by Jeff Hirsch
He finished, and the three of us just stood there slack-jawed. What did you say to that? Did you applaud? Was it brilliant or was it insane? Freeman saved us the trouble of deciding. He whipped another library card out of his pocket and held it out to me.
“Letter of transit.”
I took the card. Greer and the girl helped Freeman up, and he strolled away without another word.
Greer watched him go, then turned back to us. “Who the hell are the children of Lethe?”
The girl laughed. “Who the hell is Penthesilea?”
I wondered—Who the hell is Freeman Wayne?
The backpack was right where she said it would be, sitting beside a pink crocodile in the middle of the sculpture garden. The park’s iron gate squeaked as Greer opened it. I expected the girl to run to the bag and start tearing through it, but she hung back near the fence, staring at it, her arms crossed tight over her chest.
“You want me to . . .”
She nodded. Greer knelt by the bag and unzipped it. I watched from the other side of the fence as he tossed out a pair of socks, a pair of jeans, a plain gray T-shirt. Next came an empty bottle of water and a couple energy bar wrappers. He looked discouraged until he saw another pocket on the front of the bag and opened it.
“Well, well, well. Lookee here, boys and girls!”
I let myself into the garden. “What is it?”
“We’ve got ourselves a driver’s license!”
The girl jumped away from the fence. “Seriously?”
Greer pulled an orange wallet out of her backpack, then, with a grand, Freeman-like bow, turned to her and produced a plastic card. “Please allow me to reunite you with you. Marianne.”
The girl snatched the ID out of Greer’s hand. He turned to me, grinning.
“Damn, Card, are we good or what? We’ll have her back to her folks by the end of the day.”
I nodded, but the truth was, I didn’t feel like celebrating. It was stupid. This had been the plan. We figure out who she is and get her off the mountain; then things go back to normal. I should have been relieved—I wanted to be relieved—but when I thought of her being gone, I don’t know, it was like all the air had rushed out of me.
“Hey! You okay? What’s wrong?”
I thought Greer was talking to me, but when I looked up, I saw that the girl was at the fence, head down, with her back to us. The ID was clamped in her hands. When she moved to return it to Greer, I saw that she was crying.
“What?” he said as he scanned the license again. “You don’t like the name? I think Marianne is nice. We could call you Mari if you want.”
No response. Greer looked at me, helpless, and handed the card over. It was a New York driver’s license all right and it was definitely her in the picture, green hair and all, but there was something about it, something I couldn’t put my finger on. And then it hit me all at once.
“It’s fake,” I said.
Greer plucked the card out of my hand. “What? No way. How do you know?”
I started to answer, but the girl interrupted me.
“Marianne Dashwood.”
Her back was pressed up against the fence, and she was clutching at the key around her neck. Her eyes were puffy and red. Greer looked to me, confused.
“She’s a character in a book called Sense and Sensibility,” I said.
“Well, maybe her parents just—”
“The address isn’t real either,” I explained. “Eighteen eleven Austen Street? Jane Austen wrote Sense and Sensibility.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Greer said. “Why would she have been carrying a fake ID? Where would she have even gotten one?”
I knelt down and opened the backpack again. There had to be something else there. I turned the thing inside out, but there were no pictures, no bank cards, no phone, no other ID. I went through the wallet, but all Greer had missed when he found the license was some cash in small bills. As I counted through them, a scrap of paper fell to the ground. It was rumpled and torn, but as soon as I unfolded it, I could see what it was. A Greyhound bus ticket stub.
It was for a route that ran from some town in Indiana to one that was barely an hour from Black River. But why would someone keep a bus ticket in her wallet for over six months? Just as that thought went through my head, I saw it. A few numbers printed at the bottom. The wallet dropped out of my hands.
“What’s up, Card? You got something?”
I handed Greer the ticket. It took him only a second to see the same thing I did. “But that’s not—”
“What is it?” the girl asked.
When Greer didn’t answer, she snatched the ticket out of his hand. “So what?” she said. “You said some people were just passing through when—”
I took a step toward her. “Look at the departure date on the bottom.”
