Author: Sophie Jordan

The knock comes again.

“Go away!”

“Davy, you have a . . . guest.”

For a moment, hope zings through me that it’s one of my old friends. Then reality sinks in. No one wants to see me. And there’s no one I want to see. No one who can take this away . . . who can make me feel better, whole again.

“I don’t want to see anyone,” I call out.

Mom’s voice is coaxing through the door. “Davy . . . please . . .”

Guilt seeps inside me at what this is doing to her. What I have done. But then the emptiness in my heart finds that, too. Kills it so I’m numb again.

“No,” I say loudly, sharply, in a tone I never use with my mother. I’ve never needed to. I was the respectful daughter who made all the right choices and only good things ever happened to me.

Her footsteps fade away and I fix my gaze on the fan again, letting the whirring blades mesmerize me.

I start at another knock on my door. It’s different. Solid. Two raps in swift succession. I scowl and glance from the fan to my bedroom door before looking back at the fan again, intent on ignoring the person on the other side.

“Go away!”

I glimpse the swing of the door peripherally, from the corner of my eye. Annoyance flares in me that someone ignored me and invaded my solitude. Irate words burn on my tongue.

And then I turn and my annoyance pivots into a combination of shame and bewilderment.

Sean’s gaze arrows directly on me. He doesn’t give the rest of the room even a cursory glance. He stares only at me.

“What are you doing here?” I watch him warily.

“I heard that they came for you yesterday.”

“Yeah. So?” I sit up and swing my legs over the side of my bed, feeling less vulnerable that way. The sudden movement makes me dizzy and I close my eyes for a long moment, breathing through my nose. Dipping my head, I wait for the dizziness to pass. My hair falls forward, the blonde strands covering much of the white gauze wrapped around my neck, but not all. Not enough. It will never be enough.

“I thought I would check on you.”

I open my eyes and glare at him. “Doesn’t that go against your philosophy? Never get involved. . . . Be strong and tough and all that . . . an island unto himself.”

He crosses his arms but otherwise gives my taunt no reaction.

I notice Mom then. She hovers behind Sean, looking wide-eyed and uncertain, her hands locked together in a death grip, her knuckles white. Her mouth parts and I know she’s on the verge of asking if it’s okay for this boy to be here—an imprinted carrier. My lips curl in a smirk. A little late for that. She already let him up. I guess that just indicates how at a loss she is . . . how desperate.

Of course, I could tell her it’s not okay. That he’s just as dangerous as the imprint on his neck declares. My gaze fixes on the wide band around his neck, seeing it in a new light. Now, more than ever, I want to know what he did to deserve it . . . if he did anything at all.

“It’s fine, Mom,” I say before she can find her voice. Rising, I stride across the room. Sending her a reassuring nod, I close the door, giving me privacy with Sean. Normally, my parents don’t let me close the door with a boy in my room. But nothing is normal anymore.

I move back a few steps into the room, still a careful distance from him, waiting for him to say something.

“You need to remove that gauze.”

I wait a beat and cross my arms across my chest, mirroring him. “So I’ve been told. You didn’t need to come here to tell me that.”

“So, what? You just don’t care? You want to get an infection?” He shakes his head almost like he’s disgusted with me. And that irks.

He moves into my adjoining bathroom. I watch his back as he stands at the sink and turns the water to warm. A bottle of antiseptic still sits on the counter where Mom left it, along with some little nail scissors.

He pulls out the bench in front of my vanity chair and motions me into the bathroom.

I don’t move.

He sighs, sounding tired. “Get in here.”

“What?” I snap. “Are we friends because we’re alike now? Is that it?”

His gaze meets mine in the mirror. “First of all, just ’cause we share the same tattoo hardly makes us alike. I still have an identity. So do you. There are plenty of imprinted carriers out there. Don’t mistake us as all the same. Some of them, probably most of them, are just as dangerous as the Agency says.”

And what is he? Is he truly dangerous?

“And secondly . . .” His voice fades and I wait, expecting him to add that we are friends now. With a start, I realize I want to hear him say that. I want a friend. I need a friend. Now more than ever.

“And secondly?” I prompt, feeling stupidly hopeful.

“Secondly, stop asking so many questions . . . hurry up and get over here. I’m already late for work.”

I drop my arms to my sides and move, lifting one leg after another. Grudgingly, I sink onto the cushioned bench and stare at myself in the mirror, seeing what he sees.

My hair is a mess, the light strands lank and tangled—in need of a good wash. The gauze around my neck is no longer a pristine white. Rusty streaks stain the bandage. I would never have been caught dead looking like this before. Before. “Before” doesn’t exist anymore.

Before, I looked like someone who had it all together. In control. I inhale. I couldn’t be that girl anymore, but I could take back some of that control. I could stop simply allowing everything to happen to me.

It’s time I decide what happens next.

Gazing at Sean’s profile, I get the impression, wrong or right, that nothing happens to him without his consent. Even with the imprint on his neck, he’s somehow in control.

I inhale a deep breath and face myself, confront the me in the mirror that I’ve been avoiding for the last twenty-four hours. I nod at him.

