I hesitate again.
I’m wondering, just for the briefest moment, just as if it’s a fly I’m brushing away, I’m wondering–
I’m wondering if I can tell him.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I really don’t. They didn’t tell me in case I couldn’t be trusted.”
Todd looks up at me.
And for a second, I see the doubt on his face, too.
“You don’t trust me,” I say, before I think to stop.
“You don’t trust me neither,” he says. “Yer wondering if I’m working for the Mayor right now. And yer wondering what took me so long to find you.” He looks down sadly at the floor again. “I can still read you,” he says. “Nearly as well as my own self.”
I look at him, into his Noise. “You wonder if I’m part of the Answer. You think it’s something I’d do.”
He doesn’t look at me, but he nods. “I was just trying to stay alive, looking for ways to find you, hoping you hadn’t left me behind.”
“Never,” I say. “Not ever.”
He looks back up at me. “I’d never leave you neither.”
“You promise?”
“Cross my heart, hope to die,” he says, grinning shyly.
“I promise, too,” I say and I smile at him. “I ain’t never leaving you, Todd Hewitt, not never again.”
He smiles harder when I say ain’t but it fades and then I see him gathering his Noise to tell me something, something difficult, something he’s ashamed of, but before he does, I want him to know, I want him to know for sure.
“I think they’re at the ocean,” I say. “Mistress Coyle told me a story about it before she left. I think she was trying to tell me that’s where they were going.”
He looks back up at me.
“Now tell me I don’t trust you, Todd Hewitt.”
And then I see my mistake.
“What?” he says, seeing the look on my face.
“It’s in your Noise,” I say, standing up. “Todd, it’s all over your Noise. Ocean, over and over and over again.”
“It ain’t on purpose,” he says but his eyes are widening and I see the door of his cell left unlocked and I see a man in the cell with him telling him where I am and I see asking marks rising–
“I’m so stupid,” Todd says, standing, too. “Such an effing idiot! We need to go. Now!”
“Todd–”
“How far away is the ocean?”
“Two days’ ride–”
“Four days’ walk then.” He’s pacing now. His Noise says Ocean again, clear as a bomb itself. He sees me looking at him, sees me seeing it. “I’m not spying on you,” he says. “I’m not, but he musta left the door open so I’d–” He pulls his hair in frustration. “I’ll hide it. I hid the truth about Aaron and I can hide this.”
My stomach flutters, remembering what the Mayor said to me about Aaron.
“But we have to go,” Todd’s saying. “Do you have any food we can take?”
“I can get some,” I say.
“Hurry.”
As I turn to leave, I hear my name in his Noise. Viola, it says, and it’s covered in worry, worry that we’ve been set up, worry that I think he was sent here on purpose, worry that I think he’s lying, and all I can do is just look at him and think his name.
Todd.
And hope he knows what I mean.
I burst into the canteen and run to the cabinets. I leave most of the lights off, trying to keep quiet as I grab meal-packs and loaves of bread.
“That fast, huh?” Corinne says.
She’s sitting at a table far back in the darkness, cup of coffee in front of her. “Your friend shows up and you just leave.” She stands and walks over to me.
“I have to,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” she says, eyebrows raised. “And what happens here, then? What happens to all the patients who need you?”
“I’m a terrible healer, Corinne, all I do is wash and feed them-”
“So that I can have time to do the very little healing that I’m capable of.”
“Corinne–”
Her eyes flash. “Mistress Wyatt.”
I sigh. “Mistress Wyatt,” I say and then I think and say it at the same time. “Come with us!”
She looks startled, threatened almost. “What?”
“Can’t you see where this is all headed? Women in prison, women with injuries. Can’t you see this isn’t going to get any better?”
“Not with bombs going off every day, it isn’t.”
“It’s the President who’s the enemy,” I say.
She crosses her arms. “You think you can have just one enemy?”
“Corinne–”
“A healer doesn’t take life,” she says. “A healer never takes life. Our first oath is to do no harm.”
“The bombs are set for empty targets.”
“Which aren’t always empty, are they?” She shakes her head, her face looking suddenly sad, sadder than I’ve ever seen it. “I know who I am, Viola. In my soul, I know it. I heal the sick, I heal the wounded, that’s who I am.”
“If we stay here, they’ll eventually come for us.”
“If we leave, patients will die.” She doesn’t even sound angry any more, which is scarier than before.
“And if you’re taken in?” I say, my voice getting challenging. “Who’ll heal them then?”
“I was hoping you would.”
I just breathe for a second. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is to me.”
“Corinne, if I can get away, if I can contact my people–”
“Then what? They’re still five months away, you said. Five months is a long time.”
I turn back to the cabinets, continue filling the sack with food. “I have to try,” I say. “I have to do something.” I turn back to her, bag full. “That’s who I am.” I think of Todd, waiting for me, and my heart races faster. “That’s who I’ve become, anyway.”
She regards me quietly and then she quotes something Mistress Coyle once said to me. “We are the choices we make.”