Tabula Rasa

by Kristen Lippert-Martin

  I get up and poke around the trailer, looking for something that might pass as clothing. I find a pair of dirty overalls that crackle when I try to fold them over my arm and a yellow Windbreaker-type thing with an orange reflective triangle on the front. I also find a long, stretched-out sweater with a poinsettia design on the front. It has the name “Collins” written on the tag. I show it to Pierce.

  “I guess even ugly holiday sweaters have their uses.”

  “You do the pants,” I say, turning my head as Pierce pulls the overalls up over the guy’s naked lower body. I help him put the sweater and windbreaker on the kid. I feel like I’m dressing an overgrown, tattoo-covered child to go sledding.

  Pierce takes a pair of socks out of his backpack, looks at the kid, and sighs loudly.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “This dude better appreciate this. These are my favorite socks.”

  CHAPTER 14

  I spend most of the day exploring the drawers and cabinets of the trailer, minding the tattooed kid, and trying to distract myself from the bitter cold, which is pretty much impossible. Pierce has spent hours trying to find a way to get us inside without being detected, and so far that’s proven to be equally impossible.

  I look through the desk drawer for a key that might unlock some of the cabinets, but as time drags on, my patience runs out, so I start unlocking them with my boot.

  “I’m trying to concentrate over here!” Pierce complains.

  “And I’m foraging.”

  “Please forage more quietly, okay?”

  I kick another door. Kick it again. The third try is the charm. Inside the cabinet I find something more valuable to me right now than my memory.

  “A space heater!”

  Pierce looks up and blows into his hands to keep them warm. “We can plug it in for a little while, but not too long. It’ll drain the batteries.” He points to a cord running up the wall and into the ceiling. It says, Powered by Green-Power! “Powering a few computers is a lot different than heating an entire trailer. We’ll be lucky to get thirty minutes of heat out of it, seeing as the batteries haven’t been able to charge much in this storm.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll take it.”

  I carry the space heater over and bring it close to where the kid is lying on the floor. I turn it on full blast. After a few minutes, the kid’s shivering lessens, and the trailer starts getting so warm, I take my jacket off and hang it over the back of the desk chair.

  Pierce’s watch starts beeping.

  “What’s that?”

  “I set my alarm to remind you to take your meds.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  I walk to the watercooler and knock on the plastic bottle. It’s frozen solid. In the corner I find a mini-fridge and open the door. Inside are a bunch of paper bags and, on the door, a small carton of orange juice that’s already been opened. I throw the pill into my mouth and wash it down with what’s left of the orange juice.

  I start coughing and gagging.

  Pierce jumps up and rushes over to me. He takes me by the shoulders and squeezes, trying to get me to look him in the face.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “This orange juice is rancid!”

  He sighs at me and rolls his eyes. “Don’t do that again, okay?”

  I smile at him, just a little. “Sorry.” He’s a surprisingly easy person to smile at. Maybe that’s been my problem all along. I’ll smile as much as anyone if I have a good enough reason.

  “I thought you were dying.”

  “Not yet.”

  I think for a moment that he’s actually really mad at me, but then his face relaxes and his eyes go wide.

  “That’s it! I should hack the medication timetables right now, so we can open the med locker. They might even have the locations of the pills listed in there!” He hugs me roughly, crushing my face into his chest. “Angel, that’s brilliant!”

  I push back from him, rubbing my nose, wondering if I should point out that it was his idea, not mine. “They keep the meds in a locker?”

  “Definitely the painkillers and the sedatives. That’s where most hospitals keep them, anyway, and we’ll assume they’ve done the same thing here. Probably the pills you need will be even higher priority. All we need to do is find one of the lockers, unlock it, and then get back out again with the pill you need.”

  Pierce sits down, and within seconds he’s swimming through the lines of code on the screen, oblivious to everything around him. I hover over the tattooed kid for a while. He looks like he’s trying to wake up but can’t. I spend another half hour looking at the pictures on the walls and going through the rest of the contents of the mini-fridge to see if anything is still edible. I find a couple of dried-out hard-boiled eggs, coffee creamer, and a brown paper bag with grease spots. I look inside.

  “Where would you get Chinese food around here?” I ask aloud. I pull the takeout receipt off the side of the bag. “Johnnie Q’s Szechuan.”

  Pierce looks up from his computer.

  “You think Johnnie Q’s delivers here?” I ask.

  “Not unless their corporate jet has a little basket on the front of it. That restaurant’s in L.A.”

  “The receipt says this stuff was ordered in August.” I bring it to the desk and open the top of one of the containers. I sniff and groan at the rank odor.

  Pierce coughs. “Kung Pao E. coli. My favorite.” He pushes back in the wheeled chair and stands up. Something on the wall catches his eye. “Hey, look at this.”

  I close up the cartons and go to see what he’s looking at. It’s a framed magazine cover featuring a youngish Asian man standing in front of a strange building that looks like an upside-down bowler hat. The caption says, William C. Chin in front of his newest creation, the Opera House, Dubai.

  He points to Chin’s name on the edge of one of the blueprint drawings lying on the desk. “This guy’s a rock star of architecture. They must be sinking a lot of money into this place if they’re using Chin to design it.” He continues to read the bottom of the blueprint and then says, “Ah! And now I see why.”

