Angels of America: A Circle of the Fallen novella

by Wendy Maddocks

  I didn’t expect to be spending my second night on the run in the Leeship Free Clinic but it’s better than any alternative I can think of. Finding another motel would have cut into our finances further already and there was no way the three of us would have spent the night in the Porsche without ending up as some 3 person blob by morning. It turned out that we all needed a decent shower, a check for any smoke inhalation, and our guest could get those cuts to his hands and face cleaned out with actual antiseptic. Maybe an x-ray for his arm. Standing under the hot jets needling into my skin, I go over the afternoon once the fire had driven all sane people out of the mall. Katie stayed behind even as the flames melted everything in sight, and turned other stuff to ash. I got out with Matthew Bytheway where he conveniently had an asthma attack. Whilst we – barely – dealt with that, Katie was still inside. A group of firefighters were spilling out of a single fire truck and unreeling a yellow hose, pointed at the building. As they plugged it into the nearest hydrant, Katie stumbled out of the mall looking like an urchin kid from some Dickens novel. The closer she got, the better you could see the black smoke smudges on her face and clothes, the sprinkler-soaked hair plastered to her face, and the leather jacket had been abandoned. She was shiny with sweat.

  “Ta da!” she sang and thrust a handful of bags out to me. Dumbly, I reached out for them but hesitated before I took them.

  “Am I handling stolen property?”

  “Some of it. But, seriously, nobody will even notice in this chaos.”

  And that is somehow meant to make me feel better. “Katie, it’s stolen.”

  She sighed and looked behind me to where Bytheway was still concentrating on breathing right. “Look, I paid for what I could but we have needs, Rose. I don’t like this any more than you do, believe me. Back home I went to the park once and felt guilty when the café owner wouldn’t let me pay for my stuff. But I had to do some really bad things to get where I am now and this…this I can deal with. So suck it up.

  “Hey, Coffee Shop Guy! You’re okay, right?”

  He put both thumbs up and we all started to walk towards the car, Katie slightly ahead of us. We spent the walk in silence, trying not to look like we were hurrying before anyone in authority saw us. Once the three of us had all squeezed into the car, I let out everything I had been keeping inside. “What the hell?! I mean, what the actual hell was that?! You steal, you push away so you can play with fire, and you come out looking like fire damaged goods. You’re wet and filthy. Anyone could have seen you – police, security cameras. Are you trying to – no, I’m not over-reacting, don’t look at me like that.”

  “There are reasons I stayed in that fire when I didn’t have to, Rose. And I got our stuff out didn’t I?”

  “Oh, right, the stuff you stole.”

  “Girls, girls,” a voice piped up in the backseat. I had the sudden urge to smack that condescending tone of voice right out of him. Like we’re just squabbling kids who didn’t save him spend the night in hospital with his arm in a cast, broken in half a dozen places. It was chewing at my insides to remind him of that fact. I didn’t. I feel I’ve grown as a person. “Now, I enjoy a chick fight as much as the next guy but can we wait until we get somewhere more private? I don’t think you should be confined to a car.” He coughed and I suddenly remembered the asthma flare up he’d had and how he’s tried to save me from the worst of the smoke. This isn’t the thanks he deserves – but I can’t bring myself to say it. “We need to get cleaned up. We can’t go anywhere looking like this.”

  “On it,” said Katie.

  She pulled the Porsche over to the side of the road and spent a few minutes examining the sign up ahead. It just looked like a square of white with some squiggles on it in black. I used those moments to slump into my seat and wonder about the future. I mean, what was it going to be like? Would we even have a future if we got captured by the men with guns? If I got caught.

