by Jeff Hirsch
“But couldn’t you just—”
“We better get back to it,” I said. “Right, Greer?”
“Right. Sorry. You two hush. Work to do.”
He leaned over his books. The girl left him alone, moving across the meadow to sit closer to me. I was backlit by the sun, so she raised her hand to shield her eyes, which cast a little mask of shadow across her face.
“So there’ll be a picture of me in one of those? And my name?”
I picked a blade of grass and wound it around a fingertip. “That’s the idea. But there are thousands of pictures, so knowing more about you narrows things down. Like for you, Greer will probably be looking at academic clubs, student government, library assistants.”
“Nerd stuff!” Greer called out. “Somewhere in this stack I bet there’s a picture of you and Card at some interschool dweeb mixer.”
She laughed, which made her nose wrinkle prettily. “So you’re a nerd too, huh?”
I shrugged. “Guess so. But I’m a sci-fi slash comic book nerd. Looks like you’re more of an academic nerd.”
“So if we met, we would’ve had to fight to the death.”
“Probably.”
The girl smiled again. It was like this weird drug. Every time I saw it, I tried to think of ways I could get her to do it again.
“Oh hey,” I called out to Greer. “You should also check band. Jazz band maybe.”
“Good thinking!”
“What? Why band?”
“You’re a musician,” I said. “You play guitar anyway.”
“I do? How do you know that?”
I started to reach for her hand but pulled away at the last second. I pointed instead.
“Those calluses on your fingertips. You got them from holding down the strings of a guitar.”
She held her fingers up before her eyes. “I was wondering where those came from.”
“We’ve seen it before,” I said. “Astrid plays a little too. Her calluses were fainter, though. Looks like you’ve been doing it longer.”
“So wait, if I picked up a guitar right now . . .”
“You’d be able to play,” I said. “Whole songs you wouldn’t even remember learning.”
“That is just . . . spooky.”
“A lot of this is,” I said. “You’ll get used to it.”
Greer raised his voice again. “Hush, nerds!”
The girl got up and moved closer, stretching out on the grass in front of me. She was right on the line of too close, but I didn’t move. I watched as she picked dandelions and gathered them into a bunch.
“I was wondering,” she said. “Why did we stay? I mean, if my family and I weren’t infected, why wouldn’t we have just left?”
“Most everybody thought a cure was right around the corner,” I said. “And when it wasn’t, I don’t know, I guess some had relatives who were infected and they didn’t want to leave them. Others wanted to keep their eye on their houses or businesses or whatever. Maybe some people just didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Which one of those were you?”
Her eyes moved up and over the contours of my mask.
“I mean, you’re not infected, right?”
I nodded.
“So why’d you stay?”
My face felt like it was burning. I scrambled for an answer, but then, just over her shoulder, I saw Greer slam a book shut and toss it aside.
“What’s up, Greer?”
The girl turned around. “What’s wrong?”
He was running his palm back and forth over the stubble on his head. “Nothing. It’s just . . . you definitely weren’t at Edwards, so I was thinking Perkins, but . . . sorry. It’s tricky, since you probably looked a lot different then.”
She returned to Greer’s side. It was a little disappointing to have her suddenly gone. I watched from my spot as he went through one of the books a second time. When he came to the final page, he went back through St. Edwards and then all the others, one by one. After that he reached into the cardboard box and pulled out a sheaf of papers.
“What are those?” the girl asked.
“Missing posters.”
She waited for more, but Greer was so absorbed in his work, I jumped in.
“Some people who got caught up in the outbreak didn’t actually live here. The Guard took pictures and put them online so their families could identify them.”
“But you said I just got infected—what? Yesterday?”
“That’s what we thought, but . . .” Greer looked up from his pile of books. “What’s the very first thing you remember?”
“Those two men,” she said. “The ones who were chasing me.”
“And you don’t remember anything before that,” I said. “Nothing at all.”
“No. Why would I?”
I left my place by the trees and came into the meadow. “Once you’re exposed to the virus it takes about ten hours to do its thing. The last couple hours of that, you’re kind of going in and out. You know who you are one second, don’t know the next.”
“Sometimes people will remember bits and pieces from that time,” Greer said. “Maybe one of them will mean something.”
The girl bore down hard. It was as if there was a mountain in her path and she was scaling it one handhold at a time. “I remember standing beside a fence. It was low and black. And then . . . bells. I remember hearing bells.”
“St. Stephen’s,” I said. “This was before the men found you?”
“I think so. I was hot. I smelled flowers. And then I turned around and they were there. Those two men.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran. Oh! I think I dropped something.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “There were bells and then . . .” Her eyes went unfocused on the ground, and then she looked up suddenly. “It was a bag. Like a backpack. That’s what I dropped when I ran. A backpack. It was green. I can see it in my hand and then hitting the ground next to—”
She shook her head.
“Next to what?” I asked.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“I see a green bag on the ground next to a pink crocodile,” she said. “I must have just been confused.”
