Courage Is the Price Page 2

  Ghost wouldn’t wait. Rue knows that her friend would have left to look for her sooner. As soon as the sense of dread had become so much Rue is still amazed she didn’t throw up. That’s when Ghost would have left. That’s when brave people would have left. Rue can’t be there for her friend the way that Ghost has always been there for her. She’s a coward. She can’t even play a game like dodge-ball without being afraid. Rue has always known she’s a coward. Everyone but Ghost has always said it. Everyone including Ghost has always accepted it.

  It doesn’t fill Rue with a lot of confidence.

  4

  RUE THINKS SHE can’t sleep, but she must have dozed off from time to time. She hasn’t heard Priti walk past her room that morning and she always hears Priti before the UV-shields have rotated fully to day.

  Once, Ghost had encouraged Rue to ask why. It’s because the other girls harass Priti too, for not having been born a girl and not having been born rich. Priti never gets bullied for being a coward the way Rue is, but it really doesn’t seem to matter.

  Rue half-wishes that they could be friends, but she doesn’t dare ask. Anyway, she already has a friend and she’s never really believed she needs anyone else. But now Ghost is gone, vanished. And Rue doesn’t know what to do.

  The sun tickles Rue’s scalp. She has an east-facing room, one more reason for the other girls at the Academy to resent her. Single rooms are expensive enough even without a view. Though she’s grateful for the privacy, Rue would never have wanted a single room had it been her choice. It was her mother’s, intended as a statement and nothing more. At least it offers her some respite most of the time. Only Libby and her limpets dare sneak inside to make Rue’s life worse. She’d lock the door if she were allowed, if she could. Ghost has always urged her to tell one of their teachers about the snakes at least, but Rue never has. It’s bound to cause more trouble than it’s worth.

  Getting out of bed sluggishly, Rue tries to think about her day. She has to get ready, has to go home and then figure out what she’s supposed to do. Splashing some water — mountain-cold, though the only mountains Rue has ever seen have been on a screen — onto her face helps her to wake up, to realise once more that her friend is not there. Ghost is not there. But there is nothing Rue can do now. She hates the waiting. She wants to tear out of the room, the Academy, and search for her friend. Without a plan, without a thought. But that won’t do her any good. All Rue knows with flimsy certainty is that her friend is far away and somewhere unsafe.

  She’ll have to bide her time, fake a smile and carry on. She’s returning home today. She’d be missed. She needs to wait, and try to come up with a plan to help her friend. How stupid that she’s never once asked Ghost’s name. How selfish. And now it might be too late to ask.

  Rue won’t let it be too late. She’s impatient as she dresses. Just a simple skirt and blouse, not her uniform. She’s in such a rush that she can barely get the buttons closed properly. She brushes her hair and finishes her packing. Rue only has a few items left: her uniform, her nightgown, her journal. Today, later today, she can start to do something. Start properly. It makes her heart thud in her chest because she really doesn’t want to. Rue wants to hide away in a tower and never deal with anyone at all like Rapunzel did, but she’ll have to. Because she cannot simply abandon her friend. That’s not what friends do.

  Shaking herself, Rue takes the nightgown out of her suitcase and refolds it. Thankfully, it’s already been worn for a week and no one will notice the crumpled way she’s tossed it in. She doesn’t have a lot to pack. Rue never takes many clothes to the Academy, doesn’t need them there, to the great exasperation of Amaranth. Other girls, the more popular girls, have several suitcases filled with nothing but clothes they cannot wear except on special occasions. Rue has never cared about it much, has never quite fitted in. Maybe that’s why Ghost picked her, but perhaps it’s also why the other girls dislike her so much. Maybe she’d trade one friend for another if given the choice. Rue shivers. Disloyal thoughts make her uneasy; she’s never had any before.

  Rue closes her suitcase with more force than is strictly necessary and paces her room, trying to herd her thoughts into some form of order, but there is nothing. Only chaos and ideas she can’t quite grasp.

