Legend, Page 23

  The firing squad quickly files out. Two soldiers pick up the boy’s body and take him away to the cremation chambers.

  My hands start to shake.

  The boy is John.

  I whirl to face June. She watches me quietly. “That’s John!” I shout over the rain. “The boy is John! What was he doing out there, out in the yard?”

  June says nothing.

  I can’t catch my breath. I understand what she did now. “You didn’t take him back,” I manage to say. “You switched us instead.”

  “I didn’t do it,” she replies. “He did.”

  I limp back to her. I grab her by the shoulders and push her back against the chimney. “Tell me what happened. Why did he do it?” I shout. “It should’ve been me!”

  June cries out in pain, and I realize that she’s injured. A deep gash runs across her shoulder, staining her shirt with blood. What am I doing, yelling at her? I tear a strip of cloth from the bottom of my shirt and try to wrap her wound the way Tess would. I pull the cloth tight and tie it off. June winces.

  “It’s not that bad,” she lies. “A bullet scraped me.”

  “Are you hurt anywhere else?” I run my hands down her other arm, then gently touch her waist and her legs. She’s shivering.

  “I don’t think so,” she replies. “I’m okay.” When I push wet strands of her hair behind her ears, she looks up at me. “Day . . . it didn’t go according to my plan. I wanted to get both of you out. I could have done it. But . . .”

  The image of John’s lifeless body displayed on the JumboTron makes me light-headed. I take a deep breath. “What happened?”

  “There wasn’t enough time.” She pauses. “So John turned back. He bought us time and he went back to the hall. They thought he was you. He even wore your blindfold. They grabbed him and took him back to the firing squad yard.” She shakes her head again. “But the Republic must know by now that they made a mistake. You have to run, Day. While you can.”

  Tears stream down my cheeks. I don’t care. I kneel in front of June and clutch my head in both hands, then sink to the floor. Nothing makes sense anymore. My brother was probably worrying about me while I moped in my cell like a selfish brat. John put me first, always.

  “He shouldn’t have done it,” I whisper. “I don’t deserve it.”

  June’s hand rests on my head. “He knew what he was doing, Day.” Tears appear in her eyes, too. “Someone needs to save Eden. So John saved you. As any brother would.”

  Her eyes burn into mine. We stay here, unmoving, frozen in the rain. It feels like an eternity. I remember the night that set this all in motion, the night I saw the soldiers mark my mother’s door. If I hadn’t gone to that hospital, if I hadn’t crossed paths with June’s brother, if I’d found a plague cure somewhere else . . . would things be different? Would my mother and John still be alive? Would Eden be safe?

  I don’t know. I’m too afraid to dwell on the thought.

  “You threw everything away.” I bring a hand up to touch her face, to wipe rain from her eyelashes. “Your entire life—your beliefs . . . Why would you do that for me?”

  June has never looked more beautiful than she does now, unadorned and honest, vulnerable yet invincible. When lightning streaks over the sky, her dark eyes shine like gold. “Because you were right,” she whispers. “About all of it.”

  When I pull her into an embrace, she wipes a tear from my cheek and kisses me. Then she buries her head against my shoulder. And I let myself cry.

  THREE DAYS LATER.

  BARSTOW, CALIFORNIA.

  2340 HOURS. 52°F.

  HURRICANE EVONIA HAS FINALLY STARTED TO CALM DOWN, but the rain, heavy and cold, continues to fall in sheets. The sky churns in fury. Under all this, Barstow’s lone JumboTron broadcasts the news coming in from Los Angeles.

  EVACUATIONS MANDATED FOR:

  ZEIN, GRIFFITH, WINTER, FOREST.

  ALL LOS ANGELES CIVILIANS REQUIRED TO

  SEEK SHELTER AT FIVE STORIES OR HIGHER.

  QUARANTINE LIFTED ON LAKE AND

  WINTER SECTORS.

  REPUBLIC WINS DECISIVE VICTORY AGAINST

  COLONIES IN MADISON, DAKOTA.

  LOS ANGELES DECLARES OFFICIAL HUNT

  FOR PATRIOT REBELS.

