The corridor in front of me is empty. Still running, I pass by the closed doors to the Rug-Rat Room and the Supply Room.
I keep going. My footsteps echo so loudly that sometimes I think someone is chasing me.
Soon I reach a door with a push-bar opener and a sign above it that says Main Mall West.
I don’t stop. I slam into the door, shove it open, and run out into the mall.
• • •
All of the lights on the first floor have been turned off.
In the darkness, the different stores look almost the same; I accidentally take a few wrong turns as I search for an escalator.
I can feel my body shaking. I’m so afraid that I’m going to come around a corner and run into a stranger that I can barely keep from tripping over my own feet.
Eventually I see a way up to the second floor—two sets of stairs with a long handrail dividing them—but as I get closer to the staircase, I see something unexpected.
The base of the stairway is blocked with strips of tape stretched across in a criss-crossing pattern.
And that’s not the only strange thing I notice.
On the other side of the tape, I see a bunch of cardboard boxes stacked on the landing, halfway up the stairs.
I approach the blocked stairway slowly, looking around.
I don’t see anyone.
I almost decide to plow right through the barrier, ripping the tape down, but then I stop and think about it first, like Momma wanted me to.
If I mess up the tape, it will prove that I was here, which I don’t want anyone to know.
I decide that I need to figure out another way to get by, without breaking down the tape barrier.
I can’t fit my body through the cracks between the criss-crossing tape—the spaces are too small. I can’t go under the tape either. The bottom of the barrier is only a few inches above the floor.
There’s only one choice.
I need to go over the tape.
I approach the blue metal banister separating the two stairways, climb onto the flat part at the end and swing my legs over the tape, dropping down on the other side, onto the first stair.
I quickly climb the stairway to the first landing, where I pause to peek inside the cardboard boxes somebody left there.
The boxes are filled with supplies.
It’s just like the stuff we delivered to the Supply Room earlier: different kinds of food, bottled water, and medical products like gauze.
I don’t spend much time investigating; I need to get out of the main mall and get somewhere safer.
I glance down the stairs to the first floor, checking one last time to make sure no one is following me. I don’t see anyone, but I do notice something weird about the criss-crossing tape blocking the base of the stairway below me.
A message has been written in black marker on the silver side of the tape. Just two words. But the two words have been written over and over again.
Go Back.
• • •
I run straight to the toy shop.
The overhead lights are on. I open one of the glass doors and look inside, whispering Momma’s name, but I don’t see or hear her anywhere. All I see—other than the normal toys and games on display—are a few yellow baby blankets on the tile where Momma was lying before.
I search the entire place, but I can’t find her.
Panicked, I leave the toy shop and run to the camping store.
I crawl through the broken front display window, step past the pretend camping scene and drop down onto the floor. I hear the sound of glass chips crunching under my shoes. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
“Momma?” I whisper.
There’s no answer.
I walk further into the store until I’m next to a rack full of jackets—I can hear the sound of the slippery fabric as I pass by.
“Momma?”
I think I might hear a faint groaning sound ahead of me—it’s hard to be sure.
I quickly make my way to the back of the store, find the cash registers, and duck behind the checkout counter, where I find Momma—my momma—lying on top of a sleeping bag, alone. There’s no sign of Miss Christiana at all.
I rush to Momma and lie down beside her, getting as close as I can and burying my face between her chest and shoulder. I feel her warmth and her movement as she breathes. I hear the air rattle in and out of her throat.
I burst into tears. I can’t help it.
Eventually I lift my head and look up at Momma’s face. Her eyes are open—just two slits—and the corners of her mouth are curled upward into the faintest smile.
• • •
I open my eyes.
I lift my head and look around.
I’m still inside the camping store, lying underneath a sleeping bag behind the counter.
I see Miss Christiana sitting on the carpet close beside me, reading a book with a small flashlight in her hand.
When she sees me moving, she sets the book and the flashlight down.
“It’s all right, pikin,” she whispers. “Come up slowly—you’ve been sleeping hard. You’re okay. It’s morning.”
I stretch my arms high above my head and yawn.
I turn over in my sleeping bag and look for Momma. I see her sleeping bag—the blue one—but Momma isn’t there.
Momma is gone.
Again.