  5

  ONCE THEY HAVE had breakfast, Rue tries to avoid the other girls as much as she can. She’d hide herself away in a corner until everyone else has gone home, but she gets priority treatment and can’t. Her parents want it; they want the very best that money can buy for their darling little girl, and if it makes her life miserable… Well, how would they even know? Rue is one of the first to be picked up. At least it means she’s gone sooner, even if she has to stay where the others can see her. Perhaps they know something is wrong because even Libby leaves Rue in peace.

  Still, by the time the hovercar arrives to pick her up, Rue is grateful to be gone. She climbs into the vintage model with all the grace she can muster and slumps into her seat the moment the door is closed and no one can look inside anymore. The driver can’t see her and her friend is gone, so there’s no one to observe her posture or comment on it. So Rue lets herself go limp. Lets herself slip just a little bit toward the soft edge of her friend, enough to know that the direction of ‘home’ leads her closer to Ghost. That’s good. Rue rests her head against the window and lets out a deep sigh. If her friend is near where she lives then she might manage to deal with a rescue. She might even know where to start.

  For the majority of the ride, Rue lets herself lie crumpled against the glass. She’ll have to sit straight again by the time she has to get out, but she’s set the hovercar timer to warn her when they’re approaching the gates. Her parents will only see her for a few moments, assure themselves that she’s alive and safe, before retreating back into their own lives.

  So Rue slumps and rests, trying to ignore the dimming of the glow in her thoughts and at the same time telling her friend that she’s coming. She may be a coward and she may not know what to do, but she’s coming. Eventually.

  When the alarm jingles, Rue takes a deep breath and sits up straight. By the time the hovercar stops at the entrance to the grand, Old Earth style house, Rue is ready. Her hair is tidy and her clothes are neat. She gets out of the car and lets the sun fall onto her face for a few moments, then she walks up to the entrance of the house.

  Taking a deep breath as a butler opens the door, Rue enters and smiles dazzlingly. The first thing she notices is her mother, sweeping down a staircase to greet her. Once the doors close, the hall is nightfall-dark. Amaranth is nothing more than a peachy blur of Old Earth dress and perfume, her voice tinkling like a bell as she welcomes her daughter home and asks no questions about her schooling. Amaranth air-kisses her daughter and spins off, the poofy silk fluff tickling Rue’s cheek the way her mother’s lips did not.

  Her father is not present to frown disapproval on his only child, his one girl-that-should-have-been-a-boy. Rue can only be herself and she has long ago given up trying to prove to her father that she’s just as good as her still-born brother would have been. She hates them both.

  And in the darkest shadows, after her mother has left, is Mrs Krombel, enfolding Rue in a hug that would crumple her mother’s delicate silks and ruin her dresses. Rue smiles, but Mrs Krombel is harder to fool than Amaranth and the housekeeper clucks as she spins Rue around. Has she eaten enough? Exercised enough? What did they feed Rue this year? It wasn’t all synth-food again, was it? How was the school year? Is Rue still determined not to join the drama class?

  Rue tries to evade the questions as best she can, grateful for the rapidity with which they’re asked, but it is still hard to evade questions from someone trying to crush her ribcage. Rue likes Mrs Krombel. The housekeeper has looked after Rue since she was a baby. When she was very small, she used to think Mrs Krombel was her real mother.

  Normally, Rue would make an effort to answer Mrs Krombel’s questions at least half-heartedly. Normally, her friend woul
d encourage her to do so, but all she wants now is to be alone and think. She needs to think. Still. Rue cannot simply leave and ignore Mrs Krombel, cannot flee into her room as she’d like. Ghost would, under the circumstances, have come up with an excuse that she could use, Rue is certain of it. But she has no such clever ideas and so Mrs Krombel waves a servant to take Rue’s suitcase up to her rooms and then ushers Rue into the small dining room that she always uses when she’s not eating with her parents.

