We were halfway there when Patrick took a knee behind the special van that the Dubois family kept for Blake and his wheelchair. Breathing hard, he held up a finger to signal that he needed a second to catch his breath. Sweat trickled from his hairline, and his face looked washed of color.
“Sorry,” he said. “Oxygen. Fuzzy.”
I eased him down so he could lean against one big tire, then sat next to him. In the darkness the combination of the mask and his cowboy hat made him look pretty scary. For a time he tried to catch his breath. Then he made a fist around the tube trailing up to the H tank on the gurney. Was he so loopy that he was thinking of ripping it out?
“What do we do when the tanks run dry?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
I couldn’t take my eyes off his fingers tensed around that tube. “We go back to the hospital and fill them up again.”
“How ’bout when the IV food is gone?”
“Dr. Chatterjee said he thinks he can figure out some kind of system to make more.”
Patrick gave a slow nod, but his face didn’t hold much hope. “And what about when the next kid turns eighteen? Or Alex? Or you?”
“Let’s worry about that later,” I said.
His fist tightened around the tube. “It sucks living like this. A mask clamped over my face. Being fed through tubes and needles. Forever.”
I watched his fingers turn white as he squeezed the tube, then released it.
“Actually, not forever,” he added. A bitterness I didn’t recognize had crept into his voice. “Just till the mask slips some night when I’m sleeping. Or a tank malfunctions. Or I sneeze wrong and blow the tube out.”
“Look,” I said, “we just bought you more time. For the particulates to dissipate.”
“For a miracle,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “For that.”
He squeezed the tube again, kept it compressed. His eyes looked hazy, his gaze loose, though whether from the oxygen or not, I couldn’t tell.
I stood up and offered him a hand. “Alex is waiting for you.”
He looked at me for a long time. Then he released the tube and took my hand.
I knew that would do it.
Our progress felt like torture, every rasp of our boots against asphalt amplified tenfold, every creak from a shadowed porch amplified a hundredfold. But even with that squeaky wheel, even pushing a gurney loaded with seven giant tanks and one portable one, we made it through undetected. At last we came up on the edge of the teachers’ parking lot, halting behind a row of hedges.
Leaving the gurney, I crawled through the hedges and signaled at the front gate with a blip of my flashlight. Then I waited for Alex’s signal that the coast was clear.
No signal came.
I waited and waited and then flickered my beam again and waited some more. Only darkness stared back through the bars of the gate.
I crawled out to where Patrick crouched by the gurney. “No signal,” I whispered. “Maybe Alex took a bathroom break.”
“No,” he said. “She’d be there. Something’s wrong.”
Carefully, he lifted his H tank off the gurney. “Let’s head for the gate. We’ll come back for the other tanks later.”
We slithered through the bushes to the other side, cast glances around us, then bolted across the parking lot. Panting, we reached the gate.
It was locked.
We looked around frantically, Patrick’s biceps bulging under the weight of the hundred-pound tank. Once again I clicked my flashlight through the bars toward the building.
Something glinted in the grass.
I lowered the beam.
It was Alex’s jigsaw pendant glittering among the blades.
Beside it, grooves gouged the grass, trailing out through the gate.
Finger marks.
The beam wobbled in my hand. I didn’t dare look over at Patrick, but I could sense him staring where I stared, seeing what I was seeing.
A voice from the darkness startled us. “Chance. Patrick.”
A girl ran up to the gate, fumbling with Ezekiel’s giant key ring.
It was Eve, not Alex.
Her hands were shaking even worse than mine.
“She’s gone.” Eve unlocked the gate and stepped back, letting it creak inward. “They got Alex.”
ENTRY 28
As Patrick and I staggered into the gym, the others rose to their feet as one. I couldn’t tell if it was a show of respect for Patrick since his girlfriend had been taken or if it was some kind of perverse curiosity, that they wanted to see our reactions.