He squats next to me, examining my neck. His voice cuts through me so no-nonsense that I blink. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“How come you haven’t run away?” I hear myself ask, my voice small and faraway sounding.

I tremble as Sean slides the hair back off my shoulder, clearing it away from my neck. He shrugs as he concentrates on me. “Thought about it. But it’s not like I can run to anything better. We’re in the national registry. We can’t get into a college or get a decent job. They screen for everything. You can’t hide from this. Why? You thinking of running?”

I shrug. Maybe. After today, running away has its temptations.

He glances around my room again. “You won’t find anything better out there than what you have here. Off the grid . . . or in the cities.” He shakes his head. “That’s a brutal existence.”

His touch is gentle, at great odds with his words and tone of voice. He peels back the edge of the gauze, flicking enough material away from my neck so that he can snip at it with the scissors.

I hiss as he peels it back.

He pauses. “Sorry. It’s sticking.”

And he doesn’t say it, but I hear the mild accusation in his voice. I know it’s my fault. Because I left the wrapping on too long.

“Just rip it off.” I clench my fingers around the bench as I say this.

He gives me a look. His lips twitch and he breaks into an almost smile. The closest I’ve seen from him, and my stomach does an odd little tremble. “It’s not like a Band-Aid, tough guy. I need to ease it off, okay?”

“Oh,” I murmur, and steel myself for the slow tug and pull of the gauze on my raw skin.

“There,” he announces, dropping the soiled fabric on my counter. “Now I’ll just clean it up for you.”

I stare at myself in the mirror—at my neck. There’s a lot more ink than I expected even though I’ve seen it before. On others. On Sean. It’s one thing to know, and another thing to know. To see it on yourself.

I know what an imprint looks like, but the band looks so thick, the H so large and stark against my neck. Tiny flecks of crusted blood mar the tattoo. The skin around the collar of black is an angry red.

“It looks bigger than yours.” Turning my neck from side to side, I scrutinize it almost clinically. It’s hard to connect the girl in the mirror with an imprint around her neck as me. It’s like I’m watching someone on television. Or looking at someone else from a distance, across the street. A stranger with greasy hair and wild eyes. An inked collar with an obscene circled H stamped on her neck.

“Your neck is just smaller. It’s the same as mine.”

“That makes sense.” I nod once and marvel that I can talk so calmly—appear so normal about this.

“Let me clean it up.” He wets a washcloth and gently wipes at the tender flesh. I wince but don’t utter a complaint. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Will I?” I say this curiously. In a voice that doesn’t even sound like me. And maybe it’s not me. Maybe the real Davina Hamilton is dead, left back there in that room. Replaced by the girl in the mirror. A shadow of myself. A new creature without lip gloss or tidy, brushed hair . . . with an ugly tattoo on her neck.

He flicks me a glance as he wraps a hand around my hair and lifts it from my neck to dab at my nape. “You can’t let this define you . . . beat you.” Dropping my hair, he trickles astringent onto a fresh washcloth. My gaze catches on his bicep, on the tattoo there, the one he wanted to have. I watch as it moves over his skin with his actions, the pattern crawling and alive. Then I watch his face again. He studies my neck intently, eyebrows drawing close over his deeply set eyes. Leaning closer, he lightly presses the cloth against my neck, not even glancing at me as he treats the skin.

Don’t let it define me?

Isn’t that the purpose of it? The point? To define me for everyone who crosses my path?

“You need to keep going,” he continues, saying more than he’s ever said before. For once, I’m the quiet one, and he’s the one with all the words. “Go to school . . . do whatever else it is you do.”

“I don’t have anything else,” I say through numb lips. No friends to hang out with. No job. All my extracurricular activities at school . . . voice, orchestra, student council . . . that’s gone. Ripped from me like everything else. “Just school. The Cage.” I laugh bitterly. “My friends . . . my boyfriend. They’re the ones who did this to me. So. Yeah. My social calendar is pretty open.”

“What do you mean?” His eyes lock on my face.

I lift one shoulder in an awkward shrug and then wince at the sudden sting in my neck. “I had a fight with my boyfriend. . . . Ex,” I amend.

“How’re he and your other friends responsible for this?”

“I mentioned the fight with my boyfriend, yes? Well, I slapped him. There were plenty of witnesses. Pollock knew all about it. That’s why he came for me. I’m obviously violent,” I mock, air quoting the word with my fingers.

“Why did you slap him?”

I stare at him for a moment. “You’re the first person to even ask me that.” To even care why.

“Why?”

I sigh and look away. “He was being a jerk.”

He places a single finger under my chin and forces me to look at him again. “Why?” he repeats evenly.

A single word, but it hangs between us, demanding the truth. Painful as the memory is, the words tumble heavy and hard from my lips, like marbles falling to the ground. “Since I turned out to be a carrier, he thought I should fall gratefully into bed with him.”

Sean says nothing as we stare at each other. The sensation of his fingertip on my chin makes me hyperalert of him, of our nearness. “I guess you probably think I’m silly to get offended over something like that.”