by Kat Zhang
But I stopped.
As soon as I did, Ryan slowed down, too. Circled back to us. We’d passed the grove of trees. We were at the rear of a neighborhood now. A row of squat houses lined the bottom of the hill.
We ducked into the shadow of some high shrubbery. The branches scratched at our arms, even through our jacket.
“You saw her, right?” Ryan spoke in an out-of-breath whisper. “Hally. Ahead of me.”
I opened our mouth, then shut it again.
she said. Our heart thundered boom boom boom boom through our body.
“I saw her ahead of us,” Ryan said. I wan’t sure who he was more desperate to convince, Addie and me, or himself.
What could I do but nod?
“They shot at us.” Ryan had been the one to drag us away from the van, to pull us along until our own self-preservation kicked in. But he was faltering now. He wasn’t looking at us, though his fingers locked around our wrist. Like he needed the physical reassurance that I was there. “Peter—”
He fumbled over his words. My own thoughts fumbled. Each sentence started only to be interrupted by the sight of Peter’s body on the ground. His eyes. The unnatural stillness of his limbs. The suddenness of it all.
I hadn’t seen blood. Such violent death was supposed to be accompanied by blood, and screams, and thrashing. Not abrupt silence.
Death. Was Peter dead?
Put next to his name, the word lost all meaning. Addie and I had skirted around death our entire lives. I’d been destined to die years ago. They didn’t call it dying when a recessive soul faded away, but that was what it was. Death hidden under semantics.
Then Lyle had fallen sick, and death had slept under his bed for weeks. It still lingered about the house, held off by his dialysis sessions and medications.
But I had lived. Lyle had lived. Addie and I had brushed against death at Nornand, and at Powatt, and both times death had passed us by. Perhaps we’d grown arrogant. We’d come to think death would always let us alone, and those we cared about.
Peter was dead.
I didn’t know what that meant.
I thought about that little piece of metal ricocheting around Peter’s insides, tearing up the soft tissue of his lungs, his heart, denting and breaking his ribs—
I bent over. Coughed and held our breath against a rising nausea that squeezed tears from our eyes, shoved us forward and backward like the earth tilting. Like a top spinning. Whirling.
When I opened our eyes again, Ryan had crouched down next to us.
“We have to keep moving,” he said softly. “We have to find the others.”
I nodded. Closed our eyes again. Forced our lungs to inhale, exhale. Forced myself to stand on shaky legs. “There’s a meet-up location,” I said through lips too numb to move.
Peter always set one up when we traveled, in case anything went wrong. He’d made sure we all memorized this one before leaving the farmhouse.
“That’s miles away,” Ryan murmured. “It’ll take hours to get there.”
He didn’t add, What will we do if we show up and no one else does?
He didn’t need to.
All around us, the woods were silent. Even the houses were still, not a single person puttering around the backyard.
“We can’t go back.” Our voice was quiet, hoarse. “The police will be all over the van.”
I could see them now, shuffling through our meager belongings, searching for answers in the folds of our clothes. And Jaime. They had Jaime.
I grabbed at our purse. The zipper was closed, but I opened it just to make sure Henri’s phone was still inside. A business card fell out. I snatched it before it could hit the ground.
“We have to find everyone,” I said to Ryan. “But we can’t do it alone. We don’t have a car, don’t have a place to stay. Nothing.”
“We have an emergency number—”
“Our nearest contact is in the next state,” I said. “It would take hours for her to get here.”
“Then who?” Ryan asked.
I held up the card with Marion’s number.
“No.” Ryan’s eyes were dark. I’d told him what Marion wanted from Addie and me. “How coincidental is it that the day she shows up is the day Emalia gets in trouble, and the day we get stopped by the police? How can we trust her?”
There was something painful in her words, a wound I couldn’t help heal. I wasn’t sure if telling Ryan that Jackson had deemed Marion trustworthy would help. They hadn’t exactly parted friends.
So I didn’t bring him up. Instead, I looked at Ryan and said, “Trust me. You don’t have to trust anyone else. But trust me.”
I’d never used Henri’s satellite phone before. It was smaller than most phones I’d seen, barely bigger than our hand. The screen took up almost half of it.
The screen that I now realized had cracked. I tried to turn it on. It wouldn’t.
Just hours ago, we’d been back at the safe house, joking with Henri about taking the phone apart and putting it back together. We hadn’t taken it apart, but it was broken all the same. Something must have smashed against it during the car crash.
“Can you fix it?” I asked Ryan desperately.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But right now, we’re going to have to find a pay phone. Do you have money?”
I did. Addie and I had made sure to carry some—not much, but enough coins for a few calls, and enough cash for a couple meals, if we were careful.
