CAT GREW PALER BY the second, and in no time at all, his face was the color of chalk. He was slipping away.
I heard Hope faltering down the hallway. I hoped she could catch up with Chancellor Maddox, but at that particular moment I almost didn’t care. What I cared about was Cat, my friend Cat, who I’d discovered dying in the desert and who’d taught me more about myself than anyone I’d ever known.
And now he was dying before my eyes. As Scylla helped put pressure on the wound, I began to babble.
“Remember that day?” I said to Cat. “We found you fried like an egg, wearing that black T-shirt. That’s what we called you at first: Black T-Shirt. Later we realized Cat was a better name.”
Blood flowed from Cat’s chest.
“And then you kept saving us. The wolves and that shot at the propane tank and that time you got Sergeant Dekker with your arrow when we went back to Camp Liberty. Remember? You even lost your arm, but you came back stronger than ever. And this’ll be the same. We’ll get some doctors and they’ll fix you up and you’ll be the same old Cat, better than ever.”
His eyes told me he didn’t believe me. Our fingers clutched when his hand flailed forward.
“You’re going to recover,” I said, still talking nonstop, my throat suddenly tight. “And we’re going to do all those things we said we’d do: eat all kinds of good food and you’re going to teach me how to hunt and we’re not going worry about Brown Shirts anymore.”
His eyes fluttered closed.
“And maybe I’ll even get you to read. You’ll probably love it once you start—it’s just getting started that’s sometimes tough. And I’m guessing you’ll really like Jack London and Jules Verne and who knows what else.”
His chest struggled to rise. When he exhaled, there was a bubbling sound.
“Okay, you rest,” I said. “When you wake up, you’ll see. The doctors will have you patched up and we’ll get a bunch of us and rebuild that cabin at Frank’s place. And we’ll fish and hunt and we’ll plant a garden and no one’ll bother us and we’ll start our own community, far away from all the politicians and the soldiers and the Chancellor Maddoxes of the world. And we’ll build another library, just like Frank’s, and it’ll be perfect. Life’ll be perfect.”
Cat’s mouth parted, and I realized he was trying to say something. I leaned in to hear and I remembered: this was exactly how we’d met back in the No Water, him struggling to talk and me placing my ear against his cracked and bleeding lips. Just like then, he mumbled something, but I couldn’t tell what.
“What’s that, Cat? I didn’t get what you said.”
His lips moved slowly, as though putting every last effort into producing sound. When he spoke, it was the vaguest of whispers, all sandpapery and rough—but I understood.
“Book . . . and Hope . . . together.”
I slowly drew back and looked at him. Was it my imagination, or was there a smile on his face? If it existed, it was brief and fleeting. A moment later, his head lolled to the side, his chest stopped rising, the blood stopped spilling out.
He was still.
Cat—my friend Cat—who told us what was really going on in the world and who showed us how to live our lives, was dead.
I buried my face in his chest and sobbed.