  DANIEL ALTAN WING EXECUTED DEC. 26

  BY FIRING SQUAD.

  Of course the Republic would announce Day’s execution as successful. Even though Day and I know otherwise. Already the whispers have started in the streets and dark alleys, rumors that Day has cheated death once again. And that a young Republic soldier helped him do it. The whispers stay whispers, because no one wants to draw the Republic’s attention. And yet. They continue to talk.

  Barstow, quieter than inner Los Angeles, is still overcrowded with people. But the police here aren’t looking for us in the way police back in the metropolis must be. Railroad city. Ramshackle buildings. A good place for Day and me to take shelter. I wish Ollie could have come with us too. If only Commander Jameson hadn’t pushed the execution up a day. I’d wanted to let him out of the apartment, hide him in an alley and then go back for him. But it’s too late now. What will they do to him? The thought of Ollie barking at soldiers breaking into my apartment, scared and alone, brings a lump to my throat. He’s the only piece of Metias I have left.

  Now Day and I struggle through the rain back to the rail yard where we’re going to set up camp. I’m careful to stay in the shadows, even on this stormy night. Day keeps a cap on and tilted low over his eyes. I’ve tucked my hair inside the collar of my shirt and wrapped an old scarf—now soggy—across the lower half of my face. It’s about all we can do for disguises right now. Old railway cars litter the junkyard, faded and rusted with age. Twenty-six of them, if you count a caboose missing half of one side, all Union Pacific. I have to lean into the wind to keep from falling over. The rain stings my wounded shoulder. Neither of us says a word.

  When we finally reach an empty car (a 450 square foot covered hopper car with two sliding doors—one rusted shut, the other halfway open; must be designed for carrying dry bulk freight) safely tucked behind three others at the back of the yard, we climb inside and settle down in a corner. Surprisingly clean. Warm enough. Most important, dry.

  Day takes off his cap and wrings out his hair. I can tell his leg is hurting. “Good to know the flood warnings are still in place.”

  I nod. “Should be hard for any patrol to track us in this weather.” I pause to watch him. Even now, exhausted and messy and completely soaked, he has an untamed sort of grace about him.

  “What?” He stops wringing out his hair.

  I shrug. “You look terrible.”

  This makes Day smile a little—but it disappears as fast as it comes. Guilt takes its place. I fall silent. Can’t blame him.

  “As soon as the rain stops,” he says, “I want to head out toward Vegas. I want to find Tess and make sure she’s safe with the Patriots before we move on to the warfront to find Eden. I can’t just leave her behind. I have to know that she’s better off with them than with us.” It’s as if he’s trying to convince me that this is the right thing to do. “You don’t have to come. Take a different route to the warfront and meet me there. We can decide on a rendezvous point. Better just to risk one of us than both.”

  I want to tell Day that it’s insane to head for a military city like Vegas. But I don’t. All I can picture are Tess’s hunched, narrow shoulders and wide eyes. He’s already lost his mother. His brother. He can’t lose Tess, too. “You should go find her,” I say. “You don’t have to talk me into it. But I’m coming with you.”

  Day scowls. “No, you’re not.”

  “You need backup. Be reasonable. If something happens to you along the way, how will I know you’re in trouble?”

  Day looks at me. Even in this darkness, I can’t take my eyes off him. The rain has washed his face clean. The scarlet stripe of blood in his hair is gone. Only a few bruises remain. He looks like an angel, if a broken one
.

  I look away, embarrassed. “I just don’t want you to go alone.”

  Day sighs. “All right. We’ll go to the warfront and find out where Eden is, then cross the border. The Colonies will probably welcome us—maybe even help us.”

  The Colonies. Not long ago they had seemed like the greatest enemy in the world. “Okay.”

  Day leans toward me. He reaches up to touch my face. I can tell it still hurts him to use his fingers, and his nails are dark with dried blood. “You’re brilliant,” he says. “But you’re a fool to stay with someone like me.”

  I close my eyes at the touch of his hand. “Then we’re both fools.”

