I reach down, brush the hair off his face. I reach into his shirt for the IV bag and hang it from one of the car’s plastic hooks, watching the liquid drain down the long, thin tube again. It sways each time the SUV hits a rough patch on the road.
“Not to be the proverbial rain on this proverbial parade, but please, God, tell me this house is somewhere in the great commonwealth of Virginia,” Liam says. “We’re cutting it close as it is.”
He’s right—I’ve been the picture of selfishness in going after Lucas, in focusing on him and him alone, when, according to Nico, we have an almost seven-hour drive through the darkening evening ahead of us.
“Bedford’s about forty-five minutes from Salem,” Ruby tells Liam, and it strikes me all over again how strange it is that despite how close our old towns are, we never would have met in another world.
She looks back, catching my eyes in the rearview mirror. We communicated like this at Thurmond, all stolen glances and raised brows, we had to—no speaking, no touching, nothing. I thought, with all the time we’d been apart, this connection between us would feel brittle, splintered, now that we’re back together. But what connects my life and hers is a thread that knots itself back together each time it begins to break. There is a Sam that exists only with Ruby, and when she’s gone, that piece of me will disappear.
Are you sure? she’s asking.
I hope my message comes through just as strongly. Yes, please, do everything you can.
Liam gives her one of those easy smiles, but it doesn’t diminish the tightness in his face. “Okay, copilot, you’re up.”
I don’t know if this will work. I have no idea what Ruby is planning to do, exactly, but I accept that things can’t always be in our control. The same way you can never get back the connections that were lost, the security you had, the innocence of being a dumb little kid in a world that caters to your every need. So you adjust. Uncertainty never becomes comfortable, but it becomes normal; we learn to deal with it the best we can.
It’s not enough for me to learn the rules; I want to be in a position to make them. Ruby is right—I feel stronger knowing I have kids to protect. Not just the ones in front of me, but everywhere. The unclaimed ones. The ones being wheeled in against their will to have the procedure done. The ones still out there, running wild, hiding.
I think there is some truth in the idea that gifts come hidden inside burdens. It is so easy for all of us to get caught in the net of wishing for things that were denied to us, to replay over and over the hurt and pain caused by words and hands and weapons. We have lived for too long inside a question the world has posed: if we’re even allowed to think of ourselves as human. We have asked ourselves this, and we have doubted. Every single one of us has doubted.
But we are stronger for what’s happened to us. I am stronger, even if I couldn’t see it at first. We have been given the gift of understanding that we can come through struggle and pain. We have built new families in place of the ones that cast us out. We have learned that life is one journey, and the purpose is not to reach some treasure at the end of it, but to find the courage to decide which paths to take, who to travel with, and to let things fall into place as they should and will.
I don’t know if this is faith, but I believe that I would never have found Lucas and Mia again if not for everything that happened. That I would never be in the position to help them now if I hadn’t taken Ruby’s hand all those years ago, when we were just little girls, and she was so scared. There are tests, but there are also small mercies. Life tossed us up into the air, scattered us, and we all somehow found our way back. And we will do it again.
And again.
And again.
A calming sense of gratitude washes over me as I sit back and look out at the approaching night. It stays with me, a warm glow in my veins, until Liam finally breaks the comfortable silence.
“We have company.”
There’s no one on the highway in front of us, and I doubt there will be for miles yet. But when I turn, I see exactly what he means. A white van, driving without its headlights, is tailing us about three car lengths back. The windows are tinted, too dark to see anyone or anything inside, but I know.
It’s the van from the safe house.
“Who wants this one?”
Vida smiles like she’s finally caught a fish after spending hours out on a lake. She cracks her neck, then her knuckles, and gestures for Mia and me to scoot aside so she can carefully climb over Lucas to sit between us for a better look.
“Oh, buddy,” Liam says, “you picked the wrong car.”
The van lets out a monstrous groan, a metallic whine as it’s lifted off its wheels and flipped onto its nose, its windows exploding out with the force of it. Liam floors the gas pedal and sends us lurching forward.
