Page 28 of The Circle

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THEN.

I’m squatting on my heels, back against the warehouse, hugging myself against the brisk Belfast wind as I stare out across the river in front of me at the sun in the clear blue sky. My leather jacket creaks, protesting against being tugged at by my arms, which are wrapped around my chest. Almost like I’m trying to straitjacket myself.

“Christine?” Danny’s voice snaps my attention to where he’s approaching.

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

I turn my head and look back out at the river. I’m not sure which river it is. I don’t know Belfast at all. I think I heard one of the kids currently being held inside the warehouse call it the Black… something. I dunno. I can barely understand them in the first place and they’re pretty doped up on Vicodin right now.

Jesus Christ, I hope we don’t have to kill them. I’m so fucking tired of killing people. I wonder what it would be like to save someone. I bet that feels awesome.

“Nothing,” I say back to Danny. “Waiting. What else is there to do?”

Danny steps up next to me, reaches down to stroke my hair, and I close my eyes. It feels so nice. I just want to feel nice all the time. I know that’s impossible, but a girl can dream.

He crouches and plops down beside me, his own jacket creaking and cracking, and he stares out at the river as well.

After a long moment he says, “He’ll be all right.” When I don’t respond, he says it again but with a slight adjustment. “He’ll be fine.”

“That’s not the same thing,” I point out.

“Yeah.”

We stare for a second longer before I ask, “Do you have any idea why all this has happened?”

“What?” Danny leans his head back against the brick. “Which part?”

“All of it.”

“All of it?” he repeats with a huffed laugh. “I mean… I’m not sure I even know where that would begin.”

“Yeah…” I trail off. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter anyway.”

I pick up a rock and throw it at the river in front of us. It skips. I feel like a kid for about two seconds. Like Danny and I are just a couple of kids waiting on our moms to come pick us up from school. Just hanging out and throwing rocks into water and shit.

And then, just as quickly, I feel like me again when Danny says, “If he doesn’t come back—”

“You just said he was going to be fine.”

“He is. But if…” The pause that fills the air as I wait for Danny to continue the thought feels like it’s going to strangle me. “I dunno,” he finally concludes.

“Do you think he… was trying to prepare us?”

“When? Earlier? At the hotel?” Danny asks. I nod. “I mean, we spent months together after you shot the guy off the edge of a fucking cliff. It’s not like we haven’t been alone without him before. So…”

“I know, but that’s not… I don’t mean like he needs to give us permission or anything. But do you think it was like him giving his… blessing?”

Danny starts to answer reflexively but then pauses. Stops himself. And thinks. We sit in silence, with the distant sounds of Belfast motoring along in the background and the much-nearer sound of the gears in Danny’s brain grinding harder and harder.

“I don’t know,” he finally says. Which is probably as frustrating for him to say as it is for me to hear. “Ever since we’ve all been back together…”

“He’s different,” I finish.

He is. Has been. In many, observable ways, he’s still the same old Alec. But in other, more subtle ways that you’d have to understand him as well as we do to pick up on, there’s some kind of change in him. He’s softer. More vulnerable.