by Anna Carey
Page 42
“They’re still there . . . with Leif. ” Caleb’s hand returned to the wheel. Rocks and twigs plinked against the underside of the carriage. The meaning of his words sunk in. He had left behind his home, his life, his friends . . . for me.
After a long while, Caleb went on. “I’m going with you to Califia. ” He turned to me. “We’ll get there. ” There was something about that word—we—that comforted me. There was no longer him. There was no longer me. There was us.
A life together seemed possible now. A life in Califia, this place across the red bridge, hidden in the hills by the ocean. They would take us in, this community of escaped orphans. I could teach there, Caleb could hunt and send out new messages to the boys in the labor camps. Eventually we’d return to School, as soon as we could make the journey. I’d go back for Ruby and Pip. Just like I’d promised.
I looked down at Caleb’s hand, letting my fingers fall through his. They stayed there, laced together, a soothing sight. The sunlight hit the side of my face, my shoulder, my bare legs.
When I turned back to the road, my feet pressed against the floor. I grabbed at the side of the window. “Caleb! Stop!” I screamed. He braked, and my body hit the dashboard.
The car skidded to a stop. “Are you okay?” Caleb asked. I nodded, pushing myself back into the seat. I rubbed the spot where my arm had met with the hard plastic console.
“What now?” I asked, pointing straight ahead.
On the road in front of us, visible in the last of the day’s light, was a van. Its tires were shredded and its windows broken. Beyond that was another car, then another, a whole line of them stretched out on the road for miles in front of us, their rusted bumpers just barely touching. The road was packed, impenetrable.
He picked up the map, looking at the thin blue line we had been following through Arizona. “This was the best route. ”
I glanced out the dirt-caked window to where the roadway snaked around. Ahead of us, a hundred yards away, was a pile of sun-bleached bones.
“How did Fletcher bring you here?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was dark. He went over the dirt sometimes. ” We both got out and stood on the road, taking in the line of cars. They had been trying to get out. Whenever the plague was mentioned there was always that word: chaos.
Caleb moved to the back of the car, opening the trunk. He pulled out cans of food and grabbed a long tan sleeve filled with metal poles and fabric. There was a plastic tube for siphoning gas, and a metal container. Then he slammed the door shut.
“Let’s stay the night here,” he said, prying one of the cans open with his knife. “The troops won’t find us—they’ll know this road is blocked. Then tomorrow, we’ll turn back, and go around the way I came. Over the mountains. ”
The sun was nearly down, dotting the sky with bright white stars. Back on the road, with the headlights lit, the troops would be able to spot us easily. We had no other choice.
Caleb set a tarp down beside the pavement, in a spot of dirt half hidden by the withered, brown bushes. I watched him, his body moving silently, easily, as he drove the spokes into the ground. By the time the tent was up, the sky was gray, the moon casting a cool light on our skin.
“After you,” he said, gesturing beneath the flap of dark green fabric.
The inside of the tent was just wide enough to fit both our bodies lying down. Caleb came in behind me, his T-shirt soft as it brushed against my bare arm. After days apart, the sudden closeness made me nervous.
“Well,” I said loudly, every inch of my body suddenly awake, “I guess we should go to sleep now. ” I picked up the tattered gray blanket and folded it over my lap.
“I guess we should. ” Caleb laughed, his smile still visible in the dull light coming through the thin tent. “But first I have something for you. ”
He pulled a small silk pouch from his pocket, so dirty it could be mistaken for trash. But instantly I knew what was inside. “You left this in your room at the dugout,” he said, handing it to me. “I thought it might be important. ”
My fingers dug into the pouch gratefully, feeling the tiny plastic bird, the tarnished silver bracelet, and finally, the worn edges of my mother’s letter. “Thank you,” I said, tears gathering in my eyes. He couldn’t know how important it was. “I don’t know how to—”
“It’s nothing. ”
He grabbed my hand and lay down, stretching one arm underneath me so it rested in the slight space at the back of my neck. He pulled me closer, so I could feel the warmth of his body, the stubble on his chin scratching at my forehead. “Good night, Eve. ”
“Good night, Caleb,” I said. As I listened to his breath slowing, my hand resting on his heart, the blood pulsed through my fingers, my legs, my heart. After days of wondering and imagining and wanting, he was there beside me. Three thoughts came to me in the seconds before I drifted off to sleep.
I am going to Califia.
I am with Caleb.
I am happy.
Chapter Thirty-two
THE AIR COOLED AS WE DROVE FARTHER NORTH. I TOLD Caleb about the truck and Fletcher, how we’d met Lark, and the movies Otis projected on the wall. I told him about Marjorie’s breakfasts of eggs and boar, and how we’d hid in that secret room while the troops searched the house. Then I told him about all I’d seen—the bullet that exploded in Otis’s chest, Marjorie being struck across the cheek, the purple-red spatter that covered my legs after Lark was shot. How I made that horrible mistake. “It’s all my fault. I can’t stop picturing it. ”
Caleb pressed his lips together in thought. “You didn’t know. Sometimes, in the night, I’ll wake up panicked. I’ll think I’m back in the labor camps—cement blocks on my back, or a boy on a cot next to me, blood and spit spilling over his lips. But then I realize it’s a dream and I feel lucky. ”
“Lucky?”
Caleb turned to me. “Lucky that I can wake up. That now, it’s only a nightmare. It used to be my life. ”
The car started up a steep road, its engine making a loud, grating sound under the new stress. The Sierra Nevada mountains rose around us. I stared out the window, at the steep, green hillside, and thought again of my mother, and the songs she had sung to me as she bathed me in our claw-footed tub, miming a spider with her hands.
“Do you remember your family?” I asked suddenly. Caleb had said he’d entered the labor camp when he was seven, but I knew little about his life before. Had he ridden a bike like I had? Did he share a room with brothers? Had he known his parents?
“Every day. ” The car stuttered as it climbed the road, slowed by the thick greenery that covered the pavement. A wall of rock rose up on one side. “I try to remember the times before the plague, when I played Capture the Flag with my brother and his friends in our yard. He was five years older, but he let me be on his team, and sometimes he’d have to carry me over the line so I wouldn’t get caught. ” Caleb’s smile appeared and disappeared.
“Where did you live?” I turned, resting my hip on the seat.
Caleb squinted. “A place called Oregon. It was colder, rainy. We were always in our jackets. Everything was so green. ” The car dipped into a ditch, making a scraping sound. Then we were back up, moving again, the stray plants crushed beneath the beaten tires. “What about you? Did you have any brothers or sisters?”