Greer and I locked eyes. “The sculpture garden,” I said. “By City Hall.”
“Guys, what is it? What’s happening?”
Neither of us said anything for a second.
“Guys!”
“You’re not in any of the yearbooks,” Greer said. “Not one of them. And you aren’t on any of the missing posters either.”
“So? What does that mean?”
Greer turned to me. There was nothing left to do but tell her.
“It means we have no idea who you are.”
11
“WHOA!” GREER SHOUTED. “Hold on! Would you wait a second?”
“I’m not going to just sit there!”
The green-haired girl had left the meadow and was racing toward camp. Greer and I were struggling to keep up.
“You guys know where I dropped that bag, right?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“So we’ll find it,” she said. “It’ll be a clue.”
I ran out ahead and blocked the way. “We’re supposed to be keeping you under wraps, okay? And besides, those guys from yesterday are still down there.”
“I don’t care! I—”
“We have a friend in the Guard,” I said. “We’ll have him come up here and he’ll be able to figure out who you are. You just have to be patient.”
The girl whipped around, getting right in Greer’s face. “If you thought there was something out there that could tell you who you really are, would you just sit around and wait?”
Greer glanced nervously over her shoulder at me. I mentally urged him to stay strong. “Absolutely! I would wait a reasonable amount of time and then go when all interested parties agreed that
it was perfectly safe.”
“Liar.”
She turned and ran on down the trail. Greer came up alongside me.
“Former Navy SEAL slash teen librarian,” he said. “That’s what I’m putting my money on. You’re one day late returning a book and she punches you in the face.”
Greer laughed, but I didn’t join him.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ll go with her and make sure she stays out of trouble.”
“No,” I said. “I brought her up here. It’s my problem.”
“Card—”
“I said I’ll go.”
By the time I got down to Greer’s camp, the girl had passed through the cabins and was at the trailhead that led off the mountain. When she saw me coming, she pressed on, picking up speed. A familiar heat moved up through my stomach as I thought about being back on the streets of Black River. I grabbed hold of the knife to steady myself.
“You all right, man?”
Greer appeared beside me, stuffing some clothes into a backpack.
“You don’t need to come. I can handle this.”
His eyes narrowed. “Dude, do you really not understand how this works by now?”
“How what works?”
“If you’re going to do something stupid, then so am I.”
“Greer—”
He jogged past me, swinging the backpack onto his shoulders.
“Come on, birdman! Let’s get stupid!”
Once we got down the mountain, I took the lead, with Greer in the back and the girl between us. My hand hovered by the hilt of the knife as I checked every overgrown yard and vacant house we passed—for infected, for Marvins, for Guard. I felt an edge of panic gathering from being back in town again, but I pushed it away as best I could and focused on what I was doing.
After we crossed the bridge, I led them down Harding Street to keep us away from the center of town for as long as possible. We’d be at the sculpture garden in ten or fifteen minutes and then back on Lucy’s Promise a half hour after that. Easy. We just had to keep moving.
We came to the end of Harding and turned onto Warren. The boughs of the red maples on either side of the street met above us, making it feel as if we were in this shady tunnel. I felt something inside of me ease a little and I let my pace slacken. Soon the girl had drawn close, as close as I could let her anyway. The clothes I’d seen Greer stuffing into his backpack had been for her. She had her hair tucked up under a Yankees cap and she’d traded her old button-down for a hooded sweatshirt. She hadn’t said a word since we’d started out, just plowed forward with her head down.
“You all right?”
She nodded, but didn’t look at me. Her lips were pressed tight, like a hairline crack in a block of marble.
“You know what I was thinking? What do me and Greer know, right? I mean, seriously. Two guys with a stack of yearbooks and a test they made up one day when they were bored? It’s not exactly scientific. Like, there were a few home-schooled kids in Black River. They wouldn’t be in the yearbooks at all.”
She glanced over at me, clearly unconvinced.
“Okay, fine, maybe it’s a long shot, but your family is here somewhere. We’ll find them. Did I ever tell you that me and Greer were world-famous private detectives before the outbreak?”
The corners of her mouth lifted, faintly. “I just keep wondering what it will be like when we find them,” she said. “I mean, if I was standing in a room with my mom and dad, if they were right there in front of me . . .”
“They might seem familiar,” I said. “Sometimes things from an infected person’s old life feel that way. Certain people. Certain situations. Kind of like déjà vu, I guess.”
“But when I see them will I feel anything? Will I still . . .”
She trailed off, but it didn’t matter. I knew how the question was going to end. Will I still love them?
Warren Street hitched to the left. We followed it past the empty playground outside Kinderbrook Elementary. Part of me wanted to tell her that love conquered all, even this, but then I saw Mom standing in that alleyway, sunlight streaming over her shoulders, and I couldn’t do it. I shook my head. The girl didn’t so much as break her stride, but I could see in the way she went back to studying the cracks in the pavement that it was a blow.
