“Let’s talk in my office,” Richard says when he sees Corina walk me back across the pool deck.
I’m scared. However weird this place is, the thought of being kicked out makes me feel even worse. “Okay,” I say.
He smiles gently and gestures toward the gym door with his chin. “It’s the first door on the right on the other side of the basketball court.” He nods agreeably. “I’ll be right there.”
I wait for him to show me, but he doesn’t.
He just looks at me encouragingly. “I’ll be right there, kiddo.”
I shrug and walk through the door into the gym. I can feel him and Corina waiting until I’m out of earshot before they start to talk about me.
Richard’s office looks like a cross between a man cave and a school principal’s office. There’s a desk covered with papers and a couple of padded chairs that face it, and the walls are covered with posters—Einstein with his tongue out, Seahawks, Mariners. There’s a blown-up photo of a Locust, too, that keeps drawing my eye. Coldplay, AntiSeems, and an enormous Taylor Swift round out the collection.
Richard seems like a nice enough guy, but I can’t say we see eye to eye musically.
There’s an old-school 2-D TV tucked into a bookshelf and a strange-looking box thing underneath it that I don’t recognize. I’m wondering whether I can get a closer look at it when Richard comes in.
“Hey, man,” he says as he comes through the door. He pats me on the shoulder as he passes me on the way to his desk. “That was quite a thing.”
“Is Paul okay?”
Richard shakes his head as he sits down. “Paul’s fine—you just knocked the wind out of him.”
“I didn’t mean to . . .”
“I bet.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m sure you didn’t.”
This isn’t going the way I want it to. He’s not yelling at me or telling me the ways I’ve screwed up. “Damon started it.”
“Yeah . . .” Richard’s voice is kind, filled with understanding. “I watched the feed. There’s no doubt.”
I can hear the enormous but hanging off the end of his sentence. “But?”
“But in the end you lost your temper, Alex.” He appraises me like a doctor.
I shrug. I don’t want to tell him he’s right.
“If Damon pinching your patch can set you off that much, what are you going to do when the fate of the world is on your shoulders—you’re not going to be useful to anybody, including us.”
My heart stops. He’s going to kick me out. My world goes black. Images of the street, prison, being insane. “Don’t,” I whisper. “I won’t . . .”
But he waves me off. “You’re not getting out that easy. I know you understand that this can’t happen again?”
“I do.”
He nods. “I trust you. You’re going to be on your game for me, right?”
Whatever was sitting on my heart before moves. I can breathe again. “Yessir.”
He cocks an eye at me. “Damon’s not going anywhere.”
“It’ll be cool. I won’t start anything.”
“Or finish anything?”
I shake my head. “But Damon’s getting in trouble, too, right?”
He doesn’t answer my question. Instead he stands up. “You going to be alright?”
I nod. He offers me his hand. I stand and take it. He surprises me by pulling me in for a hug and I surprise myself by returning it. He lets me hold him for a second and then separates himself. “You’re going to be fine,” he whispers. “You’re safe here.”
I want to tell him that I know that, but I can’t make the words happen.
When he lets go, I ask him the question that’s been floating in the back of my mind since yesterday. “Richard?”
“Yeah?”
“Why didn’t I warn myself about my parents? When I wrote the letter?”
He studies me, biting his lip as he thinks. “The Gentry’s Oracle device? The one that chooses your targets? It sees all the possibilities, Alex. When we started evaluating you, it saw all the ways your life and the lives of all the people around you could play out.”
Too much. “It chose to let my parents be murdered?!”
He leans back against his desk, out of my arms’ reach, before he says more. “Alex, your parents were going to die in every future the Oracle saw. As painful as it is to accept, having it happen like this was the least terrible way for everybody, including them.”
“Bullshit.” The word hurts coming out because my throat is so tight, but even while I’m saying it, I’m remembering what my Voice told me before the patch sent her away.
Remembering what I said to me in my letter.
He sighs, shrugs, shakes his head slowly. “There was no saving them, Alex, and trying to save them could have meant that you wouldn’t be here right now and that we would all die an even more horrible death at the hands of the Locusts. Your parents’ murders aren’t your fault, and what you eventually write will save your life and your freedom and allow you to come here to be with us as part of the team whose work means the human race has a chance to survive.”
I nod because I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m still not writing the letter.
“I’m going to meet with you and Damon this afternoon when you’ve both cooled off a bit more.” He nods. “Right now, go find Paul. Tell him you’re sorry.”
Paul’s in the commons talking with Corina when I come back. She raises her eyebrows at me to see if I’m okay. I smile, pretend that I am.
“I’m gonna let you two talk.”
I watch her go up the hallway to the bunks before I turn to Paul, who’s looking up at me from the couch.
My hands are sweaty, so I wipe them on my pants.
“I . . .” I start, but I don’t know exactly what to say. “I’m sorry I hit you.”
He nods, starts untucking his shirt from his pants. “Do you want to see my bruise? It’s gonna be a good one.”
I don’t want to see his bruise. I feel bad enough without seeing anything at all. “Nah. I . . . Look, I am sorry. I didn’t know it was you, I thought—I wasn’t . . .”
He stops pulling at his shirt. “You’re sure you don’t want to see it? It’s gonna look just like your elbow.” He tucks his shirt back. “Seriously, though . . . it did hurt.”
“I didn’t even know it was you.”
He waits a moment, then lets out a breath. “I know.” Then: “It’s cool. I’ve had worse knocks that I deserved less.”
“Nah, I shouldn’t’ve done it.”
He smiles and it gets quiet. I don’t know what to do, so I start looking at the door to the dormitory, but I don’t know if it’s right to leave.
Paul follows my eyes, then looks over at the games along the wall. He gestures with his chin at a motocross VR near the pinball machines. “You wanna race?”
He ends up beating me five times before I win once. I try and tell myself it’s because I feel bad for elbowing him, but the fact is that he’s just flat-out better at it than I am.
After dinner, back in the room: “We’re cool, right?”
He looks at me, shrugs. “Yeah, why? You’d rather I was mad at you?”
“No . . .” But in a way, I would. As is, I just feel bad with nobody to get mad at for it.
“Good.” He points at my bed. “Now, lights out, Neo. You gotta witness tomorrow.”
Ridiculous. “Why? It’s not even eight.” I haven’t had this conversation since I was in elementary school.
“Why, Morpheus.” He raises his eyebrows at me. “Because you’re witnessing tomorrow and there’s nothing that’ll suck your energy like time travel.”
“I’m not calling you Morpheus.”
He grabs my toothbrush from the shelf above my desk and hands it to me. “G’night, Neo.” He’s smiling.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” He stops smiling and nods his head. “Seriously. You need to sleep.”
I don’t want to give in, but it’s not like I have much else I was going to do tonight. And I guess I am pretty tired.