by Matt Ryan
“Yes, but I think if we can get ahead of him, we have a chance. We need to get out of this city.”
“Then where?” Jackie asked, and I had the same question.
“I’m not sure, but I know my mom will have a plan. She’s been dodging all sides for a long time. This is what she does.”
An hour passed as I grilled Mark about the dark, and anything else he knew about the hierarchy of alchemists. He didn’t know as much as I wanted, and it turned out Axiom was more of a boogeyman’s tale to scare young alchemists. There were leaders, but apparently they changed often as one grew weaker in power, or was killed off. Mark had no idea about who led what faction anymore. His mom had stopped talking to him about alchemy once she’d learned he couldn’t make a stone.
With each piece of information Mark gave, even the vaguest tidbits, the alchemy world grew exponentially around me. At one point, I’d thought I was near the top of the food chain, since I could make any stone set in front of me. But now I was aware of how very little I knew. I felt small and insignificant again, and the feeling made me want to get to my mom even more.
“You think your mom can find her?” I asked Mark.
“Who?”
“My mom.” It was the first time I’d mentioned her since we’d left the Academy, but every second she consumed my thoughts. If I didn’t start talking about it, I might burst.
“I don’t know. She’s better at avoiding people.”
“She found me.”
“That she did. I think she’ll at least know who would know where your mom is.”
The idea of making progress toward my mom sent my spirits soaring. I beamed back at him with a big smile.
“She’s not going to be the person you remember from your childhood,” Jackie said.
I gritted my teeth. “She’s my mom. I don’t need her to be anything else.”
“Bullshit.”
“What do you know?” I fumed. The truck bounced and I grasped the stack of flour bags next to me.
Jackie took a deep breath and looked away. “They never are, you know? They put on a face for us, but once they scrape the makeup and the plastered smile off their faces, they’re just as sick and demented as the rest of the world.”
“How would you even know?” In every memory of my mom, she loved me and I loved her. We were happy.
Jackie laughed. “I would know because I was once in your very shoes. My mom left me as a child as well—though I didn’t have the benefit of her faking her death. No, she just left me at a park one day and never came back.” She glanced over to me. “I spent eight years conjuring cockamamie reasons as to why she’d left me. I put her on a pedestal as I bounced from foster home to foster home, recalling every fun moment we’d had. It wasn’t until later that I started thinking differently.
“You see, when you’re a kid, you don’t think about spending nights in a car as a bad thing, or shaking your mom awake because a cop says you have to move. It’s all normal in your little naïve prism. You could watch her spend a lot of time in strange houses as you waited in the car and not bat an eyelash. I had old newspapers to color and wet kisses left on my cheek. It’s silly how little you need as a child—just the love of your parent to be happy.”
Jackie smiled and looked at nothing in particular. Perhaps she was thinking of her mom kissing her on the cheek. I touched my forehead. My mom used to kiss me there. I would give anything for that feeling again.
Her smile faded and she plucked at the edge of a paper bag of sugar. “When I saw her again, I was fifteen. She ended up at the hospital, dying from cirrhosis of the liver and a whole lot of other stuff I didn’t understand. The doctors wouldn’t do much, and I didn’t have the strength to fight then. To them she was just some no-insurance druggie, disposable. . . .”
She blinked and I saw the tears building in her eyes. If she were most people, I would have put an arm around her, but this was Jackie. She’d slug me for sure.
“When I walked into her hospital room, she didn’t recognize me. Hell, I barely recognized her, looking all thin and pale. You know what she wanted me to do, once I convinced her I was her daughter?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I knew Jackie needed to unload. “What?”
“She told me where to get her some drugs. She wrote the directions down on the front of a magazine, right over the face of Ryan Gosling. I told her I didn’t have any money. She told me I should use what she gave me, and pointed to my body.”
I covered my mouth. I really hoped she was building up to a pun of some sort, but the tears in her eyes told me she wasn’t. This had really happened, and it tore at my soul to think of Jackie going through it, alone. The risk would be worth it; I put my arm over her shoulder and nudged closer to her.
She leaned against my chest and continued. “When I refused, she went into a rage. Her IV got pulled out and blood dripped from her arm. She screamed at me and I screamed back out of fear. The nurses ran in and strapped her to the bed. One of them offered to help me, but I just ran. I didn’t want to see my mom like that anymore. I wished she had died before I ever saw her. It had soiled my childhood memories, and. . . .” Jackie stopped and sniffled.
She turned her head up to look at me. “Just don’t think your kid memories are an accurate portrayal of your parents. They aren’t. Your mom could be someone entirely different than who you think she is. She willingly left you, Allie, just like my mom did. A real mom doesn’t do that.”
I squeezed her much harder. Her words stung. I was putting my mom on a pedestal because there had to be a reasonable explanation for why she’d left me, something dire and noble. My mom rescuing me in the Academy had proved she cared enough to get me out of there. But she hadn’t left just me, she’d left my dad as well. When I thought of my dad, my chin quivered. He’d be home soon. He’d promised.
“Don’t start crying on me,” Jackie said, and pushed away from my chest. She composed herself and turned to Mark. “What’s your deal, Mark?”