  The thoughts were depressing me. Didn’t matter. Some things have to be considered no matter how painful. And the possibility I might die at the end of all this was undeniable even though I was doing my best to do exactly that. If those men were so blasé about killing the faculty back at school then what would they do to us three if they managed to get to us? And what were they doing to Jack right now? None of this was my fault I decided. I had run from those men and that woman because some deep survival instinct had ordered me to. If I had stayed in my apartment…yes they probably would have caught up to me and taken me to where-ever they had come from, but Katie, Bytheway and Jack wouldn’t have gotten involved. The mid-afternoon sun shining through the window was making me squint – it was that which squeezed tears from my eyes. By the time I had pulled myself together, wiped my face leaving more smears of dirt and ash, we were slowing down in front of a dirty white building with a sign reading LEESHIP FREE CLINIC out front. According to the sign, it was open every week night and all day at weekends. The building had one boarded up window with graffiti on it in more colors than there were in the rainbow, steps led up to the big wooden double doors but there was a wheelchair/stroller ramp at the side entrance another sign said. It was a small building with just the one floor, maybe big enough for three or four treatment rooms, one office for everyone to share and a small waiting area. Clearly, it was emergency treatment only. No way would you have an operation or anything here – well, a person wouldn’t come here at all if they had any other choice. And neither of us did. Katie obviously didn’t have US health insurance because – legally – she wasn’t even here. I was too young, and too poor anyway, to have my own. With a long term condition like asthma Matthew Bytheway undoubtedly had it but splitting up now wasn’t worth the risk. Katie sped up a little and we parked in a gas station at the end of the street. The clinic wouldn’t open for another hour or two.

  “Dinner?” she asked. No-one was hungry enough o manage a proper meal so I pulled my wallet out of my bag and started across into the little convenience store to get us all some subs.

  “… yesterday. Milagro High School was the scene of the fatal shootings of two faculty members and the serious wounding of at least three of the student body,” the TV informed me as the bell dinged my entrance. I headed to the drinks cabinets for sodas and subs then wandered the shelves as I listened for names of people I knew, pretending to be thoroughly involved in my grocery hunt. “The teenagers were fired upon by two men who were following a young female student who recently ran away from foster care. It is not known how guns came into play but it is essential that this girl is returned to social services. A description is available…” The reporter reeled off some missing persons website. Milagro High had been my school. Three students had been caught up in the crossfire. Safe to say I hadn’t been friends with any of them but I might have known them, shared a class with them, hell even had the locker next to theirs. Apparently, police couldn’t name the kids because the families had refused to go public and I wondered if they would use that as an excuse not to put much effort into the investigation. I tried to see the bright side to that; that at least it was less likely I’d have police on my tail as well as these men and their boss. All there was, though, was a deep, dull ache of how unfair it all was. And I still didn’t even know why this had all happened.

  I’m still under the shower though the water is beginning to run cold. The harassed-looking nurses here were nice enough to tell all three of us we could use the showers once we’d been checked over but I haven’t seen either of the others since we got split off into treatment rooms. Some-one cleaned the thousand tiny cuts on my body from yesterday’s window adventures and directed me to this small, dimly lit bank of showers. It took hunting through three cubicles before I found some tubes of cheap all in one shampoo and body wash. My clothes are draped over one of the sinks opposite, drying out from where I scrubbed the worst of the ash out before getting under the shower, the curtain slid back just a lit
tle so I can make sure nobody decides to walk off with them. Once I’m out, dried and dressed, I rummage in my bag for my hairbrush and look in the mirror to see what can be done with my hair.

  “Shit, right,” says a girl from behind me. She comes into view in the mirror – a girl not much older than me, and certainly not old enough to be sporting that size baby bump. She’s as pale as paper with long, lank black hair and purple smudges under her eyes. The dream of any goth. Only this girl looks tired and ill for real. “He’s due next month and I’ll probably end up having him here. Well, here or in the hostel if I can get a bed but those nuns don’t approve of girls like me. We’re sinners.” She says that last without making air quotes, which is one thing I couldn’t do. “He’s been kicking crap outta me all week.”

  “You know it’s a boy?”

  “No, they did a scan and offered to tell me but I already know.”

  “Where’ll you live, you know, when he’s born?” Because I know most hostels won’t take mothers with babies because of disease and lawsuits, and there are so few refuges for single moms it’s not even funny. “I’m putting him in care until I get myself sorted. I’ll go back to school, get a job, find us a little place somewhere. Then I’ll get him back.”

  I feel like smacking her.

  “It’s not that easy. I’ve been through the whole care thing, pinballing from one temporary home to the next until I gave up and ran away so trust me when I say that once you put that kid in care, he’ll be lost to the system.”

  “I only want the best for my kid. I’m eighteen, you know. It’s not fair!”

