by Jeff Hirsch
When Mom came out the stage door, we all rushed her at once, crashing into this tight little circle, the flowers Dad brought in the center. Mom’s hand and your hand curled around either side of my back while Dad’s long arms reached all the way around us. We leaned into the circle and our breath swirled together, mingling with the scent of Mom’s stage makeup and her sweat and a dozen yellow roses.
“Hey. You okay?”
I snapped out of the memory to find Hannah standing at the edge of my campsite, a flashlight in her hand.
I shook the past out of my head and jumped up. “Is everything all right? Are the kids—”
“They’re fine,” she said, waving me back down. “Greer’s trying to move everybody toward bed, and I needed a breather. He figured you might be up here.”
She settled onto a fallen log. My mask and gloves were in the tent behind me, but she was five feet away, maybe six, so I left them where they were. She pulled two cans of soda out of a plastic bag and held one up to me.
“Ren made a special trip into town and talked a guardsman out of two six-packs of soda. Said he did it just for me.”
I waved the can away. No way to know how many infected had touched it. “He’s lying. He talks Eliot into doing things like that and then he takes credit for it.”
“No way! He said the only reason he did it was so I’d give him a kiss on the cheek.”
“Guess you should kiss Eliot, then,” I said. “Just watch out for Astrid and Makela if you do.”
Hannah stretched her legs in front of her. “Ah, but you’ve been away too long,” she said. “The girls decided that they’re too mature and desirable to waste their time on a boy who clearly doesn’t appreciate them. Besides, they really need to spend more time on themselves, you know?”
“And how do they plan on doing that?”
“Well, Astrid is going to rededicate herself to the art of sculpture. Makela wants to take up hunting.”
“Hunting?”
“Yeah, and you’d better be prepared because tomorrow she plans on asking you and Greer how she can get hold of a shotgun.”
“No way,” I said. “I will not live in any camp that includes an armed Makela Whitman. She’s scary enough already.”
Hannah laughed. I didn’t think there could be anything better than her smiling, but there was.
“You looked like you were having fun with them,” I said.
“They’re good kids,” she said. “Exhausting, but good.”
She upended the soda, her neck gracefully long and pale in the glow of the flashlight. When she lowered the can, our eyes met, and it was as if an electric circuit snapped into place. I quickly looked away and pointed to the key around her neck.
“Any feelings about what that might open?”
Hannah took it in her fingertips and turned it over. She shook her head. “Every time I touch it, I see the color blue, like sky blue, and then I feel happy for a second, but then . . .” Her face darkened. She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just gone.”
She let the key drop. I pulled at the blades of grass by my feet while we listened to the night sounds of the woods.
“I didn’t actually come up here to bring you a soda, you know.”
She was leaning forward, her eyes on me, mussed hair framing her face. I felt a nervous trill in my gut.
“I never really thanked you,” she said. “For yesterday. With those men.”
“Oh.” I shrugged it away. “Anyone would have done it.”
“Not me, apparently. The second they grabbed you, I ran away.”
“But you came back.”
Hannah nodded, but I got the feeling it was an excuse she didn’t really buy. “Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks. Whatever this—however this turns out, I’m really glad it was you who found me.”
She smiled and my face went hot, as if every drop of blood had raced there at once.
“I’m glad it was me too.”
“Also glad I got to see you without that mask,” she said, then lightly touched her cheeks. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have known about those dimples.”
“Hannah! Card! Guys! Where the hell are you?”
There was a crash out in the woods and then a second later Greer exploded out of the trees, his clothes askew, his eyes wild.
I grabbed my mask and gloves. “What is it? Is it Raney?”
“No time to talk! We have to run! Now!”
“But why? What’s going—”
Right on cue, the singsongy voice of Carrie Baldwin rang through the trees.
“Gre-er! I know you’re hi-ding!”
Greer let out a yelp and took off into the woods. “Let’s go! Now! Before she finds me!”
“GRE-ER!”
Hannah looked to me. I rolled my eyes and cinched on my mask. “Come on. We’d better get him before he breaks his damn neck.”
Hannah and I tracked Greer’s flashlight beam as it bounced through the forest. Carrie’s voice faded as the woods closed around us and the trail narrowed. We didn’t stop until we found him collapsed on the shore of the reservoir, doubled over and trying to catch his breath.
“Oh, man”—gasp—“that was close. That was really”—gasp—“close.”
“So that’s what all the whispering was about!” Hannah said, then turned to me. “The whole time Greer and I were talking, Carrie was on the other side of the camp whispering with Makela and Jenna.”
I laughed. “Carrie Baldwin does not like it when someone messes with her man.”
Greer wailed. “Dude! Shut up. Seriously. That is so wrong.”
Hannah climbed onto an outcropping of rock by the water. “What’s the big deal? She’s one of the older ones, right?”
“Turned fourteen last week,” I teased.
“Then I don’t see what the problem is,” Hannah said. “You’re all alone on this mountain. It’s the middle of a national emergency. And you’re what? Sixteen?”
