by Lee Kelly
Sometimes at night we lie in the dark and hold each other. Sometimes . . . it’s more, and it feels as if the dark has stolen our borders and we’ve merged into each other.
When the sheen of immediacy dulls, when I think about Tom, about what I’m doing, the guilt drives me to madness. But a small, self-preserving voice inside me keeps whispering that I need this: Save yourself. Whatever it takes. Save yourself.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Oh my God!” I jump, bang my elbow against the windowsill, and glance up to find Ryder perched over me.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, it’s my fault. I’m jumpy. Too wrapped up in this, I guess.” I quickly close the journal and wave Charlotte’s Web in front of him, then immediately wish I hadn’t. I curse myself for picking the spider over Great Expectations back in Mom’s old apartment. “What are you doing up?” I say, trying to divert his attention. I shove the journal back into my knapsack, trying to bury Mom’s words—I sighed . . . I wanted it—and chase her out of my head.
“I couldn’t sleep either.” Ryder takes a seat opposite me in front of the window. “I was sick a lot, on the boat ride over here. Guess I’ve gotten used to being up around the clock.”
He smiles at me, but it’s a sad smile, one that hides things I bet I’d like to know more about. But maybe I shouldn’t pry. “I know how that goes,” is all I say.
“What, getting sick on a boat?” he teases.
I laugh. “No, battling insomnia.” I look out the window for a moment, at the street below us frozen in time. “I hope I get the chance to be seasick, though,” I say, allowing the possibility of a world outside this city to warm me once more. “I hope we get out of here.”
He gives me a flash of that hollow smile again.
“I’m sorry,” I add. “About Lerner.”
“Thanks. I didn’t know him very well, though,” Ryder says. “He was my brother’s mate. Sam met him and Frank—the one who didn’t survive the zoo prisons—on his trek back from Dover.”
“Well . . . I’m sorry just the same.”
Ryder doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Your mom was right.” He finally breaks our silence. “Sam and I couldn’t believe it. There’re . . . monsters on this island. The world has turned men into monsters.”
“Mom’s warned us about tunnel feeders since we were little,” I say slowly, “but I’d never seen one before today. That I remember, anyway.” I close my eyes and they appear again. The ravaged, hungry cannibals, loose packs of wolves roaming the dark, hunting us, hurting Phee. I try to shake off the images.
“What do you call the monster of the Park?” he says softly.
“Who? You mean Rolladin?”
Ryder nods, then leans in. The stark white sky catches his hazel eyes and turns them into gold. “What kind of monster can brainwash an entire island into thinking the war’s still going on?”
“Manhattan’s not brainwashed,” I say, snappier than I would’ve liked. I take a deep breath. Why am I getting so defensive about Manhattan? I sound like Phee or something. “I mean, you just don’t understand how it works here. Rolladin’s been our only window to the outside world for a long time. She’s run the Park since the island became an occupation zone and the Red Allies started withdrawing. People just don’t . . . question her. And even though she’s warden, the prisoners still think of her as one of their own. They’d never think she’d betray them.”
“But what happened to the whole American way?” he sputters. “Democracy? Checks and balances?”
I give a choked laugh, surprised that he knows anything about US history. He can’t be much older than I am.
“Well, we devolved into a monarchy,” I answer, testing the waters. “A true kingdom in the Park.”
He smiles again, this time wide and uncompromised, and I see that it’s a little off center—lopsided. Contagious. “I guess every country goes through its ‘Queen’ period.”
“Some longer than others.”
“Touché. But I don’t identify with Britain pre-Parliament,” Ryder says. “Or post-Parliament, for that matter. The country really went to pot when Parliament disbanded. I prefer fictional governments, mostly.”
“Oh really?”
“Really. Atlas Shrugged, 1984—”
“Animal Farm,” I add, getting a little more excited.
“Oh, Animal Farm’s a classic.”
