“And?”
“I ran out on her. I left her behind. Nice, huh?”
“Men shooting at you does tend to distract one.”
Pierce is trying to cheer me up, let me off the hook maybe, but I can’t stop thinking that I let Jori down.
“I shouldn’t have run. I should have protected her.”
“How could you have done that?”
“You don’t understand. She relies on me. She’s very attached to me.” I look at him, and when our eyes meet, I look away. “I know that’s probably hard to believe.”
“Why would that be hard to believe?”
“I mean, that anyone would feel, you know, that way about me.”
“You think it’s weird that someone would like you?”
“You said it yourself. That I don’t seem like the type who has too many feelings, or whatever.”
“I only meant that you seemed strong. Like you’re no pushover. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, there’s everything right with it.”
“But I’m not—”
Just then, the yurt shudders so violently, Pierce grabs one of the support poles and says something about securing a few of the ropes better, but it’s like his words have been tossed into the wind. Another memory comes barging into my head.
I am ten years old, and my mother and I are standing in the nave of a large, beautiful church. I am hot with anger and humiliation, and at the same time I know I have no right to be. It’s their church. Their rules. Their steeple.
My mother is being scolded by the church secretary. The secretary keeps fanning herself like she’s on the verge of having a fit. You’d think she’d been the one sitting up in the bell tower, dangling her legs over the edge.
“You should mind your daughter more carefully! Heavens! She could have died!”
My mother does not look at the woman, just at me. She’s checking me so thoroughly I wonder what she could be looking for. I’m fine. And besides, if I’d fallen from the steeple, I wouldn’t have hairline cracks that needed close examination. Anything broken would be plenty obvious.
I really don’t know what the fuss is about. I wanted to have a look around. From way up high. I’d always wondered what it was like at the tippy-top of the church.
My mother hugs me while the secretary scolds her, scolds me. Back and forth, like she can’t make up her mind. It seems to go on for a long, long time, and I want to leave.
My mother is more gracious than I think she should be to the secretary. She thanks her, apologizes, accepts all the blame for not keeping a closer eye on me. I’m angry at the secretary for making my mother feel bad.
After promising to never ever go into the steeple or even the church again, we depart. When we are on the street again, I stop and look up longingly at the sharp tip of the bell tower. It’s like a spear piercing the sky.
My mother shakes her head and says angrily, “Don’t you ever do that again. I turn my back in the grocery store and you’re gone! You can’t just go wandering off like that, climbing into the rafters, just because you feel like it. That tower has been closed for repairs longer than you’ve been alive.”
That would explain why the stairs were blocked off and why I’d had to climb over the barrier to get into the steeple.
“Why? Just tell me why you went up there.”
I want to tell her. I want to explain that I like to be high up in the air because I like looking down at the apartment buildings on our street. And the stores. And the people. How I feel closer to people when I’m farther away. And they can’t hurt me.
But I don’t know how to say this. I don’t know that I even understand what pulled me up those stairs, why I felt so free and comfortable with my feet dangling over the edge.
“I wasn’t afraid,” I tell her.
She pinches my nose and then whacks me lightly on the behind. “You should have been.”
“I like to be up high,” I finally blurt out.
“Well, maybe you’ll be a construction worker someday. And you can skip along the beams of the skyscrapers.”
“Really?”
“Yes. That’s the only appropriate job for a girl who likes to hang around church steeples. That or becoming an angel, and somehow I don’t think you’re angel material.”
My mother called me Angel from that day forward. It was a joke between us—a reminder of that day we both got in trouble at the church. But it was more than that. Sure, I wasn’t the sort of girl anyone would mistake for an angel, but I also wasn’t going to be pushed around easily. I wasn’t going to let people walk all over me. Not even a little bit.
I think my mother was glad about that.
CHAPTER 9
Pierce is pressing me against his hip, his arm tight around my lower back to keep me standing up. He hands me a canteen, and I take a drink. The water is ice cold, and it hurts my teeth. I test my legs to see if they’ll take my weight, and as I do, he slowly lets me go until I can stand on my own again.
“Sarah?” He whispers to me like he’s not sure I’ll respond. I feel the tickle of his breath on my cheek. It’s like a gentle nudge to return to the here and now.
“You back?” he asks.
“Back?”
“From wherever you just went.”
I must look frightened. I am frightened. I’m not sure if I should tell him what I just saw, but I blurt it out before I can stop myself. “Her face was blank.”
“Whose face?”
“I remembered my mother, but I couldn’t see her face. I mean, I could see everything clearly. As clearly as I see you right now. But my mother’s face was just this blank white space.”
“You’re all right,” he says. “At least I think you’re all right. Has this ever happened before?”
“Once. Right before I escaped. And then as I was waking up a little earlier.” It’s finally starting to register that without him standing here, I’d fall down. “Is this—”
I blink. I’m worried about something and afraid to say it out loud.
“What?”
By now I’ve fully come out of my daze, and I push back from Pierce a little.
