The Cage(55)

Cora knelt to pick up the scattered tokens. “Well, they all hate me now, thinking I stole their food. And good luck talking to Rolf and Nok. I doubt you can get them to stop making out long enough to listen.” She stuffed the tokens in the pillowcase, and then started past him onto the porch.

“Wait. I can fix this—”

“I’m fixing it myself. I’m tired of these black windows. Nothing they give us here will break them, but I know something that will.”

He followed her at a fast clip, trying to talk her out of it. She strode up the toy shop steps, shoving open the saloon doors. The croquet set sat between two dolls. She started shoving tokens through the copper slot.

“Maybe you should take a deep breath, Cora. Meditate . . . or something. I know that fight turned quickly. We’ve all been bottling up emotions. Not thinking straight. This morning I woke up and forgot my mom died. I kept waiting to hear her making breakfast downstairs.”

Cora paused before continuing to feed tokens into the slot. She’d forgotten that Lucky’s mother had died when he was little. He’d told her so quickly, like it pained him deep to even think about. She’d forgotten he had a life before this, and plans.

The Kindred had taken that future from him.

From all of them.

“It isn’t about the fight.” Cora fed the slot more tokens. “Not entirely. It’s about the two of you arguing with each other, when it should be them we’re fighting. It’s about Rolf and Nok hooking up even though the Kindred are watching. We’re forgetting what matters, Lucky.”

She slammed the last token through the slot and pounded on a copper button beneath the croquet set. The glass door opened. She grabbed the blue mallet.

It felt powerful in her hand. Real.

She headed for the doorway.

The light had shifted to dusk. Music came from the diner, something with a hint of jazz, but it just made her head pound harder. Mali stood by the open door with her hands across her chest, watching Cora like she could see straight into her soul. A cry came from inside the diner and Nok rushed out, followed by Rolf, who clutched a guitar in one hand.

“You!” Rolf jabbed a finger at Cora. “What, breakfast and lunch wasn’t enough? You had to steal dinner too?”

“I didn’t steal anything!” Cora yelled.

“Stop shouting!” Nok wailed. “My head hurts!”

Rolf stomped toward Cora, his eye twitching. “Is this revenge for seeing us together? If you’re jealous that you and Lucky don’t have a relationship like we do, maybe that’s your own fault!” He let the guitar fall to the porch with a clatter of errant notes.

Cora jumped back. What had gotten into him? She tightened her grip on the mallet. First the radio. Now the guitar. If anyone had a right to be angry, it was her.

“You’ve been secretly buying things from the shops, haven’t you? We could have used those things, Rolf! If I’d had a garrote or a makeshift knife when the Warden had tried to strangle me, maybe I could have killed him!”

He rolled his eyes. “Wow. How brilliant of you to figure out my plan. Yes, I bought them and didn’t tell you. Just like you took our food and didn’t tell us.”

“I didn’t!”

Splinters of pain shot off from her head. It felt like her brain was splitting in two, and anger boiled from the fissure. She gripped the mallet tighter.

Rolf narrowed his eyes.

“Stop it.” Nok tugged on Rolf’s arm. “It doesn’t matter why she did it—there’s still enough food, if we divide up what’s on her plate and forage in the orchard. Cora, just don’t do it again. Please. Headaches are bad enough, we don’t need hunger pangs too.”

“I didn’t take your food. Don’t you see? The Kindred are doing this. They want us to turn against each other.”

The others stared at her like she’d gone mad.

Mali yawned.

Cora spun and strode through the grass, bumping into Rolf so hard that he knocked into the guitar with another burst of errant chords, and then she stopped in front of the movie theater’s black window.

Her father had taken her to a zoo when she was a little girl. They had gone to see the tiger. She remembered squeezing her father’s hand as it paced back and forth, back and forth, watching them with unblinking eyes through the glass.

She felt like that tiger. She was that tiger.

She laid her palm flat on the humming window. Only a thick piece of glass had stopped that tiger from killing her. She hoped the Kindred could read her mind, and know she was biding her time until no surfaces separated her from them, and she could do to them what that tiger wanted to do to her.