Quicksilver

by R. J. Anderson

  “Please,” I whispered. I didn’t hide the tremor in my voice. I needed him to feel my desperation. “Milo, you can’t tell the police or the media anything about me. Not my name, not that we work together, none of it. It’s incredibly important.”

  He recoiled. “Why? Are you in trouble?”

  “No, but if you don’t help me out, I will be. I’ll explain later. But please, Milo. Promise me you won’t tell.”

  For a moment Milo’s eyes were as blank as his glasses, and I thought I’d failed. But then he sighed. “All right. I’ll handle it. Go.”

  “Thank you,” I breathed. Then I ran to the back doors, shoved them open, and leapt out into the freezing rain.

  “Hey!” yelled a voice behind me, but I didn’t look back. I skidded across the sidewalk, flung myself over somebody’s box hedge, and vanished into the anonymous night.

  0 0 0 1 0 1

  By the time I got the front door open, I was soaked and my teeth were chattering.

  “Niki?” called my mom faintly. “Is that you?”

  Crackers frolicked around my ankles, delighted to see me. I swore under my breath as I hopped around, trying to get my boots off without squashing him. “I’m home!” I yelled. “I’m fine!”

  “Oh, thank God.” Mom hurried out of the bathroom, wrapping her robe around her. “When I called the store and they said you’d left forty minutes ago, I was so—” She stopped, aghast. “What happened?”

  It had been hard convincing my parents to let me take this job at Value Foods in the first place, even harder to persuade them that I could get around the city safely on my own. If they so much as suspected that I’d been in serious danger tonight, it would be the end of my independence.

  “It’s no big deal.” I let out a silly-me laugh. “I got on the wrong bus, so I had to walk a couple extra blocks, and a truck splashed me on the way.”

  “You should have called!” She brushed ice pellets from my hair and shoulders, her brow creased in distress. “It’s too dangerous for you to walk in this weather. What if you slipped and broke your leg? What if we had to take you to hospital?”

  For anyone else, the worst part of that scenario would have been the broken leg. But for me, it was the hospital. Doctors poking and prodding me, nurses giving me drugs that could cause violent reactions or no reaction at all. And if anyone decided to take a blood sample, we might as well call up Dr. Gervais and be done with it.

  But I couldn’t spend my life encased in bubble wrap either. And when I’d jumped off that bus tonight, wiping out on an icy sidewalk had seemed a lot less scary than ending up on the eleven o’clock news.

  Not that I planned to tell Mom about that if I could help it. It had taken six weeks in our new house before she’d stopped being wary of the neighbors and nearly four months before she felt secure enough to start redecorating. She’d even been reluctant to adopt Crackers at first, afraid of getting attached to a dog she might have to leave behind. Now that she was finally starting to settle in, the last thing I wanted to do was unsettle her all over again.

  “It wasn’t that bad out,” I said, as I wriggled out of my coat and hung it up to dry. “More wet than slippery. Did you know you have paint on your face?”

  “Oh.” She touched the white smear on her cheek self-consciously. “I was just getting into the shower. But you should go first—you must be freezing—”

  I shook my head. “I’m just going to change and make some hot chocolate. Go ahead.”

  She gave me a doubtful look. I returned my brightest smile, and finally, she sighed and retreated into the bathroom. I waited until I heard the water running, then peeled out of my jeans, put on a pair of flannel pajama pants, and headed downstairs.

  “You’re pretty wet,” said my dad, glancing up from the sofa with the TV remote in hand. “What’d you do, fall into the lobster tank?”

  “Caught the wrong bus.” I spoke lightly, knowing he wouldn’t make a big deal out of it if I didn’t. Especially since he could see for himself that I was okay. “Who’s playing?”

  “Montreal and Toronto. Habs are winning 3-1. Want some popcorn?”

  So I grabbed a blanket, wrapped it around me, and cuddled up next to him to watch the hockey game. By the time it went to commercials, I’d warmed up and was starting to relax. But then Dad started channel-flipping, and halfway through the second lap we hit a local news bulletin.

  “—taken to hospital. Police are at the scene…”

  The reporter stood by the curb, with the bus behind her. By the flashing lights of the police cruiser I could just make out the girl with the pink cell phone, gesturing and pointing as the officers listened to her story.

  Dad’s finger hesitated over the button. “Isn’t that…?”

  My thoughts flashed ahead, anticipating all the ways this conversation could go. Then I sat up abruptly, the blanket dropping from my shoulders. “Whoa! That’s my bus!”

  He gave me a sharp look. “The one you were on tonight?”

  “No, the one I was supposed to be on.” I leaned forward, staring at the screen as though mesmerized. “Did you catch what she said? Was there an accident?”

  Please don’t let the bus driver be dead. Please don’t let it be my fault.

  “… Further details at eleven.”

  The darkened roadside vanished, and a model bounced across the screen with a bottle of shampoo in hand. Dad switched back to the hockey. “Well,” he said. “I guess we’ll find out in a few minutes.”