  “What?”

  “Claymore Industries.”

  He looks at me and smiles weakly. “How about we just skip over the part where you tell me that you don’t know who that is.”

  “No. I do. Sort of. I mean, that name does sound kind of familiar.”

  “Well, it should. Claymore Airlines, Claymore Studios, Claymore This, Claymore That. Erskine Claymore puts his name on everything.”

  I can see a building in my mind. A tall, thin skyscraper that looks like a perfectly formed icicle … or a sword. “Central Park South. Claymore Tower.”

  “Good girl! I’d throw you a biscuit if I had one.”

  I shoot him a dark look, but can’t help feeling proud of myself for remembering.

  “Claymore Industries also happens to be a big military contractor. Interesting, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.”

  “And perhaps you’d be interested to know that the building project, the one that you managed to derail by carrying on like a cross between Spider-Man and Robin Hood, was linked to none other than …”

  “Erskine Claymore,” I say.

  “Direct hit on correct.”

  But the name means something more to me. I’m not sure why, but suddenly I have a terrible feeling of … loss. Fury. Confusion. Curiosity. There’s something about that name that reaches all the way down into me, like a memory stored in the marrow of my bones. If I were to yank it out, I’d end up pulling myself apart.

  “He’s a very powerful guy,” Pierce says. “Not that having all the money in the world has done him much good in his personal life.”

  “Why?”

  “All his kids have died. Well, except the youngest one, but he’s got some problem. I forget what. He’s really sick or a quadriplegic or something. And Claymore’s wife had a breakdown a couple years ago, and hasn’t been seen in public since. Th
anksgiving in that family has got to be a real bummer. It’s probably just Claymore and his butler watching football and eating turkey sandwiches together.”

  Across the room, we hear a moan. Or more of a growl, really. We look at each other and then slowly walk toward the tattooed kid. I reach down and touch him on the forehead. As soon as his eyes open, he tries to sit. He rolls onto his stomach and pushes himself up, kicking off the warming blanket like it was trying to smother him. He stumbles toward the desk, grabs it, and upends it with a crash.

  Pierce and I both step back.

  Seems we succeeded in bringing this kid back to life. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

  CHAPTER 15

  The kid immediately starts speaking Spanish. Pierce says out of the corner of his mouth, “Do you know what he’s saying?”

  “I think he’s asking, ‘Where is she?’ ”

  Then it occurs to me that we found his footprints near Jori’s body. It’s possible that they’d tried to escape together.

  The kid falls over, gets up, falls over again. He hits the floor like an anvil. He’s not as tall as Pierce but twice as thick.

  “Thirsty,” he says.

  I walk to the watercooler. The water is still mostly frozen, but the space heater has thawed it enough that I can get a few ounces of liquid out. I bring him a Styrofoam coffee cup of water. He drinks, crushes the cup in his fist, and flicks it away from him.

  “Where’s the girl?” he asks.

  “Which girl?” Pierce says.

  “I don’t know.”

  The kid looks down at himself and says, “Sandhog.”

  Pierce looks at me. I have no idea what he means, either.

  “My uncle’s a sandhog.”

  “Ah, got it.” Pierce whispers, “I think he means he’s dressed like a construction worker. Sandhogs are subway tunnel workers.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s your name?” Pierce asks him.

  “Oscar,” he says. “Oscar …” He’s trying to think of his last name. He shakes his head, and then starts smiling and putting his hands in the air like he’s thinking, How can I not know this?

  I start to introduce myself—“I’m …”—but then I realize I don’t know what to say. I’m caught somewhere between Sarah and Angel. I’m not one, not the other. I guess I’m nothing.

  Then I hear Pierce say, “Angel. This is Angel … and I’m Thomas.”

  Thomas?

  I jerk my head to look at him, trying to ask with my eyes if that’s his real name or one he’s trying to pass off like counterfeit money. His eyes lock with mine, apologetic.

  Yes, I think he’s told the truth this time.

  “You swore you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t tell you. I told him.”

  I suck my teeth in irritation.

  “It’s only my first name. So I only half-broke our deal. There are a million Thomases in the world, right? I could be anybody.”

  Oscar looks back and forth between us like he’s trying to figure why any of us is here.

  “Who are you?” Oscar asks, his eyes narrowed.

  I pull my cap off to show him my bare head. As soon as I do, he reaches out and touches it. “Mija, we got to stay together, eh?”

  He starts laughing hysterically but then stops abruptly a few seconds later. His gaze shifts to Pierce, I mean Thomas—it’s going to take a minute to get used to that. Oscar seems to realize that Thomas is not his kind, but I am. And not just because of the baldness thing. I guess I noticed the same thing about Thomas: He’s unmistakably a rich kid.

  Oscar puts his fist to his chin and pushes hard, cracking his neck and his knuckles at the same time. He points to the carton of Chinese food on the desk. “You want?”

  “All yours, dude,” Thomas says.

  Oscar empties the container of greasy food into his mouth, tapping the bottom of it to get the last bits out. Thomas and I look at each other. Aside from being certain that he’s going to be puking inside an hour, something about Oscar is making us both jumpy.