  “Not fair! A baby growing up without a family isn’t fair but that doesn’t seem to bother you much.”

  “How can I look after my son with no education, no job, not even a roof over his head?”

  Maybe you should have thought about that before you opened your legs to the football captain. Yesterday morning I probably – okay, definitely – would have said that but I stop myself now. I can’t afford to cause a scene and get thrown out. “You’re making the wrong decision.” But, suddenly, I’m not so sure. Maybe what she’s saying is right. Sure, being bounced around the state won’t be much fun for the kid but he’ll be safe – safer than he would be on the streets with his mother anyway.

  “Whatevs,” she sighs. “If I could keep him, I would but I know these streets. Sometimes I struggle. No way can I put my baby through that.”

  Brush away and bag done up, I just turn and leave. Probably should have said goodbye or something but, as she said herself, whatevs. There are more important things to worry about. On my way through the battered swinging door to the shower block, Katie is leaning against the wall and drumming a strangely addictive beat on her thighs. Clean, undamaged, perfectly straight hair. I hate her. I’ve had the same shower she has and I still look like something the cat dragged in. Wordlessly, she takes my elbow and steers me to a dark alcove with a few brown, plastic chairs hidden inside. “Sit. I just used the computer in the office –“ meaning she broke in again “ –and that missing person site has a description of you but no photo.” Is that a good thing? “So I called my sister, who’s a brilliant hacker, to see if she can do anything about changing what’s up there.”

  “Why does it matter if the social find me? The police can protect us if they get involved.” Before Katie says anything I know the argument. The trio who want me would get here first, undoubtedly. So we have to stay one step ahead. Or find them first. “If people have already read about me, what good will it do to change it now?”

  “The majority of people always mean to look at those kind of sites later. So, we’ll probably get there before it gets far.”

  It occurs to me that I should probably ask what kind of a girl her sister will be turning me into but, honestly, I’m just glad that there’ll soon be room to breathe. As we sit there, a phone starts ringing angrily. I know it’s not mine because I’m pretty sure the Samsung in the pocket of my shorts ran out of charge at some point this morning, and we haven’t stopped anywhere long enough to plug in and charge it up. But the silver thing Katie suddenly has in her hand is screaming away like hell on Earth. “Screw that. I don’t know that number,” she snorts and turns it off with a cursory glance at the screen. “How do I get stupid sales calls when I’m right out here?” The ringing starts again, chopping off the reply I hadn’t thought of yet. I touch her hand stilling it as it hovers over the red disconnect button.

  “Wait. Jack’s kidnappers might have made him tell them your number. We can find out where they are without driving for the rest of forever, playing catch-up.” She’s taking too long to think about this, so I answer it before it rings out to voice mal.

  “Where’s Jack?”

  There is a second or two of silence, just enough time for me to start doubting myself, then a smooth female voice answers. “Don’t you know? We know where you are.” Oh. Shit. But she hasn’t used my name so I’m taking that as a good sign: maybe she doesn’t know it’s me. “A little voice told me you two could find each other anywhere with your… spirit link.” So –I’m Katie for the duration of this conversation. Good job she’s not too tricky a character to play.

  “You should know it’s not that easy then.” God, I hope she doesn’t know any different. “Where is he?”

  “Why are you playing this game? Protecting this girl you barely know and risking the – ahem- man you love.”

  “You’d never understand it.”

  “I’m prepared to offer a trade. Him for her. And, if you answer now, we’ll stop this.”

  Stop what? And then I hear it. A sound worse than any I’ve heard: worse than gunshots, more desperate than screams and more heart-breaking than wailing. It’s just one single whimper, weak as a newborn kitten, and strangled. Certainly it’s Jack. I never thought of him as so hopeless or helpless. Guilt washes over me once more. “Don’t call again.” I cut the call off, quickly scroll through the call list to save the number to the address book and hand the phone back to Katie.

  “Don’t call again? How the hell are we meant to-“

  “They’ll call,” that cool, knowing part of me says before my racing thoughts can catch up. “They can’t not. I mean, why would they want to hold onto Jack?”