When I risk a look back, we’re far enough away that all I can see are the sparks from the van still smoldering on the road, but even those are swallowed by the light that seems to rain down from the curtain of stars spread across the sky.
THE HOUSE SITS LIKE AN abandoned castle at the end of Greenwood Lane, slowly drooping into mulch and mud. The early morning light casts it in a soft glow of colors, but I’m too tired and cranky to appreciate the effect. The others took turns driving and napping, but Sam and I didn’t sleep at all. I’m too anxious about running out of time—I don’t know how long this will take, only that Ruby is risking her freedom for us. She says we have until noon, five hours, but what if this takes longer? What if she has to leave before the job is finished?
What if she can’t come back because she’s displeased the government?
One side of the house is covered in the overgrown vines that Dad spent years heroically trying to cut down and rip out, only to have them return each spring with a vengeance. The trees have grown so close together that their limbs seem locked in an embrace, and what’s left of Mom’s carefully—meticulously—cultivated flowerbeds have scattered into the lawn, mingling with the bright heads of wild milkweed and thistle, the white, frothy patches of Queen Anne’s lace.
If the missing strips of wood siding and the busted-in door aren’t enough of a sign that the place is empty—vacant—the fact that the sign, the one I hated so much, is still there at the end of the driveway is proof enough for me: FORECLOSURE: FOR SALE BY BANK.
Sam’s memory is perfect. She knew exactly which streets to take to find our old neighborhood, and then our street. I let all of that information bleed out of my head when we drove away that last time because I never thought we’d come back.
I never told Lucas that. He believed Mom when she promised we would; he was still crying a little about having to leave Sam behind. Luc could be blind to things, and I think he honestly thought he could will that happy ending into existence, if he only wished hard enough.
Here we are, though, at a house that isn’t a home. The upstairs windows are broken, the garage door is half-collapsed, and the old red mailbox has disappeared completely. I used to lie in my bunk and close my eyes, strain to remember exactly what this place looked like, try to catch that last image I had of it looking back through the rear window as we drove away. It’s been frozen in time inside of my head, like the cursed sleeping kingdom in Lucas’s story about Greenwood. Seeing it now in this state pries my chest open. We have aged, and so has the house. We grew up without each other.
“How are we looking, Vi?” Liam asks, killing the car’s engine.
“All clear, as far as I can tell,” she says. “I’m going to take a few laps around the block, just to be sure.”
“I know it’s pointless to say this to you,” Charlie says as she opens her door, “but if you see trouble, at least entertain the thought of running away from it.”
I cannot figure these two out, and her response—blowing him a kiss and then immediately giving him the finger—does nothing to help me there. It feels like watching a hawk snuggle up to an owl.
“Hey—hey, darlin’, we’re here.” Liam reaches
over and brushes Ruby’s hair behind her ear. She doesn’t stir or yawn; I see her eyes open in the rearview mirror and realize that she hasn’t been sleeping at all. If anything, she looks even more exhausted than before.
“Anything?” she asks, turning back to us hopefully.
Sam grabbed Lucas’s hand the moment we crossed into Virginia, and she hasn’t let go since. She shakes her head. “The same.”
“Okay,” she says, straightening up in her seat. “We’ll find the notebook, then.”
So Ruby has been…working, I guess? No one came right out and said it—almost like that word, Orange, has a power to it that no one wants to summon—invoke—but I’ve got enough pieces to fit the puzzle together. This whole drive, she’s been inside of Lucas’s head.
“Chubs and I will have a look around the house, make sure no one is poking around or squatting,” Liam tells her, reaching into the glove compartment for something—oh. A gun.
They have this system down to an art. These kids, they came stocked with food and water, extra canisters of gas so we wouldn’t need to stop at one of the overcrowded stations. They know which roads to take to avoid unwanted eyes, someone always watches to make sure they aren’t being tailed, and, honestly, they don’t seem to feel a fraction of the fear that’s rocking every last one of my nerves. I’m jealous—I’m so jealous of what they have, and how surviving seems to come so easy to them when Sam and I failed so miserably at it.
