The pieces of this were coming together for me now—those people she was talking about were Liam’s parents. That must have been the moment that she crossed paths with Liam’s mom.
“What happened to him?”
“He...his name was Gabe, did I say that? His name was Gabe, and he was...he was really kind.”
“What happened to him?” Alice asked again.
“Gabe died.”
Chubs released the breath he’d been holding, and scrubbed his face with his hands. I’d known how the story ended, but it was still devastating. Seeing her face, hearing those two words...
“What happened to him?” Softer this time, more hesitant. Alice looked back at Liam, as if to ask if it was all right to continue to head down this path. He nodded; he understood too. She wanted to talk about this. I had a feeling she agreed to this specifically so she could talk about Gabe and what he’d done for her.
“The kids I was traveling with before? They beat us to California and were waiting at my—at the meet spot we agreed on. We didn’t know that, though.”
Oh, God...
“Gabe made me walk behind him as we looked around. It was really, really dark—we could barely see anything. When we opened the doors to—to one of the nearby buildings, the other kids were hiding in there. They saw him and recognized him from Arizona, and they thought he had followed them. One of the girls panicked and shot him.”
I looked at Liam the exact moment he looked at me, absolutely stricken.
“He was a good person, and he was just trying to help—it was a mistake, but there was nothing we could do. They thought he was going to hurt them. They didn’t know what I did. He died because he helped me instead of helping himself.”
“That’s terrible,” Alice said, still looking for the right words. “That’s...”
“Everyone is so afraid of each other,” Zu continued. “I don’t want to look at a grown-up and assume they’re thinking of how much they can get for me. I don’t want them to look at me and think of how badly I could hurt them. Too many...too many of my friends are in pain. They’ve been hurt very badly by what they’ve been through, but they’ve taken care of me. That’s the other side of everything. Because there are people who are afraid, and then there are people who are so brave. We only survived being hungry and scared and hurt because we had each other.”
Alice let the camera keep recording for several more seconds before finally switching it off and sitting back. “I think that’ll do for today.”
Zu nodded, standing up and setting the notebook down on her chair, and came straight toward Vida. “Did I do okay?”
Vida held out her fist for a bump. “You killed it, girl.”
Liam was half listening to whatever Alice was saying to him, half listening to hear what was passing between Zu and Vida—he caught me watching him, and instead of looking away, he offered up a small smile. I felt myself return it, but the moment passed as quickly as it had arrived. What was important here was Zu; the small blip of happiness I’d felt at that small cease-fire was nothing compared to the joy soaring inside of me as she talked to Vida, her hands moving to emphasize her words. And as I listened to the sweet way the pitch of it rose as she got excited, a thought began to stir at the back of my mind.
I touched Chubs’s arm to get his attention. “What part of the mind controls speech?”
He came out of his daze like I’d thrown a pitcher of ice water in his face. “It’s a whole system, remember?”
“Right, I understand that. I guess my question is, is there something in your mind that could leave you silent or unable to process words, even if everything else seemed to be working fine?”
Now he just looked confused. “Zu didn’t talk by choice.”
“I meant Lillian,” I said. “Like all of the lights are on in the house, but she can’t get the door unlocked—she can pick up a few words here and there, but she can’t understand us and we can’t understand her. Have you heard of anything like that?”
He thought about it. “I can’t think of the medical term, but it’s been known to happen sometimes with stroke patients. My dad had someone come into his ER once who’d been in the middle of teaching a lesson on Shakespeare and then, two minutes after stroking out, couldn’t communicate at all. It’s...expressive...aphasia? Or is it receptive aphasia? I’m not sure, I need to double-check. One indicates damage in the Wernicke’s area of the brain.”
“Inglés, por favor,” Vida said, catching the tail end of this. “Unfortunately, you’re the only one here fluent in Geek.”
He snorted. “Basically, we form what we want to say in the Wernicke’s area of the brain, and then that planned speech is transferred to the Broca’s area, which actually carries out the speech. I wonder...”
“What?” I prompted.
“Maybe Clancy managed to...shut down, or somehow numb those parts of her mind? Or depressed them, maybe, so they’re not functioning at full capacity.” He turned a shrewd look on me. “When you restored Liam’s memories, what exactly did you do?”
“I was thinking about...I was remembering something that happened between us,” I said. “I was—” Kissing him. “Reaching out to him somehow, it was kind of...instinctive. I was trying to connect to something in him.” I was trying to find the old Liam I had given up.
Mirror minds.
“Oh,” I said, pressing both hands to my mouth. “Oh.”
“Share with the rest of us,” Vida said, hands on Zu’s shoulders. “Your half is the only half of the conversation I understand.”
“I need to jumpstart her,” I said.
“Excuse me?” Cole said, joining the conversation now. “Who are we giving the shock treatment to?”
“You think you can reset that system in her mind,” Chubs said, understanding. “But...how, exactly?”
“Clancy said something to me the last time I was in his head,” I said. “Mirror minds. I think that’s what happens when I enter someone’s head. I’m mirroring what’s in their mind with my own. When I’m tampering with memories and searching through them, it’s like I’ve set up a mirror between us, and all of those changes I’m imagining into existence are immediately reflected in the other mind.”
“Okay?” Cole said. This was going to be nearly impossible to explain—they had no idea what any of this felt like, and I wasn’t sure I knew how to articulate it.
Thank God for Chubs, though. “So you think that if you engage that part of your mind, it’ll engage that part of her mind, too, and reset it?”
I held up my hands. “Worth a try?”
“More than worth a try,” Cole said. “It’s time we checked in on her anyway—”
There was a bang on the loading dock door—one loud sound that came like a shot through the calm that had settled over the room. Liam jumped to his feet, a grin splitting his face as he jogged to the door. It was the only reason I let myself relax as he and Kylie unhooked the padlock they’d installed there and the door rolled up, rattling like thunder as sunlight spilled in.
I counted off the eight kids as they came in, each somehow looking worse than the next; filthy, in a variety of mismatched knits. We could smell them from where we were standing, which Cole chose to note with raised brows and an expression I’d seen Liam wear a dozen times.
I recognized the new faces, but I hadn’t been in Knox’s camp in Nashville long enough to assign them names from memory. The kids there had been so hopeless, left with next to nothing by way of supplies because Knox and a few of the others had taken everything they brought in for themselves. Now this group only seemed to be in slightly better shape. Between them, they had a few backpacks and makeshift bags tied together from old sheets. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have thought they walked from Nashville.