by Amy Saia
I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for courage.
Something moved on the path behind me. I heard feet on gravel, and then a voice. “Put it down, Emma. It’s me he wants.”
William. When I lowered the gun, he ran over and threw his arms around me and squeezed so tight I could barely breathe. “You don’t have to do it, Emma. Just listen to me. I remember. You, our life, Penn Peak, the eclipse. I remember it all. Put the gun away, and I’ll send us back home.”
“Back?” I asked, with a mouth like dry sand. How could we go back? What was he talking about? He didn’t understand what back meant. Back was the same as now. Marcus would be alive, threatening us our entire lives. He’d destroy everything we were, and when he was done, he’d come after the baby.
Shaking my head in silence, I moved away from his grip. My fingers tightened on the revolver. “I can’t.”
“Don’t do this. We’ll figure out something else.”
“No. It’s too late.” A buzzing started in my ears, and I felt a pressure form in my chest— Marcus’s real weapon.
What am I doing? What am I really doing?
A million thoughts moved furiously inside my head, and, in the eye of the hurricane, a primal urge to pull the trigger. End it all. But logic kept beckoning me. If I killed, it would change me forever. It would haunt me and render me a stranger to myself. I’d see myself in the mirror and find someone else: someone who acted out of justice. I thought of Paul and how he’d tried to teach his ways of peace. But none of it could change time, and it couldn’t change Marcus. It couldn’t change the pain of knowing Marcus was still alive. Or the remembrance of the horrible things he’d done to the people I loved.
Silence followed. A hawk approached. It swooped over our heads, so close I could hear its wings cutting through the air.
“I need you, Emma. Don’t make me live in this time alone. I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything? Doesn’t that fix any doubts you have? I wanted you to change for me, to live in this world because I was afraid of yours. But I’m more afraid of staying here, if it means losing you.” William’s eyes searched mine. “Don’t do it. Don’t leave me, Emma. Please.”
Leave? Is this what I was doing?
“I can’t think,” I said, eyes focused on Marcus again.
An ache started in my head. Blackness came like a drape around the sun. I struggled to keep my focus, but soon everything darkened and blurred. Everything but one single form—the one William had called Black Death.
His eyes sharpened in the dark mass, then a mouth, a nose, an entire face appeared as if drawn by an expert hand. His whole body formed and sharpened and his mouth, the one I knew so well yet hadn’t seen for over a year, parted to speak.
“Miss me?”
In the next moment, I saw Marcus bend from an unforeseen hit. My first thought was I’d unknowingly shot him, but I hadn’t; Jesse was the one causing Marcus to wretch. With narrowed eyes, he produced a silent dagger of pain. The lenses inside Marcus’s glasses cracked and splintered. Even his skin seemed to stretch and shrivel into leather.
But Marcus made one last attempt. Removing his broken glasses, he turned to me and raised the pistol, finger pressed into the trigger. I saw a silver bullet release from the chamber with an explosion of fire and smoke.
William cried out and threw his body on top of mine. As we fell to the ground, I heard him groan and felt his entire body shudder violently. Then I felt the bullet enter me. His heartbeat, and mine, silenced. And a third one, too. So faint, so beautiful, until it too was gone.
A curtain of darkness fell, and the whole world muted into nothing.
When I opened my eyes, I was on a high plateau, and time had stopped altogether. Spasms wracked through my body.
Jesse threw an arm across my shoulders. “What do you know about that? You are going to die, Emma, and here I’ve just come back to life.”
There I was, lying underneath William, and there was blood everywhere. It was horrible. I couldn’t stand it. I had to close my eyes.
“Yeah, you see, you’re dead, and Marcus will take William’s soul. It’ll all be over and for what? For fucking what, Emma?”
I couldn’t move, but was aware of every bead of sweat suspended across the surface of my skin like oil on water. I could hear the cry of the hawk, a long, slow cry which carried on forever.