“Seventeen,” Greer said. “And that’s not the problem. The problem is that I’m in a position of authority here.”
“Ha!”
“Shut up, Card! I’m like their big brother! Their wise and noble big brother.”
“Who makes them dance the mambo between halves of fake football games.”
“Exactly!” Greer said. “Even when I’m making them do ridiculous things for my own amusement, they trust me. I can’t abuse that!”
“Even though you want to,” Hannah teased.
“Oh God,” he moaned. “I want to so bad, it haunts my dreams. That’s it. I’m burning up. I need a swim.” He ripped off his shoes and socks.
“Now?”
He yanked his shirt off over his head. “It’s an emergency, Hannah!”
“What’s that?” she asked, shining her flashlight on his back. Up near his shoulder blade was a tattoo in heavy black ink. Two numbers separated by a slash.
“Fourteen eighty-eight?” she read.
Greer twisted around to try and get a look at it. “Oh, yeah, that. Weird, huh?”
“What does it mean?”
“We don’t know,” I said. “I tried to look it up once, but it doesn’t seem to mean anything.”
“Just another part of the mystery that is me,” Greer said. “Okay! Let’s do this!”
He pulled off his shorts and underwear in one swipe.
“Greer!” Hannah squealed.
“What?” he said, wiggling his pasty butt in the moonlight. “We’re all alone on a mountain. It’s a national emergency. Anything goes.”
“Not that! Anything goes but that!”
“You’re just afraid of your own desires. That’s all it is.”
He took a running leap and threw himself into the water, popping up dozens of feet away doing a strong backstroke.
“Hey! Did I ever tell you guys I think I might have been an Olympic swimmer?”
Greer laughed, then turned over, chopping at the water freestyle. A white V spread out from the tips of his
fingers and trailed behind him. I thought he’d turn back, but he kept on going until he was beyond the reach of our flashlights. Soon the splash of his strokes faded, replaced by the sound of crickets.
Hannah laughed. “Poor guy has no idea what he’s in for.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Carrie’s not the only one. Judging from the way the younger girls look at him, she’s gonna have some serious competition a few years from now.”
Hannah took a pebble from the shore and playfully tossed it at my shoulder. “So which one of them’s in love with you?”
I shook my head, feeling the blood rise to my cheeks again.
“Ah, come on,” she said. “I bet there’s one or two.”
“Nah. I’ve always had to kinda keep my distance from them, you know?”
“Ah, so you were a ladies’ man before the outbreak.”
“Yeah, right.” I laughed. “No. My brother, maybe. He had a new girlfriend every week since he was like thirteen. Not me.”
“I don’t know. I bet you could—” Hannah sprang to her feet. “Whoa! What the hell was that? Card! Did you see that?”
She was pointing out over the water. At first I didn’t see anything, but then a few pinpricks of greenish-yellow light appeared over the surface of the reservoir.
“What?” I said. “The fireflies?”
“Fireflies? Oh! Look! There’s more! They’re so pretty!”
All across the reservoir, lights flared and then winked out, like match heads. I watched Hannah watch them, her eyes bright, her mouth agape. A few minutes passed, and then they were gone.
“Fireflies,” she whispered, as if she were carving the word into her memory. “Hey, I guess that’s another clue, right? I didn’t know what they were, so that must mean I come from a place that doesn’t have fireflies.”
“Maybe that’s why you left.”
Hannah laughed. She pulled off her boots and let her feet dangle in the wavelets at the reservoir’s edge. “Can I ask you a weird question? It’s something I’ve been wondering.”
“Sure.”
“Is Cardinal your real name? I mean, that’s a kind of bird, right? Your parents named you after a bird?”
“No. My dad—he, uh, he wrote comic books. Cardinal was a character of his.”
“Seriously? That’s so cool! What are the comics about?”
“This group of superheroes in a place called Liberty City,” I said. “The Brotherhood of Wings. There’s Black Eagle. Sally Sparrow. Blue Jay. Kestrel Kain. Rex Raven. Goldfinch. Lord Starling.”
“And Cardinal,” Hannah said.
The first few pages of issue one came flooding into my head. Mild-mannered Cameron Conner sweeping up the lab while he pines for Sally Sparrow, his true love, who barely knows he exists.
“He was a nobody at first,” I said. “Just a technician and a part-time inventor who worked in the lab. And then one day the Brotherhood was defeated by a bad guy named Kirzon Sloat, and Conner threw on this experimental suit of armor he’d built from scratch and saved the day.”
I flipped through the pages in my head until I came to one of my all-time favorite sequences—Cardinal being unmasked by Rex Raven. Sally Sparrow gasps in shock when she sees that their savior is some anonymous lab tech. Conner is heartbroken, convinced that she’s going to make him give up the Cardinal armor and return to his lab, but in the very last panel Sally leaps into his arms and kisses him.
Holy heartthrob! Blue Jay exclaims. Looks like there’s only one bird for Sally Sparrow now!
“That sounds amazing!” Hannah said. “Tell me more.”
“About the comics?”