  As it’s almost noon, Rue is starting to get a little hungry. Aside from the vague sense of discomfort in her bones — she should be doing something — she does not mind too much. And, at least as long as Mrs Krombel is focused on feeding her ‘proper’ food, she won’t have to answer any questions that she does not wish to answer, such as what’s wrong. Mrs Krombel doesn’t believe in ghosts. They were all right when Rue was a child, when imaginary friends are encouraged, but not when she is almost an adult. A few more years and she shall leave her fine academy behind with all she has learned and be introduced to society. A few more years and she will be free of the cloying house with its dark, faux-oak panelling and its new artificial darkness.

  When she asks Mrs Krombel about it, the woman explains that the darkness is designed to ‘enhance the sparkling beauty of human nature’. Amaranth has taken the idea that she is a shining star in the darkness of the galaxy a little too far. Rue looks down at her own ochre hands and wonders where she fits in her mother’s shining world, where her father fits. It makes her wish she knew more about how Amaranth and her father met.

  Rue almost asks Mrs Krombel about it, but she masks her attempt by stuffing a forkful of salad in her mouth. Some things are best left unknown, especially where her parents are involved. Besides, Rue already has one mystery on her mind. She doesn’t really need to add another. One is plenty. One is more than she fears she can handle. She wants to talk to her friend, or to someone who’d listen. She only has Mrs Krombel, who won’t.

  6

  RUE EXCUSES HERSELF after lunch by claiming to be very tired from the journey. It is not entirely a lie. She finds her suitcase lying on the bed and touches her hand to the scanner. It’s programmed to unlock only for her, so she has to put away her own clothes. It could easily be reprogrammed, but Rue doesn’t mind. She prefers her privacy and she likes sorting out her belongings.

  The dirty clothes go on the laundry pad to be picked up and the rest get put away. Her journal goes into the secret compartment that she’s made in her desk. Her parents would kill her if they found out she’d ruined a priceless artefact of real wood, but they’ll never know.

  Rue made the compartment herself. It was her friend’s idea, but Rue was the one who worked out how to do it and who actually did it. Over the years, she’s made quite a few hiding spaces in her rooms, uses them to store her tools where Amaranth can’t find them. She’s proud of her work. She’s good at making things, at working wood.

  When Rue has finished tidying up, she settles on the edge of her bed, letting the sunlight fall onto her face. She tries to concentrate on the glow in her thoughts. For now, she will not try to track down her friend. Not yet.

  Throughout the journey home she has lost more of the gentle glow that has always marked Ghost, has also been purposefully shutting it out lest the fretting eat out her heart and render her unable to function.

  Truthfully, Rue does not know if she will worry like that, but she cannot afford the risk. Her friend cannot afford it.

  So, for now, Rue wishes only to focus on Ghost’s well-being, on the connection itself and strengthening it again. Nothing more. Over the years she has learned that emotions help, though Ghost had never been as enamoured with the idea as Rue. It has been one of the few things that has ever created a great argument between them. Ghost has always refused to explain why making their bond stronger is a bad idea. She’s only ever told Rue that it is and she cannot explain in more detail. Rue has long since demurred and stopped asking, but today… Today Rue does not care. Today it is necessary.

  Reaching out for the glow that is Ghost’s presence, Rue tugs it closer to herself, wraps her mind around it even as the glow wraps itself around her mind in return. Rue fans it stronger as well as she can, though she has no idea what she is doing or how she is doing it. She is filled only with the knowledge that even so wrapped and so close her friend’s glow is barely more than a pinprick of light. It is not strong enough to chase away the shadows in Rue’s mind and, indeed, it is so dim that it is almost darkness itself. Heart hammering, Rue fans it and offers it bits of herself that she could never put into words. Breathing deeply, Rue imagines the glow brighter and stronger and fiercer.

  And then the pain hits. Ghost pain, as unreal as it is real and as distant as it is close. Stabs of it, shards of it, everywhere. Most importantly in the part she’d name a soul, for all that she can’t point to it on a biological chart. The pain halts her breath, stabs her chest. It sinks its fangs into her mind and stays there, chewing and throbbing. It wraps itself all around Rue’s thoughts, around Rue’s entire body. Darkness wraps around her core like – like –

  Rue cannot think, cannot breathe. Cannot feel her limbs, her numbing limbs, and a heaviness to her chest and the glow in her mind receding and fading and despite it all Rue grabs for her friend with all her immortal being, all her mortal self, and she cannot — cannot! — hold on and then –

  Nothing.