I can’t contain my enthusiasm when I ask, “So you really do read a lot?”
“Every book I can get my hands on.”
“Even textbooks?”
“I’m a textbook junkie,” he says.
And I just might have found my soul mate.
“Not just history,” I say, still not believing that this beautiful boy in front of me prefers to spend his time reading old textbooks from a forgotten world. “I’m talking biology, chemistry, physics—”
He stares at me straight-faced. “Prentice Hall is a god.”
And I can’t help but burst out laughing. “What do you do, scavenge libraries?”
“Universities, mostly. But I went to school for years before Britain bit the bullet. Almost graduated year eight and everything.”
“Year eight.” I match the grin he’s now wearing, and will my mind to keep working overtime, to pull out all the shreds of the past I’ve managed to stitch together from books and papers. I have this desperate need to show him what I know, even as the world forgets it. “Not quite high school, but you were clearly going places. Your parents must be so proud.”
I’m the slightest bit horrified when his eyes start watering. Sam and Ryder obviously came over here alone. Why did I just mention parents?
“Ryder, I’m sorry—God, I didn’t mean to say anything wrong.”
“Not your fault.” He turns away from me, towards the dusty pane. And my skin feels like it’s on fire, as if this is what I get for flying too close to the sun.
“It’s just—” He lets his words hang between us for a while. “My mum was the big reading advocate. She’d still walk me to school every morning, even with England’s shelter-in-place. Still kept rallying for textbooks, even after the city declared a state of emergency. Petitioning until there was nothing, and no one, left to petition.” He gives me one of those lopsided smiles again, but it doesn’t strong-arm his sadness. “I miss her, is all.”
“I’m so sorry, Ryder.”
I want to ask him so many questions. I want him to share whatever happened to his mom, to his family, to him . . . with me. I want him to trust me.
I want him to like me.
Before second-guessing myself, I whisper, “We’ve lost a parent too. My dad. I mean it was a long time ago, obviously. And I don’t remember him, so I know it’s not the same.”
I look at Ryder for a second, trying to judge his reaction, but he keeps his face neutral.
“So it’s not like I miss him, but—I miss him for my mom, if that makes any sense. I wish she had someone, so she didn’t have to raise us without him. It’s—it’s a hole in her I wish I could fill.”
I know I’m reaching, blubbering on about secondhand pain, when Ryder’s is real, immediate. He must think I’m clueless. Insensitive—a self-centered little girl on a sheltered island.
“That’s exactly what it feels like,” he whispers. “A hole.”
“You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to—”
“It’s okay,” he whispers to the window. “Mum was beautiful. Smart as a whip, strong, rebellious. She took the state of emergency as a guideline. And when the bombing finally died down, after everything was in pieces and survivors started leaving to see what was left of the mainland, we’d go on these tours . . . walks through London’s bones to make sure I didn’t forget the past.”
Ryder’s sto
ry pinches me with something: longing . . . maybe even jealousy. I picture him with his mother, walking through the skeleton of a foreign city, her whispering well-kept secrets, giving him the gift of a dying world. Secrets Phee and I needed to figure out for ourselves. Secrets we needed to steal a journal to uncover. On cue, Mom’s mantra springs from a well-worn river in my mind: Sometimes the past should stay in the past.
“Was it just the two of you?”
Ryder nods. “My dad was deployed early on, not long after Britain joined the war effort,” he says. “When he died, Sam just . . . changed. He closed up. It became all about joining the marines, going to war, moving on. He was out the door way before he actually went to Dover for training.”
“So you just had your mom.”
“And she just had me.” Ryder rubs his eyes. “You ever look backward and wonder how you missed something?” He laughs a different laugh—this one’s bitter and sharp. “I can’t believe I didn’t see what was going on, having a mom scream at police, and holler and run through minefields. A mom who took me on walking tours of a bombed-out city. I just thought it was us . . . being explorers. A game. Our own private world.”
