Summer Ruins by Trisha Leigh Page A

comb my fingers through my hair, kick off my shoes and socks, and crawl under the covers. I’m not sleepy after our long nap, but there isn’t anything else to do.
    Which I suppose is the point.
    I don’t lie down, though; instead I sit with my back against the cool wall and my knees pulled up to my chest. Lucas lands next to me a minute later, and I make a little ball of fire in my hand for the explicit purpose of getting a look at him in his thin undershirt.
    Our eyes meet and my heart thumps hard before I pull my gaze away, resisting the urge to fan my face and holding the light far enough away to allow me the shadows. I can feel Lucas smile as he shifts a little closer, settling his hand on my knee when I drop my legs onto the bed.
    “So.” I clear my throat, since it came out funny. “So, what do you make of Emmy not wanting to be seen with us?”
    They’re both quiet for a minute. It’s Lucas’s fault Emmy’s here. Her lab partner was injured in chemistry last autumn after he froze some beakers, making her one of the people whose lives rest on his shoulders. I’ve always felt a little responsible for what happened to her and Reese, too, for not taking any kind of action to stop it.
    “Maybe she hates me for what I did,” Lucas suggests softly.
    I shake my head. “No. She doesn’t know that was you. I mean, how could she?”
    “Wait, what happened?”
    Pax waits, his expectation palpable. I pause, unsure whether or not Lucas wants to share but, of course, he does. It shouldn’t surprise me. If there’s one thing the three of us have learned since falling into one another’s company early this spring, it’s that keeping secrets from one another doesn’t work in our favor.
    “So she and this Reese didn’t know about you when they were deemed Broken, right?”
    “No. They were still veiled and they weren’t Broken. But the Wardens were there observing and kids were disappearing left and right for no reason and all.” I shrug. “Emmy and Reese didn’t know why their beaker was frozen that day.”
    “If it’s not that, then what’s her problem?” Impatience pricks Pax’s voice.
    “I don’t know. What if Leah’s here somewhere and they’ve been talking? About… everything.” I’ve been afraid to believe Leah might be alive and saying it aloud feels like I’m tempting chance.
    “If she is here, I’m willing to bet she hasn’t given up trying to help us,” Pax says carefully, reminding me that we didn’t search for recording devices earlier.
    The fondness in his voice when he talks about Leah, about her spitfire tenacity, hurts my heart. I liked— like —her, too, and she and Lucas were good friends during Intermediate Cell. We all care about her, and she’s risked so much already.
    It’s painful to allow myself to hope that she’s not dead. If we find out otherwise, it’s going to be a big blow to all three of us.
    “What happens tomorrow?”
    Lucas’s hand tightens on my knee. It’s impossible to tell in the dark whether he’s nervous about what we’ll face tomorrow or if he’s recalling memories from the last time he was here.
    “They wake up at three-thirty, have breakfast, are in the mines by four. No lunch break; no break at all, actually. They work until eight, back here, shower, dinner, lights out at nine-thirty.”
    “That’s it?”
    “That’s it,” Lucas whispers in answer to Pax’s familiar skepticism.
    “What do we do?” I want to know why he keeps saying they instead of we.
    “I don’t know. I was here in Apa’s place the last time, so they kept me locked up except for the hour after everyone came out of the mines, when they dragged me around to all four terraforms and had me refreeze the ice.”
    “Basically, what you’re saying is that we have no idea what our days are going to look like?”
    “Basically, yeah.”
     
    ***
     
    We find out early the next morning when the recorded announcement startles us awake. It’s not even technically