Cassius ran up, put his front paws on my chest, and licked my face. The display of affection felt out of place considering the news we’d just received.
Ben regarded us with something like awe. “You made it,” he said. “You actually made it.”
Setting down his tank, Patrick collapsed against the nearest wall. Dr. Chatterjee ran over to him.
“The oxygen levels are playing games with him,” I said.
Chatterjee checked Patrick’s eyes, then began adjusting the dials. “Please talk to JoJo,” he said to me over his shoulder. “Behind the bleachers.”
JoJo’s stuffed animal had been left over by the base of the wall. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her without Bunny.
Rocky appeared at my side. “She won’t even talk to me,” he said.
I rested a hand on his black curls. They were matted and dirty. No one around to tell him to wash his hair, behind his ears.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
I scooped up Bunny and squeezed behind the bleachers. JoJo had wedged herself into the darkest, tiniest corner, and she was clutching something with all her might. I headed toward her, ducking, then crawling, until finally one of the benches crowded down on me so I could go no farther.
“JoJo, I can’t get to you,” I said. “I can’t help you from here.”
Her tear-streaked face tilted toward me. “I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t deserve to be helped. It’s my fault.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
“I got scared after you left. And I wanted my Frisbee. It’s the only thing that makes me think about other stuff besides … everything. So I snuck outside, and … and…” She trailed off, crying some more. “I squeezed under the fence by the oak tree.”
“You went out there alone?” I felt my body temperature rising.
Guilt. I thought about my broken promises to get that Frisbee for JoJo. How I’d dismissed her before we’d left.
And so she’d gone to retrieve it herself.
She nodded. “And I ran over to get it when…” A few quick breaths. “When he started to come for me. Alex yelled out, ’cuz she was on watch for you. I tried to run away. I tried. But she came out and hit him. With this.”
She shifted, and I saw that the shadowy item she was clutching was Alex’s hockey stick.
“Where was Cassius?”
“The gate swung back after Alex ran out to get me, and he was stuck behind it. He ran up along the fence away from the gate to bark at us all. And then Ben dragged him inside so he wouldn’t make more noise.”
“So Ben just left you and Alex out there?”
“Yeah. Alex grabbed me and ran back to the gate. But we’d just gotten inside when…” JoJo sucked air a few times, her bottom lip trembling. Her rough-cut hair was all blunt edges and stray shoots. “He grabbed her. And she fell. And dropped me. And her hockey stick. Even while he was carrying her away, she was screaming at me to lock the gate. To lock her out. So I did. I did.”
Fresh tears rolled down JoJo’s cheeks. “And it was him.” She looked up at me, and I could see the horror on her face. “It was her daddy.”
Squashed beneath the bleachers, breathing dust, I took a moment with that one.
It had been awful being there when Patrick killed Uncle Jim and Sue-Anne. But I couldn’t image how much more awful it would have been getting snatched by them. Dragged off. And cag
ed.
“It’s not your fault,” I said when I could find my voice. “Any more than it’s Ben’s fault for throwing the Frisbee out the window. Or mine for not getting it for you like I promised.”
But it is your fault, Chance, a voice in my head said. It is.
“Now will you please come to me?”
She shook her head.
I thought for a moment, and then I said, “I’ve got Bunny here, and we’re stuck. I’m too big to be under here, and I need your help. Will you help us?”
She stared at me for a while. Then, slowly, she crawled over, Alex’s hockey stick clacking on the floorboards. She gave me a shove, and I pretended to roll free. We squirmed through the space beneath the bleachers, brushing dust from our knees. I held out Bunny. “Trade you for the hockey stick?”
JoJo took the deal.
I walked over to where Dr. Chatterjee was still working on Patrick. My brother lay on his back, weak and pale. His shirt was peeled open, and one of the big needles I’d grabbed from the nurses’ station was rammed in the crook of his arm and secured with white medical tape.
Chatterjee looked up and said, “You did great, Chance.”
