“I need to go outside,” I said, standing so abruptly that my chair nearly went over backward.

No one said a word as I walked out of the room. Not even Graham.

2.

The sun was so hot it felt like the light had weight, smothering any trace of coolness or comfort. I walked to the edge of the empty swimming pool and sat, dangling my feet above the basking rattlesnakes. A few shook their tails in a disinterested manner before they returned to their silent sunbathing. Either they were too comfortable to put on a proper threat display, or they were already starting to dismiss us as threats.

Was it because they were rattlesnakes, the baddest of the bad and the kings of this desert? Or was it because they didn’t register me as human? I wanted it to be the former. I was direly afraid it was going to be the latter.

Someone’s foot scuffed the concrete behind me. I turned my face toward the sun and closed my eyes, refusing to let myself look. If I didn’t know, I wasn’t deciding who to tell. If I didn’t know, I wasn’t confirming my loyalties—not yet. Even though really, my loyalties had been decided the moment my unthinking vines had grabbed hold of a little girl whose only crime had been following a delicious scent into the forest where she wasn’t supposed to go.

“I know what the cultural literacy is for,” I said. “I know why they dropped us here so early.”

The person behind me said nothing as they moved to the edge of the pool and sat down. I resisted the urge to reach for their hand. Whoever they were didn’t matter as much as the fact that they were there: they were listening.

“Cats don’t hate mice. They like to chase them. They like to hunt them. They may even like killing them, although I guess most cats like eating them better than they like the hunt itself. Mice are a means to an end. Want a full belly, catch a mouse. So when a mouse gets away, the cat isn’t mad. The cat doesn’t care enough to be mad. If you put a cat in a barn full of mice, some of the mice will always get away. They wouldn’t, if the cat cared more. If the cat knew how to hate.”

Silence. If I hadn’t been able to hear my unknown companion breathing, I would have thought that I was hallucinating.