding my hands out in front of me to keep him from doing something I knew he would regret. I heard Chubs storm away behind me, heading back in the direction of our cabin. Liam tried to take another step forward, but I pressed back against his chest. Liam was breathing hard, his fists balled up at his sides.

“Let him go,” I said. “He just needs to blow off steam. Maybe you should think about doing the same.”

Liam looked like he was about to say something, but instead, he let out a frustrated grunt, spun on his heel, and started toward the nearby trees, in the exact opposite direction Chubs had taken. I leaned back against the trunk of the nearest tree and shut my eyes. My chest was too tight to do anything other than take in shallow, short breaths as I waited.

It was nearly dark by the time he emerged, rubbing his face. The skin on both hands was torn and bleeding from smashing them into something solid. His face was drawn in the twilight, as if the flush of anger had been ripped out of him and he’d been left with nothing more than gray sadness. I held out an arm to him as he came near, wrapping it around the solid warmth of his waist. His arm settled down over my shoulders and he pulled me close, pressing his face against my hair. I took in a deep breath of his comforting smell—wood smoke, grass, and leather.

“He didn’t mean it,” I said, walking him over to a fallen log. He was still shaking, and looked unsteady on his feet.

Liam didn’t sit so much as collapse down onto it, leaning forward to brace his elbows against his knees. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

We sat for a long time—long enough for the sun to disappear behind the trees, and then below the horizon. The silence and stillness between us became unbearable. I lifted my hand and guided it lightly down the length of knobby bones between his shoulder blades.

Liam sat up slowly, turning to look at me. “Do you think he’s okay?” he whispered.

“I think we should probably go check,” I said.

I don’t know how we made it back to the cabin, only that when we arrived, Chubs was sitting on the porch, silent tears streaming down his face. I could see the apology written there, the wretched guilt, and was surprised to find my heart could break even that bit more.

“It’s over,” he said as we sat on either side of him. “It’s all over.”

We didn’t move for a long time.

TWENTY-FIVE

IT SHOULDN’T HAVE SURPRISED ME that Liam threw himself back into watch duty, but it took a generous amount of coaxing from the others for his mind to refocus on the camps. I sat by his side more than once as he and Olivia talked through possible ways of breaking through camp defenses, offering suggestions here and there as they discussed how to bring up their ideas with Clancy.

The thing about enthusiasm—especially Liam’s particular brand—was that it was catching. There would be nights I would simply sit back, watching, as he became more and more animated with his hands as he spoke, as if trying to shape his ideas out of the air for the rest of us to see. His words were coated with such unyielding hopefulness that it visibly inflated everyone around him. By the end of the first week, interest in the project had spiked to such a level that we had to move the meetings out of our small cabin, to the fire pit. Now, when Liam went anywhere, it was always with a loyal pack of kids around him, trying to catch his ear.

Chubs and I were less enthusiastic about getting back into the swing of things. He forgave me, maybe because a miserable person can only stand to be alone with their misery for so long. He never went back to work at the Garden, but that girl, the bossy one, never ratted him out, either.

I went back to lessons with Clancy. Or at least tried to.

“Where is your head at today?”

Not invading his, that was for certain. Not even cracking it.

“Show me what you’re thinking about,” he said, when I opened my mouth. “I don’t want to hear about it. I want to see it.”