Jesse slid his arm away. He shoved his hands inside his jacket pockets. With careful steps, he circled around, eyes locked with mine the entire time. “You make a choice. Come with me, and William is safe. He’ll stay in his time, and Marcus will be destroyed.”
I saw time reverse. The bullet sucked out of my body and then William’s, and centimeter-by-centimeter it made a long arch back to Marcus. Sunlight hit its casing with a blinding sliver light. I heard William’s heartbeat again, and mine. The faint, bird-like heartbeat started up like a slow train. But it was weaker than before.
“I’ve learned something by being in the cult. They thought I was asleep, dead, but I’ve been listening, and I’ve been learning. I can control Marcus and all of them. I can take him right now and hold him inside my soul, and I get to live. I get to live, Emma. And he’ll never see it coming. I have that power now.”
I saw William in a vision. He walked freely among people who acted and dressed in a similar style and fashion. No more pretending. No more trying to make things work which couldn’t work. And he’d forget me, eventually, as I’d forget him. He’d find someone else. Someone who knew and understood. He’d be safe, and all of this—this unnatural world—would be nothing more than a dream.
Wasn’t this what I’d wanted all along?
“Do it, then,” I said. “Save him.”
Jesse’s eyes hardened into fine points. “And you give him up? For the rest of time?”
“Yes.” The bullet suspended like a pebble in ice. The hawk’s cry still rang out, William’s voice too, crying to me in a long, agonizing note. “Yes! Do it now!”
Everything became quiet. I watched Marcus slump to the ground and fade into the landscape, William too, with his blue eyes draining into nothing. Like a television screen fading into gray after someone cuts the power. The hawk’s cry ended; it swooped away through the sky.
A horrible shaking started. The revolver dropped from my hands.
I fell to my knees, gasping for air. Then came tears. It was over. Finally over.
I heard footsteps crunching on gravel. Jesse’s hand fell onto my shoulder. I stared at his brown leather boots for a long moment before craning my neck to look up into his face. Chocolate eyes gazed down into mine; they were smiling, happy. A sudden cold breeze lifted the dark strands of his long hair and swooshed it around his face.
“Oh, Jesse!” Rising, I fell into his arms and held tight. “Is this real? Are you really alive?”
“Beating heart and all.” He held up a hand to inspect all its amazing flexing digits in joy, then let out a hearty laugh. “I really am!” He squeezed me tight, then pulled away for a moment. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” I said, meaning it, but there was a radiating pain inside my heart.
Our eyes locked together.
Jesse said, “He’s where he belongs. Where he’s always belonged.”
I nodded. Yes. Don’t say his name, though. Don’t ever say it.
“This is our time, Emma.”
Time. Ours. Mine and Jesse’s.
The bitter wind which wrapped around me said we were no longer in the past. It had turned winter once more and shifted back to present day. I could feel it in my bones, the change of decades, the loss of something paramount.
For a second I thought he would kiss me. I prayed he wouldn’t. Not yet. Jesse moved away and reached down to take the revolver from my hands. “Never thought I’d see the day,
Emma.” When he handed it to me with a twisting smile, I slid it into my purse, because it made me sick. I didn’t want to see the revolver, or any gun, ever again.
Jesse turned to the sky. With a hand shielding his brown eyes, he peered out over the long valley of limestone and far off trees. Snow covered every ridge and pine, and the sky was white with the threat of a blizzard. An exhaustion filled me. My legs shook, and it wasn’t because of time or the sudden drop in temperature; it was something much deeper. The tiredness could be felt in every bone, every muscle of my body. I thought of the Ovaltine and how the iron was supposed to help after a trip, but how much I hated the way it tasted. I wouldn’t drink it for anything. I never wanted to see a can of Ovaltine again.
I heard Jesse say, “There’s something I have to do.” He turned to me. “That we have to do.”
“What is it?” I asked. Don’t think about him, Emma. Don’t you dare think about him.
“I want to see my dad,” Jesse said, hands in his jeans’ pockets now.