His eyes looked misty as well. I was sure he was as disturbed by Jackie’s story as I was. He looked at the floor of the truck. “I guess I’m a card-holding member of the dead parent society.”
“So your mom is the alchy?” Jackie asked.
“I don’t know if my dad had the gift or not. My mom won’t talk about him. She has it, but it’s weak.”
“She’s a Malki, like you?”
“Yeah, just like me.” Mark looked away.
A police siren blared from behind the truck. I jolted up and looked at Mark and Jackie.
“We’d better hide,” Mark said. “It’s illegal to ride in the back of one of these.”
“Great,” I said.
We crowded behind two pallets at the back of the truck. From the floor, I could see under the wooden pallet to the end of the truck. The siren continued to blare and I felt the momentum of the truck shifting forward as we slowed. We jerked around as it stopped.
Cars could be heard whizzing by—we must be next to the freeway. I thought I heard footsteps in the gravel by the side of the truck.
“What’s the problem, officer?” Jerry asked.
I closed my eyes and listened to the words.
“You drove around our checkpoint back there. Why?”
“I have a delivery to my East L.A. store. I was just trying to make good time.”
“Step out of the truck and open the back up,” the officer instructed.
“Okay, no problem.”
I pulled my feet in tighter and watched the back of the truck through an opening in the pallet. The door lifted open, and the outside light flooded in.
Jerry squinted, scanning the contents of the truck. “Here you go. Just some flour and baking supplies. You know we give the men in blue fifty percent off all purchases in our stores. It’s not something we advertise—”
The officer stepped forward and put his hand in Jerry’s face. If we stayed still, I didn’t think he could find us. The officer was wearing
black gloves and I spotted his motorcycle behind the truck, parked on the dirt shoulder of the road, lights still flashing.
His hand touched the metal edge of the truck and clunked. I strained to see the yellow stone in his hand. He tapped it on the metal and rolled it under his palm. I froze as much as any freeze stone would make me and felt the quick breaths coming from Jackie on my arm. I didn’t dare move even my eyes to give her a look.
“Don’t ever avoid a checkpoint again,” the officer said, and stuffed the stone into a leather box clipped to his belt.
“Yeah, will do. Bit early for a DUI check, though, isn’t it?”
“Move along or I’ll find a reason to ruin your day.”
“Okay, will do.” Jerry pulled the door back down.
I breathed out as if for the first time. The motorcycle started up and the sound of gravel being flung let me know he was gone. An alchemist cop? I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. How many people in the world were part of this?
The van door opened and slammed shut. “You guys okay?” Jerry called from the front.
“Yeah,” Mark responded.
“That was real close. I’m not sure what you guys did, but they’ve sent out everyone to find you. We’re not that far now.”
The truck started up and I moved into a more comfortable position. As we veered back into traffic, I stumbled and fell into Mark. His stiff body received me and I spent some time getting off of him.
“You two want to make out or whatever, go ahead. I don’t mind,” Jackie said.
She could still put color in my cheeks. I cleared my throat and kept a good foot away from Mark. “How many people can do what we do?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but my mom’s found them all over the country. I bet there are a lot of people who don’t even know they have it in them,” Mark said. “Like you, before I moved next door.”
“I self-taught,” Jackie said, and stretched out her legs on the wood-planked floor. “After my awesome family reunion, everything seemed to piss me off. I ended up at this group home, creepy as hell, but they let us bake.” She laughed. “Let’s just say, alchemists shouldn’t bake angry, unless you want your cookie batter to explode.”
“Then you got a visit from our friendly neighborhood Academy recruiter, right?” Mark asked.
“Yep. A few weeks later, Darius showed up at the group home and promised to take me away from everything. You wouldn’t believe how excited I was when I first got there. That was the mean part, and maybe why I was able to make so many stones. They took away something from me I didn’t know I’d had until it was gone. Funny how it works like that.”
The truck came to a stop. I really had no idea where the baker had taken us and only hoped there wasn’t some delivery door back to the Academy. Standing near the middle of the truck, we waited for the door to slide up. The latches sounded and the back door flew open.
Standing silhouetted by the outside light was Ms. Duval.
“Get out,” she ordered.
I darted to the end of the truck with the others. Sitting on my rear, I hopped out onto the asphalt. A few other cars and a couple of motorcycles were parked near the Cheers Diner. The dirty windows allowed an advertisement for meat pie to show through.
“I can’t believe you guys got out of there,” Mark’s mom said, panting as if she’d been running a mile.
“Hey, Mom.” Mark hopped from the truck. “That place you sent us to was a hell on Earth.”
Ms. Duval covered her mouth and ran to him, then wrapped him up in a big hug. Mark held back his arms for a few seconds before matching her affection. Seeing her embrace her son sent a wave of jealousy through me. My mom and I hadn’t gotten a moment, only a brief glance at each other before she was hit by a stone and pulled away by the men she’d come with. She’d said my name, though. She knew me, and now she knew my face. We would have our moment.
