The Warning

by Patterson, James

  As Jordan and I walked back to my house, I took his hand and asked, “So how are you?”

  “Good,” he said, kicking a stone on the road’s shoulder. “Maybe not so good.”

  “I get it,” I said, nodding. I still was haunted by Hannah’s cries for “Mommy and Daddy.” I’d cried a few times, usually in the bathroom with the water running. I didn’t want to share any more of this with Jordan, who I knew was missing his mother and brother—and dad—on top of the trauma he experienced at the fire and the loss of his house.

  “I keep seeing my mom’s face as they wheeled her away,” Jordan said. “I keep remembering how Charlie’s little hand felt in mine. He’s such a funny kid. I miss his laugh and the way he’d spit back my dorky pop-culture references. No offense, but I feel really alone.”

  I wanted to stop and hug him so hard. I wanted to do more as well, but taking romantic advantage of such a situation felt wrong.

  “I appreciate that you’re willing to share your feelings with me, Jordan,” I said. “It’s one of the things I love about you. It makes me think you’re that much stronger.”

  I wasn’t intending the word “love” to come out of my mouth in relation to anything involving Jordan, but there it was. I wasn’t taking it back.

  He stopped, my words appearing to register with him in a significant way. “Thanks, Maggie. I mean it. I feel like I can tell you anything. I’ve never felt that way with anybody, including my family. I hope you feel the same with me.”

  “I do,” I said. “I have cancer.”

  “What?”

  I hadn’t meant to blurt that out, either. Sometimes Jordan was my truth serum.

  “It’s not definite,” I said, “but, yeah, I have a pretty strong hunch.”

  “A ‘hunch,’” he said. “Not a doctor’s diagnosis. A ‘hunch.’”

  “Right,” I said. “Jordan, you don’t know how hard it is to tell you about this. I haven’t even told my mom, and she’s a doctor.”

  “For four-legged patients.”

  “You can’t tell her, Jordan,” I said, suddenly getting insistent. “You can’t. You have to promise me right now.”

  “I promise, I promise,” he said, putting his hands up in a surrender position. “I don’t even know what’s going on.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I have a suspicious lump—on my left boob, if you must know. And I have no idea how to get to an oncologist, given all that’s going on here.”

  Jordan gave me the most serious look I’ve ever seen.

  “Maggie, this is important. This is your life. We’ll get you diagnosed if I have to steal the next helicopter that lands within twenty miles of here.”

  I smiled. “I appreciate that. I hope this won’t require your superhero intervention.”

  He shook his head. “Cancer. Fuck. I don’t believe it. You’re too young.”

  “I know,” I said. “I wish I didn’t have such a great track record for being right.”

  He gave me a look like he was deciding whether to make a wisecrack.

  “I was taking my X-ray in Mom’s office,” I continued, “and that reminds me.” I rolled up my sleeve and pointed to a white bump on my bicep. “Do you have this scar?”

  He glanced at the corresponding spot on his arm. “Nope.”

  I told him about the pill-like disc I saw on the X-ray, how I wondered whether it was like a microchip you implant in dogs in case they run away. “Is the military tracking us all now?” I asked. “Is it something less sinister? Or more?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve stopped discounting anything. Do other people have that scar? Does your mom?”

  “Good question. We’ll have to check.”

  He took my hand and started swinging it back and forth as we resumed walking.

  “So … you’re a sixteen-year-old girl convinced that you have breast cancer—from a supposedly insignificant amount of radiation—while the government has implanted a microchip in your arm to track your every move. And you’re worried about your friend here because he might’ve lost touch with reality.”

  I couldn’t suppress a smile. Neither could he.

  “Bingo,” I said. “Next time, take out your damn cell phone and get a picture of your flaming, flesh-flying skeleton dude. You think you’re living in the 1970s or something?”

