The Cage(29)

Rolf snickered, and Nok gave him a surprised look. She hadn’t been joking.

They continued through the swamp, as Rolf pointed out each clump of green muck and gave her its scientific name—alder twig, cattail, loosestrife. She’d never met a boy more in love with slime; it made her smile as much as it made her roll her eyes.

“Look!” He slushed toward a cluster of fungus. “Pleurotus ostreatus. I didn’t know they grew in wetlands.”

“Swamp mushrooms.” Nok feigned rubbing a hungry stomach. “Mmm.”

He grinned.

They kept walking. She’d warmed up to him, she realized, as she watched him take careful steps ahead of her to avoid crushing any plants. Neuroses and fungus and all. She didn’t mind that he was four inches shorter than her and looked like he hadn’t seen daylight in weeks. Handsome boys were insufferable, always checking themselves out in mirrors. Judging by the cowlick in his red hair, Rolf hadn’t glanced in a single mirror since they’d arrived.

“What will you get with the token?” he asked over his shoulder.

She patted her dress pocket, where a heavy bronze token rested. Rolf had solved the swamp puzzle after only ten minutes. It involved listening for a bullfrog croak (it had a metallic ring to it—definite not real), then searching for water bubbles and reaching into the silty bottom to get a token before the bubbles stopped. “It isn’t really my choice, yeah? We have to save up to buy something Cora can make into a weapon.”

He glanced at her. “Well, if you could choose anything, what would it be?”

She took another slushy step through the slime. “More nail polish?”

No, stupid, she cursed herself. She didn’t care a quid for nail polish—but Delphine was still hiding in some deep pocket of her brain, telling her to say what he wanted to hear.

“Ah, scrap that. I’d take the radio,” Nok answered, more confidently. “The red one in the arcade. I liked the way the knobs formed a little face.”

Her first few months in the London flophouse, she’d both loathed her parents and missed them painfully. The only comfort she had found was a little shortwave radio she’d discovered crammed on a bookshelf, which she could tune to a Thai station. Now she had a feeling she would never see home again.

Her foot sank deeper in the slime, which splashed the hem of her dress. She cringed. Rolf rubbed the back of his neck, blinking a little fast.

“I could try to carry you,” he offered.

She snorted. She’d squish the poor boy. “It’s fine, really.”

As they kept walking, Nok wondered what kind of a baby they would have, if they did go through with the Kindred’s insane plan. Maybe with her looks and his brains, it would be some super child. Or else with his twitches and her height, it would be the most awkward thing ever. She pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling sick. Were they really going to have to go through with it? Sixteen years old and trapped in an alien zoo didn’t exactly make her feel ready to be a mother.

“Some of my friends back home got pregnant,” she said. “Only one kept the baby, though.” The girl had married a photographer—a real classy guy—and had brought the baby back to the apartment to show the other girls. Nok had held it uneasily. It wasn’t entirely awful; it had smelled nice, at least.

Rolf stopped, blinking steadily, and faced her. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Nok. But I can promise you one thing. Whether we end up having a child or not, whether they take it away from us or not, I’ll always be there. For you, I mean.”

She swallowed back a surge of tenderness. No one had ever been as sweet to her before.

She cleared her throat, suddenly nervous. “Hey, look. More Pluris ostrus or whatever.”

He smiled. “Pleurotus ostreatus.”

“Well, we can’t all be geniuses.”

The grin fell off his face as his cheeks reddened. He pushed at the bridge of his nose. “I’m not a genius.”

“You think Leon can identify swamp mushrooms? Why do you downplay it so much?”

His fingers twitched by his side, performing some calculations, as though that might help him think better. “Girls don’t like smart guys,” he said at last.

She looked at him in surprise. Suddenly she regretted all her crocodile tears, all her acts of helplessness. She knew when a boy liked her, and Rolf had it bad—but he didn’t even know who she really was.

“Let me be the judge of what I like,” she said softly.