  Day pulls me to him. He kisses me before I can say more. His mouth feels warm and soft, and when he kisses me harder, I wrap my arm around his neck and kiss him back. In this moment, I don’t care about the pain in my shoulder. I don’t care if soldiers find us in this railway car and drag us away. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I just want to be here, safe against Day’s body, wrapped in his tight embrace.

  “It’s strange,” I say to Day later, as we both curl up on the floor. Outside, the hurricane rages on. In a few hours we’ll need to head out. “It’s strange being here with you. I hardly know you. But . . . sometimes it feels like we’re the same person born into two different worlds.”

  He stays quiet for a moment, one hand absently playing with my hair. “I wonder what we would’ve been like if I’d been born into a life more like yours, and you had been born into mine. Would we be just like we are now? Would I be one of the Republic’s top soldiers? And would you be a famous criminal?”

  I lift my head off his shoulder and look at him. “I never did ask you about your street name. Why ‘Day’?”

  “Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything’s possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.” He looks toward the railway car’s open door, where streaks of dark water blanket the world. “You try to walk in the light.”

  I close my eyes and think of Metias, of all my favorite memories and even the ones I’d rather forget, and I picture him bathed in light. In my mind, I turn to him and give him a final farewell. Someday I’ll see him again, and we’ll tell our stories to each other . . . but for now I lock him safely away, in a place where I can draw on his strength. When I open my eyes, Day is watching me. He doesn’t know what I’m thinking, but I know he recognizes the emotion on my face.

  We lie there together, watching the lightning and listening to the thunder, and waiting for the beginning of a rainy dawn.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Every time I flip through Legend, I am reminded of my fourteen-year-old self, writing by lamplight into the deep hours of every school night, blissfully unaware of how long the road to publication would be. Now I know how many people it takes to birth a book and how much of a difference their hard work makes. You all have my deepest gratitude:

  To my literary agent, Kristin Nelson, for first taking me on for a manuscript that did not sell and then never wavering in her faith while I wrote Legend, and for her brilliant insights into Legend that made it what it is now. I would not be here without you. To the wonderful staff at the Nelson Literary Agency for making sure nothing fell through the cracks: Lindsay Mergens, Anita Mumm, Angie Rasmussen, and Sara Megibow.

  To my editor extraordinaire, Jen Besser, for taking Legend under her care and polishing it into a story that shines far brighter than what I could have done on my own. I am so lucky to have you on my side!

  To the unbelievable team at Putnam Children’s and Penguin Young Readers that has embraced Legend so passionately and treated me like a princess—Don Weisberg, Jen Loja, Shauna Fay, Ari Lewin, Cecilia Yung, Marikka Tamura, Cindy Howle, Rob Farren, Linda McCarthy, Theresa Evangelista, Emily Romero, Erin Dempsey, Shanta Newlin, Casey McIntyre, Erin Gallagher, Mia Garcia, Lisa Kelly, and Courtney Wood—and to all the international publishers who have taken Legend under their wings.

  To my incredible entertainment agent, Kassie Evashevski, for finding Legend the best film home possible, and to Temple Hill Entertainment and CBS Films for being that aforementioned best film home. Isaac Klausner, Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, Grey Munford, Ally Mielnicki, Wolfgang Hammer, Amy Baer, Jonathan Levine, Andrew Barrer and Gabe Ferrari, you guys are amazing. Special thanks to Wayne Alexander for lending his brilliant contract expertise to Legend.

  To Kami Garcia and Sarah Rees Brennan for taking time out of their enormously busy and talented lives to offer a n00b writer two incredible blurbs, and to JJ, Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo, and Ellen Oh for your invaluable advice, kind words, and Twitter entertainment.

  To Paul Gregory for working his magic to make me look presentable in my author photo. To my deviantArt folks, who helped nurture my creativity since 2002 with their helpful and encouraging words. To the fam bam for always being there for me (and for all the delicious food).

  And most importantly, to Primo Gallanosa, who saw Legend in its earliest form (a two-sentence ramble), let me borrow his personality for Day and his name for the Republic’s evil dictator, suggested that June should be a girl, and listened to me day and night, through all my fear, excitement, sadness, and joy. Love you.