“But they’ll love you,” I said, dipping down to try to catch her eye. “And, you know, with enough time together, you’ll love them again too.”
Our eyes met and she smiled. A real one this time. It sent a wave of heat through my chest. Her hand was swinging beside her as she walked. It took everything in me not to reach out and take it.
Greer shouted from behind us. “Yo! Guys! Heads up!”
A truck was rolling into the intersection down the street. It was one of the big Marvin ones like we’d seen earlier, but with a dark canvas top covering the back. We ducked off the road and around the side of a nearby house as the vehicle slowed to a stop on the other side of the intersection. I heard voices beneath the engine’s rumble, and then a flap opened in the back. A bundle the size of a large trash bag spilled out onto the roadway, and then the truck belched a cloud of exhaust and was gone.
Greer just shook his head. “Here one day, and they’re already littering. No respect.”
“It’s not trash,” the girl said.
“What?”
The bundle shifted and began to unfold. It was a man—gray-haired, wearing a long, dark coat. He moaned as he sat up, clutching the shoulder they’d dropped him on.
“Is that Freeman?”
Greer was right. Freeman Wayne—the town librarian. The same man I’d seen taken away by the Marvins at the ration drop.
“Come on,” I said. “We better keep mov—”
Before I could finish, Greer darted out from behind the house and into the street.
“Looks like you got yourself into a bit of trouble there,” he said to Freeman. “What’d you do? Refuse to renew somebody’s copy of Encyclopedia Brown?”
The girl looked back at me, and then she joined Greer. The two of them helped Freeman onto the curb, and Greer handed him a bottle of water from his pack. The spire of St. Stephen’s rose just beyond the houses across from us. We were five minutes from the sculpture garden, maybe less. Damn it. I looked both ways for more Marvins, then crossed the road.
Freeman Wayne was well over six feet tall and scrawny, with a beaklike nose and a rat’s nest of white hair. Gray stubble ran from his jawline to the edge of his cheekbones. Despite the heat, he wore a dingy white button-down shirt and black pants, the knees shiny from wear, under the coat. I’d have bet anything that if Black River had any homeless people before the outbreak, Freeman was one of them.
He finished the bottle of water Greer had given him, then wiped his lips with his sleeve.
“Kept talking to me about papers,” he said. “I told them this was America and I wouldn’t show them my papers even if I had them. Then they asked my name. I told them it was Freeman Wayne, but they kept asking, so I said it was Josef K.”
He made a spasmodic kind of gulp that I guessed was a laugh, then reached inside his coat and started hunting around for something. He exhausted nearly every pocket before he pulled out a piece of construction paper cut to the size of a business card. “Black River Municipal Library” was scrawled at the top of it. Freeman held it out to Greer.
“Letter of transit,” he said. “Whatever you need, you come see me. I have the entire universe and all of time trapped within four walls.”
“I already have a library card. Remember? Greer Larson?”
Freeman squinted up at him and then bowed with a flourish as he turned to the girl.
“For you then, Penthesilea.”
She blushed a little and took the card. “Uh . . . thanks.”
Greer clapped his hands together. “Well then! This has been great, but if you’re feeling better, we’ll just get—”
“You’re the man in the iron mask.”
Freeman
was staring right at me. He had these intense eyes, small and ocean blue, beneath snowy eyebrows.
“You look after the children on the mountain,” he said. “You and that other one. Layton. Belson.”
“Larson,” Greer said, raising his hand. “I’m right here, Free.”
“My name’s Cardinal.”
Freeman’s eyes narrowed to slits, looking at me, through me. “You must be very careful.”
“I’m sorry?”
“To not have become one of us. All this time. Surrounded by the children of Lethe. You must be very careful.”
“I keep my distance.”
He looked at my mask and my gloves; then his eyes slipped down to my waist, where my hand gripped the knife. I snatched it away. He smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose you must.”
Greer stepped down off the curb. “So! Like I was saying, we have to—”
“Do any of you know how new planets are discovered?”
Freeman waited for an answer. Greer looked from me to the girl. We both shrugged.
“We, uh, don’t know. Some kind of telescope maybe?”
The librarian let out a grunt of disgust, then he reached into his coat again and whipped out a nub of chalk.
“Planets that are too distant to be viewed directly are sometimes detected by looking at the way light bends around them.”
He leaned over the asphalt and drew a stick figure with a slash of a line growing out of its chest.
“It’s the same with us. We, like light, attempt to move through life in a straight line, unchanged, but we encounter massive objects along the way.”
He drew several lumpy masses in front of the stick figure and labeled them: SICKNESS. DEATH. LOVE. The line growing from the figure’s chest was forced to zigzag around them.
“Each event bends our life into a new trajectory. It bends who we are. So if you look closely, you can perceive distant events in a person’s life by observing the ways in which they’ve bent themselves around them. The ways in which they’ve been deformed. It’s like looking back in time. But it’s also like looking into the future.”