I put the satphone back into our purse as gingerly as I could. We walked until we reached the outskirts of the nearest town. I slipped into the first phone booth we found and dialed Marion’s number with clumsy fingers.
Marion picked up. She was somewhere quiet. A hotel room? I thought about phone taps and bugged lines and was almost too afraid to open our mouth. But she said Hello? Hello? and with Addie’s strength pushing mine, I answered her.
I didn’t give details. She could probably hear the suppressed panic in our voice. She didn’t ask unnecessary questions. Just where she should meet us. If she should bring anything.
I told her the nearest intersection. Then hung up and went to sit with Ryan in the shade of a large tree. I hadn’t realized how cold it was until then, as we sat huddled up against each other, heads bent in the wind.
Marion came within the hour. I recognized her car, nondescript and silver, as she reached the intersection. She looked around, but didn’t see us hidden in the shadows, and pulled into a coffee-shop parking lot to wait.
Ryan looked at me. “You’re sure about this, Eva?”
I nodded and stood. He rose slower. Cold sunlight dappled through the tree branches, glistening off the few remaining leaves. He took our hand, and we walked to Marion’s car.
I hadn’t told her it was just us and Ryan. She hesitated, but didn’t ask about the others, just unlocked the doors and let us climb in. Ryan kept one hand on the door handle. I saw him test it, making sure he could still open it from the inside.
Marion had come, she said, from her hotel room near the farmhouse. She’d put up her hair, her eyes hidden behind large sunglasses. I suddenly wished I had the same option. Our face—our entire body—felt naked. We’d been in hiding so long, buffered by Peter, and Dr. Lyanne, and the others. There had been the feeling of safety in numbers.
Now it was just me and Addie, Ryan and Devon.
“Where to?” Marion said.
“Do you have a map?” I asked. Marion pulled one from the glove compartment, and I unfolded it over our lap.
“The hotel is on Steind.” Marion pushed up her sunglasses and pointed. “Right after it intersects Mallers.”
The reunion point was in the opposite direction. It wa
s too far to walk—not unless we wanted to spend the better part of the day doing it, and risk getting seen.
I looked up. Looked right at this woman with her now-bared eyes, and the slight frown on her forehead, and the way she was pursing her mouth. I tried to read the way she’d let the nude-colored polish chip off her nails, the fact that she didn’t avert her gaze, even when my staring had gone on too long to be polite.
“What do you really want?” I said quietly, and caught the tremor in her throat when she swallowed.
“I want to help,” she said.
Then, finally, I looked away. I nodded.
“Here.” I jabbed at a spot on the map maybe a mile from the meet-up point. “Take us here.”
Marion studied the map, then started the car. But she couldn’t help asking, as she pulled out of the parking lot, “What’s happened, Eva? I’m completely in the dark here.”
“Please,” I said. “Just drive.”
I said softly
SEVEN
The meet-up location was in a clean, touristy-looking town. Trees lined the avenues, and despite the chilly air, plastic flowers hung in baskets from the signposts, trying to fool people into thinking it was spring.
Ryan and I walked so close our shoulder kept bumping into his arm. We’d left Marion a few blocks away, at a shopping center. She’d protested, but only halfheartedly, asking how long she was supposed to wait.
“We’ll be back before nightfall,” Ryan had said.
He’d sounded assured at the time, and I’d made sure we looked the same. But the facade had dropped by the time we were out of sight.
Addie and I huddled in our jacket. Glanced at each vehicle that passed, watching out for police, or someone who stared too long. Being recognized was a risk Peter had drilled into us upon our arrival in Anchoit, and our faces hadn’t been public knowledge then, the way they were now.
Peter had chosen for us to meet at 137 Danwill Street, which turned out to be an old-fashioned arcade. We heard music blasting inside, even from the sidewalk.
I hadn’t realized how much I relied on Peter’s plans, his connections, his safety nets, until they were gone. Until he was gone.
Dead.
The word hit me harder this time. Like it had gained substance again during the drive here. We were following plans made by a dead man. Walking in the shadow of Peter’s ghost.
Ryan looked in the window. When he came back, he said quietly, “There are a couple guys in there. College-aged, maybe. One older man.” The look on his face was enough to tell us that he hadn’t seen his sisters. Dr. Lyanne. Kitty.
I understood now, as I’d never truly understood before, how easy it could be for a person to simply disappear off the face of the earth. To be here one day, tangible and laughing and real, then gone like blown smoke the next.
“We should go in to wait,” Ryan said, noticing us shiver.
Inside, the place smelled faintly like cigarette smoke, even though there was a lopsided No Smoking placard on the wall. It was low-lit. Two of the arcade machines bore Out of Order signs that had been there long enough to be covered in angry graffiti.