I don’t like Liam, but I like the way he looks at Ruby, the way they seem to be able to hold conversations without words. I like that he kisses her hand sometimes, the way knights do in the old legends, or heroes do in Mom’s favorite movies.
But he’s not happy about helping us—helping Lucas—so I’m not happy with him.
“Which one was yours?” Ruby asks Sam.
“That one, right there.” Sam nods at the stumpy brick house on the next lot over. It gives me a little evil swell of satisfaction to see their perfect—manicured—lawn looking just as feral as ours. To see Mrs. Dahl’s perfect white fence in pieces on the wild grass. I’ll never forget the way the witch grabbed my right ear and gave it a yank, sharp enough to turn it red for hours, after I accidentally knocked into the fence with a soccer ball. After that, and the screaming terror Mom unleashed on the cold woman, I made sure to have loads more “accidents.”
“I barely recognize it.” Sam rubs her thumb over the curve of Lucas’s hand absently.
“I tried to find them after the press conference, to see if they’d picked you up without anyone noting it,” Ruby says carefully. “I couldn’t find a record of address for them.”
There isn’t a FOR SALE sign out like every other house on this street, but all the windows are boarded up and the carport is empty.
Sam shrugs. “It’s…whatever.”
I wish I could think of something to say, but I’m not so sure that Sam really needs to be comforted. I get it now; this is what I needed to see to slam the point home. She’s as much of an orphan as Lucas and I are—but our parents didn’t want to leave us. They didn’t have a choice. Hers did.
And I threatened to leave her, too. The idea makes my stomach go sour.
“It’s sort of sick,” Sam says, “but Thurmond felt like more of a home than this place.”
“That’s because home isn’t four walls,” Ruby says, “it’s the people you’re with.”
Sam lets out a soft laugh. “I guess so. Are the other girls okay? Did they ever find out what happened to Ashley?”
Ruby smoothes her dark hair back, a shadow passing over her bright green eyes. “The girls are all fine. Everyone’s just been worried about you. I’ll tell you about Ash later—after we get Lucas on his feet, okay?”
“That bad?” Sam says, shaking her head.
It’s late afternoon now, and the warm light almost tricks my eyes into thinking some color is back in Lucas’s face.
“Does he have to remember?” Sam asks suddenly. “When all of this is over and he comes out of this, does he have to remember what the Trainers did to him?”
Why wouldn’t he? Unless Ruby…my suspicion solidifies into a real answer. Ruby can affect someone’s memory. Vida and I were too far away from the house to really see what was going on, but we did pass one of the men as he ran away. Vida didn’t seem worried about it—no one seemed worried about the blank faces of the soldiers, or how they would explain the dead bodies.
Because Ruby gave them a memory they didn’t have?
“I’m worried about…the feelings,” Sam continues. “Even if the images are gone, will he still feel that pain?”
Ruby gives her this small, heartbreaking smile I don’t understand. “I’m better than I used to be. When he comes out of this, I can suppress everything—if that’s what he wants.”
“Can’t you just do it right away? Before he remembers it?” I ask.
“Sometimes protecting yourself from the pain only makes it harder to face in the long run,” Ruby says. “He’ll be the one to make the choice.”
I look to Sam, trying to get her read on this. She lets out a soft, tired breath, but nods. Outside of the SUV, Liam appears at the front door, Chubs trailing behind him.
“Are you sure you can do it?” Sam asks.
“I can sure as hell try,” Ruby says. “It’ll just take time.”
Which, judging by the empty IV bags Sam unhooks, and by the way Luc’s skin has shrunk around his bones, we might not have much of after all.
I can’t stand to be in the house.