“I was going to say real.”
That I could be here, in a yurt, with this boy—I’m convinced I’ve made it all up. I must be lying in my hospital bed right now, dreaming the whole thing.
“Yeah. This is real. Here’s a good way to figure out if something’s real: Ask yourself, ‘Does this suck?’ and if the answer’s yes, then it’s probably real.”
“That’s actually not half bad.”
“I have my moments.”
I shake myself a little and then windmill my arms around. I take what few steps I can inside the yurt.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know. The more I move around, the clearer my mind gets.”
“Maybe it’s like with dreams,” he says. “They always seem so real and vivid when you first wake up, but then five minutes after you get out of bed they’re gone. I once read that there’s something about moving around that does that. When you get up, go take a pee, whatever. It disturbs all those fragile neurotransmitters in your brain and—whoosh! It’s all gone.”
Maybe that’s why the note said to lie still after taking the pills.
“What else did you see? Besides your mother. I mean, if you don’t mind telling me.”
“I don’t. There wasn’t much to it. Just a childhood memory. I remembered a nickname my mother had for me.”
“Pumpkin?”
“No, not quite that bad.”
“What then?”
“Angel.”
He turns his head slightly and his eyes narrow. “Angel?”
“I know, right? Hard to imagine.”
The wind blows so hard, the yurt buckles on one side. Pierce lunges for one of the tentpoles. “Help me.”
Together we push it upright, but then freeze. There’s another sound hiding behind the wind—like a small chainsaw revving up. Pierce lean
s toward me; his mouth is an inch from my ear.
“Did you hear that?”
I nod. I’m only just realizing that the woods—the outdoors, generally—are not my comfort zone. I may not remember everything about it, but something deep in me misses the glass-and-concrete world of New York City.
“If we’re lucky, it’s just the Mounties,” he says.
“Mounties?”
“Canadian police. Used to ride horses; now they ride snowmobiles. Really fast ones. We’re right up against the border here. I’d say yards from Canada at most. The storm should give us cover, but let’s hope whoever it is doesn’t have infrared technology. I’m sure we’d light up like a Christmas tree on fire.”
“So we’re sitting ducks?”
“We’re definitely some kind of ducks. Probably slightly better than sitting. Let’s say we’re standing ducks. Maybe whoever it is will think we’re just hunters or something.”
“Hunters with a satellite dish on the top of their tent?”
“Yeah. You’re right. We’re in big, possibly dead, trouble if it’s not the Mounties.”
We stay motionless. Hoping the predator will move on. The motorized whine gets louder, then quieter several times. They’re circling around.
“They’re not shooting at us. That’s a good sign,” I say.
We hear the engines again, and finally, the sound is carried off by the wind. We stay still for a while longer, though. Just in case.
I suddenly remember being vigilant like this. I remember the thrill and fear of waiting in the dark until everyone had gone home from the work site, hoping my luck would hold out just one more day. I wasn’t some careless daredevil when I climbed those tower cranes. Not for one second did I forget that every single handhold, every single step, was a chance to die. It was always on my mind.
Remembering these feelings is so frustrating. It’s like remembering how I felt going to and then leaving a carnival, but not recalling anything about the carnival itself. The concrete things my feelings are attached to—I still can’t get ahold of them.
“I think whoever’s out there just drove off,” Pierce says. He turns to me, eyes narrowed. “Hey, come here a sec.”
“Why?”
“Just come here.”
I take a step toward him.
“Closer.”
I take another step, but I guess I’m still not close enough. He pulls me forward until I’m an inch from his chest. This is not the best moment to realize how bad I stink. Pierce seems so clean by comparison. Well, maybe it’s not that he’s all that clean, either, but he smells good.
I look up at him and see that he’s staring down at my head. “Look here,” he says. He holds up one hand, pulls his sleeve down, and then turns his hand around so I can see there’s nothing in it.
“Are you going to do a magic trick?” I ask.
“Watch,” he says, snapping the fingers of his left hand. I do. A moment later, I feel a sharp pain.
“Ow!” I slap my hand against my head, furious. “What was that?”
He holds his right hand out—the one I wasn’t looking at. There’s a small piece of metal in the center of his palm. It’s one of the inserts for the halo.
“This was wiggling back and forth, so I pulled it out. You could probably use a stitch or two, but I doubt either of us wants this to be my first experience as a medic. I have some butterfly bandages that should help keep the wound closed well enough.”
I pick up the metal insert, look at it briefly, and then throw it toward the door of the yurt.
“Sorry about the sleight of hand, but I figured it was better that way.”
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“I went through a magic phase when I was twelve. I read books, practiced; I even had a cape. I used to pull quarters out of my kid sister’s ears.”
“I bet she loved that.”
“She did.”
Two emotions march across his face in quick succession. Sadness, then revulsion.
“She’s gone now,” he says. “She died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Happened a few months ago.” He moves me back a little and says, “You’ve got another wound near your temple. The dressing is pretty well soaked through with blood. Here. Sit down.”