“That wasn’t the Academy. It’s run by the dark alchemists, and I should have known—the protocols were all wrong. It’s just that when I saw you had the gift. . . .”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Hey, Sarah,” Jerry greeted, coming around the corner of the truck.
“Jerry,” Ms. Duval responded. “Thank you so much for doing this.”
“I owed you,” he smiled. “Besides, if these kids are drawing this much attention, they must have done something wonderful to those dirtbags.”
“Attention?” Sarah asked.
“An alchy cop pulled us over after I dodged one of their checkpoints. Sarah, if they’re willing to be openly searching for the kids, they won’t be safe no matter where you stash them.”
“Almost nowhere.” She nodded.
“Hi, I’m Jackie,” Jackie interrupted.
“Hello.” Sarah shook her hand. “Were you in there with them?”
“Yes, and we left a whole slew of people behind. We’d really like to find a way back there. Maybe with some help?”
Sarah glanced at Jerry and then back to Jackie.
“I’ve been silent for a long time,” Jerry said, raising his hands. “If I made one stone in this city, they’d find me. I’m afraid my part in this expedition ends here. But if I may, I’d like to add one pearl of wisdom. Don’t go back to L.A.”
Jerry said his goodbyes and left in his box truck. His departure swirled up dust and left us standing in the parking lot of Cheers. I scanned the horizon and saw that the only notable structure nearby was a freeway, carving its way up into the mountains.
“Mark, you look better.” Sarah shot a glance at me. The last time we’d spoken, she’d given me one mission—to get a life stone and cure her son.
“Allie cured me.” Mark answered her unasked question, but couldn’t bring his eyes to meet mine.
“Allie, thank you so much.” She moved closer to me, but I took a step back.
“I did it for Mark.”
I saw in her eyes that she knew the price of the stone. Flashes of the boy being sundered by the two stones played out in my mind.
“Well, thank you all the same,” Sarah said.
“My question still hasn’t been answered.” Jackie crossed her arms. “How are we going to get the rest of them out of there? A bunch of those kids have parents. They must want to help.”
Sarah took a deep breath and looked at the black pavement under her feet. The sun was near mid-sky, casting down its radiant heat on us. “Things aren’t that easy.” She shook her head and locked her attention on me. I frowned, half-expecting some shattering news. “Allie, your mom is alive.”
Her bomb had been dropped and she waited for the fallout.
“I know. She broke into the Academy to get me.”
Sarah shook her head and looked as confused as I must have been when I first saw my mother. “She broke into that place?”
“She and a couple of other people,” I said.
“They weren’t the first, either. A man dropped in and was taken prisoner. He was searching for his son.” Mark touched his stomach. He glanced at me and I sank under the weight of his look, wondering if he saw me differently now.
“We had to fight our way out of that place,” Jackie said. “We used some stones on the teachers, and Allie stole a life stone from them.”
“Oh my. I had no idea.” Sarah looked around. “This is even worse than I thought. They will be sending everyone after you.”
A motorcycle rumbled on the freeway below, turning off the ramp. I squinted and leaned forward as the white motorcycle with red and blue lights veered up the ramp toward the restaurant.
“Is that the alchy cop?” Mark asked.
“Yes,” I said after a quick glance in confirmation.
“To the café, quick,” Sarah said. She pushed us, and soon we were jogging to the door.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim light inside the diner. A long bar ran down one side, where a few men wearing flannel and t-shirts, keeping to themselves mostly while watching TV and eating their hamb
urgers.
“How many?” an elderly woman with an apron asked.
Sarah moved closer to the woman with a bright, inviting smile. “Pam, is it?” She glanced at the woman’s name badge. “You’re a spitting image of my dear Aunt Erin. I’m Sarah.” She extended her hand for a shake.
Pam took a deep breath and stuffed a pen into her apron pocket before accepting the hand. Her expression changed from slightly annoyed to a blankness I hadn’t seen since Mark and I had frozen that thief in the farmer’s market.
“Now, Pam.” Sarah held Pam’s hand on both of her own and raised them closer to her chest. “I want you to take us to the back room. In a minute, a police officer will arrive looking for us. I want you to kill him.”
“Mom, no,” Mark said.
Sarah took a deep breath and sneered at him. The sound of the motorcycle rumbled near the front of the diner and then silenced. Sarah turned to us with a new urgency. “Don’t kill him, then. But I want you to act as normal as you would with any customer walking through those doors, and forget you ever saw us. Now, take us to the back room, please.”
“Okay, it’s right over here.” Pam turned around and walked along the bar toward the door. A few patrons noticed our group walking through the restaurant, but most went on paying attention to their gravy or whatever slop they had on their plates.
The back room turned out to be storage, with boxes of various oils and dry foods. A back screen door stood partially open, letting in some badly needed fresh air.
“Now, Pam, remember . . . as soon as you leave this door, you won’t remember us, and you look forward to serving the police officer. Okay?”
“Yes,” Pam said. I wasn’t sure she had blinked yet.
“Then go.”
Pam left the storage room. I peered through the crack long enough to see the café door opening and a smooth black boot entering. The bell on the door chimed.
“How did he find us?” I asked.
“They must have gotten to someone you crossed paths with. Who knew where you were going?”