For a moment, the sounds of the arcade surrounded them, the flashing lights spilling out on Rolf’s face, turning it blue, then orange, then red. Nok’s heart twisted a little bit with each one. She hated that the others didn’t see how valuable his genius was. She hated that Leon bullied him. Maybe he was right—they deserved a little happiness.
Rolf put his hands over hers, holding the radio tightly.
“I know this place was scary at first.” The lights of the games reflected in his eyes. “But it really is engineered to keep us safe and happy.”
She swallowed. “But Cora says—”
He was always looking away, at his toes or at the floor, but this time, he looked her square in the eyes. “I don’t care what Cora says. I know I’m supposed to hate it here and want to go home, but the truth is, life was bad for me there.”
She rubbed his hand, petting him like a wounded bird.
His eyebrows knit together. “I was testing eight years ahead of my age level. My parents had my entire life planned out: graduate from Oxford at seventeen, PhD in mechanical engineering at MIT in America, a MacArthur fellowship by the time I was twenty. It was suffocating. I felt like I’d be trapped for the rest of my life. I don’t care about engineering, or Greek literature either. I want to work with plants. Have my hands in the soil. But that wasn’t academic enough. And then here . . . and you . . .” His fingers were starting to shake. “I know I’m not supposed to, but I like it here. And I really, really like you.”
The arcade games kept beeping and flashing, throwing colored pools of light over both their faces. Nok clutched the radio. Rolf’s hands clutched hers. In that moment, she felt like the arcade was the only place in the universe.
“I lied before,” she admitted. “Life was bad for me at home too. I’m not some top model. My parents sold me to a seedy modeling agency that’s only a step above an escort service. I’d have been stuck with them forever, or until I was too old and they threw me onto the street.”
She hung her head, worried he wouldn’t like her anymore.
But his hands didn’t let go of hers.
“I’d have done anything to save you from that life,” he said. “I still would.”
She looked up in surprise. She wasn’t sure what impulse made her do it, but she kissed him.
Rolf went rigid; despite what he claimed about having had sex before, he went as stiff as though it was his first kiss. But then he kissed her back, a little too soft and a little unsure of himself, but to Nok it was perfect. She had kissed boys before, but always to get something. Delphine had taught her well. And yet when she kissed Rolf, all she wanted was to be kissed back.
The next day, when Cora and Lucky went to the alpine biome to explore, Nok and Rolf kissed again while sitting in the movie theater’s red plush seats, and then the next day in the French salon, and it only got better and better.
In another week, they were obeying all the rules—even the third one.
24
Cora
SAND CLUMPED IN CORA’S toes as she searched the beach for a seashell. Since she rarely slept, she’d started rising before first light to collect seashells, which she left in a stack on her windowsill, one for each day. Today’s would be the fifteenth. And yet the pink streak in Nok’s hair hadn’t grown out, and neither had anyone’s fingernails or the boys’ facial hair.
What was happening to time?
The dull ache of exhaustion throbbed in her head. She lost her focus and her toe snagged on something hard. She crouched down to find a snow-white shell. Like all the rest, it had no sharp edges, as though it had been worn smooth by years of sand and sea. Or, rather, engineered to appear that way.
The hair on her arms rose. Her headache increased, like pressure was building. She shoved the shell in her dress pocket and spun toward the town. Was the Caretaker coming? Or had that tingle on her arms only been the sea breeze?
She climbed the stairs to the nearest shop, the bookstore. Inside was a different world. England at the turn of the century. Two leather club chairs and a brocade-covered settee in the middle of the room, with a tea set on the coffee table. The shelves were made of elegant wood packed with beautiful cloth-bound volumes that smelled like must and rain. They weren’t real books—she had already checked. They made up the puzzle, which involved categorizing the volumes by title and color. The real books were enclosed behind the glass countertop. The Hobbit. Charlotte’s Web. The complete boxed set of Dating the Duke romance novels. All available for a few tokens each.
But it wasn’t the books she was interested in. The hair on her arms was still tingling, and she faced the black window behind the counter, keeping her distance. She ran her thumb over the seashell’s hard edge, reminding herself that nothing here was real. Not the shell. Not the bookstore. Not even time itself.
But the Caretaker—he was real.
Cora leaned against the counter. “Are you there?”
She had meant to sound accusatory, and yet the words came out as a whisper. She’d sounded almost curious. Guilt cut into her, and she whipped her gaze out the bookstore door. What if Lucky caught her trying to talk to Cassian?
She turned back to the window. Yes, she was curious about him. And yes, she knew that was sick, but she couldn’t help it. It didn’t mean she wasn’t also desperate to wrap the metal guitar strings around his neck and squeeze.
She rested the pads of her fingers on the humming window. The vibrations entered her. The ache grew in her head. She pushed through the pain to peer into the murky blackness, longing to see a shadowy figure—his shadowy figure—and to know she wasn’t alone.