  “You make an interesting point, Maggie Gooding,” he said, swinging my arm higher. “As you often do.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Jordan

  AS MAGGIE AND I sat on her couch to watch the western Cat Ballou (her choice), I wrapped my arm around her, and she huddled close. It felt natural, like why hadn’t we been doing this always? I was putting up a good front, but her confession rattled me. If something bad happened to Maggie, I couldn’t bear it. I realized that more than ever. If she was right, we had no time to waste. You don’t rope-a-dope cancer.

  There was too much going on. People’s lives could end in a flash—and already had. I was seeing—and feeling—things that not even I completely believed. I wasn’t sure whether my headache was a lingering result of my concussion or the accumulation of so much pressure coming from so many directions. I didn’t even have homework yet.

  Maggie’s mom came in and sat on the cushiony chair by the couch. She looked at us and smiled. The three of us had sat in these seats a hundred times over the years—I could quote almost every line from On the Waterfront, Maggie’s favorite movie—but tonight everything was different.

  I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on with Lee Marvin in this one. I’d promised Maggie I wouldn’t tell her mom about the cancer, but I wasn’t comfortable with this decision. If you think you have cancer, you tell a medical professional, period. Maggie’s mom was a medical professional. Maggie wouldn’t be able to research her way out of this one.

  I kept glancing at her mom, thinking about what I knew that she didn’t, wishing I had a better idea of what to do.

  Maggie’s plan was to wait until the road opened up and then go to a hospital for a mammogram. I suggested she go to the sick camp and the hospital there—where my mom and Charlie were—but Maggie said she’d talked to an army nurse who said that facility didn’t have a mammography machine. She said the nurse recommended waiting till she could get to the Canville hospital or the big medical center in Charleston. I said that may not be a very good nurse.

  My brain was racing. Could we get Maggie to a doctor or lure a doctor to town? If we drove up to the roadblock and said we had a medical emergency, would the army really stop us? Could we at least mail her X-rays to a specialist somewhere? Was the mail going through?

  In the meantime, there I was, sitting on the couch, enjoying the peach scent coming from Maggie’s hair and the soft warmth of her body and feeling terrified that now that we were together, she could be snatched away from me.

  As the movie ended, Dr. Gooding pointed at the both of us together on the couch and said, “So, this is interesting.”

  “It’s for our health, Mom,” Maggie said. “Remember that study in U.S. News and World Report that said hugging releases oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin? It helps with stress and lowers blood pressure.”

  “Well,” her mom said, “then you two must be stress free.”

  “Right,” Maggie said. “Like you and Bud Winkle.” She stuck her forefinger deep down her throat.

  Dr. Gooding’s face darkened. “Well, that is not nice.”

  “He called you my pretty mama.”

  “Don’t you think I am?”

  I could see Maggie trying to think of the right answer here. Her mother looked surprisingly vulnerable.

  “Of course, Mom,” Maggie finally said.

  I would’ve happily stayed on that couch with Maggie all night, but an idea had lodged itself in my head, and I couldn’t shake it.

  I needed to talk to my dad.

  There was so much to discuss: Mom, Charlie, the house, where I should live, what I should do next. I also needed him to tel
l me what to do about Maggie’s health situation.

  “I’m going to hit the sack,” I announced.

  “You are?” Maggie said. “Okay.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just really tired.”

  I thought of planting a slow, wet one on her right then, but I couldn’t do it with her mom there. I wished their floors didn’t creak so loudly; otherwise I’d consider sneaking up to Maggie’s room after her mom had gone to bed. But Maggie didn’t have her own room; she and her mom shared one big space upstairs. I was on a cot in the larger of the examination rooms. I appreciated that Maggie and her mom made room for me, given how small their living space was. I also was glad I didn’t have to sleep on the metal table where the dogs and cats were examined.

