by L. E. DeLano
“Would you like to sit up a little?” Finn asks. “I can raise the bed.”
“Mmmm,” I reply noncommittally. “Where’s my mom?”
“Danny was hungry, so she took him down to the cafeteria. They’ll be back soon.”
“Oh.” I close my eyes, and I think I may be dozing off again. I feel Finn straighten my covers, and then he kisses my forehead. I break into a loopy grin again.
“What?” he asks.
“You kissed me,” I say, and then I giggle. I never giggle.
“It was just on the forehead,” he protests. “I thought you were asleep again.”
“You kissed me right on the mouth,” I explain. I pull my IV’d arm up and put my fingers on my lips. “Right here.”
“I did?”
“Other you did. And you were a pirate.” I open my eyes, and he slowly comes into view. “You look good in black, you know.”
He looks at me carefully, and then glances around the room before lowering his voice. “Jessa, did you travel without me somewhere?”
“Mm-hmm. It was easy this time. Piece of cake.” I point at him with a crooked finger. “You didn’t think I’d be good at this, did you?”
“I never said that.”
“Well, other you seemed to think I was pretty awesome,” I tell him, giving him a smug smile.
“Is that so,” he answers drily.
“And boy, can he kiss,” I add. My eyes slide closed, and I drift away again into a dreamless sleep.
When I wake, Finn is gone, and I can hear my mom talking quietly with Ben. My head is a little clearer, but now I can feel my shoulder a lot more.
I shift onto my side, to find the button that raises the bed up, but I groan as everything starts to hurt. My mom and Ben both turn at the sound.
“Looking pretty gnarly, St. Clair,” Ben teases.
“Just out for an afternoon swim,” I quip. My mom joins him on the other side of my bed. She reaches down, taking my good hand.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” she says. Tears start to fill her eyes, and she blinks them back before she leans down to smooth my hair off my forehead.
“They’ll be bringing you more pain medicine soon. Your dad stopped by, but you were asleep and he didn’t want to disturb you. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
I frown, and it pulls at my bandage again. “I have to stay here all night?”
Mom’s hand gently strokes through my hair again. “You’re hurt, honey. Are you hungry?” she asks. “Can I get you anything?”
I hadn’t been, but now that she’s said it, I am starving. “Yeah. I’ll take whatever. You know what I like.”
She glances toward the door. “I think they brought you soup, but you were still sleeping. They may still have it out there.”
“Soup is fine,” I say, clearing my throat. My voice is husky and my throat feels raw. I guess that’s what happens when you swallow a creek.
“I’ll be right back,” she reassures me, kissing me again.
Ben takes her place, folding my good hand into his. “Hey, listen, St. Clair,” he says. “Just because I’m dating another girl doesn’t mean you have to throw yourself off a bridge.”
I roll my eyes. “Please. How did it go?”
“How did what go?”
“The coffee date, stupid. What’s her name, anyway?”
“Oh, the date,” he remembers. “Didn’t happen. My truck broke down on the way home from school, and Dad had his car at work.”
“Better luck next time,” I say.
“Right. So what were y’all doing, anyway?” he asks. “Danny said he was up a tree with your new boyfriend.”
“My new … Danny said that?” That’s not like Danny. He probably considers Finn to be more his friend than mine. They were climbing trees together, after all.
“Well, is he?” Ben doesn’t realize he’s squeezing my hand as hard as he is. I give it a tug, and he releases me.
“Sorry,” he apologizes. “None of my business.”
“No, it’s okay. Finn’s just a friend.” I can’t quite meet his eyes.
“Yeah. There’s a lot of that going around,” he mumbles. “Do you know anything about the person who almost hit you? Did you see who it was or anything?”
“There wasn’t time. It all happened so fast.”
“What about your friend?” He overemphasizes the word.
“Not that I know of. Maybe that’s where he went—down to the police station or something.”
“I told Finn to go home and clean up—he was soaked,” my mother says, reentering the room. “He wants you to text him when you feel up to it. He’s a nice guy. How come I haven’t seen him around before?”
“We just met last week.”
“Your brother certainly likes him.” She slides a tray onto the bedside table, then turns the table to pull it across me. “Danny’s pretty upset by all of this. I sent him down to the cafeteria to get ice cream.”
“Well, I’m not too thrilled about this, either,” I reply, raising my eyebrows.
“I know, sweetie. Here, try the soup. They said if your head isn’t hurting, you can go home sometime tomorrow.”
“When can I go back to school? I have a paper due.”
“I’ll call the school,” she reassures me. “I’m sure Ben can turn in your work for you. The doctor wants you home until next week. Your dad and I are switching weekends so you don’t have to be moved unnecessarily.”
“Great.” I sigh, trying to shift myself upright more so I can eat. Mom puffs up the pillow and slides it behind me, but it jostles my shoulder and I let out a groan.
“I think you’re due for your medicine,” she says with a frown. “They said it’s better with food in your stomach. Let me go get the nurse.”
She steps back out into the hallway, and I reach clumsily for the spoon and end up knocking it off the tray. Ben picks it up off the covers and puts it in my good hand.
“Do you need me to spoon-feed you?” he asks.