Patrick lifted his head and blinked drowsily. “But saving me cost us Alex.” He sagged back against the floor, his Stetson falling off to the side.
“We have to get fluids in him.” Chatterjee nosed through the organ-donor bag. “Since we don’t have a central line, we’re limited in what we can give him. It’s good you grabbed the bags with ten-percent dextrose, because anything much higher than this will wreck his veins.” He gestured at the needle jammed into Patrick’s arm. “This is the access port for the peripheral IV. Give me a minute to get him online here. With the oxygen adjusted, once we push some nutrients, he’ll come around.”
I wasn’t used to seeing Patrick vulnerable like that. I backed away, then headed out to retrieve the tanks. Though running to and from the gurney in the night would be scary, it felt less scary than seeing Patrick so feeble.
Besides, I had to get those tanks moved before daybreak.
As I passed Ben at the lookout post, I said, “Real courageous, Ben. The way you helped Alex and JoJo.”
He shook his head at me. “Courage is overrated,” he said. “In that moment I had to make a tough choice. And I realized: I had one job. Get the gate closed. Protect the others. The only thing that matters anymore is staying alive.”
“If that’s true,” I said, “then what’s the point of staying alive?”
I walked past him down the corridor. I’d almost reached the front doors when I heard footsteps behind me. Eve ran up, keys jangling in her hand.
“I’ll watch the gate for you,” she said.
I appreciated it more than I could say.
As I ran back and forth across the teachers’ parking lot, bringing the tanks in one at a time, Eve waited by the padlock for me, signaling when to wait, when to go.
By the time I lugged the last one to the gym, daylight streamed through the windows and I was worn out and ready to sleep. I set the final tank down with the others. Still woozy, Patrick now lay propped up in his cot, needles and tubes threading into him. He looked like someone dying in a hospital.
I thanked Eve, and she nodded and drifted over to her post at the supply station. I didn’t want to leave Patrick’s side, but it was also hard to look at him like this. I sat next to him and studied my boots. After a few minutes, Chatterjee called me over to the bleachers. Relieved, I went.
“How are the particulate readings?” I asked.
“No better.” He rested a hand on my shoulder, and his expression of concern shot a tremor of fear through me. “Chance, you’re an amazing and resourceful kid.…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I just don’t want you to think that this is a long-term solution for your brother.”
“Why not? We can refill the tanks. You can make more IV food or whatever you call it.” My voice was rising.
“Providing nutrition exclusively by IV carries with it big risks, Chance.” His sad eyes blinked behind those glasses. “Infections. Deficiencies. Imbalances. And we can’t give him enough nutrition this way. We’re too limited without a central line.”
“Then I’ll get you one.”
Chatterjee drew a deep breath. “You did a wonderfully smart and brave thing that will give us more time with Patrick. But at some point you’re going to have to let him go.”
I felt my face harden into a mask. “No,” I said. “Not ever.”
I went back over to where Patrick rested and lay on my cot next to his. My eyelids grew heavy, and I knew that the minute I closed them, they’d stay shut. So I forced them open. Right now I just wanted to be near my brother. He was holding up his jigsaw pendant so he could look at it. Alex’s matching piece dangled from his other clenched fist, the two parts swaying side by side.
I wondered where Alex was right now. What was happening to her and who was doing it.
It was hard not to notice her empty cot.
It was hard to notice anything else at all.
ENTRY 29
I woke up to the sounds of fighting.
Patrick was on his feet, heading for the exit, dragging the hundred-pound tank behind him, the IV line snaking from his shirtsleeve. Dr. Chatterjee was trying to slow him while Ben, standing at the gym door, looked on.
“This is ridiculous, Patrick!” Chatterjee said. “You stop this instant!”
Patrick bulled on. “I’m going for her.”
As I blinked myself awake, the light felt disorienting. It was dusk already? I’d slept all day?
“You’re not gonna get farther than the next block hauling that tank around,” Dezi Siegler said.
