Find Me Where the Water Ends (So Close to You)

the forties, and then had his brain stripped in the eighties.
Like my grandfather.
Twenty-two’s voice pulls me from my thoughts, though she addresses Wes only. “The I-units are in the next room. We can get them and I’ll show you the other supplies.”
But Wes hesitates, glancing over at me. I keep my eyes on the floor, not letting on that we know each other.
“Why don’t we let them get reacquainted?” Twenty-two still speaks in that flat monotone. It’s unsettling to sense her sarcasm but not hear it. “I’m sure they have a lot to talk about.”
Thirty-one just looks amused by her words, but Wes’s gaze shifts to the other boy, staring at him in a way that seems to suck the air out of the room.
“We don’t have much time. The fund-raiser starts soon,” Twenty-two adds. Wes finally nods and follows her to the door, though the rigid line of his shoulders never softens.
Thirty-one moves to stand next to me, and I can’t help but think we’re already pairing off—the two experienced recruits united against the newer ones.
As soon as the door shuts behind them, Thirty-one sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m exhausted. The TM never gets easier, does it?”
He moves toward the bed and slumps down onto the mattress. I stare at the relaxed, easy way he moves his body. Most recruits are like coiled springs, their muscles tight, their eyes watchful. But not Thirty-one.
He raises his brows and I realize he’s waiting for me to answer. “No.” I think of the time machine—Tesla’s Machine, or the TM as the Project refers to it—the way it rips your body apart, shooting you through space and time in broken pieces. “It never gets easier.”
We are silent for a minute. I stare at the heavy wooden door, wondering what Twenty-two and Wes are doing in the next room.
Thirty-one is watching me closely. “I’m surprised you remember me.”
“We sparred together under Lieutenant Andrews,” I say. “There were only ten of us on our team. Why wouldn’t I remember you?”
He shrugs. “You seemed pretty out of it. And it wasn’t just the sparring. I would watch you, sometimes, in the Center. Eating in the cafeteria, or walking down the halls.”
I try to think back to that time, but it is a blur of empty hallways, endless lessons, white lights, and cold, blank recruits. “You did?”
“You didn’t even notice.” He spreads his legs wide and rests his forearms on his knees. It is too comfortable of a position. Everything about this boy is too comfortable, too casual. “You had your head down, looked kind of blank. But there was one day, a few months ago, when I saw you crying and I knew you weren’t like the rest of them.”
I remember that day. It was after my commanding officers had forced me to write a letter to my parents, saying that I was running away. They would put it in my bedroom the same night I disappeared, and a few days later a body matching my description would be found in a nearby ditch. My parents would never know the truth of what happened to me.
I had written it carefully and silently, my fingers not even shaking. It wasn’t until I was out in the hallway that the impact hit me. I fell back against the wall, one hand pressed to my stomach, the other to my chest, trying to hold in the sobs I could feel ripping through me. Only a few tears escaped, sliding down my face to fall onto the white tiles below. I had thought I was alone, that no one had seen me, but obviously I was wrong.
“I am like the rest of them,” I protest, but Thirty-one shakes his head.
“No. They’re zombies. You’re different, I think.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
At my icy tone, he shifts his weight, pulling in his arms slightly. “I’m going too fast, aren’t I? My mom always said I speed through shit. Sorry.”
“You remember your mom?”
He nods, his hazel eyes locked on my green ones.
“How is that possible?”
He shrugs again, the movement deliberately casual. “I don’t know. I just do.”
“Were you . . . were you brainwashed?”
He nods, keeping his body forward, his hands swinging in the space between his knees. I don’t even know why I bothered to ask. Brainwashing is the first stage of training. It means the recruits won’t run away when they’re out on missions, because they have nothing left to care about. No family, no friends, just the constant fear that the Project is all knowing, that they will find you no matter what. It was why Wes wouldn’t run away with me, in the end.
“Were you?” he asks, and my muscles go tight, my back stiff above the silk of my gown. He is digging too deep, and I cannot trust this person. I can’t trust anyone anymore.
“I’m the same as any other recruit.” I keep my voice even.
“I haven’t met another recruit who would cry in a hallway.”
“And I haven’t met one who remembers their family.”
“That’s why I think we might be able to help each other,” he says softly.
There is a silence. I keep my arms wrapped around my middle. I’ve been trying so hard to be numb, to forget those endless days of training. When they first took me I was in the Center, hidden below Central Park. That is where I learned how to be a recruit—how to fight, how to survive in the wilderness with no supplies, how to load a gun in seconds. Then there was the intelligence training: languages, codes, minute historical facts. It is the recruit’s job to change small moments, to gather information, to act as a liaison between different time periods. If we are not careful, we could change the entire course of history.
All that information, crammed into six months, crammed into my head, crammed in a room with hundreds of other recruits, all children, all vacant eyed. In the beginning, I had so many questions. Who was