“I’m not that bad off,” I say. “Just groggy.”
“So what grade is Finn in?” he asks me nonchalantly, while he opens a pack of crackers.
“I’m not sure,” I hedge, and really, it’s the truth. “I just met him. He doesn’t go to school here.”
“Where’d you meet him?” he asks, raising a cracker to my lips. I turn my head away.
“I don’t think I can eat that,” I say with a grimace. “My throat feels like I swallowed rocks.”
“You might have,” he says, popping the cracker into his own mouth. He finishes chewing and looks at me thoughtfully.
“So … he’s from Manortown? Or someplace else?”
He’s not going to let up, and I really am not mentally up for creating a backstory. I push the tray with the soup away and close my eyes.
“I don’t know, Ben,” I say. “I just met him. And I’m really tired and everything hurts.”
“Sorry.” He sounds chagrined. “Just looking out for you, St. Clair. Somebody’s got to do it.”
I don’t have the heart to tell him the position is already taken.
19
Family
The next two days go by in a blur of pain, then pain medication, then sleep. At least it was my left arm that caught the brunt of it. I can still type one-handed, so I do. I finish Ms. Eversor’s ghost assignment. My mom dropped it by the school and returned with homework for English lit. My calculus homework sits on top of the pile by my bed, but I can’t bring myself to do it yet.
Luckily, my phone somehow landed on the bridge and didn’t get run over by the psychopath in the car, so I can at least play some games and surf the Internet. Mom is adamant about me not having visitors for a few days, so I’m starting to get really bored now that I’m awake more. It’s only Wednesday and she wants me “quiet and resting” until Friday. My left shoulder is a sickly purple and green, and I can’t move it much. We’ve cut back the medication, and now I’m only taking it at night, sinc
e my shoulder stiffens up while I sleep.
I finally get tired of lying in bed. I run a brush through my hair and walk downstairs in search of food.
“Danny, I mean it,” my mother’s voice warns from the kitchen. “You need to calm down.”
I walk into the family room to see Danny standing with his hands in tight fists, making a face at my mother’s back.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Danny doesn’t want chicken,” Mom answers, running a hand across the back of her neck. “And I thought we had more macaroni, but we’re out.”
“I want macaRONI!” Danny shouts.
“We don’t have any right now. I have to go to the store,” my mom tries to explain, for what’s probably the fifth or sixth time. She looks tired, and I realize very suddenly that she probably is.
“Hey, Danny,” I say. “What if I make you a grilled cheese?”
“I want macaroni!” he repeats, refusing to budge an inch. Time to break out the psychological warfare.
“Fine. I’m going to make myself a grilled cheese and you don’t get to have one.” I stick my nose up in the air, and I walk toward the kitchen.
“No!” He tries to stop me. “I want a grilled cheese.”
“I don’t know…,” I say, as if I’m considering it.
“You make me a grilled cheese,” he says emphatically. Then he remembers his manners. “Please, Jessa?”
I give him a begrudging look. “Okay. Just this once.”
He leaves the room to go watch a DVD, and I saunter into the kitchen.
“Crisis averted.” I open the cupboard, reaching in for the griddle.
“Let me do that,” my mom says. “And what are you doing up?”
“I’m getting a backache from lying in bed all day.” I lean against the counter and look at her. “Have you even sat down since you got off work?”
She laughs. “No. When do I ever get to sit down?” She goes back to stirring her fry pan full of chicken and vegetables, and I reach across, taking the wooden spoon out of her hand.
“Since now. Go sit down and relax. I can stir chicken and make a grilled cheese.”
“I don’t want you hurting your arm,” she says.
“I don’t use my left arm to flip grilled cheese.” I tilt my head toward the living room. “Sounds like Danny’s watching The Incredibles.”
She looks torn. “I love The Incredibles.”
“I know you do. Go sit on the couch and watch the movie. Or open up a book for ten minutes. I’ve got this.”
“Okay … if you say so.”
“I say so.” I point toward the couch with the wooden spoon.
She gives me a silly sort of half-smile and then hugs me carefully. Then she runs a hand over my hair.
“Why don’t you call your friend Flynn?”
“Finn.”
“Sorry. Why don’t you tell him to come over? Or give Ben a call?”
“You mean it?” She nods and I perk up immediately, giving her a smile as I butter bread for Danny’s grilled cheese. She peels the cheese slices from their plastic wrappers, laying them out for me.
“Enough, Mom. Go sit down.”
“Okay. But watch that arm.”
I plate up the stir-fry for Mom and me and deliver Danny’s grilled cheese before settling between the two of them on the couch. I send Finn a quick text, telling him to come over, and I leave the phone in my lap as I eat. We watch the movie, and for a while it feels wonderful to be back in the normal world again. But I know there’s no such thing. I don’t get to be normal, ever again. Someone wants me dead.
Finn shows up halfway through the movie and watches it to the end with us. He’s never seen a Pixar movie, and I have to remind myself that he’s not from around here. After the movie, we go up to my room so I can tackle some homework.
“You seem like you’re feeling better,” he remarks as he sits down on the bed next to me.