  “For the same reason they want you. To experiment on him.” A deadly serious look settles on her face making her look delicate and overwhelmed. Dry washing her face, Katie settles back into her chair, making herself as comfortable as the cheap, grade school-style will allow. “Jack is the reason I am… what I am. When I died, he gave me all his Shade energy and mixed it with my friends’ energies. That turned me into a ghost and then, when I had passed some stupid test the Keepers put on for me, I started developing these weird powers. Flying, healing, breaking things before they actually hit the wall, some other stuff.”

  “Like invisibility?”

  “It’s not quite invisibility but you’ll learn that.” I will? Don’t I have to be, like, dead first? That might have been a faint smile but the shadows are now too deep to tell. “Rose, who used to pay for your apartment?”

  “Random.”

  ”Seriously. It’s important.”

  “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “I never get bills either.” Now that I think about it, it’s really strange and I can’t believe I never even considered it before. “As long as I had a roof over my head, it didn’t really bother me. I always assumed it was Fred.” But the job as a concierge in my block can’t pay that well.

  “Damn it! See, your entire life up until now has been paid for by them. The men with guns and… there was a woman, right?” Katie turns her head to the end of the corridor, apparently hearing something I can’t. A few seconds later a gurney rolls past with a sheet covering a body-shaped lump. She suppresses a shudder, not entirely successfully. I guess it is pretty morbid. Once it has rolled past and the porters are w
ell on their way towards the swing doors at the opposite end, Katie continues. “That was a retrieval team.”

  “A what?”

  “Somebody higher up sent them here to bring you back.” Okay, not liking the sound of that. “It’s serious, Rose. We cannot stop running.”

  “What’s serious?” asks Bytheway as he walks up to us, drags the chair from the opposite wall over the corridor with a scraping sound that makes me think my teeth are going to fall out, and settles himself in front of us in a tight little triangle. His dark, long hair is hanging loose around his face, slightly damp from the showers and suddenly I get it. While he doesn’t do much for me right now, I can see how he could be hot. He has toned, but not massive, muscles filling out his cheap t-shirt and the jeans Katie got are just tight enough that the lines of his legs are showing through. But he’s settling in the dark with us now.

  “How much have you heard? What did she tell you at the coffee shop?”

  He quickly gives her a run-down of what I told him; that people had shot up my school and were now after me, that I’d been rescued by some girl who could fly and survive a bullet to the head, that I’d had to leave behind the life I was just starting to make for myself.

  “You don’t even know him!”

  “I didn’t think I’d see him again so it wouldn’t matter.” Plus I needed some-one uninvolved to use as a sounding board. And now he is involved. Grrr! “He’s with us now though. Isn’t that a good thing? Safety in numbers?”

  “The more of us there are, the more conspicuous we will be. Christ, we’ll think about this in the morning. None of us are thinking straight tonight.” The clock on the wall says it’s about half an hour before midnight. I feel like I’ve been awake for a week, so much has happened today. “Tell us about yourself, Matthew.” The last thing I hear is him rumbling along in some story about another fight from his school days.

  When I open my eyes, the first strains of dawn are spilling through the window in purples and oranges. It takes another moment to realize that a nurse is gently shaking the three of us awake. Even Katie fell asleep despite her insistence that she didn’t sleep if she had energy.

  “Wake up kids. We’re getting ready to close down for the day. You have to leave.”

  I grunt something in answer, not quite ready to form actual words yet.

  “This isn’t a hostel. We can put you in touch with-“

  “No, we’re fine.” Instantly awake and alert, Katie sits up and starts fidgeting like she really needs to use the bathroom. “We need to get moving anyway but thanks for letting us take over this corner though. Erm, where are the ladies again?”

  “End of the corridor. Last door on the left.” The nurse points the way and watches her until she vanishes into the bathroom. Bytheway fishes an inhaler out of his pocket, shakes and puts it in his mouth. Nursie hangs around while he does this twice, then scurries away with a “take care.”