I scanned my brain, like pushing a broomstick through a mess of cobwebs. His dad? His rock-star father? John Lennon?
“We have to get to New York,” he said.
I nodded in agreement, but my thoughts were with the baby. Something felt off, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe I needed to rest. But then I thought of going home and seeing William’s things. I couldn’t do it. Not yet.
And I couldn’t tell Jesse about the baby, either. He’d have to find out on his own, and I prayed he’d understand.
Chapter 21
Half a mile up the road, we hitched a ride from someone in a light blue Toyota pickup. Jesse threw my suitcase into the rusted bed of the truck, and then we both crammed together in the front seat next to the driver, a middle-aged man wearing a thick brown coat and red wool scarf.
“Where ya headed?” he asked in a drawl which told us he was from down south.
“New York,” Jesse said, putting an arm around me to keep me warm. “But you can drop us off in Louisville if you’re headed that way.” He spoke next to my ear, “Ever been on an airplane?”
“No.”
“Me, either, but we’re about to now. We are getting the hell outta this place.”
The driver laughed, releasing a puff of frozen breath. “You two gettin’ married or sumpin’?”
Jesse didn’t say. His arm tightened around my shoulders. Then, “Hey, you think you can turn up the heat in this thing? My chick is freezing over here.”
“It’s all right, Jesse. I’m fine.”
“Right,” he said, “you’re fine. In a skirt and a little top? I can feel you shaking, Emma.”
The driver reached to switch up the heater a few notches. “That won’t do much. This thing is falling apart. What the hell you kids doing out in here in your summer clothes anyway?”
Jesse flipped up a hand near my right shoulder. “Just being crazy, man.”
The driver laughed again. “Yeah, I ’member them days. Love makes you crazy. It sure do.”
Jesse regarded me with a huge grin. When the Springvale town limit sign flew past, he let out a loud whoop. He lifted a middle finger and held it up to the window. “Screw you, Springvale. Screw you forever.”
I shook. The driver was right, no matter how high he switched on the heat, it didn’t want to work. Or maybe I couldn’t feel it. Maybe it wasn’t the cold making me shake.
¤ ¤ ¤
Clint Webber, our Toyota savior, dropped us off outside the United Airlines terminal at the Louisville International Airport. Jesse nudged me, and I fished out the last few dollars I had in my purse to our driver as an offering of thanks. Unaware he’d been given currency from over two decades ago, he gave a nod before speeding off past a line of taxis. Jesse grabbed my bag right in time, but I told him he needn’t have bothered. There was nothing in there but curlers and unwashed clothing, anyway.
“Hey, it’ll make it more official. Who’s going to get on an airplane empty handed?”
I shrugged. “I’m just sick of carrying it around.”
“Hey, I’ll carry it. Don’t worry.”
I reached down for my purse and felt the revolver again. I had to get rid of it. “Open the bag, Jesse.” He did, and I tucked my purse inside underneath three pairs of underwear.
He gave me a look of understanding before closing the latch with a quick snap. “Ready?”
“Yeah.” We slipped inside a revolving glass door.
“Hold on tight,” he joked.
Inside, it was chaos. People were everywhere, most staring past us. Some eyed me like I was a freak in my dirty summer clothes. My heels were still caked with mud from the day before. Day? Laughing ironically to myself, I thought about how much time had really passed. Decades had dwindled away into nothing. And here I was, still covered in its dirt.
As we approached the ticket counter, I pulled Jesse aside to speak. “I don’t have any money.”
“None?” he asked, slight smile at his lips.
“Yeah. I’m broke. I gave Clint my last few dollars.”
“No problem,” Jesse said. He lifted a cool brow and resumed his path to the counter. I followed, listening in as he spoke to a clerk at the counter. She had hair permed into an auburn halo and wore thick plastic glasses on a tiny nose. When he told her we wanted tickets for New York, she told him the total—an expensive sum of money. He leaned in, contemplated her for a long moment, then whispered something about a charge account for a Marcus Kerr. “Just look it up,” I heard him say. And she did. A minute later a little machine began shooting out a pair of tickets.
