The Release

“A girl named Hope.”

Hope gives her head a violent shake. “Not gonna happen.”

“Why? Because of those?” He gestures vaguely to the Xs on her face. “You think you’re the only one around here with scars?”

“No …”

Book tugs up a sleeve and displays the crisscrossing lines on his wrist. “What do you call these?”

“Sure, they’re scars …”

“But?”

“They’re hidden. You’re not disfigured like me.”

“Right, because yours are on your face, that makes them somehow worse,” he says sarcastically.

“That’s right.”

“Because everyone can see them, that somehow makes them more noticeable than everyone else’s.”

“Exactly.”

“And my limp?”

“That’s different and you know it.”

“Is it? What about my internal scars? How about those?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Feeling responsible for the deaths of my friends. Those scars don’t heal.”

“You think I don’t have those, too?”

“I know you have them. That’s my point. All of us do.”

She stops abruptly. “So these are just nothing?”

“I don’t care about those. No one does.”

“I do!”

Her voice carries farther than she intends, and Diana makes a move to come to Hope’s side. Hope shakes her off.

“I care about these scars,” Hope says in a fierce whisper. “I care because I know that’s all that people see. They can say they don’t, that they can look past them, that all they really see is my soul, but that’s bullshit and you know it.” She whips the hoodie back so that the Xs catch the full brunt of sunlight. The scars pucker the skin; shadows crisscross her cheeks. “Tell me you don’t see these.”

Book shrugs. “I don’t see them.”

“And you see into my soul.”

“I see into your soul.”

Hope grabs Book’s hand and slaps it against her cheek, resting his fingers on the cold, raised edges of her scars. “And now?”

“They don’t exist.”

She throws his hand away. “You’re crazier than I thought.”

Then she pulls the hood around her face and stomps off, joining the seventy-some others who trudge past Book in the vast expanse of snow.

7. (#ulink_773f34ed-dbdd-5212-82e1-c4bdd11e045a)

HOPE WOULD HAVE NOTHING more to do with me the rest of that day. Or the day after that. When we set up camp each evening, I put my bedroll on one arc of the circle, and she put hers directly opposite. Then she’d go off in search of food, not returning for hours.

Each evening, we huddled around our fires, pockets of muffled conversation drifting from one group to the other.

“What do you think it was like?” Flush asked out of the blue one night.

“What what was like?”

“The day the bombs fell. Omega.”

“Frightening,” an LT said.

“Confusing,” another added.

“Terrifying,” a third chimed in.

“For the living, yeah,” Twitch said.

We turned to him. His blind eyes probed the night.

“Ninety-nine percent of the earth’s population was probably eliminated in a matter of seconds. They didn’t feel a thing. They might have been the lucky ones.”

His words settled on us. The fire popped and crackled. The world had never seemed so still.

“I wonder which country started it,” Flush said.

“Why’s it matter?” Cat said, whittling a branch. “What matters is it’s left to us to pick up the pieces.”

“Yeah, but aren’t you curious?”

“Why? There’s no way we’ll ever know.”

Cat was right—we’d never find out the answer to that—but it did make me wonder about something else.

“Why do they hate us?” I asked. The question had burned within me ever since I found out we were considered Less Thans. As I spoke, I petted Argos. I could feel the ribs protruding beneath his fur.