Page 80 of Across the Universe (Across the Universe 1)

It was our last date.

I’d already told Jason by then. Told him how I’d be gone soon. Gone forever. We’d said goodbye earlier that night, alone in his bedroom. Together. Really together. For the first—and last—time.

After, he took me to this overpriced Italian place called Little Sienna. And it was so wonderful that all I wanted to do was cry, because I knew it would end. And of course I hadn’t worn waterproof mascara, and of course it smudged all over the place, so I excused myself. There was only one toilet, and a line of women waiting.

“Are you here with Jason?” the girl in front of me asked. I nodded. Her name was Erin, and she was a senior, and that’s about all I knew of her.

“He broke my heart last year. I don’t know how he does it. ”

“Does what?” I was still smiling, but the smile was starting to feel plastic.

“Keep up with all his girls. ” My smile disappeared. “I swear,” Erin said, “I thought I was the only one, all those months we dated, but I never knew about Jill and Stacy, not until after we broke up. ”

I felt like I had swallowed boiling lead.

“He cheated on you?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. Then she laughed. “But that was last year. I’m sure he’s not like that now. You two look really cute together. I’m glad to see you were able to reform him. Your name’s Kristen, right?”

“No,” I said hollowly. “Amy. ” Who was Kristen? Why’d she think my name was Kristen? Was Jason seeing Kristen on the side?

“My bad,” Erin said.

Was that pity in her eyes?

I left the line. Screw smudged mascara.

But when I sat down at the table, Jason laughed and passed me a napkin, and then he licked the corner of it and wiped my eye himself, and he brushed my cheek with his fingers, and his eyes lingered on my lips.

And I remembered saying goodbye to him, earlier that night.

Part of me wanted to demand who Kristen was. To find out who he’d been texting, earlier, when he wouldn’t let me see his phone. What his friends had meant about “big plans” next Saturday. After I’d be gone.

But another part of me said it was too late. We’d already. . . said goodbye.

Wouldn’t it be easier to believe Jason was my Jason, not a cheater, not a scumbag?

At the time, I didn’t think it would matter.

But now, my only regret is that I didn’t demand the truth.

46

ELDER

“SHE’S NOT HERE,” HARLEY SAYS. HE’S SITTING IN THE WARD common room, staring out the window at the wheat fields in the distance.

I head to the door that leads to the private chambers. “Don’t bother,” Harley snarls. “She wants to be left alone. ” I open my mouth to ask why, but he adds, “For that matter, I want to be left alone too. ” He rubs the side of his face, and I notice a dark bruise under his eye.

I make a mental note to check with Doc about the last time Harley took his meds. It’s not the standard mental meds I’m worried about—it’s the other pills Doc gives him, the ones that hold back Harley’s dark moods, make him less loons.

So I leave the Hospital alone. I pass the statue of the Plague Eldest, but I don’t pause. I don’t want him looking down on me, too.

Instead, I head up the path to the Recorder Hall. I see the people, still in full swing of the Season, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach, knowing that all of this is just contrived through Eldest’s water pump.

When I get to the Recorder Hall, I have to step over a pair of intertwined bodies to get up the stairs. Victria sits on a rocker on the porch, watching them, occasionally writing something in her small leather-bound book. I’m surprised she’s not with Bartie, not doing what the couple on the steps are doing, but Eldest did say the hormones affected the Feeders more than others.

Orion stands with his back to me, facing the picture of Eldest that looks out over the vastness of the Feeder Level. Before I can say anything, however, he lifts the picture from its nook on the wall and leans it against the floor of the porch.