I shook my head in disbelief when he turned to me. We left to go sit in the United Airlines boarding section by a large window facing out to a busy runway. “He had money in accounts all over this flippin’ country. You’d be surprised how much. And the bastard owes us every single penny.”
I stared at the planes coming and going.
¤ ¤ ¤
An hour later, we were sitting side-by-side in second class, a tiny window our only view of the runway. Jesse leaned across so he could see the landscape rushing by in blurs of white and dark pine and amber-colored limestone. Not until we were in the air did he finally relax into his seat, eyes to the ceiling. “I was scared it wouldn’t happen.”
“Me, too.”
“When I left you in that room the night of the eclipse, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“I wanted to go back and join you, to get revenge, but William stopped me.”
He winced at the name but said, “Good. I’m glad he did.” Jesse watched me for a long time. I felt like he was going to say something else, but his lips pressed together. We both turned to the window again, and after a while he muttered, “I love you, Emma.”
My heart sputtered. I knew this moment would come. And I loved Jesse too, I really did. This past year, I’d never stopped. If I hadn’t met William, there was no doubt in my mind Jesse and I would have already been together. It was like we’d driven over a million roadblocks and were finally on the road we should have been on all along.
He leaned across the seat and met my lips with a soft kiss and moved his fingers into my hair. I kissed back, thinking the whole time how strange it was to not experience a spark when touching another person. His lips were warm and soft. They were full of secrets.
Jesse drew back, eyes closed for a few seconds. He smiled. “The whole time I was stuck in there, I told myself I’d kiss you again someday. It’s the only thing that kept me going.”
I touched his face, glad I had been able to give the one thing he’d wanted, glad he’d made it out alive. The cult hadn’t won.
“Maybe I can have another later?” he asked, eyes lighting up.
When I looked out the window, embarrassed, I cou
ld see in the glass reflection he was grinning.
¤ ¤ ¤
Jesse attempted to hail a cab outside the JFK, but without much luck. It was a lot colder in New York than it had been down south. A bitter wind cut through me like icy needles, and soon Jesse grew frantic. “I’ll get one soon, don’t worry!”
I couldn’t speak. My mouth was locked shut, teeth clenched so hard I thought they might crack.
A few more taxis sped past, completely ignoring Jesse’s exaggerated waving of arms and ear piercing whistles. I thought of the movie It Happened One Night and how Claudette Colbert had stuck out a leg to hitch a ride, much to Clark Gable’s anger. I doubted such a thing would work today, and anyway, it was too cold to stick my leg out anywhere.
Jesse kicked the fender of a cab speeding by and spit a string of vulgarities at it. After rubbing his forehead for a while, he seemed to calm down, and the next thing I knew he had jumped right into the middle of the busy pickup zone, eyes set on the next cab like it was a baseball he was going to catch. It blasted its horn, but Jesse wouldn’t budge. He took a few steps closer, eyes latched on the driver.
The cab screeched to a halt.
“C’mon!” Jesse grabbed my bag and hustled me inside the back seat. We both covered our noses at an overwhelming odor of urine and sourness. “Welcome to New York,” he muttered, before barking into the front seat the address for the Plaza Hotel.
The driver—a dark-haired Italian man with a name tag on the dash which said Rudy—glanced back at us, saw how young we were, how poorly we were both dressed, and let out a laugh. “You kiddin’?”
“No, man. I said the Plaza Hotel, didn’t I? You deaf?”
“Jesse.”
“What?” He turned to me. “This guy’s gonna give us trouble, I’ll give him trouble back.” Jesse lifted his butt off the seat and pulled out a wad of cash, much to my surprise, and dangled a few bills over the front seat. Settling back beside me, he whispered, “Got it while you were in the bathroom. I told you, Marcus had a load of cash, and I got the combination. Put your eyes back in your head, already.”