“My shoulder still hurts, but it’s not as bad as it was. It’s a great shade of yellowish green. I only have to take my medicine at bedtime now.”
“That’s a shame,” he says, and his mouth twitches into a smile. “You’re awfully cute when you’re medicated.”
I put my hands over my face. “Oh God. What did I tell you?”
He’s grinning widely now. “You met a certain pirate…,” he prods. “And I gather he—or should I say ‘I’—got a little familiar.”
“It all happened out of nowhere,” I tell him. “I had no idea he was there until I ran into him. I was too busy noticing how weird everything was.”
“It’s all right,” he says. “You’re bound to run into me from time to time. It’s just a little odd that you fell right into his arms like that. You’ve been so determined to run away from me.”
He sounds almost … hurt. I owe him the truth.
“It’s not you I’m running from, Finn. You come with a whole life I’m not sure I want for myself.”
“Would it be so bad?” he asks softly. “Living that life? You’re not alone in this.”
His fingers come up to tuck my hair back behind my ear, and they linger, touching my face. “I’ll take care of you, Jessa. You know that.”
I give a little shiver as his fingers stroke my skin.
“You’re cold,” he says.
I try to get a grip on myself. “It’s freezing in here.”
“You think?” He shrugs. “Guess I’m used to the cold. I’m fine.” He glances around, then finds my hoodie on the back of the chair by my desk. He hops off the bed and then helps me out of my sling and carefully into the sleeves.
Once I get my sling back on, I settle myself again, cross-legged. “So, where do you live that’s so cold and has no Pixar movies?” I ask him. “Antarctica?”
He exhales, almost like a sigh but deeper, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have asked that. Finally, he answers.
“My reality started out a lot like yours,” he tells me. “We just got … derailed.”
“By what?”
“Natural catastrophe, triggered by man. We’d been fracking and drilling all over Montana and Wyoming for decades, without a lot of regulation or oversight. Eventually, we triggered an earthquake cluster that kicked off the Yellowstone eruption. That led to global temperature drops, crop destruction, famine; all the rivers and streams were choked with ash. It happened when I was a little kid, but my mom used to tell me about what it was like before. It sounded a lot like your life.”
“And now?” I’m almost afraid to ask.
“Widespread starvation and not a lot of natural resources. The government fell to a military coup, which led to a couple of short-lived wars in a battle for usable land that threw spots all over the world into anarchy. Now the few people who are left are running. Like me.”
“From what?”
“From each other.” He stops a moment. “There’s no food where I live, Jessa. No animals, no plants, not even many living trees. It’s all gone. The rest of the globe didn’t fare much better, so aid has been extremely limited and without any kind of widespread distribution. In some places, humans are the easiest source of food.”
I put my hand to my mouth. “That’s horrible.”
“You learn to sleep with one eye open. And you learn to avoid people when you do see them.” He smiles faintly with a memory. “It took you and me a long time to trust each other.”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “We didn’t … eat people, did we?”
“No. But now you know why I’d rather be here with you,” he explains. “And I never existed in your reality, so I wasn’t sending anyone to a certain death when I came over.”
“You never existed here? Really?”
“Not as far as I can tell. I tried to find my parents when I first got here, but no luck. And according to the census records at the town library, there’s no record of me or anyone in my family anywhere in your reality.”
“So how did you know to come here?”
“
Rudy,” he says. “Since I don’t have a counterpart, he arranged everything through another Traveler—money, shelter, cell phone. I don’t need much. I’m used to living with a lot less.”
I reach for my notebook while my mind processes everything he just told me.
“No trees?” I ask. “At all?”
“Not many. A lot of the streams and creeks that fed their roots are gone. There were so many fires. They raged out of control with no one to stop them.” He pauses a moment, and his eyes unfocus as he remembers.
“There was one big oak I found once,” he continues. “It was on the bank of a river, so it was still alive. And green.” His voice is wistful. “I hadn’t seen green in a long, long time, so it was amazing when I saw it.”
“Have you been back?”
“Back there? No way.” His voice is emphatic.
“So you’ve never gone back home,” I say. That just seems … impossibly sad somehow.
“It’s not home,” he says quietly. “Home is where your family is. There’s no one there for me anymore.”
He has no family. At least, not anymore. I think of my mom and Danny and Dad. What would it be like to lose them? To live in hunger and fear and cold every day? No wonder he travels. He’s got nothing to lose.
But I do.
Oh, I do.
My mind starts to wander, and a scene begins to play in my head.
He stood sentinel in the doorway of what used to be their home. The picture she’d hung on the dirty wall had fallen, leaving a pile of glass and pieces of frame on the floor beneath it. He watched her pick it up, turning it over carefully in her hand.
“It’s ruined,” she said softly, her voice quavering a bit.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked like he wanted to comfort her, but the need to protect her from whatever might be outside was stronger.
“We can try to find another frame…,” he offered.
“No. It’s ripped.”
“Maybe we can fix it.”
“No.”
She blinked back the tears because they were stupid. Useless. “They weren’t my family, anyway,” she confessed. “I just pretended they were.”
“I know.”
The kindness in his eyes was almost her undoing. “Let’s go. There’s nothing here. They got it all.”