The girl did and then looked up at me, uncomprehending.
“That was three days ago.”
None of us moved. When the girl spoke again, her voice was hard and small.
“But . . . you said the town’s been quarantined for months.”
I turned to Greer. “Was there a charity group at the supply drop yesterday?”
“Yeah, some church was helping out, I think. Oh! That’s it! I heard they came in the day before to get ready. She must have gotten permission to cross into the QZ to do some charity work and then ended up getting infected.”
It made sense, but something about it didn’t feel right. I turned it all over in my head. A bus ticket and a fake ID sitting in a mostly empty backpack. No phone. No ATM card. Her hair had been dyed recently. Each piece clicked together like the sides of a frame. When the picture inside emerged, I felt something cold in the pit of my stomach.
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“Then what?” Greer asked.
I studied the girl as she stood there holding the ticket in her trembling hand. She looked exactly as she had the first time I’d seen her. Hunted. Frightened. Lost. But strong too. I took a breath to steady myself and looked her in the eye.
“You did it on purpose,” I said. “You came here because you wanted to get infected.”
“What?” Greer exclaimed. “No way, man.”
“People have tried before. Gonzalez said—”
“That every now and then some mental case throws himself against the fence. You think that’s who she is? No. Uh-uh.”
The girl had started backing away toward the gate. Greer went after her.
“Listen, Card thinks he knows everything, but trust me, he’s not as smart as he—”
Greer tried to grab her arm to keep her from leaving, but she drove both hands into his chest and knocked him to the ground. She threw herself through the gate and into the street. I called out to her, but she ran past City Hall and St. Stephen’s and then down Elm Street. Greer groaned as he rolled over.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Fine,” Greer said. “See? Told you. Former Navy SEAL. Come on, we better go after her.”
I went back for her bag. As I stuffed her things inside, I saw a splash of yellow tangled up in the thorns of a rosebush near the fence. A thin jacket, like a Windbreaker. I remembered her saying she’d been hot as the virus took hold. I yanked it off the thorns and immediately felt something in the pocket. I reached inside and pulled it out. It was a small sealed envelope. On the front, in neat block letters, it said:
READ ME.
“So,” Greer said. “You gonna take a look?”
We’d been winding through the streets for hours, searching for the girl without any luck.
“Take a look at what?”
Greer nodded toward the note I had clutched in my hand.
“No,” I said. “And you’re not either. Whatever she wrote, it’s none of our business.”
“Yeah, but you can’t tell me it isn’t killing you, right? It’s killing me. Oh! Maybe she was like a bank robber or something and she came here to get away from the pol
ice.”
“Then she’d want them to forget her,” I said. “Not the other way around.”
“Right. So maybe . . .”
Greer laid out a dozen more theories as we checked the park and the high school, but I could barely hear him anymore. My heartbeat was pounding in my ears. It seemed to grow louder every minute we stayed in town. I’d become hyper alert too, flinching at every sound and constantly seeing movement in the shadows only to turn and find nothing there. I could feel our house lurking out in the maze of neighborhoods, pulling at me, trying to draw me back. All I wanted was to find the girl and go.
Greer led us down to the alleys and the boarded-up shops on Main Street. Infected emerged from their homes, standing in the gloom of their doorways to watch us. Greer stopped and asked each one if they’d seen her while I waited on the street. The answer was always no. Nothing. Not a trace. The sun was just starting to fall.
“Come on,” I said. “Maybe she headed back to camp.”
Greer agreed and we left Main and rejoined Route 9 heading out of town. Lucy’s Promise rose ahead of us. The pounding in my chest slowly eased.
“Hey, at least we know she’s from Indiana,” Greer said. “That’s something, right?”
“We know she got on a bus in Indiana,” I said. “She could have been anywhere before that.”
“Yeah. Right. Good point. I still don’t get it, though.”
“What’s to get?” I said. “She gives some charity group a fake name, then ditches them once she gets inside.”
“I get that,” Greer said. “I just don’t get why. I mean, what could happen to a person that’d be so bad they’d throw their whole life away over it?”
