by Jon McGoran
But that wasn’t the answer. Not for me.
I took a deep breath and stepped off the train, almost ready to face the music.
But not quite.
As the doors began to close, I got back onto the train.
SEVENTY-ONE
New Ground Coffee Shop was almost empty, and Jerry was behind the counter. He looked up when I walked in, twitching his eyebrows in greeting. I wondered if the scant crowd was because of his customer-service skills, but then I realized there were no chimeras in there at all.
“Where is everybody?”
He shrugged. “Some split, some are laying low with all this crazy GHA stuff going on. As for the rest, you tell me. Where’s Rex?”
“I’m not sure,” I said truthfully. “But we found Ruth and Del.”
“For real?”
I nodded and lowered my voice. “That place Ryan mentioned, Haven, we found them there.”
“No kidding.”
“They also say they’re going to Chimerica.”
He threw back his head and laughed, drawing looks from the few patrons in the place. “You mean cloud cuckooland. What are you talking about, Chimerica?”
I shrugged. “They think it’s real and they said they’re going there. A secret place, somewhere out of state or in Canada or something.”
He snorted. “Even Rex?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s still trying to figure out if he believes it, and if he’s going.”
“You’re kidding me. I wouldn’t have thought Rex would fall for that stuff. And where’s this Haven place?”
“It’s totally hush-hush, like a big secret. The guy running the place made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone where it is.”
He snorted again. “Well, don’t worry about that. Rex showed me the map before you guys left. It’s the place out near Pitman, right?”
I didn’t say anything.
He laughed and shook his head. “That’s crazy, but smart too, right? Nothing out there but some old coal wells and a bunch of redneck H4Hers.”
“Yeah, well, that’s probably who shot Ryan.” I tensed myself before I asked. “So . . . how is he, anyway?”
Jerry’s laughter died instantly. He looked down and gave his head a little shake. “Guzman got him stabilized. We took him to a hospital, but the poor guy had already lost too much blood.”
“He’s dead?” I felt it like a punch. I staggered and bit my lip, trying not to cry, trying not to feel. It seemed like I’d been doing so much of both.
Jerry nodded and put his hand over mine on the counter. “You did what you could, kid. It was heroic, you two carrying him like that.”
I nodded, hearing him if not agreeing.
Ryan was dead. I hadn’t known him well, but I’d glimpsed the type of person he was the night when Del was changing. He was kind to that girl, talking her out of getting spliced. He was kind to me, too, reaching out, reassuring me, inviting me to walk with him.
Images of him came to me—staring at me from the driveway the first time I saw him, laughing outside of Genaro’s, his eyes flashing in the darkness that night at Malcolm’s. Bleeding in my arms.
In all of them, he was alive. And now he wasn’t.
I thought about all those chimeras at Haven, feasting and having the time of their lives, preparing to go to Chimerica, not knowing their friend was dead.
I realized Jerry was still staring at me, concerned.
“Is there going to be a service or anything?”
Jerry shook his head. “His folks came and got him. The mom was a mess, but the dad was a jerk. Actually made a crack about burying him in the backyard. I wanted to smack him.”
“What about Claudia?” I asked. “Is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s good. Guzman fixed her up. She sweated it out okay, and now she’s home with her folks.” He smiled faintly. “She’s a smart kid. Reprogrammed the memory function on my espresso system before she left. That thing’s been out of whack for years.”
I smiled, too. At least there was that.
“Earth for Everyone filed a couple of lawsuits, trying to get GHA overturned.” He shrugged. “It’s only been a couple days, but hopefully the courts will step in, put a stop to all this craziness before it spreads across the country. But H4H, man, they got a lot of money. The forces of evil got a lot of influence in this state.”
“But the forces of good have you, right? You’re still working to fight it?”
“Hell yeah, man. It’s wrong. Earth for Everyone, right? We’re still gonna meet here Tuesday nights. You should come by.”