“You’re okay. Shh,” Miss Christiana says. “Your mum couldn’t stay inside this place, love. She insisted on waiting for you to find your way back here, but once you came, we had to lift her over to the department store. Macy’s or Nordstrom—I’m not sure which one the boys settled on, but we’ll find her. I promise.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Why did we move her? Because that’s where we’ve set up home camp, pikin. Many of us have, at least—not all. Your mum needs to be where someone can help look after her. I’m not able to do it here.”
The more Miss Christiana talks, the more upset I get.
I don’t like that she took my mom away without telling me, especially because I just found her again myself.
“Why did you do that?” I ask. I feel my eyes filling with tears.
Miss Christiana stares at me; she looks confused. “I just told you why, love.”
“But why didn’t you let me come too?”
Miss Christiana nods and puts a hand on my leg.
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to wake you is all—you were dead to the world, dear. I thought you needed the rest.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“I understand that now,” she says. “I should have woken you. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” I answer. “You should have.” I cross my arms.
Neither one of us says anything for what feels like a long time.
“Shall we go see her, then?” Miss Christiana asks gently. “What do you think?”
I uncross my arms. “Yeah. Okay.”
She smiles. “All right, perfect. But first, I need you to do something for me.”
“What.”
“Remember how you promised to return my phone when you were finished?” she asks.
Oh no.
I was hoping Miss Christiana wouldn’t ask about the phone ever again.
“I need it back now, please,” Miss Christiana says.
Uh oh.
I have no idea what to say.
Momma told me to keep the phone for myself and never give it back. She said that I need it more than Miss Christiana does, and more than anyone else too.
I really want to do what Momma told me, but I don’t know how to tell Miss Christiana that she can’t have her own phone back.
It’s hers.
How can I keep it for me?
• • •
I leave the camping store and hurry toward the toy shop, all by myself.
I really don’t want to go anywhere alone—even if it’s only for a few minutes—but I have to.
Here’s why:
Everything I’m about to do is top-secret.
Miss Christiana’s phone is sitting under the Hello Kitty pillow in my nest, and Momma told me to keep my nest hidden from everyone.
Everyone.
That means Miss Christiana too.
I push open the glass door to the toy shop and stand in the entryway, listening.
I don’t hear anything or anyone. The overhead lights are turned off, but now that it’s daytime, I can still see pretty well.
I step into the shop, letting the door swing closed behind me, and begin making my way slowly toward the cash registers. I pass shelves and display cases filled with games, crafts, and toys. I’m scared, but not as scared as I would be if it were nighttime.
I find my secret nest in the back corner, make an entrance by moving three boxes out of the way, and crawl through the opening until I’m underneath the train display table. I grab the phone and put it in my pocket with the goldfish crackers I took for Momma.
I crawl out of the nest.
I put one of the three boxes back into place.
As I reach for the second box, I hear a sound coming from the front of the shop.
I freeze.
I hear the sound again. The sound of footsteps.
Panicked, I duck down and crawl back under the table, turn around, and quietly drag the boxes into position one by one, blocking the opening again. My hands are shaking. When I finish rebuilding the wall, I can see a sliver of light shining through a crack between two boxes, but that’s all.
I peer through the crack.
I wait, holding my breath.
Soon I see someone walking slowly down an aisle filled with electronic games locked inside a clear display case with two sliding doors.
The person isn’t Miss Christiana, like I hoped it might be.
It’s a man.
I recognize him—his tall skinny frame, the sharp cheekbones, and the long dreadlocks tied back with a green bandanna—it’s Mr. Emmanuel. He’s holding a black shopping basket in one hand and a black crowbar in the other.
I don’t think he sees me.
I don’t think he’s even looking for me at all, which is a relief.
Mr. Emmanuel sets the shopping basket down, takes the crowbar in both hands, and pushes one of the sharp ends into the space between the two display case doors, near the round locks. He leans back and pulls—right away, I hear creaking and groaning sounds. Soon one of the doors breaks open with a clang and slides violently to one side, rattling the entire case.
Mr. Emmanuel sets the crowbar down on the tile, picks up the basket, and begins pulling boxed video games from the display case shelves and dropping them in, one after another.
I watch as he takes around twenty games.
Afterward he picks up the crowbar and walks out of my sight, leaving the display case open.
I wait.
I hear Mr. Emmanuel’s footsteps getting quieter—it sounds like he’s walking away from me, toward the front of the store.
The footsteps stop suddenly.
I hear the sound of something hitting the bottom of the shopping basket. Then another thing.
The same pattern happens again and again.
Walking, stopping, taking, dropping.
I keep listening until—after what feels like forever—I hear nothing other than my own breathing.