  We left the car at the gas station yesterday evening and, like a miracle, it’s still there. Bytheway and I take the seats back as far as they will go and lie them down. We’re both nearly asleep when a shadow falls across the wind shield. Katie mutters “I’ll wait out here,” there is a slight creak of metal as she settles on the hood. I’m not sure how long that wonderful, dreamless sleep has held me, but the sun is bright and warm on my face when I stretch myself awake. Life has begun; cars are rolling op and down the street, honking when they get jammed up. Children re wearing bright jackets as about twenty of them walk to school together. It all seems so normal. So oblivious to the chaos going on in my life. For one hot, irrational instant I hate them all for not caring and it feels so good not to have to have a logical reason. I know I’m frowning at this scene of normality but it’s totally justified because I can’t be a part of it. My seat ratcheted back up, Katie beckons me out of the car, finger to her lips to remind me not to wake Bytheway. Yeah, ‘cos that was my plan.

  “While you two slept, I logged onto that missing people site and my sister changed your details but I checked again a few minutes ago and your file’s just gone.”

  “Gone,” I repeat. “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Exactly that. Gone. Best guess? This retrieval team figured out we changed it and pulled it.” Surely that’s a good thing though. Now, even if anyone recognizes me, they won’t be able to report me and let them find me. “That’s true,” she says, totally oblivious to has much this whole mind-reading deal freaks me out. “But it brings us as many problems as it solves. I was using – my sister Dan was using –their IP addresses of where they last checked the message boards to figure out their locations. Now they’ve taken it down…”

  “Weren’t you using the link to find them? And Jack.”

  “I can only use it to tell if he’s close and alive. He’s safe.” After hearing Jacks’ pitiful whimper down the phone, I suspect something different, but don’t think I should say anything yet. “We need to start moving. I get the feeling we should head east from here.” Don’t question it, Rose, just follow the crazy dead girl. Luckily, none of us have much of an appetite for breakfast so, after a quick (and gross) bathroom break, we head back into the town. By the time we get out of Leeship and are following roads to Route 95, I’m starting to regret not putting something in my stomach. It’s too hot and bright to sleep through these twinges of hunger, and I’m not even a little bit tired, amazingly.

  “So,” begins Bytheway, leaning over the headrest and drumming his fingertips on the leather just above my crown. “What the hell happened to my arm. My bike practically crushed it and now…”

  After a minute I reply with “Katie can heal people.”

  “And then that fire… What was that about? It was right where we were sitting. If we’d been there just a few minutes later.”

  “It wasn’t a coincidence.”

  “What?” I turn to Katie in surprise but it takes an instant to squash that and know that she is right.

  “Too much has happened too me to believe in them. Option one: the Keepers started it to test me. Make sure I’m on my toes or something,, I suppose. Our second choice is that the retrieval team has been tracking us too. This might have been their way of driving us out into the open so they could make sure they had eyes on us.” There’s something else she’s not telling us, it’s in that tilt of her head that says she’s considering saying more, but I’m fairly sure I know what it is. If they set the blaze, then they were there and Jack was within grabbing distance. And I ran! I picked up my bags and ran! That – that wasn’t me. Looking across at Katie, there is a glisten of tears in her eyes. Crying helps some people. It doesn’t get anything done though, and that’s what this situation calls for – action. Just getting it done. “Matthew, do you need to call your family or anyone? When we stop for lunch, there are pay and go phones in the boot.” He looks at me, clueless. Right there with ya, man. “Erm… burners in the trunk.”

  “Got it. I need to tell my roommate I’m… What the hell do I tell him?”

  “You’re on a random road trip with two beautiful girls,” says Katie, glaring at him in the rearview mirror. And here it is again. This time, only the area around her eyes is glowing, and it’s quite faint. Angel stuff. Doesn’t make me any less worried.

  “Is that a good idea?” I whisper. Don’t know why, he can hear me anyway – three average sized people in a sports car made for two has that effect. “What if he reports us to somebody? If not them then the cops. Grand theft auto isn’t gonna help Operation Don’t-get-Rose-experimented-on.”

  “I’m only phoning home. One of you can stand by me if you think you need to but I swear I won’t try anything.”