He retrieves a first aid kit from his backpack and kneels in front of me. He’s only inches away, and I feel frozen in place, like I’m back in the halo.
“I’m going to pull this bandage off. You want me to do it fast or slow?”
“Slow.”
“Wrong answer.”
He rips it off, and I jump up, practically landing in his arms.
“Fast is always better,” he says as he dabs some antibiotic cream on the wound. “There’s another insert that’s almost out. You want me to pull it out, too?”
After a second I give half a nod. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s get it over with.”
This one doesn’t come out cleanly. I bite down hard and stay motionless as he digs it out with his fingernail.
“Sorry about that,” he says. “It’s out now. See?” He shows me the bloody piece of metal in his hand.
“I guess we’re even for the punch in the face.”
“Yeah. Not that I’m keeping track. I mean, it’s not payback. I didn’t like hurting you just now.”
I stare into his chest. I feel his chin bump against my forehead, and then I slide back away from him, onto the mattress. He clears his throat and our eyes lock.
He leans toward me and puts a Band-Aid on my head.
“Thank you,” I say. “You’re a good guy.”
He smirks.
“You don’t know many guys, do you?”
“I think you might be the only one at the moment.”
He laughs, but I was being serious. I have no idea who’s left up there at the hospital. It’s kind of sickening to think about.
“Hey, look,” I say. “I’ve got a trick, too.”
I stand up, take a freeze-dried bean from the foil packet, and then toss it high into the air. It almost touches the top of the tent before dropping in a straight line directly into my mouth.
“That’s your trick? That?”
“You try it. It’s not as easy as it looks.”
He stands up next to me. Several minutes of throwing another kidney bean go by.
“It has to go all the way to the top of the tent or else it doesn’t count,” I say.
On his fifteenth attempt, he manages to catch it.
“See? Piece of cake.”
We sit down on one of the mattresses, side by side, and watch the heated air rising in a column in the center of the yurt. All the tension in my body seems to flow up and out through the roof along with it.
But almost as soon as I let myself start to relax, there’s a rustling sound outside. A moment later, the whole yurt seems to shimmy.
Someone’s found us. Someone’s coming inside.
Seems we’re sitting ducks after all.
CHAPTER 10
Pierce turns to me and puts his finger to his lips. Then he calls out, “Hey, 8-Bit? That you?”
The inner tent flap flies up and we see the metal tips of two snowshoes come through the opening, followed by the barrel of a pistol. Pierce puts his arm in front of me and then tries to push me behind him.
A man enters. He’s got ice clinging to his bushy, blond beard. He lifts his goggles as he turns to look at us. We’re both gaping back at him like he’s an especially dangerous sort of armed bear. He points the gun toward the floor.
“Two days of storm. Big delay. Not have delay.”
He’s got a thick accent and, besides that, seems to be speaking through his nose.
“Excuse me?” Pierce says.
“Delay. Storm.” He slices the air with the pistol in his hand. Then does it again in the opposite direction.
Pierce looks at me, then back up at the bear man. “Um … what?”
The man grunts and shrugs. “Deal off. Have
other jobs.”
Pierce scrambles to his feet as the man turns to go.
“Wait!”
The man waves his hand at us and then leaves. We hear the sound of him trudging away from the yurt. A minute later, a snowmobile engine roars to life.
“I think that may have been the person 8-Bit and I were supposed to rendezvous with. The guy who was going to fly us out.”
“Looks like he just bailed on you.”
“Yeah, that’s the impression I got from the …” He imitates the man’s grunting and the way he made an X in the air with his gun. “You know, this is the problem with paying people to save your butt. Their hearts just aren’t in it.”
“This storm is really going to last two whole days?”
“So says the Russki.”
“So what now?”
“We wait.”
“For what?”
“For someone to find us and kill us. Or morning. You know, whichever comes first.”
I don’t know how Pierce managed to fall asleep so fast, but now that he’s out, I think this may be the most alone I’ve ever felt. Before these few memories came back to me, I didn’t have a strong sense of what was missing. But now that I realize how many pieces of me have been stolen, I can feel what’s gone even if I don’t know everything that’s been taken. I had a mother, a city, a whole other life before I came here. It’s like this massive ship has sunk, and though I dive and dive, all I can find are the smallest treasures from the wreck: a coin, a few broken pieces of china, a child’s shoe. Things that imply there was once so much before the weight of time and cold darkness separated me from it.
Ignorance is not bliss. Not for me, anyway.
The pitch-black yurt isn’t helping me sleep, either. I’m used to lights and machines beeping and people checking on me every two hours. With the lantern off and the computers shut down, there’s nothing to focus on.
But the biggest reason I can’t get to sleep is that the coveralls I’m wearing are scratching me raw. I can’t stand it one more second, so I sit up and peel the top of the coveralls off. I try to remember where Pierce left his backpack. Maybe he has something in there I can borrow. I just need a T-shirt underneath as a buffer.
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