I nodded. “If I’m not grounded for the rest of my life, maybe I will.”
SEVENTY-TWO
As I walked up to Trudy’s house, a gentle breeze swayed the trees and the dappled sunlight that filtered through them. I was overwhelmed by how quaint and homey it felt. Just a few days earlier, it had seemed so strange and unfamiliar.
The gate opened as I approached, and almost immediately the front door opened as well. Trudy burst through it, running toward me. Her face was wet and she was clutching a handkerchief.
“Jimi!” she cried, running up to me. Her face was contorted by a mixture of anger and fear and pain, but there was relief as well. “Thank God you’re okay!”
“Hi, Aunt Trudy.”
She wrapped me in a tight hug.
I felt the tears rise in me, but they didn’t spill out; maybe I was done crying for a little while. Trudy’s anger seemed to dissipate before she’d even shown it. “Are you okay? We were so worried about you,” she said, her voice quivering as she held me tight.
I patted her on the back. “I’m okay.”
She seemed to believe me, because some of the anger came back. She gave me a tiny shake, growling through gritted teeth. “Do you realize what you put me through? Put your mom through? We’ve had the police looking for you and everything.”
“Is she here?”
“She’ll be back soon. She’s a basket case, you know. Especially since she missed your call yesterday. She came back here and left Kevin on his own when you disappeared, down at the University of Delaware. When you said you were coming home today, she drove down to get him this morning.”
Just as she said it, the gate opened again and my mom’s car came in. It lurched to a stop just inside, and my mom jumped out and ran toward me. She practically tackled me, squeezing me tight. Then she held me at arm’s length for a moment, her eyes furious. “Don’t you ever do that again!” she said. “Do you know how worried we’ve been? You’re out there with those chimeras and with all these anti-chimera riots going on? We’ve been terrified!” She looked down at my dirty clothes and shook her head. Then she pulled me close and started crying again.
Over her shoulder, I could see Kevin in the passenger seat, asleep.
“I know things haven’t been easy for you lately,” my mom said into my ear. “But this has to stop. Disappearing like that, without telling anyone, it’s unacceptable. And I have to say, very seriously, you need to stop looking for Del, you need to let it go—”
“I found him.”
“You’re never going to— You what?”
“I found him, Mom. That’s where I was.”
“Where?”
Trudy put out her arms, one hand on each of our shoulders, and said, “Let’s get her inside. Then she can tell us everything.”
As Trudy steered us toward the door, I looked over my shoulder back at the car.
“What about Kevin?” I said. He hadn’t moved since they got back.
“He’ll be fine,” my mother said, hurrying to get inside so she could grill me.
My mom sat on the sofa and pointed to the seat next to her. “Start talking.”
Trudy went into the kitchen, listening in as she made tea. I think she wanted to make sure she didn’t get in the way.
I told them most of it. I started with finding Ryan and what he said, the map he had on him. And about how we took the Levline and th
en walked, out past Pitman.
“Pitman?” My mom wrinkled up her face. “That’s forty miles away. Why would anyone go out there? There’s nothing. Even when people used to go hunting around there, everyone said it was an awful little town. I’m shocked it still exists.”
“Well, the town’s definitely still there. I went through it.” I left out what happened with the cop in Alder, and with Andrew in Pitman. I just said I bought some supplies there and it was really lame. Then I told her about hiking through the woods and finding Haven and finding Del, and how he’d been spliced a second time.
“Okay,” Mom said, holding up her hand. “Go back a minute. Where is this Haven place, exactly? Because if that’s where Del is, we need to tell Stan.”
“I told you, it’s out in the woods somewhere. I couldn’t find it again,” I said, lying. “But Mom, even if I could, Stan doesn’t care about Del. He really, really doesn’t.” I explained how Rex and I tried to take Del home, when he was dying from the bad splice, and how Stan would barely look at his son, let alone help. How he threatened to call the cops on us.