  I groaned and dropped my head into my hands. “Great. Now Mom’s never going to let me ride the bus again.”

  But all the while, I was watching between my fingers to see if he’d bought it. Because if he saw through my act and ordered me to tell him the truth, I’d be doomed.

  “Ah.” Dad cleared his throat. “Good point. Maybe we’ll just finish the game and call it a night.”

  Relief washed over me. My gamble had paid off—if only because Dad was even more reluctant to worry Mom than I was. For the moment at least, I was safe.

  “Yeah,” I said, tucking my legs beneath me and reaching for another handful of popcorn. “Sounds like a good idea.”

  0 0 0 1 1 0

  When the hockey game ended my dad went upstairs, but I stayed in the basement. My nerves were still fizzing, and I knew it’d be a while before I could unwind enough to sleep. So I turned on the ventilator, sat down at my workbench, and plugged in my soldering iron.

  I’d always found it relaxing to work with solder, applying precise drops of molten metal to anchor diodes, resistors, and other small components into their proper places—or even better, squeezing a thin line of gel flux along the edge of an integrated circuit and gliding a hoof tip over it to seal the tabs flawlessly in a matter of seconds. There was a warm satisfaction in populating a circuit board that was nearly as good as the afterglow of finishing the project I’d designed it for, and when I was soldering, all my worries seemed far away.

  Most people would probably think it was strange for a teenage girl to take such pleasure in building machines, but I’d gotten used to being different a long time ago. And though I’d spent years hiding my passion for electronics, it wasn’t because I was embarrassed by it. It was more because my parents had warned me that showing off my technical skills would make people curious about where I’d learned them, and I had no easy answer to that.

  My current project was a Geiger counter, to replace my old one, which had become touchy and unreliable with age. I cleaned the board, soldered the remaining diodes and then the resistors, my tension gradually melting away. By the time I started yawning, it was 12:36 A.M.

  Well, at least I was tired enough to sleep now. I stretched, turned off the soldering iron, and headed upstairs. But the pleasant feeling of distraction vanished as soon as I started down the hallway to my bedroom and remembered the bus driver lying grey-lipped and motionless in the aisle. He could be dead now, for all I knew. And when I thought about Milo and those three girls talkin
g to the police, I felt icy all over again. He’d promised not to say anything about me, but could I trust him? And even if I could, what about them?

  In the end I went to bed anyway, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. But sleep was a long time coming, and when it arrived, I wished it hadn’t. Deckard was chasing me through the corridors of my old high school, his boots pounding like drumbeats against the tile. He had his pistol out of the holster, and I knew that if he saw me, I was dead, so I ducked into the music room to hide. But when I opened the equipment closet, Brendan jumped out, laughing at the shock on my face. He dragged me inside and put his hands and his mouth all over me, and I couldn’t make him stop until I grabbed a microphone off the shelf and hit him in the head with it. He crumpled, and when I turned, Alison was standing in the doorway, looking so sad and disappointed that it made me want to cry.

  “You’ve killed him,” she said. “It’s all your fault.”

  “No, I haven’t,” I protested. “He’s only bleeding a little.” I turned Brendan over to show her, but when I looked at his face, I realized it wasn’t Brendan after all.

  It was Mathis, and he was smiling.

  I tried to shout for help, but no sound came out. Alison had vanished, and I was alone with Mathis in a cold grey space with no windows, no doors, no escape at all. He grabbed my upper arm so hard I could feel his thumb grinding against the bone, pulled my face close to his, and said in his thick accent, “You can’t get away from me. It’s still there.”

  Repulsed, I pushed myself free and backed away. But he only smiled wider and pointed to my arm. I looked down—and saw the chip, bright as a bead of fresh solder, gleaming on the surface of my skin.

  I choked on a scream, and woke.

  The room was dark, the house silent. Only Crackers’s whine from the foot of the bed and the thump of his tail against the covers as he toddled up to lick my hand told me that I’d made any sound at all.

  I touched on the bedside light and ran my finger over the tiny scar above my elbow—the place Dr. Bowman had tried to cut the chip out when I was little, right before I went into a seizure and he had to stop. I couldn’t see anything there now, but then, I never had. Still, Sebastian and Alison had both told me the chip was gone, and I believed them.

  I lay back, breathing out slowly to calm my jittering heart. It wasn’t the first nightmare I’d had since I got away from Mathis, but it was the first one I’d had in a long while with him in it. These days it was usually Deckard who stalked me in my dreams, and occasionally some brittle-looking middle-aged actress stood in for Dr. Gervais. Which made sense, because both of them were still a potential danger if I got careless. But I’d escaped from Mathis, and as far as I knew, he shouldn’t be able to touch me or threaten me ever again.

  So why was I still dreaming about him?

  0 0 0 1 1 1

  When I came down to breakfast the next morning and saw the newspaper lying on the table, I braced myself for the worst. But my mom passed me the croissants and went on reading the classifieds without even glancing up. And once I’d unfolded the front section and flipped to the local headlines, I understood why.