Greer waited for an answer, but I didn’t say anything. I kept my head down, watching the asphalt beneath my feet. I saw Mom in that alleyway. I saw the house. I saw you and Dad. Glassy chimes jangled in my head.
“Card.”
We’d come to the bridge that spanned Black River Falls. The girl was standing out in the middle of it, leaning against the stone guardrail. She’d taken off the baseball cap, and her hair rippled in the spray-filled breeze. She didn’t move as we came onto the bridge, didn’t acknowledge us. I handed Greer the note. He took it over to her and then rejoined me. The girl stood looking down at the falls for a long time before she tore open the envelope with one swift motion. Inside was a plain white card, square, folded in the middle, like an invitation. It whipped back and forth in the wind as she read.
“Or maybe she’s some kind of international spy and her bosses sent her here to—”
“Shhhh.”
It was a small card, but the girl took a long time reading it. She would come to the end, look up, start again. When she was done, she refolded it and placed it back in the envelope. Greer started to walk toward her, but I held up my hand to stop him.
She leaned against the guardrail and carefully ripped the envelope in two. She placed one piece on top of the other and tore them again. There was a whistle in the trees, and then a starling flew across the water. The girl held the scraps over the guardrail and let them drop into the falls.
12
AS SOON AS Greer and I got back to camp, there was a shriek and Astrid came running toward us.
“Greer! Cardinal! Hi!”
Behind her, everyone else had congregated in the space between the four cabins. They were scrubbed clean and wearing their going-to-town finest. Even the boys. Strips of colored paper had been strung into chains that hung from trees and rooftops like a Christmas garland.
“We, uh, we didn’t think you-all would be back so soon!”
“Well, here we are,” Greer said. “What’s going on, Astrid?”
“Where’s the girl?”
“She’s trailing along behind us,” I said. “She’ll be here in a minute.”
“Oh, okay. Well, we all thought that since Cash and Shan and the green-haired girl—”
“Wait,” Greer said. “Cash and Shan?”
“Oh!” Astrid said. “They’re the kids from this morning. We gave them names till you find their real ones.”
Astrid gestured behind her, and the Joseph’s Point kids—Cash and Shan now—stood between Ren’s and Makela’s groups. They still looked a little shell-shocked, but they were clean and in fresh clothes.
“Anyway,” Astrid continued, “since the two of them and that girl with green hair all joined us at the same time, we thought we should have a welcome party! Eliot was supposed to ask if we could this morning. He said he couldn’t find you, but I think he chickened out and was lying about it.”
“I did not chicken out!”
“You did too, Eliot!”
“Guys,” Greer said. “I don’t know if—”
“Wait! Before you say anything, we got our chores done early. And there’s going to be a cake! Well, kind of. And presents! Kind of. We’re going to have a dance party! Is it okay? Say it’s okay!”
Greer and I exchanged a look.
“Listen,” I said, lowering my voice. “This is all really great, but I don’t think she’s going to be in the mood for a dance party right now. Maybe we should—”
“Why wouldn’t I be in the mood for a dance party?”
We all turned. The girl was standing at the top of the trail, hands in her pockets, the late-day sunlight washing over her. The tension that had hardened her shoulders and made her hands into fists had dropped away all at once. She barely even resembled the person we’d seen on the bridge just minutes before.
“Well, I just thought, you know, since—”
She marched right past Greer and me. “Don’t listen to them, Astrid. I’d love a party!”
“Oh—yay!” Astrid grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the rest of the kids. “I’ll introduce you to everybody! Oh! Wait! Did you find out your name?”
“We didn’t. Not yet.”
“No problem!” Astrid chirped. “Pick a letter!”
“Pick a letter?” The girl looked back at us. Greer nodded encouragingly. “Uh . . . H?”
“Perfect! Wait right here!”
Astrid sprinted back to the others. “Guys! She picked H!”
The kids held a conference, and then Astrid came racing back.
“We have options!” she said. “Hester, Helen, Hailee, or Hermione.”