  We fall back into a tense pattern of idle chitchat and, every now and then, Katie drops in another little gem from her past in England. When she was still mortal. Crap, you do not know how hard that is to think, let alone say. Her high school allowed stude
nts to leave at 16, their pre-college athletics program sucks. For a few more hours, life is virtually normal again. I’m not at school. I have no home to speak of. And yet we’re three teens – or two teenagers and some college-age type – driving down the featureless I-95 towards the border. Slowly, I begin to relax and the tension starts to drain away. Trees pass. Cars and trucks drive by. I jump at each revving engine for the first half hour but, when no men with guns appear, I decide they won’t. I find a secret stash of candy bars in the glove compartment and hand out one each, unwrapping Katie’s so she doesn’t have to look away from the road ‘cos look what happened last time that happened. Bytheway plays I Spy with us for a while then starts leaning over the seats to mess with the radio, finally settling on a soul station that fades in and out depending on whether we’re passing tall features or not. Mostly, I ignore the music and stare out at the passing world whilst trying not to think. I don’t want to think about my old life or the life I’m living now. And definitely the life I might well be speeding toward. In the next hour or two, we could find Jack and everything will be fine; Katie could be right in her prediction and they perform messed-up experiments on me; maybe they capture the four of us and do weird stuff. Freaking out!

  From the back comes a sharp intake of breath. I turn around.

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s just my arm. It twinges every now and then.”

  “I only had time to do a fast fix on it. It’s probably the bones popping apart again,” Katie says like hearing an arm break itself is the most normal thing in the world. If this comes under the umbrella of normal in her world then I’m glad to be in mine, crappy as it is. And now we share a reality… “Look, we’re getting ready to stop for lunch. I’ll try something else.”

  “You fixed my ankle.”

  “Bones are more difficult. Your injury was muscles and tendons, this is a full-on fracture – no telling what damage it has done inside.”

  “So, my arm is re-breaking itself in slow motion?”

  “Yes. But stop worrying. I’ll do a better job next time.”

  “Next time?” asks Bytheway, worried.

  “If there’s a next time. Matthew, you’re with us now and I know that’s mostly our fault but we can’t let you go.” The car glides to a halt – a surprisingly smooth ride for an oldie – in front of a barbecue ribs hut. Suddenly the smell of cooking meat is beating me this way and that. It feels like forever since we had anything fresh to eat. A day or so of eating fast-food and convenience store subs can do that to a person. I’m practically running ahead as the prospect of real food takes over my mind.

  “Can you tell how close we are?”

  The three of us slide onto three bar stools at the Formica counter. Katie hides her face behind one of the grease-stained menus as she searches for the link between her and Jack, but now that I know, it is impossible not to notice the ever so subtle glow around the edges of her menu.

  “What can I get you kids?” A bored looking woman with hair the same copper-tinted blonde as mine walks out of the kitchen with a blast of searing heat and stands before us, pencil and pad in hand. With that hair, I have the fleeting thought that I’ve stumbled across my mother. But I barely remember my real parents – I have no idea if she looked anything like me. Bytheway orders sodas for us all and then looks down at the choices of food.

  “Anything?” I ask. Katie shakes her head and takes a gulp of the cola the waitress just put down. We order food and stare straight ahead, none of us speaking. There’s plenty to be said but nobody wants to be the one to start the wall crumbling. “You two go and sort his arm out.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Dude, your arm is broken into, like, a thousand pieces. Get it fixed.”

  “I’m fine for now. Honestly, Rose.”

  Guys are liars. It’s in their DNA or something. And when they start declaring their honesty, you know it’s the biggest lie EVER.

  “He’s right, Rose, I don’t want to leave you on your own out here.”

  Katie didn’t seem to have any worries when she sent me alone back to my apartment, even though it turned out she should have been more worried about things on her end than mine. “You said it yourself, you’ll know if I’m in trouble. I’ll call if anything happens.”