She shook her head, disgusted. “Well, the police could have helped him,” she said.
I gave her a look appropriate to such an idiotic suggestion. “Really, Mom?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Okay, okay, I get it. So then what?”
I shared a little more about Haven, and about how the chimeras all said they were going to Chimerica.
“Chimerica?” she said, in the tone of voice you’d use with a child. “Sweetie, there’s no such thing as Chimerica. Even I know that.”
I tried not to be annoyed. “That’s what I thought, too.”
“Thought?”
“Think,” I said. “I don’t know. They all think it’s for real. Or most of them do.”
My mom cupped my cheek, lovingly but condescendingly, like she was prepared to let me believe that even though it wasn’t true.
I didn’t know if I believed it or not, but for the first time, I realized I wanted there to be a Chimerica. I had chimeras in my life whom I cared about—deeply—and I desperately wanted there to be a place where they’d be safe.
SEVENTY-THREE
By the time I’d finished talking, I was exhausted. Recounting it all felt a little like reliving it, and even leaving out big chunks, I realized, I really had been through a lot.
The last thing I told them about was Ryan’s death, which left us all quiet and sad.
“Let’s get you home,” Mom said after a moment, and I felt a pang of whatever it is that you feel when you’re homesick and you get to go home.
It only took a few minutes to get my stuff together, mostly still packed in the totes I’d brought with me. From the bedroom, I could hear Trudy tearfully apologizing to my mom for letting me disappear and my mom tearfully apologizing back for dumping me on Trudy right when I was in the middle of such a difficult phase. If I wasn’t so tired, I would have been angrier—Yes, there’s nothing terrible happening; it’s just Jimi overreacting because she’s going through a phase.
When I came back out, I cleared my throat to give them time to stop talking about me.
My mom smiled. “Got everything?”
I nodded.
Trudy gave me another hug, holding on like she didn’t want to let me go. “Don’t be a stranger, all right?”
“I won’t,” I said quietly, thinking maybe I hadn’t used up all my sadness after all. We hadn’t spent much time together, but I was going to miss her, too.
She smiled, and as we stepped out onto the porch, I thought, now that all my friends were gone, maybe Trudy could be my first new one.
My mom gave her a hug, too. A real one.
Kevin woke up as we put my stuff in the trunk.
“Hey,” he said as I got in the backseat.
“Hey,” I replied.
“Doofus,” he said. Then he went back to sleep.
I gave Trudy a little wave as we drove off, watching her house receding behind me, another leg of this journey that was taking me farther and farther away from Del, separating my life from his.
The “athletic demonstration” was probably going on at Haven at that moment. I knew Del would be showing off his new abilities for his new friends, and making Jasper and all those Haven sponsors happy. I wondered if Rex and the others were, too.
I tried to imagine Del thinking about me, missing me, feeling the pain of someone leaving and not saying goodbye. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t. I saw him laughing and smiling, thinking about his future, his new life.
I tried to push him out of my mind. The void was instantly filled by thoughts of Rex, but I pushed him out, too. I’d think about him and everything else later.
It had been less than a week since I’d moved into Trudy’s house, but it felt like months had gone by. The blooms had faded in my mom’s garden, and the big sycamore tree out front was dropping bark and leaves. The chill in the air was more than a hint. The sun was setting earlier. My sense of time was out of whack, and so was my sense of place.
My mom parked on the charging pad in the driveway, and Kevin woke up again, looking around, bleary-eyed and confused. As my mom got out and opened the trunk, he looked back and gave me a nod. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay.”
When we went in through the kitchen door, the place had an odd smell, like a vacation house that had been closed up, or a house that had been empty for a vacation. Clean, but stale. The smell of a house without people or activity.
I brought my stuff upstairs to my room and sat on the bed, looking around. There were pictures of ponies and rainbows and bands I didn’t like anymore, things I’d slowly outgrown. I couldn’t find a single item that didn’t seem like it was from a different lifetime. The effect was so complete, it was like the things weren’t out of place, I was.
