The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Twenty-Seven

When dinner is over and everyone starts to clear out of the mess hall, she surprises me by grabbing my hand.

She pitches her voice low so that only I can hear it. "You shouldn't give them false hope. You shouldn't comfort them."

I try to pull away, but she's stronger than I realise; she holds me firm, her fingers grinding my bones together.

"Go away, Cole," I say, trying to sound bored, but my heart is racing.

Cole knows something.

She has information that I need.

If she's trying to tell me something, I should probably listen.

"I am trying to help you," Cole whisper-snaps, glancing around.

Instinctively I look too – for Fletcher. He's the real threat, not Cole.

But I don't see him.

By now my friends have realised something is wrong, and they're coming back to defend me, Taffy in the lead. I hold up a hand to stop them.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

Indecision flashes across Cole's face, and for a hopeful moment I think she's actually going to tell me something useful. Then she glances at my friends. Her expression shuts down and she lets go of my hand.

"Forget it," she says.

I lean close, getting into her personal space. "Cole, what do you mean?"

I wish I could tell her that I know something, that she can trust me to fill in the blanks, that maybe we can help each other, but then I remember the quiet threat in Fletcher's voice when he caught her snooping in Records. He has a greater hold on her than I ever could. She will be loyal to him, which means I can never trust her.

So when she walks away, I don't try and stop her.

But I can't stop thinking about what she said.

Why would Cole want to help me?

Cole and I have never liked each other, even before her attitude took a really nasty turn these last few months, so why the sudden concern?

Why shouldn't I comfort my friends?

That, more than anything else, makes me uneasy.

"Maybe I should tell her that I know she knows something," I say to Roan the next day, as I lie on the grass with my head in his lap, looking up into the beautiful blue sky of his eyes.

"It's too risky," he says at once.

I've thought the same thing ever since finding out about her and Fletcher, and for good reason. I still do think that, but I haven't been able to shake Cole's words from my mind. As a result, I didn't sleep much last night, and maybe my common sense is starting to fray.

"It's just so frustrating," I say, pressing a fist to my forehead. "She's right there with information we need, and we can't get it out of her."

"We don't need her or her info. We have Rosie," Roan reminds me.

"How's she getting on?" I ask.

"You can ask her yourself if you like." He fishes his phone out of his pocket.

I know that these things are commonplace on the outside – everyone has one – unlike the devices that Rosie is building, but they are still so alien to me. My only experience with them comes from the times that Roan used his to show me pictures of the world.