The Last Star by Rick Yancey Page A

shook his head.
Silly human girl!
“About who I really was.”
    “And who is that exactly? You’ve told me
what
you were, but you’ve never said
who
you are. Who are you, Evan Walker? Where do you come from? What did you look like before you looked like nothing? What was your planet like? Did it look like ours? Were there plants and trees and rocks and did you live in cities andwhat did you do for fun and was there music? Music is universal like mathematics. Can you sing me a song? Sing me an alien song, Evan. Tell me what it was like growing up. Did you go to school or was knowledge just downloaded into your brain? What were your parents like? Did they have jobs like human parents? Brothers and sisters? Sports. Start anywhere.”
    “We had sports.” With a tiny, indulgent smile.
    “I don’t like sports. Start with music.”
    “We had music, too.”
    “I’m listening.” I folded my arms over my chest and waited.
    His mouth opened. His mouth closed. I couldn’t tell if he was about to laugh or cry. “It isn’t that simple, Cassie.”
    “I’m not expecting performance quality. I can’t carry a tune, either, but that never kept me from lighting up a little Beyoncé.”
    “Who?”
    “Oh, come on. You gotta know who she was.”
    He shook his head. Maybe he didn’t grow up on a farm but under a rock. Then I thought it would be a little odd for a ten-thousand-year-old superbeing to have his finger on the pulse of pop culture. Still, we’re talking about Beyoncé!
    He’s even weirder than I thought.
    “Everything is different. Structurally, I mean.” He pointed at his mouth, stuck out his tongue. “I can’t even pronounce my own name.” For a moment, the pathos was so thick, it almost snuffed out the lamp.
    “Then hum something. Or whistle. Could you whistle or didn’t you have lips?”
    “None of that matters anymore, Cassie.”
    “You’re wrong. It matters a lot. Your past is what you are, Evan.”
    Tears welled in his eyes. It was like watching chocolate melt. “God, Cassie, I hope not.” He lifted his freshly scrubbed hands, with their trimmed and buffed nails, toward me. The hands that held the gun that slaughtered innocent people before he almost murdered me. “If the past is what we are . . .”
    I might have pointed out that we’ve all done things we aren’t proud of, but that was too flippant. Even for me.
    Damn it, Cassie. Why were you forcing him to think about that?
I was so obsessed with the past I didn’t know about that I forgot the one I did: To save the ones he had come to destroy, Evan Walker the Silencer was planning to silence an entire civilization—
his
civilization—forever.
    No, Ben Parish,
I thought.
Not for a girl. For the past he can’t escape. For the seven billion. Your little sister, too.
    Before I knew what was happening or even how it happened, I was holding him with hands that had never comforted him, never lifted him up, never found him when he was lost. I was the taker, the recipient, always; from the moment he pulled me from that snowbank, I have been his charge, his mission, his cross. Cassie’s pain, Cassie’s fear, Cassie’s anger, Cassie’s despair. These have been the nails that impaled him.
    I stroked his damp hair. I rubbed his arched back. I pressed his smooth, sweet-smelling face into my neck, and his tears were warm against my skin. He whispered something that sounded like
Mayfly.
    Heartless bitch
would have been more accurate.
    “I’m sorry, Evan,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
    I bowed my head; he raised his. I kissed his wet cheek.
Your pain, your fear, your anger, your despair. Give them to me, Evan. I’ll carry them for a while.
    He reached up and ran his fingertips lightly over my lips, moist with his tears.
    “‘The last person on Earth,’” he murmured. “Do you remember when you wrote that?”
    I nodded. “Stupid.”
    He shook his head. “I think that’s what did it. When I read that. ‘The last person on