I looked up to see my mom peeking through the door, smiling. “Did you miss all this?”
I hadn’t, not for a moment. But I said, “Sure did.”
She smiled again. “It’s good to see you, Jimi. I missed you.”
I smiled back. “You too, Mom.” And that much, at least, was true.
“You know we’re going to have to talk about all this, right? What happened, and what’s going to happen from now on?”
I nodded.
“Maybe we’ll get takeout tonight? I imagine Kevin will be at Malik’s house, so it’ll be just you and me.”
“Sure,” I said. “Sounds good.”
“If you’ve got laundry, bring it downstairs. I’m about to do a load.”
I nodded, fully intending to ignore that last bit, but I was feeling antsy, and my clothes were filthy. So were my boots.
I changed out of them and carried it all downstairs, passing Kevin on the steps.
“Twerp,” he said affably.
“Dolt,” I replied.
As I put my clothes in the washer, I could hear Mom on the phone with the police, explaining how I was fine and it had all just been a misunderstanding.
I took my boots outside to scrape off the dried mud. When I stepped out the back door, I froze at the sight of Stan Grainger’s Jeep parked in the driveway.
I hadn’t actually considered the fact that I’d still be living next door to that nutcase. It creeped me out.
The back of the Jeep was loaded up. When I squinted I could make out a couple of duffel bags and a stack of rifle cases. A fluorescent orange vest lay on the backseat.
The Graingers’ screen door slammed and I jumped. Looking up, I saw Stan staring at me from the other side of the Jeep.
“What the hell are you snooping around for?”
He looked different. Older and feebler, maybe crazier. But somehow, even with a rifle in his hand, he didn’t seem as scary as he did before. I wondered if losing Del hit him harder than he’d expected.
“Del’s okay, Mr. Grainger,” I said. I figured, apart from anything else, he was still Del’s dad. He deserved to k
now.
He snorted. “The hell he is. He’s a goddamned freak.”
He was dressed in camouflage pants and jacket, but under the jacket he was wearing his black “Humans for Humanity” T-shirt—the same one he’d been wearing at the march we got stuck behind, when he was holding that stupid banner. I fought a smirk as I remembered Stan not holding it high enough, getting scolded by Howard Wells’s minion, standing on the stage—
Something clicked in my mind.
Timms. Jasper’s assistant. I suddenly realized where I recognized him from. He was the guy at the Wells rally, counting the crowd and scolding Stan. But what was he doing with Jasper at Haven if he was also working with Wells and H4H? It didn’t make sense. Not unless the whole scenario was total bullshit.
“Wait—” I heard myself say, but Stan silenced me with a scowl as he opened the car door and put the rifle behind the seats, on top of the other cases. That’s when I saw the flyer sitting on the front seat: red and blue lettering across the top. On top of it was a piece of paper that said GAME DAY VIP, and underneath it ADMIT ONE. THE PITMAN EXOTIC GAME PRESERVE WELCOMES YOU TO A VERY SPECIAL GAME DAY. It was stamped PAID.
Stan got in and slid the papers out of view, still glaring at me as he started up the car and backed out of the driveway.
But I’d already seen it. I’d already read it. And now I knew what it meant.
They were hunting chimeras.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Running in the back door, I almost leveled Kevin, who was busy emptying his pockets onto the dryer and cramming his laundry into the washing machine. The top of the dryer was piled with old receipts, crumpled bills, gum wrappers, and car keys.
“Kevin, I need you to drive me somewhere.”
He rolled his eyes and slumped his shoulders. “Dude, I just spent five hours in that car. Why? Where do you need to go?”
I looked at the clock over his shoulder. It was three fifty-nine. If we left right then, we’d get to the train station in time for that four ten train to Carston. I could be back there by five.