Rise An Eve Novel

most of the girls from the compound. Since we’d arrived she’d always seemed exhausted, retreating to her room before dinner to sleep for hours, sometimes not waking until after the sun had gone down. “I won’t leave you again,” I said.
    “But I can’t, Eve.”
    “I know you can’t go,” I said. “Then I won’t either.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. She pressed her face into my neck, and in an instant we returned to the comfortable silence between us. At School we’d always been good at sharing space with quiet understanding, being alone together without saying a word.
    It was a long while before Clara’s voice called out from the beach. “We’re all finished,” she said, setting the last of the shirts down on the rocks. She came toward us, her expression softening. I could tell she was relieved to see us talking. “I was planning on training the girls this afternoon, assuming the horses are ready?” She looked to Pip.
    “They should be,” she said. “Ruby feeds them every morning. She can take you to the stable—it’s about a quarter mile from here.”
    “Good, then,” Clara said, drying her hands on the front of her pants. “Once the girls have the basics down we can go. Give me two days with them, maybe three, depending on the horses.”
    Clara had learned to ride in the City stables, spending the first few years training there. She’d taken me once, and I’d learned just enough to coax the horse around the giant dirt ring.
    “I’m going to stay here,” I explained, unable to look at her as I said it. “I’m going to stay with Ruby and Pip until it’s safe enough to leave for Califia.”
    “Just the three of you?” she asked. “What about the girls?”
    “You have to go without me. You know how to ride, and I can show you the route to take. It might even be safer in Califia without me there. They don’t know you’re related to my father.”
    Clara just stood there. She didn’t look away, as if she were waiting for me to rethink it, to take it back before it was set. “I’ll come as soon as I can,” I ventured. I owed something to Clara, too, for leaving the City with me. Either way, if I stayed or went, I was betraying one of my friends. “I just can’t leave them here.”
    “Right, I understand,” Clara said, but she looked past me, to where the beach met the trees. “I’ll be able to take them the rest of the way.”
    She stared at me, the silence settling between us. “It won’t be for long,” I said, but she was already turning away, walking quickly up the beach.

twenty-four
    BENNY AND SILAS HIT THE WATER FIRST, DIVING UNDER, MOVING as naturally as fish. The seconds ticked away as I stood there scanning the lake, waiting for them to resurface. When they finally appeared, they were several yards out, pushing each other as they played.
    “How’d they do that?” Bette asked. She carefully stepped out of her shoes, letting her feet sink into the sand. “They just disappeared.”
    Sarah splashed in easily, not stopping until the water came up to her knees. As she ventured further, her movements were less certain, her eyes locked on the rippling surface. “This is the hard part,” she called to Beatrice, who was standing behind me on shore, Clara beside her. “I can’t see my feet. This is where I start to lose it.”
    Their voices were somewhere outside me. I’d promised the girls that before they left I would teach them how to swim. I still remembered how Caleb had taught me, the first rush of the water as I went under, how it held me, my feet barely touching the sandy bottom. I’d read that when you missed someone you became them, that you did things to fill the space they’d left so you wouldn’t feel so alone. Standing here at the lake, months after he died, I knew it didn’t work. Doing these things—the same things he used to—only made me miss him more.
    I walked into the water, oddly comforted by how cold it was. My feet stung for a moment, the feeling waking me. As the rest of the girls started in, I turned, gesturing for Pip and Ruby to join us. They sat on a tree trunk just up the shore, a basket between them, picking the stems out of wild berries.
    “Headmistress Burns would not approve,” Ruby said, the faintest hint of a smile appearing on her lips. She combed a few strands of hair away from her face. “It’s too dangerous to swim. Haven’t you heard of those who drowned before the plague?” She imitated