  As I lay on the cot and gazed at the blue walls, I thought about Charlie and how his bedroom had been painted a similar color. I’d looked in on him before I went out to stargaze with Maggie. He’d gone to bed thinking he was starting first grade in the morning. He was so excited and bouncy. Then he was tightly tucked in and asleep, letting out a whispering whistle with each breath. His arms were flung up above his head as if he were doing the Wave. That was his sleeping position since he was a baby. I ruffled his hair and kissed the top of his moppy head, and he let out a happy little sigh. He had no idea how much his world—our world—would change over the next couple of hours.

  Now he had no bedroom, no school, not even his favorite toy. I ached to see my little buddy again.

  I waited till I heard Maggie and her mom disappear upstairs. Then I opened my window and slipped out.

  CHAPTER 22

  Maggie

  MOM SEEMED TO have recovered from my Bud Winkle shot and was smirking about Jordan and me as we got upstairs.

  “You two …” she said.

  I ignored her.

  I was so glad I’d told Jordan my secret. I had to. I knew he would keep it. I could tell he was kind of freaked out, but he also was cool. My mom would not have been. She would’ve become an emotional mess. She might have been pragmatic when it came to animals, but not with me. She’d been over-protective of me since I was little, maybe because it was just the two of us. If it drove me crazy that at this point I couldn’t do anything but wait, it would have driven her completely batshit. She would have been relentless in banging her head against those walls. Neither of us needed that.

  I turned on the computer and remembered for the zillionth time that the internet was down.

  “Have you ever heard of someone called Ishango?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “No,” Mom said. “Does he live here?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “Just heard the name.”

  After digging around in our dim, dusty crawl space, I emerged with the “I” book of our encyclopedia set.

  “What are you up to?” Mom asked.

  “Checking something out,” I said, lying on my stomach on the floor and opening the book in front of me. “Had a research paper idea.”

  There it was: Ishango. Part of a national park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, described as one of the most beautiful places in the world. Home to one of the largest concentrations of hippos in the world. Also the name of a Congolese nature preservation organization.

  Another entry followed: Ishango bone. A Stone Age tool made from a baboon bone with markings carved into its side. According to the encyclopedia, it had long been assumed to be a tally stick, but now it was thought to be part of some other type of ancient mathematical tool. One side grouped tally marks to make prime numbers adding up to 60: 19 + 17 + 13 + 11, for instance. The other side’s marks were related to more disputable equations. It wasn’t exactly the theory of relativity, but this might have been the earliest known mathematical system.

  What any of this had to do with Mount Hope, I had no clue.

  I closed the book and looked up at my mom, who was beaming at me.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Seriously, how many years did that take?” she asked.

  “We’re still in friends mode, actually,” I said.

  “Huh. Could’ve fooled me.”

  “Well,” I said, getting up, “we are going to the homecoming dance together.”

  “He finally asked!”

  “Vice versa, Mom. I’m a modern woman.”

  “So you are.”

  “I’ll just search online for a dress. Oh, wait …”

  “I’ll dig out my old sewing machine and make you something out of the drapes,” she volunteered.

  “Thanks.”

  “Hold on a sec.” Mom disappeared into the closet and rummaged around. She was really pretty, even in her jeans and a T-shirt. I could imagine her going to a dance when she was younger—or now, for that matter. She was far from ancient, having had me when she was nineteen.

  “It’s a couple years old,” she said as she reemerged, “but I hung on to it in case someone asked you out when you were a freshman.”

  She handed me a Nordstrom’s prom catalog. On the cover were three girls who were hyper-skinny and showing way too much … everything.

  “Perfect,” I said. “Now if only there were a Nordstrom’s on this side of the roadblock.”

  “You look at it for ideas,” she said.

  I opened onto a page showing a lacy thing that resembled lingerie more than a dress. “That’s a no.”

  But as I stared at the revealing gowns, I got an idea.

  “I think my arms are too weird for dresses like this,” I said, rolling up my T-shirt sleeves to expose my bare shoulders.

  “Too weird in what way? You’ve got great arms.”

