The Host (The Host #1)(151)

Jared put his arm around me and helped me up. “You can be as mad as you want, Mel. Just stick around.”

How long was I gone?

Three days is all.

Her voice was suddenly smaller. Where was I?

You don’t know?

I can’t remember… anything.

We shuddered.

“You okay?” Jared asked.

“Sort of.”

“Was that her before, talking to me—talking out loud?”

“Yes.”

“Can she… can you let her do that now?”

I sighed. I was already exhausted. “I can try.” I closed my eyes.

Can you get past me? I asked her. Can you talk to him?

I… How? Where?

I tried to flatten myself against the inside of my head. “C’mon,” I murmured. “Here.”

Melanie struggled, but there was no way out.

Jared’s lips came down on mine, hard. My eyes flew open in shock. His gold-flecked eyes were open, too, half an inch away.

She jerked our head back. “Cut that out! Don’t touch her!”

He smiled, the little creases feathering out around his eyes. “Hey, baby.”

That’s not funny.

I tried to breathe again. “She’s not laughing.”

He left his arm around me. Around us. We walked out into the tunnel junction, and there was no one there. No Ian.

“I’m warning you, Mel,” Jared said, still smiling widely. Teasing. “You better stay right here. I’m not making any guarantees about what I will or won’t do to get you back.”

My stomach fluttered.

Tell him I’ll throttle him if he touches you like that again. But her threat was a joke, too.

“She’s threatening your life right now,” I told him. “But I think she’s being facetious.”

He laughed, giddy with relief. “You’re so serious all the time, Wanda.”

“Your jokes aren’t funny,” I muttered. Not to me.

Jared laughed again.

Ah, Melanie said. You are suffering.

I’ll try not to let Jamie see.

Thank you for bringing me back.

I won’t erase you, Melanie. I’m sorry I can’t give you more than that.

Thank you.

“What’s she saying?”

“We’re just… making up.”

“Why couldn’t she talk before, when you were trying to let her?”

“I don’t know, Jared. There really isn’t enough room for both of us. I can’t seem to get myself out of the way completely. It’s like… not like holding your breath. Like trying to pause your heartbeats. I can’t make myself not exist. I don’t know how.”

He didn’t answer, and my chest throbbed with pain. How joyful he would be if I could figure out how to erase myself!

Melanie wanted to… not to contradict me, but to make me feel better; she struggled to find words to soften my agony. She couldn’t come up with the right ones.

But Ian would be devastated. And Jamie. Jeb would miss you. You have so many friends here.

Thanks.

I was glad that we were back to our room now. I needed to think about something else before I started crying. Now wasn’t the time for self-pity. There were more important issues at hand than my heart, breaking yet again.

CHAPTER 43

Frenzied

I imagined that from the outside, I looked as still as a statue. My hands were folded in front of me, my face was without expression, my breathing was too shallow to move my chest.

Inside, I was spinning apart, as if the pieces of my atoms were reversing polarity and blowing away from one another.

Bringing Melanie back had not saved him. All that I could do was not enough.

The hall outside our room was crowded. Jared, Kyle, and Ian were back from their desperate raid, empty-handed. A cooler of ice—that was all they had to show for three days of risking their lives. Trudy was making compresses and laying them across Jamie’s forehead, the back of his neck, his chest.

Even if the ice cooled the fever, raging out of control, how long until it was all melted? An hour? More? Less? How long until he was dying again?

I would have been the one to put the ice on him, but I couldn’t move. If I moved, I would fall into microscopic pieces.

“Nothing?” Doc murmured. “Did you check —”

“Every spot we could think of,” Kyle interrupted. “It’s not like painkillers, drugs—lots of people had reason to keep those hidden. The antibiotics were always kept in the open. They’re gone, Doc.”

Jared just stared down at the red-faced child on the bed, not speaking.

Ian stood beside me. “Don’t look like that,” he whispered. “He’ll pull through. He’s tough.”

I couldn’t respond. Couldn’t even hear the words, really.

Doc knelt beside Trudy and pulled Jamie’s chin down. With a bowl he scooped up some of the ice water from the cooler and let it trickle into Jamie’s mouth. We all heard the thick, painful sound of Jamie’s swallowing. But his eyes didn’t open.

I felt as though I would never be able to move again. That I would turn into part of the stone wall. I wanted to be stone.

If they dug a hole for Jamie in the empty desert, they would have to put me in it, too.