Claire wanted to jump on his words, to say aha and victoriously explain that it made sense to think that smoke could leave its mark on smoke, but she couldn’t make the words come, because there were no words. No thoughts. Nothing but a tightening in her throat and a loosening of the muscles in her chest. She swallowed, hard, trying not to let the stinging sensation in her mouth spread to her eyes, but the effort was useless.
She mattered. Maybe. Almost. Kind of.
Not to her parents. Not to the endless string of people she’d tried to befriend. Not to the towel boy at the pool or any of the teachers who forgot her name on a regular basis. She didn’t matter to any of them, and she never would, but she maybe almost kind of mattered to Nix.
It was funny. The resurrection of a dream was almost as hard as watching it die.
Claire is crying.
Nix didn’t know what he’d said to make her cry. Every time he touched her, he hurt her. He didn’t deserve her, and now that she knew that truth, she must hate him. She had to.
“I’ll go.” He said the words quietly, hoping to ease her distress.
“Don’t leave.” She sounded panicked. “Not again.”
Claire swallowed, and his eyes traced the motion down her throat before flickering back up to her face.
“Please don’t leave.”
For a moment, Nix thought that she’d retreat or crumble. Instead, she stalked toward him, her tightly balled fist the only remaining cue to the anxiety he’d heard in her voice.
“You can’t tell me I matter and then leave like I don’t.” She didn’t stop until she was standing directly in front of him, and even though he knew he should take a step back—for her sake—he couldn’t.
Claire, unaware of how close to the pit she trod, coaxed her fingers out of their fist. Put her hand on his chest and shoved—not hard enough to move him, but hard enough that he could feel the warmth of her hand through his shirt. She might as well have reached into his chest and ripped out his heart.
“If I matter, then you stay,” she said, her voice low, her hand unmoving. “You don’t leave something that matters. You don’t throw that away.”
“You shouldn’t touch me, Claire.”
“And you shouldn’t say my name like that—like it matters. Like it’s more than just a word that belongs to thousands of other girls.”
It wasn’t just a word. Not to Nix. It was her. She was Claire, the one and only.
“Don’t you get it, Nix?”
He didn’t. He didn’t understand why she was still touching him. Why his heart was beating faster and faster under her palm. He didn’t understand why the sound of his name on her lips made it difficult to stand.
“I’ve never been anybody, Nix. I’ve never mattered—not to anyone. My parents barely even remember I exist. When I was little, they were always leaving me places. At the mall. At the store. They’d take me to the park and then forget and go home without me, and I’d sit under a tree or on a swing and just wait for them to come back. They used to have this big note on the back door that said CLAIRE in all capital letters, so that if they came home without me, they’d remember to go back.
“I made up this game to pass the time while I waited for them. I’d think up different scenarios, things that could happen, and I played them out in my mind. It was like watching a movie, but I controlled it. And in that world, I mattered. People never forgot me. They cared.”
He could see her as a little girl, sitting on a swing, pretending that she was somewhere else. He could see her talking to friends who weren’t there and reacting with the entire gamut of emotions to the situations in her head.
“I still do it. I still pretend that I’m somewhere else, that I matter, but I don’t, Nix. Nobody even sees me. I’m a ghost in my own house. Most of the time, my parents aren’t even there. I didn’t come home last night, and they probably aren’t even looking for me. And my friends haven’t noticed I’m gone, because I don’t have any friends.”
He didn’t believe her. He couldn’t imagine anyone forgetting Claire, couldn’t imagine losing her and not moving mountains to get her back. If the Sensors had taken her from him that day, he would have destroyed everything and everyone that stood between them to get her back.
“Do you know what I thought when you tried to kill me? The first time? I thought, How can somebody want me dead when no one even knows I’m alive?” Claire’s voice broke, and the sound of it broke him. “I thought, He’s the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen. I thought, Is this what it’s like to be looked at? And then you left, and I was nothing again. The police, my parents, my neighbors—nobody even believed me about you. They sent me out into the world, even though I knew you’d be back.”
Claire coming out of her house. Claire walking down the street. Claire’s eyes snapping up as he slipped out of the bushes.
Claire running toward him.
It couldn’t be true. He’d believed she was a Null because the effect she had on him wasn’t natural. He’d believed she could manipulate people into loving her, because he couldn’t stop himself from feeling that pull. He’d saved her from the Sensors, because he couldn’t let them take her.
The Sensors.
Nix stiffened. The day that they’d tried to take Claire away from him, to kill her themselves, the Sensors had missed. They’d tried to run her over, and they’d clipped her in the side instead.
Claire was hard to kill—not because she had the powers of a Null, but because she escaped notice altogether. The Society had sent Nix to kill her, because even a team of Sensors couldn’t quite pinpoint where she stood.
To find the girl there, in his zone, lazing about a swimming pool, right under his nose—Cyrus was embarrassed to have missed something like this up until now. Richard and Ione’s conversation at the institute floated back into Nix’s mind, slamming the door on all other possibilities. Well, these things do happen.
Why hadn’t he listened more closely to what they were saying? Nulls didn’t have a way of flying under the Sensors’ radar. Ione wouldn’t have shrugged off a Sensor living side by side with a Null for fifteen years and never recognizing her for what she was. Pure energy, unmarked by any human interaction, was a flaming beacon over a Null’s head. Nulls weren’t a challenge for a Sensor’s ability.
Nobodies were.