The Darkest Minds

Chapter 17 begins with Chubs’s affectionate description in the minivan of Jack Fields, the friend of Liam and Chubs who died at the breakout from Caledonia. According to Chubs, Jack was well-liked and helped others use their abilities. Liam, listening, becomes moody. In the glove box of the car, Ruby finds the letters Jack and others wrote their parents, and Liam, angry, snaps at her and tells her not to read them. They turn on the radio to hear a story about Psi kids being apprehended, which upsets Liam. He pulls over and gets out.

Chubs tells Ruby to follow Liam, so she does. She sees he is grieving, and she is strongly tempted to touch him, so she backs away. He admits that he doesn’t want to find the Slip Kid just to go home or deliver Jack’s letter, but because he wants to help other Psi kids break out of camps. He tells her about his brother Cole, who worked with the League. When Liam became involved, he didn’t like how his brother became a stranger, and the way the League dehumanized others. This made him realize “the only people that were ever going to help us were ourselves,” and led him to be a leader at Caledonia (273). He feels guilt over what happened, and he wonders if the kids at Caledonia would be better off not having followed him.

Ruby reassures him. She tells him he doesn’t need to lie and that he should express all of his feelings. He comes very close, and Ruby’s feelings are mixed. She is terrified for him to touch her, but she also is filled with desire and anticipation. She begins to fall over, and he grabs her waist to hold her steady. All at once, she can see her abilities take effect on him.

Ruby sees a flash of Liam’s memories, both from childhood and more recently, especially of her in Black Betty. To stop it, she slaps him, and she panics, feeling she severed the connection too fast. However, he remembers her, believing she knocked him with her head. She tells herself no more touching. Although he seems hurt, they walk back to the minivan five steps apart. Ruby is intercepted by a male skip tracer, who hits her with a rifle.

Ruby struggles with the skip tracer, and Liam knocks him out with his abilities. They find Zu and Chubs handcuffed outside the car with Lady Jane, who has a gun pointed at Zu’s head. Lady Jane tells Liam that the boys at Walmart told her where he was going, Lake Prince, in exchange for letting them go. Ruby is horrified that she knows where East River is. Liam offers himself in exchange for the rest of them, but Lady Jane says she is taking them all.

Lady Jane says for Ruby to come to her, and Ruby does, aware that if she uses her abilities, everyone will know she is an Orange. Ruby knocks Lady Jane’s gun away and holds the woman against the car. Using her powers, Ruby tells Lady Jane to give her gun to Liam, to cross the highway, to walk into the forest, and to sit there for an hour without moving. She then erases her memories of finding out about East River and this incident. It works, but Ruby is in pain and feels light-headed. Remembering a happy moment in Black Betty from a few days ago, Ruby thinks that then she had felt she “belonged with them” (286). Now, she thinks, that is ruined.

Chapter 19 starts with a flashback to just before Ruby’s 10th birthday, the time frame from the end of Chapter 1. Ruby is still living at home, and her parents are discussing whether or not to have a birthday party for her when so many kids her age have died. Ruby asks her father if death hurts, and he tries to answer, but it upsets her mother. Her parents argue, and Ruby runs to her room and hides in her bed. In her room, she remembers that IAAN often hits when kids are 10. Listening to her parents fight, she feels scared and gets a headache. Later, she sneaks into their bedroom when they are asleep, and she gives them each a kiss, noticing her mother’s “rosemary-scented cream” (293). As she kisses each parent, she sees flashes.

The next morning, she wakes up feeling sick. She goes downstairs, surprised her mother isn’t making her birthday breakfast. Her mother, not recognizing her, asks how she got in the house. She locks Ruby in the garage. When Ruby’s father comes, he behaves like a police officer trying to help an unfamiliar child. Ruby begins to scream. Her mother calls the police, and a man in a dark uniform shows up. He pulls Ruby by her hair out of the garage.

Back in the present, Ruby wakes up in Black Betty with stitches on her temple, which she knows Chubs did. She remembers Liam, Chubs, and Zu now know she’s an Orange, and she starts to cry. She hears Liam and Chubs arguing about whether it’s too dangerous to keep “her.” In tears, she stops their fighting and promises to leave, but Chubs explains they were talking about Black Betty. Liam says they don’t want her to go, and Chubs pats her head awkwardly. She admits she can’t always control her powers, and she tells them that is why she wants to meet the Slip Kid, along with going to her grandmother’s. Worried about giving up Black Betty, Ruby thinks about the rabbit characters accepting their fates in Watership Down.

Liam asks Ruby about whether she has used her abilities to figure out the clue or to see in their minds. She is hesitant to talk too much about them—or about what the Oranges could do at Thurmond. She says it was a mistake to let her stay, but the others seem to disagree.