Chapter 2

Chapter 2: If Walls Could Talk

The second I figured out there was a real, live person on the other side—a real, live person on the other side that was in the same position as me—all I could do was keep them talking. As if, if the sounds from the other end stopped, they would disappear, and I’d be wholly alone again. 

The first thing I asked Lyla after I promised her I’d get us out was about the folder, and whether she’d found hers. 

“It’s not like I woke up knowing my name was Lyla,” she said. 

“Right.” I scratched the back of my head, feeling the coarse hair that covered it. “What  else did the paper say?” 

“Apparently, my idiot self gave them my fingerprint. Like I’d ever agree to whatever this  is.” 

“Maybe you—maybe we—did.” I hated that that’s what came out of my mouth then. It’d take a special kind of screwed-up person to put someone here, so to think that I put myself here,  that I’d do that to myself… 

I’d rather not think about it. 

“What about the rest of it?” I decided to change the subject. “Your age and picture and  stuff.” 

A beat of silence. 

“Tell me yours, too,” she said finally. 

I nodded. “Okay.” 

Lyla’s last name was Chen, and she was Taiwanese American—she snorted when I told her I was just a regular American. She was fourteen, like me, and shared dark hair and dark eyes. 

“What does your picture look like?” She asked when she was done reading off her stats. 

I can’t say I wanted to tell a total stranger I thought I looked like a malnourished rat. Sure, I hadn’t seen another person since waking up, but I knew what attractive people were supposed to look like, and the Declan Reed staring back at me was not. 

I took a deep breath and described myself as best I could, trying to play up the high cheekbones and sharp jawline. 

“I guess I’d have to see you to really picture it,” Lyla said when I was done. “Not bad, though.”

According to Lyla, her hair in the picture was long and shiny, her eyebrows sharp and angled,  with thin pink lips pulled into a slight smirk. 

“I hate it,” she said. “It’s like I’m mocking myself.” 

“Mine is just staring at me.” Like an idiot who has no idea what he’s getting himself into. 

Silence again. Did she move from the wall? Go to sleep? Did someone, whoever was asking the questions, come in and take her away? Were we even supposed to be talking to each other? 

What were the freaking rules in this place? 

“What do you think this place is?” 

Her voice, so sharp and cutting when I heard it the first time, came through the wall so softly I had to strain to hear it. 

I shrugged, once again forgetting that she couldn’t see me. “Who knows? We’re going to  find out though.” 

I didn’t know how, but we would. I wasn’t going to die in this white room. I was going to get answers. 

“Okay, Declan.” She said it sarcastically like she couldn’t believe a kid her age could figure all this out. 

“I’m serious.” 

Lyla went quiet again, the silence heavy with all the questions neither of us wanted to ask. 

I couldn’t stop talking to her, though. I couldn’t have the girl on the other side of the wall vanish. 

But then, in a voice barely higher than a whisper, she said, “You better be.”