  Looking unconvinced, Katie and Bytheway retreat to the door marked with those male and female arrow signs. It looks like it might be a unisex one then which makes life a hell of a lot easier for people like me who have no idea which one is which. Once they’ve both disappeared behind the door I turn back to my ribs and fries and dig in. There are only a handful of other people in the big diner, making it look more or less empty, and that’s why my brain is being all creepy and telling me I am such an easy target right now, sitting on a stool right opposite the big picture windows. Paranoia bites! All I want to do is eat a decent lunch and hang with my new friends. Just pretend like I’m a normal girl taking a normal ditch day from school. And sure enough, when the others return, we sit there and start chatting like three normal teens, sharing stories of schools, friendships, hobbies. It’s nice. Matthew Bytheway is really Matthew Riggs but I prefer Bytheway. He barely graduated high school, never bothered with college and had been bouncing from temp job to temp job, saving up to replace the old Honda bike we’d totaled with a slick silver one – a Suzuki he was thinking. And then those plans had been put on hold when Katie and I rocked up and basically kidnapped him. Oddly enough, he didn’t seem bitter or angry or even weirded out by everything that was going on. I’d had a full day more to get used to it but my head is still a dizzying mess. When we’ve all finished our lunch, Katie gets up and tells me she is going to go to the bathroom but my brain interprets her slightly shifty look as I need to do angel stuff – maybe celestial beings pee differently to us mere mortals. Or maybe she is going to take another one of those calls that got Jack kidnapped.

  Which makes me feel so safe.

  “Don’t worry, I’m right here,” says Bytheway when we are alone. “I won’t let anyone steal you away.”

  Oh wonderful. “And you’re going to stop them how? Stamp your feet and throw a tantrum. Or maybe you’ll just say ‘NO’ very firmly.” WTF? Did I just turn on my flipping-off-the-teachers ‘tude with the guy who was perfectly within his rights to wander off after waking up this morning? Jees, I’m not like that. Okay so he and Katie are the closest things to friends I’ve had – I’ve let myself have – since I got booted from the first children’s home and I can’t really figure out how to act around them but I’m pretty sure it’s not like this. “I’m sorry. I – I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yes you did.” He turns his smile on me and plucks the menu I’m trying to delaminate out of my hands. “But so would I in your place.”

  “Why are you here? I mean still – why are you still here? You could have ditched us at the mall or at the clinic. You could just turn around and walk off right now. Why not?”

  “’Cos…’cos I care.”

  “About me? About Katie?”

  He shrugs. “Who knows? But if these people had something to do with that fire then they’re pretty serious about getting to you and I’m just not the guy who walks away if he can help. Even if I’m just here with you in moments like this then I’m helping. That’s how it works in my head anyway.” Just because he can, Bytheway orders a chunk of strawberry pie and ice cream from the waitress I want to be my mom, and requests two spoons so we can share. From what I’ve seen on TV this feels like a date kind of thing to do. It’s cute. “Whatever Katie did to my arm, it feels just like normal again. Has she done that to you too? It’s like a superheated patch being wrapped around your arm but it goes right under your skin so it doesn’t hurt at all.” I nod and stick out my leg. “O’course, your ankle.”

  “Wait till she gets sleepy.” Truthfully I’m not exactly looking forward to it myself. Ha
ving another person basically chowing down on your soul – not something I’m overly keen to experience again. Sadly, it’s inevitable.

  Just as I’m about to explain what happens hell breaks out around the BBQ house. Well, if hell is a very quiet ruckus. Two cars pull up beside the Porsche. I recognize one of them as the black SUV I was running from on Tuesday, but the other is a deep red town car. Then nothing. The two cars just wait there, looking harmless yet sinister with their idling engines and heavily tinted windows. Trying to act casual, I twist in my seat so I can maintain my pretense of calm for a while longer but my eyes don’t ever leave the window. Once again, Bytheway has to take the menu out of my nervous fingers. Sensing something is wrong, he follows my gaze to the static vehicles and wraps an arm around my shoulder, blocking them from my view.

  “What are you –“

  “Whatever they’re gonna do, watching them won’t stop it. That is them, right? The ones who were trying to kill you?”

  They were trying to capture me and killed my principal but this isn’t the time to split hairs. So I just nod and try to force a coherent sentence out of my mouth. “The black one was chasing me. They broke into my apartment. Well, they had already bust it open so it probably doesn’t count as B and E the second time.” What was I saying about coherent? “I’ve never seen the posh one though.”

  “You think they brought reinforcements?”

  “To bring in a sixteen year old girl?”

  “You gave them the slip before. Maybe they want you surrounded; block off all escape routes.”

