Page 119 of Across the Universe (Across the Universe 1)

“Let me go,” I say. He’s gripping me just where the men held me down before Harley saved me, his fingers pushing into the same bruises.

“Harley painted this,” Orion says in his soft voice. I stop trying to pull away from him and notice the muslin-covered canvas in his hands. “He told me to give it to you when I gave him some wire. ”

“What is it?” I ask, curious.

“A painting. For you. ”

Orion releases my wrist and presses the canvas into my arms. As I look down at it, he fades into the shadows.

I step back into my room, set the canvas up on my desk, and peel off the muslin, which sticks a little to the still-wet paint. It is the most beautiful painting I’ve ever seen. It’s a self-portrait—Harley floats in the center of the canvas, surrounded by sky and stars, his face upturned in an expression of rapturous joy, his arms spread wide as if he’s about to wrap me in a hug. A tiny koi fish swims amongst the stars around his ankles.

My fingers tremble as I touch the painted Harley’s face, but I snatch them back: the paint isn’t fully dry. In his face, I see something I’ve only ever seen once before, and that was when he was talking about Kayleigh.

Somewhere, hidden under the paint, I understand what Harley meant by giving me this.

He was saying goodbye.

So when Elder bursts into my room a moment later to tell me that Harley has killed himself, I am not surprised.

70

ELDER

THERE IS SOMETHING WITHIN AMY BEYOND TEARS. SHE NODS mutely, as if she already knows it has happened. She grows dimmer, but she does not break as she did last night. She steps back to let me into the room.

And then I see it.

“Harley,” I breathe. My hands are trembling.

“Orion gave this to me,” Amy says. “Harley . . . I guess he did it before . . . ”

It is so realistic, more realistic than Amy can ever know. When the hatch pulled him out, the rush of movement had flattened his hair more, and there was more surprise in his face, and yes, pain—but in that brief second before the hatch door had closed and before the ship had moved beyond him and before space extinguished him, that was the look on his face, exactly that joy.

“You can have it,” Amy says. “You were closer to him than I was. I’m not sure why he gave it to me and not you. ”

I notice the little fish swimming at the painted Harley’s feet.

Amy always thought Harley called her Little Fish because her red-orange hair matched the colors of the koi he was painting when he met her, but he never told her the reason why he painted the koi in the first place—the reason why his room was filled with koi paintings—which was that it was Kayleigh’s favorite animal.

“He wanted you to have it,” I say. “You reminded him of someone he knew. ”

We stand a moment in silence, absorbing the painting, absorbing what Harley has done, how he has left us. Alone, still standing while he flew away.

“I figured it out,” Amy says, pointing to the wall and dragging me back to now. “The connection between them. People who have background in military fighting. Those are the ones who were killed. ”

I examine the chart.

“My father has a military background. What if the killer pulled me out instead of him by accident?” Her voice quakes, and I wonder if it is because of fear for her father, or because Harley’s gone, or both.

“When I woke up this morning, someone had marked dozens of the little cryo chamber doors. At first I thought it was Harley . . . but the killer could be marking his victims . . . . ”

“Was my father’s door marked?” Amy asks urgently, dropping her notebook.

“I . . . don’t remember. ” I hadn’t been looking for her father’s door—I’d been looking for Harley.

“We’ve got to go check!” Amy heads for the door.