“Wow. Those are some really good choices. Um . . .”
Benny appeared by Astrid’s side and tugged at her skirt. She bent down, and he whispered something in her ear.
“Oh. Okay. Sure. I’ll tell her.” Astrid stood back up. “Benny says he also likes Hannah.”
The green-haired girl smiled at Benny. “You know what? I think I do too.”
Astrid grabbed the newly minted Hannah by the hand and swept her away to join the rest of the kids. “Guys! Her name is Hannah!”
Isaac emerged from the boys’ cabin with our radio. The kids screamed as a thump and crash reverberated through the camp.
“Uh-oh!” Greer exclaimed as he ran off to join them. “This is it! This is my jam! Isaac’s playing my jam!”
He dove into the crowd, and the dancing spread out from him in waves. Hannah kept to the sidelines with Benny and the younger kids until Ren pulled them all into the swirl of bodies. It was chaos at first, but then the kids linked arms and turned as one. Someone always seemed to be a half step off, though, so they were perpetually falling into huge, giggling pileups and then climbing out of them to start again.
I watched from the growing shadows by the boys’ cabin. Over the next couple of hours, dozens of camp dramas, most of which I’d only heard about, emerged from the confusion. Carrie’s tomboyish jostling of a noticeably uncomfortable Greer. Eliot dancing with Astrid and then dancing with Makela and then collapsing in a heap with Ren and Cash, where they whispered to one another and laughed. Isaac and Tomiko off by the supply shed, their arms wrapped around each other, their lips pressed together.
The longer I watched, the more it seemed like the space between
us expanded. Even though I never moved, the twenty feet between the cabin and the dance soon felt like thirty feet, then forty. By the time the sun started slipping behind the trees, it was a hundred.
Then Hannah burst from the jumble, out of breath and laughing. Greer and Ren called for her to come back, but she waved them off, then wiped the sweat from her forehead with a lazy stroke of her arm. She’d tied her sweatshirt around her waist and a flush of pink had spread across her chest. The falling sun laid a streak of gold across her cheek.
When she saw me standing by the boys’ cabin, she smiled and waved me toward her. The music fell away, and everyone behind her blurred into a wall of spinning bodies. I imagined myself stripping off my mask and gloves and crossing the space between us. I’d take her hand and sweep her back into the dance, where we’d turn with all the rest of them, laughing, falling into each other again and again, skin on skin, our breath mingling.
She took a step toward me, and just like that, reality snapped into place. I backed away, moving into the shadows. She called out my name, and Greer did too, I think, but I kept going toward the trail that led to my camp. I hurried through the woods until the music and the lights faded away.
The three of us soared across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Manhattan. Me and you and Dad, awkward in our rented tuxes. When the cab pulled up in front of the theater, you and I tumbled out of the car into a crowd of gowned and tuxedoed Manhattanites. Every man was Bruce Wayne. Every woman was Selina Kyle. Dad took us by our shoulders and guided us toward the entrance. The last thing I saw before we swept into the lobby were the words ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER spelled out in steel above the door.
Then we were in our seats, surrounded by that pre-performance murmur until the houselights flashed and everyone found their places and quieted. Dad was sitting between us. He took your hand and then mine and squeezed. Three links in a chain. The houselights went out, and the empty stage slowly filled with a canary yellow light, like a gradual dawn. The woman behind me leaned forward. I could smell the spice of her perfume and feel the warmth of her breath on the back of my neck.
Mom emerged from the wings, alone, barefoot, wearing a dress of green and yellow tatters, each one so light and so pale it was as if a ribbon had been cut out of the air and tinted. When she reached the edge of the stage, her whole body drew upward, as if she were being lifted by a string anchored in the center of her chest. We all watched her, breathless, waiting. And then the music started, violins and cellos, and she exploded into movement. Do you remember? Leaping. Spinning. Falling to the floor only to rise up again. Other dancers joined her then, their bodies like twists of wrought iron. You fell back in your chair, eyes wide and mouth slack. Dad was crying quietly and making no attempt to hide it.