  “Let me see yours,” I said.

  She rolled up one sleeve, then the other. “Like this?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and approached her. There it was: a tiny round scar like the one I had. “See, your arms are better.”

  “Nonsense,” Mom said, though I could tell on some level she appreciated the flattery.

  “Hey, there was a microchip in Nerf, wasn’t there?”

  Mom gave me a puzzled look. “You are all over the place tonight.”

  “Sorry. I’ve got a young, fertile mind.”

  She laughed. “Yes, Nerf had a microchip, though it wasn’t that weird octopus-y thing we found after he was cremated.”

  “Right. What was that?” I asked.

  “No idea. I’ll let you find that out, genius.”

  “But he also had a microchip? That would’ve gotten burned up?”

  “That’s right,” Mom said.

  “How did it work? Like a tracking device?”

  Mom stepped up to me, took each of my hands in hers, and spoke to me as if she were passing down precious generational advice. “Honey. Since you’re so concerned all of a sudden. A pet microchip is not a tracking device. It does not have GPS. If it were a tracking device, it would require a separate power source, like a battery. These are radio-frequency identification implants, RFIDs for short, which provide permanent means of ID. It’s like the size of a grain of rice. Nerf gave his name, my name, and our address. That’s it. Anything else you’d like to know?”

  Hmm. So the microchip was much smaller than what I saw in my arm—or whatever the hell that metal thing was that survived Nerf’s cremation.

  “Could you implant a tracking device in someone? I mean, like a dog?” I asked.

  “There’s probably a way to do it,” she said. “Why? You want to see where Jordan is going now that he’s your boyfriend?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “I need to know where he is at all times, because he just might be doing something crazy.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Jordan

  AS I BIKED through the forest on hiking trails I’d walked a thousand times, I realized something incredible: I could see in the dark. My brain was doing that thing again where it was recognizing danger and reacting without thought. I was on autopilot, hopping over roots, avoiding stumps and rocks, and even jumping off little rises in the trail.
Plus, I was going really fast and not getting winded. Even in daylight I’d never had a ride like this. I was zipping along under the dark leaves and stars.

  I headed toward the power plant, where security would stop me but then could get my dad and bring him out to see me. I’d stand by the gate and wait—nothing illegal about that.

  The forest blew past me in a blur. My adrenaline was pumping so hard that it coursed through my veins. I felt invincible.

  I saw four deer standing on the trail ahead of me, and they saw, and heard, me as well, lifting their heads to the branches creaking as I whizzed through the trees. The deer scattered while I powered ahead and somehow took note of each tree’s age and condition.

  Maggie and I once watched a MythBusters episode that dispelled the widely held notion that we use only 10 percent of our brains and if we could tap into the other 90 percent, we’d be superhuman. Yet now I felt like I finally was using those extra reserves of brain and body power. It was as if everything I’d ever known—and some stuff I hadn’t—was immediately available, right there.

  What would my dad say when he saw me? He’d flip out probably and demand to know what I was doing at the plant in the middle of the night. But I was the one who should be angry. Mom and Charlie had been airlifted away after our house burned down, and he was nowhere to be found. I was sixteen, technically a minor. He was supposed to take care of me.

  The dad I knew would have found me by now, made sure I was safe. Where the hell was he?

  I needed to focus. He could help me help Maggie, too. He knew about whatever radiation had leaked. Maggie hadn’t been sent to the sick camp, because she wasn’t in the path of the cloud emitted from the plant. Plus, we’d been told that we were returning to a safe town, so Maggie shouldn’t have come into contact with any radiation.

  She couldn’t have cancer.

  No.

  I didn’t know whether what I was attempting was brave or foolish, but it was the only thing I could think of to help Maggie, especially if we weren’t going to involve her mom, who was a veterinarian and not an oncologist, anyway. Had Maggie actually been exposed to radiation and gotten cancer, and if so, how could we get her to a real hospital?