The Ask and the Answer

My girl,

Now is the time you must choose.

Can we count on you?

The Answer

Not even a name, not even her name.

Almost three weeks I've had this note. Three weeks and nothing, so maybe that's how much they think they can count on me. Not another note, not another sign, just stuck here in this house with Cori

And those are the lucky ones, the ones who aren't in prison.

And every third or fourth day, BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! And more are arrested and more are sent here. And there's no word from Mistress Coyle. And no word from the Mayor.

No word about why I'm being left alone. You'd think I'd be the one who'd be taken in first, the one who'd have interview after interview, the one who'd be sitting rotting in a prison cell.

"But nothing," I whisper. "Nothing at all."

And no word from Todd. I close my eyes. I'm too tired to feel anything. Every day, I look for ways to get to the communications tower but there are soldiers everywhere now, way too many to find a pattern, and it only gets worse with each new bomb.

"I've got to do something," I say out loud. "I have to or I'll go crazy." I laugh. "I'll go crazy and start talking to myself."

I laugh some more, a lot more than how fu

And there's a knock at my window.

I sit up, my heart pumping.

"Mistress Coyle?" I say.

Is this it? Is it now?

Is this where I have to choose?

Can they count on me?

(but is that Noise I can hear...?)

I get to my knees on the bed and pull the curtains back just far enough to look through a slit outside, expecting that frown, those fingers going over her forehead-

But it's not her.

It's not her at all.

"Todd!"

And I'm throwing back the sash and lifting up the glass and he's leaning in and his Noise is saying my name and I'm putting my arms around him and dragging him inside, actually lifting him off the ground and pulling him through my window and he's climbing up and we fall onto my bed and I'm on my back and he's lying on top of me and my face is close to his and I remember how we were like this after we'd jumped under the waterfall with Aaron right behind us and I looked right into his eyes.

And I knew we'd be safe.

"Todd."

In the light of my room, I see his eye is blackened and there's blood on his nose and I'm saying, "What happened? Are you hurt? I can-"

But he just says, "It's you."

I don't know how much time passes with us just lying there, just feeling that the other is really there, really true, really alive, feeling the safety of him, his weight against mine, the roughness of his fingers touching my face, his warmth and his smell and the dustiness of his clothes, and we barely speak and his Noise is roiling with feeling, with complicated things, with memories of me being shot, of how he felt when he thought I was dying, of how I feel now at his fingertips, but at the front of it all, he's just saying, Viola, Viola, Viola.

And it's Todd.

Bloody hell, it's Todd.

And everything's all right.

And then there are footsteps in the hall.

Footsteps that stop right outside my room.

We both look toward the door. A shadow is cast underneath it, two legs of someone standing just on the other side.

I wait for the knock.

I wait for the order to get him out of here. I wait for the fight I'll put up. But then the feet walk away. "Who was that?" Todd asks.

"Mistress Wyatt," I say, and I can hear the surprise in my own voice.

"And then the bombs started going off," I finish, "and he only called for me twice, early on, to ask me if I knew anything and I didn't, I truly didn't, and then that was it. Nothing. That's all I know about him, I swear."

"He ain't barely spoken to me since the bombs neither," Todd says, looking down at his feet. "I was worried it was you setting 'em off."

I see the bridge blowing up in his Noise. I see me being the one to do it. "No," I say, thinking of the note in my pocket. "It wasn't me."

Todd swallows, then he says simply, clearly, "Should we run?"

"Yes," I say, betraying Cori

"Where, tho?" he asks. "Where is there to go?" I open my mouth to answer-But I hesitate.

"Where are the Answer hiding?" he asks. "Can we go there?"

And I notice some tension in his Noise, disapproval and reluctance.

The bombs. He doesn't like the bombs either. I see a picture of some dead soldiers in the wreckage of a cafe.

But there's more, too, isn't there? I hesitate again.

I'm wondering, just for the briefest moment, just as if it's a fly I'm brushing away, I'm wondering-I'm wondering if I can tell him.

"I don't know," I say. "I really don't. They didn't tell me in case I couldn't be trusted." Todd looks up at me.

And for a second, I see the doubt on his face, too.

"You don't trust me," I say, before I think to stop.

"You don't trust me neither," he says. "Yer wondering if I'm working for the Mayor right now. And yer wondering what took me so long to find you." He looks down sadly at the floor again. "I can still read you," he says. "Nearly as well as my own self."

I look at him, into his Noise. "You wonder if I'm part of the Answer. You think it's something I'd do."

He doesn't look at me, but he nods. "I was just trying to stay alive, looking for ways to find you, hoping you hadn't left me behind."

"Never," I say. "Not ever."

He looks back up at me. "I'd never leave you neither."

"You promise?"

"Cross my heart, hope to die," he says, gri

"I promise, too," I say and I smile at him. "I ain't never leaving you, Todd Hewitt, not never again."

He smiles harder when I say ain't but it fades and then I see him gathering his Noise to tell me something, something difficult, something he's ashamed of, but before he does, I want him to know, I want him to know for sure.

"I think they're at the ocean," I say. "Mistress Coyle told me a story about it before she left. I think she was trying to tell me that's where they were going."

He looks back up at me.

"Now tell me I don't trust you, Todd Hewitt."

And then I see my mistake.

"What?" he says, seeing the look on my face.

"It's in your Noise," I say, standing up. "Todd, it's all over your Noise. Ocean, over and over and over again."

"It ain't on purpose," he says but his eyes are widening and I see the door of his cell left unlocked and I see a man in the cell with him telling him where I am and I see asking marks rising-

"I'm so stupid," Todd says, standing, too. "Such an effing idiot! We need to go. Now!"

"Todd-"

"How far away is the ocean?"

"Two days' ride-"

"Four days' walk then." He's pacing now. His Noise says Ocean again , clear as a bomb itself. He sees me looking at him, sees me seeing it. "I'm not spying on you," he says. "I'm not, but he musta left the door open so I'd-" He pulls his hair in frustration. "I'll hide it. I hid the truth about Aaron and I can hide this."