Page 51 of Privilege

20

VALE

I usherAmi past the guard stand and her attitude is perfect—cold, not forthcoming. Just gives her name and lets me say the rest. Her steady gaze is unnerving, so different from her giggles outside the complex.

She learns quickly, and she’s already used to how things are up here. I think about her wandering the market. Now she walks beside me, spine straight, her hands shoved in the pockets of her coat. As I stare out of the corner of my eye I can’t help but notice details of her profile.

Her freckles, still scattered over her cheeks all these years later. Her nose is straight, her chin pronounced. She moves with a smooth grace of practiced movement. Is she a dancer? She’s broad in her shoulders, her upper back a dramatic V to her trim waist like maybe she rock climbs or wrestles. She wears it well, her pretty face and wavy brown hair on her athletic body.

Ami clears her throat. “Vale, you’re staring.”

I scoff a little. “Am not, you wish.”What am I, twelve years old now?

There’s a small smile on Ami’s lips when her feet stop. In surprise I see we’re at the wide front door. She looks at me expectantly and I try to hide my confusion. How did we get here so quickly?

“You know what,” I start and falter, several things occurring to me at once. The minute we walk through those doors, my father will hear about it if he hasn’t already from the guard in the booth out front.

Also, it’s lunchtime and there will be men, lots of them, in the halls. I stray off the path, walking on the new June grass around the side of the building. Ami follows me without comment.

“Secret shortcut?” she asks under her breath.

“Something like that,” I tell her. She crouches a little, like a sneaky spy. “Stop it,” I say. I don’t need her making me laugh right now. I come to a locked side door, steel, no handles, with narrow panes of glass covered over by plywood. I pull a key from my pocket.

“You live in a high school,” Ami says.

“I live at the Forge,” I tell her, pushing the key in and pulling as I turn to open the side door, whichisin fact a secret shortcut.

“You know, I went to a high school like this,” she says. “In Baltimore.”

I roll my eyes as I pull the door open. “Not like this one, Ami.”

We’re in a back hall of what used to be the science wing. The labs have been converted into weapons storage. There are still a couple we use as labs, mostly for cookingup explosives and whatever else people are making—drugs, I don’t know. Nothing good.

The original doors have been replaced by steel doors with padlocks. The lockers in the hall have been ripped out but not replaced, leaving a mess of plaster and plywood hanging off the walls. I hadn’t thought about how it looks until I see Ami’s wide eyes. Like a high school out of the apocalypse.

I take her quickly past the locker rooms where a few guys call out to us. She’s got the hat pulled low over her eyes, and she stays right next to me. I couldn’t ask for better cooperation.

We’re quickly back to the offices and I unlock the door to my room, pulling her inside and locking the door with a sigh of relief.

Huh. I didn’t think about where I was taking her. I remember thinking we would go and look for Zeph. Talk to them together, get some answers, and check her story. Instead she’s in my room and I feel relief. At least she’s not out in the Forge with all the men staring at her.

Ami’s gazing at me. “Vale, you’re nervous.”

“No way,” I mutter.

She smiles knowingly. “Your breathing. Your shoulders. I can tell.”

I normally hate that PS stuff, monitoring everyone’s emotional state at any given moment. But it makes sense for her to be on alert.

“I’m just worried for you. My father…” I’m not sure what to say about him.

“Isaiah Adamson,” she murmurs.

“He’s not a good man. I know that. He might havebeen, a long time ago in Baltimore when my mom was still around.”

Ami makes a noise in her throat at the mention of my mom and it doesn’t help. I desperately push down the emotion before it can surface.

“The PS sent her to Iran. The negotiations in ’26.” There’s more to the story that I don’t want to discuss. I sit down heavily on the bed. Ami sits on the chair next to the desk, looking out the window at the water and the mountains. Her fingers trace over the empty desk.

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