A wave of tingles hits me, right at the top of my spine. I think I know where this is going.
“Sam put all the pieces together for me, after, when he finally came home. Things must have deteriorated without her medicine, he told me—Sam hadn’t even known about her diagnosis, until he checked the cabinets. He told me it wasn’t our fault. That it wasn’t even her at the end, just sadness and mania.” Ryder turns to me. “But it still drives me mad, that I didn’t see it. Our last conversation plays on replay in my mind, over and over. Mum saying she couldn’t handle it. That she couldn’t see her baby wither away.”
I want to say—do—so many things. I have an uncontrollable urge to grab Ryder, hold him, but I force my hands to stay where they are. All I can do is ask, “When?”
“She was depressed for a couple years after the last of the London air raids. She took . . . her life last summer. Carved a hole right out of me.” He runs his fingers along the windowsill. “Sam pretends his isn’t there. Sam just keeps . . . fighting, like he can avenge her and Dad. Like he can somehow . . . escape all of it, if we just keep moving forward.”
“I’m so sorry, Ryder,” I say again. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
“I can’t either,” he says. “Not really. It’s almost like . . . like I shut that Ryder down. I didn’t understand.” His voice is controlled, even, like he’s reciting from a script, speaking for someone else. “I couldn’t accept it, so I didn’t. I just locked it away.”
What he’s said makes me think again of my own mom—how she keeps her pain in an airless jar, preserved but inaccessible. “But you and Sam must talk about her?”
“We don’t talk like that.” Ryder shrugs. “There’s stuff we just can’t say to each other.”
I nod, even though I wouldn’t survive if I didn’t talk about something like that with Phee.
“It actually feels really good saying this stuff out loud,” he says, “just to hear it. To remind myself it’s real.” Ryder looks at me, as if only now realizing that I’m not just a reflection, a character in a therapeutic dream. “The more I see, the more I think that I just can’t make sense of any of it. The world’s a mess, right? Death, destruction, lies.” Then he gives another bitter laugh. “And now cannibals.”
I nod again, knowing I should tell him we should get some rest, and end the conversation. But he’s touched on something I just can’t nod my head and agree with, especially the more I learn about what really happened here, to Mom and everyone else in this city. And despite the fact that I know I might isolate Ryder, upset him to the point of no return, I say, “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“What?”
“That the world is just some random, messed-up place?” I break his gaze, a flush starting to crawl over my cheeks. “People make choices, and those choices add up to the world we see. Nothing’s random . . . nothing’s senseless.” I can feel my eyes start to pinch as they do when I get emotional, and so I turn my face away from his, embarrassed. “And right or wrong, what we do—our choices—matter.”
Of course, I know my world’s been small. A couple of square miles, tops. Less than five hundred people. A few momentary glimpses into other worlds—some real, some fabricated—worlds of good and evil, heroes and monsters. But I know, deep in my heart I know, that things can’t just be written off as the product of chance, no rhyme or reason to any of it. “And I think you believe that, too,” I finally add, no more than a whisper.
Ryder doesn’t say anything for a long time.
I think I’ve ruined it, whatever “it” is, the beginnings of a friendship, or maybe more, all with my big, fat, self-righteous mouth. How do I know what he believes in, really? Because I have a hunch? Because, through this warm cocoon of a conversation, I feel like I actually know him?
He doesn’t want to hear my theories, least of all when he’s so fragile.
But then, slowly, an off-center grin breaks across his face.
“I knew I was going to like you,” he says, “Skyler Miller.”
Skylah Millah.
My ears feel like they’re on fire, and my face must be crimson by now.
Ryder changes the subject. We get back to books—thrillers this time.
Horror stories.
Even some romances he begrudgingly admits he’s read.
We talk until the rain comes down so hard, the highways become rivers. I don’t remember falling asleep against the window. The last thing I remember is debating The Great Gatsby versus Gone with the Wind.