“Where would you even look?” Jenny White cried out.
“The church,” Patrick said. “Then Lawrenceville.”
“Lawrenceville,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “This is insanity, Patrick.”
But my brother kept stumbling forward.
“How about food?” Eve pleaded.
“I don’t need food,” Patrick said. “I’m not leaving her out there.”
As he neared the doors, Ben stepped in front of him. “Forget about her, Patrick,” he said. “She’s long gone.”
Off balance from holding the tank, Patrick swung at him weakly. Ben leaned back, the punch missing. Patrick stumbled forward. I leapt up and ran over to them, hurdling cots.
Patrick swung again, and Ben ducked, then shoved him over. Patrick fell hard on his side, grunting, and Ben jumped on him, pinning him to the floorboards. “Come on, Patrick. You really think you’ll make it out there? Look how useless you are.”
Patrick was winded. “… not … useless.”
Ben reached down, gripped Patrick’s mask, and pulled it away from his mouth and nose.
All movement in the gym stopped.
Patrick stayed tense on his back, one arm raised defensively. I halted in midstep, afraid that if I moved again, it would mean that time would keep moving, too.
There was no sound except the hiss of oxygen escaping from the mask.
“Ben,” Dr. Chatterjee said in a shockingly calm voice, “put the mask back on Patrick. You don’t want a Host in here any more than we do.”
Ben glared down at Patrick. The wide straps strained. Held tight in Ben’s grip, the mask wobbled a few inches from my brother’s face. Ben looked from Patrick to Chatterjee, then to me. My brother’s life in his hands.
The moment stretched on and on.
Finally Ben released the mask, letting it snap back into place hard over Patrick’s nose and mouth. Then he climbed off Patrick and stood, his face shifting with emotion, his scar lines pulling into strange new alignments.
Patrick exhaled hard through the one-way valve, then panted to catch his breath, his chest jerking.
“Hell, I was doing him a favor,” Ben said. “Showing him what it’ll be like out there. If one of me could do that to him in here, how do you think it’ll
go down with hundreds of Hosts in the open?”
It took Patrick a few seconds to push himself onto one knee, then find his feet. I wanted to help him up, but I knew if I went over to help, it’d make him angry right now. He picked up his cowboy hat and put it on. Then he adjusted the mask straps and the tube and walked back over to his cot. Every head in the gym turned to watch his retreat. He slumped onto the mattress, still breathing heavily, one hand resting gently on the mask as if making sure it was still there.
Seeing him defeated like that made something inside me break into little pieces and blow away. I swallowed hard. I wanted to pummel Ben’s face until those scar lines cracked open again. But as he took up his chair by the double doors, I detected a note of remorse in his face. That’s the only thing that stopped me from attacking him and probably getting myself killed.
I walked over to Patrick, feeling everyone’s eyes on me. I was about to ask my brother if he was okay when he tilted his head, looking up at me from under the brim of his trademark black cowboy hat.
What I saw in his eyes chilled me through and through.
“You have to go, Chance,” he said through his mask. “Go get her. Get her and bring her back to me.”
I had a hard time drawing breath. It felt as though I had a rock lodged in my throat. Everyone was still staring at us—from the cots, the bleachers, all around the basketball court. It was like getting tossed in the middle of a rodeo arena, expected to perform some feat I’d never trained for.
I shook my head.
“Ben’s right,” Patrick said. “I can’t go after her. Not with this.” He grabbed the tube from the mask. “And this.” He tugged up his stretched shirtsleeve to show the line embedded in the pit of his elbow. His eyes glimmered, and for one terrible instant I thought he might cry.
I pressed my lips together to firm them. “I can’t do it, Patrick,” I said.
“You can.”
“I can’t do it without you.”
“You can. You always could.” He lifted his fist. Dangling from the bottom, Alex’s jigsaw pendant.
I stared at it. Then I held out my hand.
The Rains Page 20