Icons by Margaret Stohl Page B

know Ro can feel me when I am connecting to him. It seemed like Lucas could, too.
    But why can she?
    The girl is painfully beautiful, and it’s only now that she fixes her eyes firmly in my direction that I realize I am staring.
    Ro pulls me, gently, closer to the food counters. A reminder. He is here. I relax into him, letting the heat in my stomach radiate through me.
    Moments later, when my tray is full, I follow Ro toward the door.
    “When you get to the door, ditch the trays, just carry as much as you can.” He speaks quietly, only to me.
    “Fast,” I say. I’m not comfortable talking about our plan to leave, but given the lunchtime clamor in the room, I’m not sure Doc could hear us.
    “Where are you two going?”
    Lucas stands between us and the door. He looks smug, like he’s caught us in the act of some anti-Embassy crime—which, in a way, he has.
    “Nowhere. Back to our rooms.” I don’t smile.
    Ro steps up next to me. “Too many Stooges around, Buttons. A guy could lose his appetite in here.”
    Lucas frowns. “You can’t take trays out of the cafeteria. Embassy rules.” He’s being awful. He knows he is.
    I slammed the door
, I think.
He’s hurt. That’s what this is.
    I reach for him but all I feel is a cold stripe of black fog.
    “What, are you going to tell on us to Mommy?” Ro practically snarls.
    “No. Not her.” Lucas smiles. “Doc? Could you secure the cafeteria doors? There seems to be a breach of protocol.”
    I hear Doc’s voice before I can interrupt. “Initiating locking sequence now. Doors are locked, Lucas. Notifying Embassy personnel of protocol breach. Officers will be dispatched shortly.”
    Ro tenses. I can see what’s going through his mind. He’s three seconds shy of running for it.
    I shake my head slightly.
    No. Not now.
    We need to see what happens around here.
    We need to know what is going on.
    Lucas gestures to the table behind him. The only empty seats in the entire room are at his table. Of course. He probably arranged that.
    Or perhaps no one here dares sit with him.
    Only the silver-haired girl.
    Ro sighs. “Just eat fast.”
    I don’t want to eat.
    I know that if I walk over there, I will have to meet a girl who holds terrible things in her mind, and be forced to talk to Lucas, who delivered me to his mother.
    More new people, with complicated lives and complicated emotions that I will have no choice but to feel, or at least make the exhausting effort not to feel.
    I want to run.
    Instead, I follow Lucas toward the table.
    Ro kicks out a chair and slides up to the table, dropping his trays, which are piled high with crusty loaves of bread, lumps of soft cheese, whole fruits, and handfuls of nuts.
    Lucas eyes Ro’s two trays, stacked on top of each other, a layer of food-laden bowls and plates on each. “Don’t hold back. You should really try to eat something.”
    “And you’ve got a real future as a comedian, Buttons.” Ro takes a bite out of a massive loaf of bread.
    Nobody else says a word. The girl looks like she wants to stab Ro in the face with her fork.
    I sit between Ro and Lucas, across from the silver-haired girl. I wonder if I will be able to eat a thing, sitting so close to such an unsettling presence. Even her clothes are gray and silver, the colors of the steel-reinforced roomaround us. As if she wears institutional camouflage.
    Lucas ignores Ro, speaking only to me. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. Eat up. We’ll wait for you, if you like. Then we could show you guys around, or whatever. I mean, if you wanted.”
    He’s testing the waters, pretending everything is fine. Like he hasn’t just locked us in this room, or handed us off to the Ambassador. But I want him to know where we stand.
    The waters are rough.
    “I’m not hungry.” I’m starving, but I know I’m right; I’d no more be able to eat in this room with these people than I could fly.
    The silver-haired girl watches us, but she never stops moving, as if