  Rue is lying on her bed. Her eyes are wet with tears and she cannot breathe, cannot breathe, cannot breathe. She is drowning in darkness, gulping for air, and dizzy with the light still streaming in through the large windows. And oh she wishes to run and tear the skin off her bones to get air into her chest, into her heart, into her lungs, into every part of her because she cannot she cannot she cannot and she will die because she can not. She cannot breathe and she has no voice with which to scream and nowhere to go. Nothing, none, no way to get out of her body nor her room nothing, no, no nothing will help and everything is spinning around her, pinching and punching from outside and in.

  Someway, she doesn’t know how doesn’t care to know how, Rue finds a way to get up. Her legs almost give way under her, but she is upright. Rue is swaying and wobbling and the world is turning upside down and she has no air, but it helps. It helps to be standing on her wobbly legs and Rue manages to sit herself back down, fold her head between her knees and breathe. One deep breath. Then another. Then another and another. She can do this. She’s been taught this. Her friend taught her how, her Ghost who is in so much pain that Rue cannot comprehend at all except that it hurts and oh gods let her not be too late. Let her find her friend again. Let her find the glow at the edges of her mind again.

  But Rue’s body has no more energy to respond. She is numb, dizzy, tired. Her flesh aches and burns dully all over. Laying herself back down on the synth-silk sheets, Rue tries to ignore her breathing. She knows herself. If she tries to calm down further, she will start to panic all over again, and that time she most probably will faint. Her friend’s glow is nowhere in her thoughts and, traitorously, Rue is glad of it. The pain is less. The connection has always faded when Rue needs it most, but it is all right. It has always come back and, at the moment, Rue does not have it within herself to care. All she knows is her body and the nausea that is rolling through her very soul.

  7

  RUE IS FEELING a little better by the time she has to start getting ready for dinner. She is still lying on her bed, breathing in and out gently. She is thinking about nothing and worrying about nothing. Her mind has gone on vacation somewhere far beyond her reach. It is scared of returning to her body, to the reality of what may or may not be happening to her friend and to the weight of fear and anxiety on her shoulders. She can feel her muscles tensing, clenching together in patterns she has never understood nor cared to understand save that her parents, if they saw, would disapprove. And so Rue drifts in nothing but the music of her breath.

  Still, the chime to warn for dinner sta
rtles her back from wherever her mind had gone. Dinner has not started yet, will not start for a short while. It is set deliberately early to allow time to change into suitable clothing. Rue pats the synth-silk around her until her hand hits on her abandoned phone-pad lying on the bedside table. She checks the calendar. Amaranth hasn’t added anything to it, not for tonight, so they are dining alone. That, at least, is a relief. Rue lets the phone-pad fall back onto the bed and forces herself upright with heavy limbs.

  She changes into one of the rich, poofy dresses that her father likes best and her mother considers utterly impractical for anything other than a ball. Rue is ambivalent. Truthfully, she prefers loose-fitting trousers, but she enjoys wearing the occasional gown in front of a mirror. This particular dress is new and, normally, Rue would care more about the ribbons sewn along her waist or that it is the first off-the-shoulder design Amaranth has ever allowed her. Normally, Ghost would be around to watch Rue twirl around in it, but not this time. And Rue feels utterly unbalanced. She doesn’t have the time to take a bath — decadent, decadent bath how she’s missed it — or even a shower. Dinner with her parents is never about food. It is always and ever about presentation and Rue’s just-calmed heart starts jumping about her throat as she struggles to finger-comb her curls into at least a semblance of something Amaranth would approve of. Sorting out hair is not one of the things that Rue’s hands are particularly skilled at and she douses herself in perfume that makes her nose itch to mask the fact that she has not thought to shower after her journey home.