people hide things.” He steals a split-second glance at Adam as he says it, a glance that sets my pulse racing with fear, and I’m about to respond when Lily beats me to it.
“I mean, it’s possible,” she says. “But The Reestablishment doesn’t have a long history of caring about pretenses. They stopped pretending to care about the opinion of the public a long time ago. They mow people down in the street just because they feel like it. I don’t think they’re worried about hiding things from us.”
Castle laughs, out loud, and we all spin around to stare at him. I’m relieved to finally see him react, but he still seems lost in his head somewhere. He looks angry. I’ve never really seen Castle get angry.
“They hide a great deal from us,” he says sharply. “And from each other.” After a long, deep breath, he finally gets to his feet. Smiles, warily, at the ten-year-old in the room. “James, you are wise indeed.”
“Thank you,” James says, blinking up at him.
“Castle, sir?” I say, my voice coming out harder than I’d intended. “Will you please tell us what the hell is going on? Do you know something?”
Castle sighs. Rubs the stubble on his chin with the flat of his palm. “All right, Nazeera,” he says, turning toward nothing, like he’s speaking to a ghost. “Go ahead.”
When Nazeera appears, as if out of thin air, I’m not the only one who’s pissed. Okay, maybe I’m the only one who’s pissed.
But everyone else looks surprised, at least.
They’re staring at her, at each other, and then all of them—all of them—turn to look at me.
“Bro, did you know about this?” Ian asks.
I scowl.
Invisibility is my thing. My thing, goddammit.
No one ever said I had to share that with anyone. Especially not with someone like Nazeera, a lying, manipulative—
Gorgeous. Gorgeous human being.
Shit.
I turn, stare at the wall. I can’t be distracted by her anymore. She knows I’m into her—my infatuation is apparently obvious to everyone within a ten-mile radius, according to Castle—and she’s clearly been using my idiocy to her best advantage.
Smart. I respect the tactic.
But that also means I have to keep my guard up when she’s around. No more staring. No more daydreaming about her. No more thinking about how she looked at me when she smiled. Or the way she laughed, like she meant it, the same night she yelled at me for asking reasonable questions. Which, by the way—
I don’t think I was crazy for wondering out loud how the daughter of a supreme commander could get away with wearing an illegal headscarf. She told me later that she wears the scarf symbolically, every once in a while, that she can’t get away with wearing it all the time because it’s illegal. But when I pointed this out to her, she gave me hell. And then she gave me shit for being confused.
I’m still confused.
She’s not covering her hair now, either, but no one else seems to have registered this fact. Maybe they’d already seen her like this. Maybe everyone but me already had that conversation with her, already heard her story about wearing it symbolically, occasionally.
Illegally, when her dad wasn’t watching.
“Kenji,” she says, and her voice is so sharp I look up, stare at her despite my own very explicit orders to keep my eyes on the wall. All it takes is two seconds of eye contact and my heart hits itself.
That mouth. Those eyes.
“Yeah?” I cross my arms.
She looks surprised, like she wasn’t expecting me to be upset, and I don’t care. She should know that I’m pissed. I want her to know that invisibility is my thing. That I know I’m petty and I don’t care. Plus, I don’t trust her. Also, what is up with these kids of the supreme commanders all being super-good-looking? It’s almost like they did it on purpose, like they made these kids in test tubes or some shit.
I shake my head to clear it.
Carefully, Nazeera says, “I really think you should sit down for this.”
“I’m good.”
She frowns. For a second she looks almost hurt, but before I have a chance to feel bad about it, she shrugs. Turns away.
And what she says next nearly splits me in half.
I’m sitting on an orange chair in the hallway of a dimly lit building. The chair is made of cheap plastic, its edges coarse and unfinished. The floor is a shiny linoleum that occasionally sticks to the soles of my shoes. I know I’ve been breathing too loudly but I can’t help it. I sit on my hands and swing my legs under my seat.
Just then, a boy comes into view. His movements are so quiet I only notice him when he stops directly in front of me. He leans against the wall opposite me, his eyes focused on a point in the distance.
I study him for a moment.
He seems about my age, but he’s wearing a suit. There’s something strange about him; he’s so pale and stiff he seems close to dead.
“Hi,” I say, and try to smile. “Do you want to sit down?”
He doesn’t return my smile. He won’t even look at me. “I’d prefer to stand,” he says quietly.
“Okay.”
We’re both silent awhile.
Finally, he says, “You’re nervous.”
I nod. My eyes must be a little red from crying, but I’d been hoping no one would notice. “Are you here to get a new family, too?”
“No.”
“Oh.” I look away. Stop swinging my feet. I feel my bottom lip tremble and I bite it, hard. “Then why are you here?”
He shrugs. I see him glance, briefly, at the three empty chairs next to me, but he makes no effort to sit down. “My father made me come.”
“He made you come here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He stares at his shoes and frowns. “I don’t know.”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
And then, instead of answering me, he says, “Where are you from?”
“What do you mean?”
He looks up then, meets my eyes for the first time. He has such unusual eyes. They’re a light, clear green.
“You have an accent,” he says.
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.” I look at the floor. “I was born in New Zealand. That’s where I lived until my mum and dad died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
I nod. Swing my legs again. I’m about to ask him another question when the door down the hall finally opens. A tall man in a navy suit walks out. He’s carrying a briefcase.