I step through the front door, and it’s like a portal into some strange mirror world where things are the same, but horribly—hideously—different. My skin itches, tightening over my skull. The air in my lungs is full of mildew and damp air, but there’s a trace of us still clinging to it. Mom took so much pride in our home that seeing it like this turns my fingers to claws again. It is filthy. The outdoors has come trampling in, leaving muddy stains on the walls and floors. A tree branch has broken through the living room window, spreading glass all over the sunny yellow armchairs and the empty space where a piano used to be.
It’s the holes that I see first: the pictures that Mom and Dad took off the walls to bring with us, the pots and pans hanging over the kitchen island, little porcelain trinkets here and there. When we left, we only took what we could fit in the car. A lot of stuff was tossed out, but the rest belonged to the house, which now belonged to the bank, which would then pass it on to whoever could afford it. The house didn’t sell, obviously, and no one cared enough to come in and cover the furniture. The heirlooms and electronics have been picked over, stolen, and whoever took them left the back door wide open.
Both Ruby and Sam watch me move through the kitchen, then the living room, like they’re waiting for me to blow my last fuse. I walk over to the back door to slide it shut, only to find the glass pane is missing entirely from it.
I’m sorry, I think, squeezing my eyes shut. I’m sorry….For the first time in my life, I am grateful that my parents aren’t alive to see what’s left of our lives.
Home isn’t four walls, it’s the people you’re with. I repeat Ruby’s words over and over until I can feel the truth of them working under my skin.
“Where should we put him?” Liam asks. He and Chubs have followed us in, Lucas between them. “I maybe wouldn’t recommend upstairs. We found a family of raccoons that were not particularly happy to see us—whoa—!”
Lucas dips dangerously to the ground as the boys both seem to jump slightly back, fighting the instinct to drop their hands and let him fall. Ruby and Sam both rush over.
His eyes are open, seeing everything and nothing.
There is a second of silence; we’re all stunned stupid, I think. But then his expression contorts—contracts into an ugly snarl, and whatever strength is left in his too-thin limbs flares. He thrashes at them weakly, trying to twist out of their grip—or trying to attack them?
The air blows out of my lungs. My chest closes
up. The world shrinks to the wall that he’s facing, the one lone picture that we somehow missed in our last sweep of the house. The little family portrait hangs crookedly, all of our dusty smiles slanting down to the floor.
“Help—a little help, please!” Charlie says to Ruby, his voice high and thin with the effort of holding onto Lucas. “Turn him off!”
The picture bursts into flame.
The fire spills across the wall and, with nothing to stop it, catches the thin, brittle fabric of the ragged curtains. Liam swears loudly as he and Chubs both drop Lucas to the floor and begin to shake out their hands, which look blistered red. He tries to catch Ruby’s arm to pull her back, but she kneels down and puts a calming hand on Lucas’s chest, even as he tries to knock a fist into the side of her head.
“Oh, hell no!” The front door slams behind Vida. She sprints through the smoke and stoops to pick up a pillow from the couch, tossing one to a frantic Sam and taking the other for herself. She and Sam start beating the flames with them, trying to keep the fire from spreading to the carpet.
And me, I…
They did poison this place for him.
Our home.
They made him hate us.
I can’t stand here—I can’t stare at the evidence of my world crumbling to ash. I am the biggest fool in the world. I’m an idiot. He’s never going to snap out of this. We never should have brought him back here. All we’ve done is upset him, cause him even more pain than he’s already in.
I just need…
I need air that’s cooler.
I need…
I push past Sam and Vida, ignoring their voices as they call after me. I run, and I don’t know where I’m going, only that it’s not back into the house, not yet, maybe not ever again.
The backyard is worse than the front. It’s a maze of hedges and trees, and for a moment, I feel too overwhelmed by the unfamiliar sight to move.
And then I hear Lucas’s voice; I hear it in the wind that moves through the chimes he and I made out of cans and old silverware for Mom’s birthday when we didn’t have money for anything else. The smell of sap and damp earth and green life curls on it, drawing me forward like a beckoning finger. I want to fight it, but I can’t.
Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds Collection) (A Darkest Minds Novel) Page 32