Ryan and I ordered a small tray of fries and two grilled-cheese sandwiches, keeping a cautious eye on the other patrons. They didn’t pay us any mind. Neither did the owner, even though it was a school day, and Addie and I, at least, were obviously high-school aged.
The blasting music, hot, salty food, and frenzied noise of the arcade games helped drown out some of my fear. But an hour passed, and no one else came through the door.
We didn’t know Peter’s contact. But she would be Peter-vetted, and we trusted that. Marion . . . Marion had her own agenda, apart from us. But then, didn’t everyone? At least we knew what she wanted—her news story.
It could truly make a difference.
I fiddled with one of the remaining fries.
Addie’s feelings flickered next to me, flashes of confused, conflicted emotion.
I knew she was remembering it now, and I tried so hard to remember it with her. But I could only imagine it. The blue of the water. The rock of the boat. The wind and the smell of the ocean.
I didn’t ask when it had happened. There were plenty of days in Anchoit that I had spent asleep while Addie lived. It would have been easy to snatch a few hours for sailing, to be out and back from the docks before I knew.
I was cast back to nearly half a year ago—a Sunday morning in our bathroom at home, our bare feet curling against the chilly tiles, our damp, lukewarm washcloth pressed against our face. The Friday before, we’d gone to the Mullans’ home, and Hally had become Lissa in the privacy of her bedroom. She’d told us what sort of life I could be living. Offered me a chance, one that Addie and I could take at great risk to both of us—but with the possibility of even greater reward.
Once upon a time, I’d asked Addie to take an insane risk for my sake, and now she was asking me for the same.
Before Addie could reply, the door to the arcade opened, and Hally walked inside. Her long, dark hair was down around her face, a curtain of curls that half shielded her expression. She took each step like the floor might crack beneath her feet. Then she saw us, and her expression bloomed into relief.
She glanced behind her, toward the door. Hope was a stubborn, buoyant thing in our chest. Why would she look behind her unless she’d left people outside? Unless there were others waiting for her?
Hally caught the attention of the college men like Ryan and I hadn’t. Their gazes followed her across the arcade.
“Oh, God,” Hally said breathlessly as she sank into the chair next to ours. There was something broken in her eyes. The jagged edges of it struck deep into our chest, made our heart hurt.
“Are you all right?” Ryan managed to keep his voice low and calm.
She nodded tightly. Her hands were shaking. I grabbed one. It was ice-cold.
“We can’t talk in here.” She looked toward the door again, and this time, she noticed the men staring. “We have to go.”
Outside, the wind tore through our jacket. Hally wasn’t even wearing one, and Ryan wrapped his around her shoulders as we hurried away from the arcade.
“Where are the others?” he said. He must have caught her glances toward the door, too.
We rounded the corner before Hally could answer. Kitty and Dr. Lyanne stared at us, pale-faced.
“Where are Jaime and Peter?” Dr. Lyanne demanded. And grew even paler when neither Ryan nor I rep
lied. The looks in our eyes were answer enough.
The sun went down early, with November encroaching. By the time Marion pulled up to her hotel, it was dusk. The different buildings were separate, and stood alone, so at least we didn’t have to pass a front desk.
To Marion’s credit, she hadn’t batted an eye when Ryan and I showed up again, hours after we’d left, with three new people tagging behind.
Wendy ran up as soon as Marion opened the hotel-room door.
“Can you find some food for everyone?” Marion said, and the girl nodded. I was about to follow the others inside when I realized Dr. Lyanne had lagged behind, one slim hand pressed against the side of a dark red truck like she needed it there to prop herself up.
I motioned for Ryan to go on in. He nodded, closing the door after him.
Dr. Lyanne glanced up when Addie and I were a few feet away. Her eyes, which could usually skewer with a look, were unfocused.
“Go inside, Eva,” Dr. Lyanne said, watching us approach. “The last thing we need is for you to get sick.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. Paltry words. But all I had. “About Peter.”
I realized, suddenly, all the things I didn’t know about Peter. About Warren, his other soul, who we’d never even addressed by name. What had they wanted to do with their lives, if there wasn’t the resistance to be thinking about? What would they have done when all this was over?
Were they scared, when they died? Did they regret the choices they’d made, that had led them to that spot, at that moment?
Had Peter and Warren had any room in their minds, during those last seconds, for anything but a blaze of pain?
Had they realized they were dying?
Had they had time to make peace with it?
Had they had time to tell each other good-bye?
“If I do what Marion wants,” I said softly, “then we might be able to bargain for Jaime’s—”
“No, Eva,” Dr. Lyanne said. Her voice was stony.