Hannah crossed her legs and leaned over them. “No. About you.”
“About me? Why?”
“I’ve decided I like knowing things about people. And since you’re the only person up here who actually knows anything about himself, I’ve got nowhere else to turn.”
It was hard logic to argue against. “What do you want to know?”
“Umm. Let’s see. You said you have a brother. What’s his name?”
A picture flashed into my head—you standing on the sidewalk, hands jammed into your jacket pockets. I scooped up a handful of rocks and skipped one across the water.
“Tennant. His name’s Tennant.”
“Is that a strange name too?”
I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Kind of. Yeah. My mom was really into Dr. Who. It’s this science-fiction TV show? Anyway, the tenth doctor was her favorite, so they named my brother after the actor who played him. If he’d been a girl, Mom was going to name him Vastra, so I guess he kinda lucked out.”
“What’s your mom do?”
I saw Mom onstage, mid-pirouette. My nose filled with the scent of roses.
“Card?”
“She, uh, she was a dancer. But she hurt her ankle a few years back and had to stop. She was going to start teaching when we moved here from the city, but it never really worked out.”
“Wow. You have such a cool family. Are they all—” Hannah cut herself off. “Sorry. I was going ask if they were all . . . it’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have—”
“Tennant was away at college when Lassiter’s hit.”
There was a rustle as Hannah shifted position. Water lapped against the shore.
“Oh. Well, that’s good,” she said. “Lucky.”
I nodded and pushed the rocks around in my hand. They made a click like bones knocking together. There was a splash out on the reservoir. I looked up and saw another white V streaming across the surface toward us.
Hannah stood up on her rock. “How was it?” she called.
“Cold!”
Greer pulled himself to the shallows and strode toward us, naked and shivering.
“You know, I take it back. I wasn’t a professional swimmer. But I’m pretty sure I might have been a nudist. Seriously, this is the way to go. Hannah, give it a try.”
She laughed, untied the hoodie from around her waist, and threw it at him.
“Dry yourself off. You’re indecent.”
Not long after that, we were on our way back to camp, barefoot, our shoes hanging over our shoulders by the laces, as if we’d just come from a long day at the beach. I felt unbelievably light, like each step I took was covering miles. The talk flowed effortlessly, rising and falling, punctuated by laughter. At some point Snow Cone and Hershey Bar came running out of the woods and trotted alongside us. It was one of those times when you felt like there was some sort of current running through the world and you had stepped into it and been carried away.
Firelight from the camp appeared as a glow in the trees ahead, along with the faint sounds of the kids’ voices. Hershey Bar and Snow Cone ran off down the trail. No one said anything, but I felt the three of us slow down until we were just barely drifting along, trying to delay the inevitable. Still, the end came. We hit the junction where the trail branched off to Hannah’s and my campsites. Greer pressed on ahead, raising his hand in farewell.
“Maybe Carrie’s still up!” Hannah called out. “You should go say hi.”
Greer flipped her off over his shoulders with both hands. She laughed as his footsteps faded away. I looked down the branch of the trail that led to my campsite. Suddenly everything there—my tent, my books, my clothes—seemed stale and flat, an eddy off the current, circling endlessly.
“Walk me home?”
Hannah was standing across from me on the trail. Her skin glowed a ghostly silver in the moonlight. When we got to her camp, she passed the tent and went out to the edge of the mountain. The borders of the QZ were never so obvious as they were late at night. Since it was long past the time the state turned off the electricity, inside the fence was nothing but inky blackness. Outside was a map of light and movement. The highway that ran along the western edge was like a glowing artery, red blood cells streaming one way, white the other. The neon billboards for gas stations and fast-food chains were so bright you co
uld almost read them from where we stood. Beyond, a constellation of small towns stretched into the darkness.
“Weird, huh?” I said. “There’s a whole other world out there.”
Hannah’s hair whipped in the breeze. She tucked it behind her ears. “What’s it like?”
I came up beside her, watching the lights move out into the dark. “A mess mostly.”
“So we’re not missing anything.”
“Maybe not.”
She was quiet a moment, watching the lights. “Greer thinks your friend Gonzalez can find out who I am.”
“Is that what you want?”
Hannah turned her back on the valley and settled onto the rocks. “He said sometimes, even when he’s happy, it’s like there’s this hole that runs right through him. All because he doesn’t know.”
“Greer said that?”
She stared down at her hands, almost as if she hadn’t heard me. “When I found out that I did it, that I came here to—it was kind of a relief. You know? Like something must have happened that made me want to, made me need to do it. But then I thought, I had to have a family, right? And friends? What could have happened that was so awful I’d just leave?”
“The note you wrote didn’t . . .”
Hannah shook her head. “It said I should decide who I am instead of worrying about who I was.”
“That’s not bad advice.”
“Maybe. But the whole time I was reading it, even though I knew it was my handwriting, I kept thinking, I don’t know this person. Why should I trust her?”
Hannah took hold of the key and drew it back and forth across the leather band.
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing happened to me at all.”