I think Mr. Emmanuel is finally gone.
Without making a sound, I push the boxes aside, crawl out of the nest, and replace the boxes so that the display looks real again. I stand up and sneak toward the front of the store, pausing to listen as I go. When I don’t hear anything, I run out the front door as fast as I can run.
Chapter Five
Miss Christiana tells me that she’s taking me to Macy’s—that’s a store on the second floor of the mall—because Momma is either there or inside Nordstrom, which is the name of another store nearby.
As we walk side by side, Miss Christiana holds my hand.
After a while, she takes her cell phone out of her pocket and makes a call to someone, talking to them in another language. It sounds kind of like English, but a lot of the words are different, they’re all out of order, and a bunch of important parts of her sentences are left out. Before long, she ends the call and pockets the phone.
“What language was that?” I ask.
“Krio,” Miss Christiana answers. “It’s one of the languages of my home.”
“Can you teach me?”
Miss Christiana stops walking. I stop too.
“You want to know Krio?” she asks, her eyes brightening.
I shrug. “Sure.”
Miss Christiana and I continue walking, hand in hand, while she teaches me a few of the easier Krio words. A bed is a bed (that’s the easiest one). Water is wata. A store where you can buy things is called a shap.
Once I learn those Krio words, she teaches me some trickier ones. Medicine is meresin. Candy is swit. Nighttime is net. When the power goes out, it’s called a blakawt, and when you want someone to be careful, you tell them to tek tem.
After that, Miss Christiana teaches me some Krio words that are totally confusing.
She touches my hair and says the word plant, and I’m like Um, even though my hair grows, it is not a plant. My hair is not green and it does not have leaves. But then things get even weirder because Miss Christiana is only talking about the braid part, not the rest of my hair. That’s how she teaches me that plant means braid in Krio!
And you know what else? Plant isn’t even the hardest word to figure out! In Miss Christiana’s language, outside is na do, to get mad is veks, and mekes is what you say when you want somebody to hurry up.
My biggest favorite is diarrhea though. I mean, actual diarrhea is not my favorite at all—that would be insane! But Miss Christiana’s word for diarrhea is really funny.
She calls it roknbele.
Get it? Rockin’ belly!
Soon Miss Christiana tells me that the language lesson is over, and she asks me where I was hiding after we got separated near the first-floor exit yesterday. She tells me that she snuck back downstairs to look for me underneath the water fountains but that I wasn’t there anymore.
At first I don’t want to tell Miss Christiana where I was. I’m not sure why—I just don’t want to talk about it.
But my silence seems to make Miss Christiana get even more curious about where I went, and she keeps on asking and asking like a total pest until I finally give up and spill the beans.
I tell her about the retreat happening on the first floor.
I tell her about the employee-only area, called Home Base.
I tell her about the Rug-Rat Room and Miss Trina.
I tell her about my friend Hadley.
I tell her about the Supply Room and the products inside.
I tell her almost everything.
In fact, the only thing I don’t tell her about is Mr. Jim.
How do you tell someone that you just spent time with a person who doesn’t like them?
What would Miss Christiana think of me if she found out that I stayed with Mr. Jim, even though I knew he thought the second floor was bad?
And what if Mr. Jim is right?
What if the second floor really is a place only for bad people who are sick?
What if I get sick?
I suddenly remember my mask.
I pat my jeans until I find the piece of black nylon stuffed in my back pocket. I yank it out and start tying the fabric around my face.
Miss Christiana stops and watches me.
For some reason, her face looks sad all of the sudden.
“You are afraid of the sickness?” she asks.
I finish tying the knot at the back of my neck.
“I’m not sure,” I answer, shrugging. “Are you?”
“Absolutely,” she says.
I always feel weird inside when a grownup admits that they’re scared of something—especially if I’m scared of i
t too. It makes the scary thing seem even scarier to me.
“Is the sickness malaria?” I ask.
“No, pikin. Unfortunately, it is much, much worse than malaria.”
“Then why don’t you have a mask on?” I ask.
Miss Christiana is quiet for a long time.
“I’m not sure,” she answers. “I suppose the truth is that I don’t believe it will save me in the end.”
We keep walking side by side toward Macy’s, but neither one of us says anything else after that.
When we finally reach the glass front doors, I’m shocked by what I see on the other side:
I see people everywhere.
They look like passengers from our flight—everyone I see seems to be African—and everyone looks really busy doing things.
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