Rise An Eve Novel

they’d gone to the siege, if they were among the bodies strewn in the road those first few days? And if they were alive, if they were there, I didn’t know if I wanted to revisit it all—that time, that place. Caleb. Leif. I’d purposely had us go west before we reached the boys’ camp.
    I nodded. “It would add days to the journey, though. I thought—”
    “I didn’t mean we should go there,” Clara said, turning to me. Her expression was apologetic. “I wouldn’t want you to. I wouldn’t want any of us to—not after what happened to you.”
    A few of the girls fell asleep, offering one another Good night s, while Sarah and Kit went to retrieve more supplies from one of the bedrooms. Clara knelt down beside the duffel bag, rooting through it until she found the radio. “I was thinking . . .” she said, holding it up. “Is there any way we could send her a message? Just to let her know I made it out of the City. That I’m safe—that I’m with you. She’s probably a mess, thinking I was killed in the Outlands, wondering if I was taken by the rebels.”
    I turned the radio over in my hands, wondering who inside the Palace would be able to decode the message. I knew it was improbable that any of the rebels who still worked in the tower would risk revealing themselves to Rose—not now, and especially not to tell her that Clara, who for all anyone knew supported my father, was alive. I’d thought about it anyway, noticing how Clara’s mood had changed over the past week, the way she’d bring up her mother, or the City, wanting to know if there were any dispatches about the Palace. “Of course we can,” I said. “I just have to warn you—it’s likely she won’t get it. Now that Moss is dead, I don’t think any of the rebels would decode it and pass it along.”
    Clara rested her back against the wall, pressing her face into her hands. “We’ll go back eventually,” she said, not really directing it at me. “Eventually she’ll know I’m all right. I’m sure she’s figured out what happened.”
    “She must’ve,” I said. “We’ll have more resources once we reach Califia. Once you’re there we’ll have a better sense of what to do.”
    The last of the day’s sun came in through the door, catching Clara’s blue-gray eyes, lighting up their depths. “I shouldn’t have just left,” she said. “It was like I was trying to punish her or something.”
    “You didn’t have much time to decide,” I said.
    “It was always just us.” Clara worked at a knot in her thick gold hair, pulling at the tangle until it came undone. “Ever since the plague, ever since my father and Evan died. There have been so many times that I’ve just wanted to be free of her.”
    “You can’t blame yourself for leaving. What if my father had found out that you’d helped me that day? What then?”
    We were both quiet. I wanted to tell her that she’d be able to go back to the City, that we could both return, but as the days passed that seemed less likely. I’d noticed a change even in the time since we’d set up camp. The nausea had lifted. Beatrice had said it was normal, that now that I’d made it to three months I wouldn’t experience the morning sickness as I had before. My midsection felt swollen and full, and my clothes fit differently—even if it was noticeable only to me. Once we arrived in Califia I wondered if I’d ever leave or if I’d be bound there, indefinitely, unable to go anywhere else. How long did I have before my father found me again?
    Sarah and Kit passed, their arms filled with two more stacks of blankets. Clara wiped the skin beneath her eyes and stood, plucking a musty felt one from the top. I knelt down, about to tuck the radio back into the bag, where I’d kept it hidden, when Kit stopped by the door. She was staring at me, her face just visible in the late light. “What are you doing with that?” she asked.
    Clara clutched the blanket to her chest. “What do you mean?” she said. “It’s a radio, Kit. You’ve never—”
    “I know what it is.” Kit pulled at her long ponytail, wrapping it around her fingers. “But I thought that was Bette’s.”
    I scanned the lobby, at the girls curled up on the couches and floor. I could barely see them in the shadows, so far from the windows and the road. “Why would you think that?”
    Kit shrugged. “She told me she’d found it in the gas station, that it was hers. She was using it two nights ago.”
    I