  Oscar looks into the paper bag and then quickly finishes off a second carton of food. A few stray bits of rice and sauce stick to his chin. He walks up to Thomas and pulls Thomas’s hat off. In this light I notice that Thomas colors his hair. It’s a deep, flat black, a different color at the roots.

  Oscar unzips Thomas’s jacket a few inches and then runs his fingers along the edge of the material. He stares into Thomas’s face, his lip curling slightly as he says, “Nice jacket, bro.”

  “He’s okay,” I say to Oscar. “He’s helping me. He helped you, too. You were almost frozen to death when we found you.”

  Oscar ignores this and walks toward the other end of the trailer, looking around, tossing whatever doesn’t interest him onto the floor, including a coffeepot, which shatters. He flicks piles of paper off tabletops, shakes out the contents of folders. Then he pushes a line of notebooks off a shelf and onto the floor.

  “There’s something really wrong with that guy,” Thomas says.

  “You think? And you color your hair, Thomas,” I respond.

  “A lot of people color their hair.”

  “True, but why do you do it?”

  “8-Bit insists we disguise ourselves. Change our appearance from time to time. Just to be safe.”

  “From who?”

  “A very long list of agencies, bureaus, and corporations. Plus several dozen irate Russian individuals with direct knowledge of our involvement in their organized crime.”

  Oscar is now rampaging around the opposite end of the trailer, pulling drawers out of the kitchenette and emptying them onto the floor. The warmth of the trailer seems to be strengthening him, and I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. He stops suddenly, looks down at his feet, and says, “I need some shoes.” He walks up to Thomas and looks down at his snow boots. “Wrong size, amigo. Lucky for you, eh?” Then he turns, opens the trailer door, and goes out into the storm.

  I jump up and run to the door. Oscar lurches out of view, around the end of the trailer. “Should we go after him?”

  Thomas shakes his head and then sighs. “The only reason I’d go after that freak is to get my socks back, but even that’s not worth it.”

  He sits down at his computer.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Seeing if I can find out something about him.”

  I walk behind Thomas and look at the screen as he searches through case files.

  “What floor did you say you were on?”

  “Fourth.”

  “Looks like we can sort by room number. There were only three of you on the fourth floor. Six on the third floor. Two on the second floor. Oh, wait. The two on the second floor were discharged. Man, that’s a big hospital for a handful of patients.”

  “Is there a file for me?”

  I can barely stand it. I want to know, but I’m afraid of what I might find out.

  “Let’s see if we can find out more about Mr. Personality first,” Thomas says. He opens a file and a picture appears. “Obviously not him.”

  “I saw that kid inside. He was crushed by a falling beam.”

  “Ouch.”

  “He was in a coma. I’m sure he didn’t feel a thing.”

  Thomas opens the next file. Jori’s picture comes up, and I’m startled by it. She has a full head of white-blonde hair and a dull, lifeless expression. Her picture is a cross between a bad yearbook photo and a mug shot.

  We both read the file simultaneously.

  Jori Elyse Harris. Age 16. Patient was referred by mental health providers in Kansas City. Excellent candidate. Otherwise healthy female. No history of violence prior to initiating incident that led to her incarceration.…

  “Her initiating incident? I wonder what it was,” Thomas says.

  We both keep reading.

  “Whoa,” Thomas says. “She killed her parents.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “after her father molested her and her kid sister and Jo
ri ended up pregnant. The mother was an alcoholic. Put her out on the street when she was twelve. Close it up. I don’t need to see any more.”

  We search the coma kid’s record. William Eggers, age 15. He was the lone survivor of a house fire that killed the rest of his family. He was the one who started the fire.

  We find files on three other kids, all of whom have been discharged. One is listed as being a “partial success,” and the two others are described as “unsuccessful.”

  Then we find him.

  Oscar Ruiz Noriega. Street name: O-No.

  “Cute,” Thomas says. “I think it really suits him.”

  We read the file together. Oscar was a complete thug. Six counts of assault and battery. He broke a kid’s skull with a two-by-four.

  “Whoa. He killed his roommate in juvie with his bare hands. Tried as an adult and sentenced to thirty years,” Thomas says. “His file says ‘Experimental.’ Seems like the kid’s a starting player on the varsity psychopath team. You had some nice company there on the fourth floor.”

  I take a deep breath and feel a tremor passing through me, but this time it has nothing to do with the cold. I sit down on the sofa, take my cap off, and start twisting it in my hands.

  “Stop,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you see a trend here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said there was a rumor I tried to kill someone. Maybe it’s true. Maybe I’m here because I’m a murderer.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Thomas kneels in front of me and takes the cap I’m strangling out of my hands.

  “I’m going to tell you something, and you’re going to have to trust that I know what I’m talking about. You are not guilty of anything.”

  “How can you possibly know that? Look at these files. Everyone they put on the fourth floor was a killer! I could be one, too!”

  He puts his hand over my mouth. “Hush. This is the ‘trust me’ part. Now look at me.”

  I look up, but my eyes dart away almost instantly as fear and shame boil up inside me.