  Much as I’d like to think they are scared of me in some crazy-ass way, I can’t help but think the town car holds the person who gave the initial order to fetch me in. Tugging on the arm across my eye line, “if that’s the case then why aren’t they getting out? They’re just… sitting there. If they come in here with guns and stuff, I for one, would like to have some warning.” Don’t know what good that will do. It’s not like I can just pop out the back and change into my bulletproof vest. “We should…” My words fall away as my feet start moving of their own accord. Closer to the window I can hear their engines shut off but nothing else. I wish I could hear what was being said inside. Maybe they are discussing the fire they set yesterday and how dumb it was to put a hundred people in danger just to make sure they hadn’t lost me. A ringing noise comes from the counter and I faintly hear Bytheway answer it.

  “Rose?” He holds the smartphone out to me.

  I turn back towards him to take the phone. My back is turned and the cars are out of my view. Alarm bells ring a moment too late. Something smacks into the window behind me and cracks appear around a tiny gold bullet embedded in the glass above the door. The door slams into my back and I fall to the ground before I even turn the pictures in my head into words.

  What seems like an instant later, a male face framed with shaggy, dark hair is staring down at me and squinting. The ends of his hair tickles beneath my nose but I haven’t got enough air to laugh. I can’t inhale – my ribs and back feel like they’re too small for me; even getting a dodgeball in the chest never winded me this badly! He offers me a hand and says something. I hear noises coming out of his mouth and nod as enthusiastically as I can. Until my legs are supporting me again, the world might as well be Pluto for all the sense it’s making. Behind me, the two armed men from the school are framing the doorway allowing a wavy chunk of heat and daylight to spill between them. One of them is dangling a gun from his clasped hands while the other one is hidden behind the shades he seems to like wearing indoors like a douche. Not that you can blame him. Against the cool, barely-there tint of the windows the day seems blinding.

  “Who – who are you?” asks the Mom-waitress. “We don’t want no trouble here, gents.”

  “We’re not looking to cause any trouble ma’am. We’re just looking for her.”

  The one without the gun nods at me, there’s a flash of movement and suddenly I’m roughly twelve inches from the end of a very ouchy looking pistol. My vision fills with silver and black and the reports as bullets blasted through the cars of students, through school walls, through Principal Kings’ skull.

  “She’s right here,” Bytheway says. “Now you know, you can leave.”

  The big men look through him like he’s not even there and glare at the diners backed up against the far wall, too scared to move. Nobody really expects two heavies with firearms to come barging into a tacky North Carolina grill house. I wish I could be as scared as them, I really do. Just rewind my life about two and a half days so I never got out of bed Tuesday morning. But I’m not shocked or surprised. I’m scared. Hell, I’m freaking terrified – be a machine not to be – but I’m not about to try an escape or beg for mercy or anything which will just get us all dead quicker.

  “It’s okay, Max.” So far from okay. Deliberately using the wrong name so they don’t identify my friend. Not sure why yet but my brain says I should. I think I know why and it’s not the happy ending I quietly hoped for. It involves me being carted off to God-knows-where and him forgetting all about me when he returns to normality with these guys not even knowing his name.

  “I’m not-“

  “letting me go, I know,” I interrupt. “But you can’t keep me safe. We’ve – I’ve – been running for over two days and all that’s happened is people have got hurt. Collateral damage and all that, I can get with it but what I can’t deal with is knowing that where-ever we go, they can find me and burn a mall to the ground to find me. It’s better I go with them and at least nothing else is going to get destroyed in this pointless hunt.” While all eyes have been on me as I made my speech, Mom-waitress has found a super sharp kitchen knife and is suddenly brandishing it as she comes out from behind the counter. Before anybody has time to react, a primal, painful war cry exits her mouth and she rushes forward to bury it in the chest of the one without the gun. In an instant the other guard levels his gun at her and presses the trigger one two three times in quick succession. Each time there is a click and nothing shoots out. Time slows down a little and I hear somebody screaming for their mom as the first shot is fired. It’s neither of the toddlers here, clinging to their parents hand like any normal kid should. Not normal. Realize it’s me. I lunge towards Mom-waitress and shove her away from her position just as the three bullets fly loose. One grazes her shoulder, a thin line of blood appearing on her pale green uniform. She screams, stumbles. Bytheway takes her off me and helps her into one of the booths so I can focus on the two men by the door.

  Chapter seven