The Unbound

I’m about to rewind further when the sharp slam of the locker room door causes me to drop the thread. I blink, pulling myself out of the past just as Amber rounds the corner. I frown and straighten, slipping the necklace into my shirt pocket and sliding my ring back on as she says, “There you are! We were begi

And before I can ask who we is, she leads me out into the lobby, where Wes and Cash and Gavin are waiting.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize anyone was waiting for me.”

“Wouldn’t be much of an ambassador—” starts Cash, but Wes cuts in.

“Thought you should probably know where they keep the food.”

“The pizza yesterday was my treat,” adds Amber. “First day tradition. But the rest of the time we have to make do.”

Gavin chuckles, and a few minutes later, once they’ve ushered me across the lawn to the cafeteria—or the dining hall, as Hyde prefers to call it—I understand why.

“Make do”? Hyde has one of the most extensive kitchens I’ve ever seen. Five stations, each with a course—each course with a regular, healthy, vegetarian, and vegan option. Appetizer through dessert, and a station dedicated to drinks. The only major failing, I realize as another yawn escapes, is the lack of soda. The lack, in fact, of anything caffeinated. My body’s begi

“Alas,” he says, “Hyde School is technically caffeine-free.”

“What about the coffees you brought yesterday?”

“Swiped them from the teacher’s lounge. Don’t tell.”

Looks like I’m on my own. It’s not so bad, I tell myself. I’ll be fine. I just need to eat something. And eating helps, for a little while, but half an hour later, when our trays are stacked on the Alchemist’s outstretched arms and I’m wading through a chapter of precalc, Owen’s voice begins to whisper in my head. It hums. The song reaches up from the back of my mind, out of my nightmares and into my day, wrapping its arms around me in an effort to drag me down into the dark. I close my eyes to clear it, but my head feels heavy, Owen’s voice twisting the melody into words and—

“Is that today’s homework?”

My head snaps up, and I find Gavin taking a seat on the step above me. I look down at the open math book in my lap and nod.

“I take it that’s not,” I say, gesturing to the book in his hands.

He shrugs. “You learn to work ahead here whenever you can. Because at some point, you’ll invariably fall behind.”

I hold up my own work. “Does that point usually come in the first week?”

He laughs. It’s a quiet, gentle laugh, not much more than an exhale, but it brightens his face. He pushes the glasses up his nose, and my chest tightens when I see a set of numbers drawn in Sharpie on the back of his hand. It’s such a stupid little thing, but it makes me think of Ben. Ben who drew a stick figure on my hand when I dropped him off at the corner near his school the day he died, who let me draw a stick-figure me on his hand to match before I let him go.

So many students make notes on their skin; so few of them look like my brother. “Mackenzie,” says Gavin, articulating each syllable.

“Yeah?”

“It’s not a big deal or anything, but you’re kind of staring at me.”

My gaze drops down to my work. “Sorry. You just remind me of someone.”

He cracks open his book and takes the pen from behind his ear. “Well, I hope it’s someone nice.”

Ben takes shape behind my eyes—not the way he was before he died, but the way he was the night I brought him back, the night Carmen opened his drawer and I woke him from his sleep. I see his warm brown eyes turning black as he slips, see him shoving me away with the strength not of a boy, but of a History. I see him crumple to the floor, a gold Archive key gleaming from his back, before Roland returns his small body to its shelf. I see the drawer closing and me on my knees, begging Roland to stop, but it’s too late, and the bright red Restricted bar paints itself across the drawer’s face before the wall of the Archive swallows my brother.

The math problems on the page blur a little. Fatigue is catching up with me, weakening my walls. Everything is begi

“Mackenzie?” presses Gavin softly. “Is it someone nice?”

And I somehow manage to smile and nod. “Yeah,” I say softly. “It is.”

I can’t breathe.

Owen’s hand is a vise around my throat.

“Hold still,” he says. “You’re making it worse.”

He’s pi

And he is. He’s carving lines across my body. Ankles to knees, knees to hips, hips to shoulders, shoulders to elbows, elbows to wrists.

“There,” he says, dragging the knife from my elbow down to my wrist. “Now we can see your seams.” If I could breathe, I would scream. My uniform is dark and wet with blood. It shows up red against the black fabric, like paint—splashed across my front, pooling beneath my body.

“Almost done,” he says, lifting the blade to my throat.

And then someone scrapes her chair against the floor and I snap back to English.

Only a few minutes have passed—the teacher’s attention is still on the essay she’s reading aloud—but it was long enough that my hands are trembling and I can taste the blood in my mouth from biting down on my tongue.

At least I didn’t scream, I think as I grip the desk and try to shake the last of the nightmare off. My heart is slamming in my chest. I know it’s not real. Just my imagination—today the role of Mackenzie Bishop’s fears will be played by the History who tried to kill her in a variety of ways. I still spend the rest of the day picturing Roland’s room in the Archive—the daybed with the black blanket, the violin whispering from the wall, the promise of dreamless sleep—and digging my fingernails into my palms to stay awake.

By the time school lets out, there are red crescents across both palms, and I shove through the doors of the building and onto the path, gasping for air. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. I feel like I’m cracking. Everything aches, the pain drawing itself into phantom lines.

Ankles to knees, knees to hips, hips to shoulders, shoulders to elbows, elbows to wrists.

“Hey, Mac!”

I open my eyes to find Wesley a little ways down the path, a sports bag slung over his shoulder. I must not be hiding the frayed nerves well enough, because he frowns. Cash is only a few strides behind him, talking to another senior guy.

“All good?” asks Wes as casually as possible.

“All good,” I call back.

Cash and the other guy catch up. They’re both carrying sports bags.

“Hey, Mac,” Cash says, shifting the bag on his shoulder. “Think you can find your way without me?”

“I think I can manage,” I reply. “The parking lot is that way, right?” I point in the opposite direction of the lot. Cash laughs. Wesley’s eyes are still hovering on me. I flash him a smile, Cash knocks his shoulder, and the three head off toward the fields.

I take a last, steadying breath and head through campus to the front gate and the bike rack. I unlock Dante and swing my leg over the bike, and I’m just about to head home when I see a girl in the lot.

I recognize her. It’s the girl from the pendant I found in the locker room. The one who clutched a steering wheel in a driveway at night sobbing and dodged the glass her mother threw at her head.

She’s a senior—gold stripes—and she’s standing with a group of girls in the lot, leaning up against a convertible and smiling with perfect teeth. Every inch of her has that manicured look that so often comes with money, and it’s hard to line this girl up with the one in the memories, even though I know they’re the same. Finally she waves to the others and strides up onto the sidewalk, walking away from Hyde’s campus.