25 PHEE
The rain keeps us cooped up inside all day—but it doesn’t bother me, since I’m so tired and beat up, all I want to do is sleep for a week. Plus, these black mats and blankets in the yoga room are somehow more comfy than our sinking bed at the Carlyle. Not that I’ve been thinking much about the Park since we got out of the tunnels.
I’ve been trying not to, anyway.
The thing is, I know Rolladin’s a liar. And I know we can’t go back to the Park, not anytime soon anyway. But that doesn’t mean I want to hop on a boat and sail into the wild blue yonder. Ryder and Sam came over here looking for answers, they said so themselves. So what’s to say the rest of the world isn’t worse off than Manhattan? What’s to say we can’t all make a better go of it here? Eventually make peace with Rolladin, after this killing-her-guard thing blows over?
I look around at our sleeping crew. I know I’m the only one who feels this way. Well, besides Trev, of course. But having his support in this crowd is about as worthless as a dollar on Wall Street.
* * *
We all get up by midafternoon. Mom lights the long row of candles in the yoga room, and we crowd around the firelight, debating, trying to figure out our next move. Sam says we’re heading south to Bermuda, since the rest of America’s in shambles. But Mom’s pushing to try the “Midwest,” and Sky and Ryder are giggling like fools, throwing out options like Narnia and Middle Earth, wherever the heck those are. After a while, I can’t stand that they’re giggling together, so I plop my yoga mat right in between them. Sky shoots me this look that says, Seriously? But I just ignore her. Ryder’s warm, smells like leaves and daytime, and his face is so close that I kind of shut down for a little.
Pretty soon everyone’s stomachs join the debate, and in no time, the whole yoga room’s one big growl. At least we all agree we’ve got to eat before we move on, since Sky’s scraps from the Carlyle are long gone and we’ll need some strength to keep moving. We settle on sending scouts to the streets for food tomorrow morning, whether it’s raining or not. Trevor and I will take the Brits, since I’m a good shot and I sold Trevor as this big-time hunting ace in the tunnels. And Sky and Mom will stay behind to man t
he fort, since my sister wouldn’t know what to do with a wild animal, and Mom’s ankle is still pretty busted.
* * *
We get up before the sun the next morning. Ryder quietly shakes me and Trevor awake, as Sam slips out of the yoga room. I empty my backpack for storage, throw it over my shoulders, and tiptoe out with the guys. But I make sure I don’t wake Mom and Sky—I just can’t handle another round of Be carefuls.
The four of us grab jackets from the YMCA closet, and then we climb out of our makeshift door. We hit the alley just as the gray sky’s pulling dawn out of its pocket.
“Anywhere but east,” Sam says as he peers out to Sixth Avenue. “No way we’re tempting those subway cannibals again. And I’m sure that Rolladin bitch is trailing the 6 line—she knows our boat’s at the Brooklyn Yard.” He places his bow on the ground and loads it with arrows faster than I can blink.
“Let’s ask the natives for recommendations.” Ryder nudges me in the ribs. “Phee, Trev, what are the West Side’s best options for fine dining?”
My face gets all hot when Ryder looks at me. ’Cause I dreamed about him last night, and like I said, I rarely dream. All through the night, too—his strong jaw, his jet-black hair. His hazel eyes that almost look yellow in the daylight. Now I feel like I’m wearing a sign, HEY, I LIKE YOU! and I can’t figure out how to take it off.
“What’s wrong with you?” Trev asks.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
I close my eyes to focus, try to picture the hand-drawn city maps Mom, Sky, and I would use when we’d search for our own game during the summer on Wall Street. One’s no doubt tucked into the bottom of Sky’s backpack, and I curse myself for not thinking to bring it. “Our best option’s probably some form of game along the river parks. Squirrels, pigeons. Plus occasional deer, peafowl, monkeys, that’ve wandered down from Central Park.”
I open my eyes. Sam and Ryder are looking at me like I’ve lost it.