  “TEENS STOP RUNAWAY BUS, SAVE DRIVER,” the article began, and beneath it were two school pictures. One was of Milo, minus the glasses and wearing an artificial smile.

  The other was the girl with the pink cell phone.

  Disbelieving, I skimmed the rest of the story. The details were pretty much what had actually happened, except with the other girl—Breanna Gingerich, apparently—taking charge of the wheel. One of her friends claimed to have helped Milo with the CPR until the ambulance arrived, while the other took responsibility for making the 911 call. Thanks to their quick thinking and courageous teamwork, said the article, the driver had made it to hospital alive, with a good chance of recovery.

  I stared at the page, the croissant crumbling forgotten in my hand. I didn’t mind Breanna and her friends taking credit for what I’d done: if anything, I was grateful. I was just surprised they’d had the nerve to pull it off.

  No, more than surprised. I didn’t believe it. There was no reason three total strangers, let alone a bunch of giggly girls who couldn’t be more than fourteen, would lie to the police and the media for my sake. Not unless there was something in it for them, and they could be sure of getting away with it.

  Which meant that Milo hadn’t just covered for me. Somehow he’d talked the girls into covering for me too.

  0 0 1 0 0 0

  “Hey there, hero!” called Jon heartily as Milo came through the sliding doors. “Nice picture in the paper!”

  Milo pulled the earbuds out of his ears. “Thanks,” he said without enthusiasm. He stuffed the headphones into his pocket and headed for the stockroom, not even glancing at me.

  I was glad he was playing it cool, but it didn’t make my job any easier. I still owed him an explanation for last night.

  Halfway through the shift, I switched off with Kayleigh and was heading to the break room when Milo slipped into the corridor behind me. “I feel like a secret agent,” he said. “Do you have the documents, comrade Nikita?”

  Nikita was actually a boy’s name in Russian, but I wasn’t going to make myself obnoxious by saying so. “It’s a long story,” I said. “What about later, on the bus? Or have you sworn off public transit?”

  “Have you?”

  “Not really. What are the odds of anything like that happening again?”

  “Zero, I hope,” he said fervently. “But my brother’s home for the weekend and we’re going out for pizza, so the bus is out. Can you give me the short version?”

  The break room was empty. No more excuses. I shoved coins into the coffee dispenser and fished a couple of creamers out of the fridge while I waited for the cup to fill. Then I took a deep breath and said, “First, I need to thank you for what you did last night. That was pretty brilliant of you, bringing the girls in on it.”

  I wasn’t just flattering him, either: it really had been a genius move. Not only did it give Breanna and her friends good reason to keep their mouths shut, it also guaranteed that any other pictures they’d taken of me would be long gone by now. The only possible glitch was that I’d probably been caught on video, since all the city buses had cameras these days. But how likely were the police to even look at the tape, let alone make an issue of it?

  “Yeah, well.” Milo took the coffee out of the dispenser and handed it to me, then started plugging in his own change. “I’m just glad they decided to play along.”

  I glanced at the door, half hoping one of the other employees would come in and interrupt us. But nobody did, so I took the plunge. “So. You’re probably wondering why I took off like that.”

  Idiot. Of course he was; that was why we were here. “Look, this is really private and personal, so please don’t tell anybody. But a few months ago, before I moved here, something happened to me. Something … bad.”

  Milo kept his head down, watching the cup as it filled. But his shoulders tensed, and I knew I’d got his attention.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I went on in a low voice. “I couldn’t have done anything to stop it—I know that now. But there was an investigation, and it was all over the news, and everybody in my school was talking about it. It was like I wasn’t even a person to them anymore, just a story. The kind of story that follows you around for the rest of your life.”

  Carefully, Milo pulled his hot chocolate out of the dispenser and fitted a lid onto it. He still didn’t look at me.

  “So my parents and I decided to move,” I said. “We even changed our names, so we could start over.” It was a risk, telling him that. But if he tried to look up Nicola Johnson online and couldn’t find her, I wanted him to know why. “Nobody from my old life knows where I am now, and I want to keep it that way.”

  “And that’s why you ran off and left me doing CPR on that guy by myself,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I felt bad, but you were doing all ri
ght. And … this isn’t just about me.” I laced my fingers around my cup, watching the steam coil and vanish in the air. “My parents left their jobs and their friends and everything, just to give me a chance at a normal life. I don’t want them to have to go through that again.”

  We stood in silence a moment, listening to the tinny pop music from the loudspeaker. Then Milo said, “Okay.”

  Which could mean any number of things—okay, I understand what you’re saying; okay, I forgive you for ditching me; okay, I’m on your side. I was hoping for the last one, but I couldn’t be certain until he turned his head, and his dark eyes locked onto mine.

  He looked serious. He also looked slightly nauseated, but the disgust wasn’t aimed at me. He held my gaze steadily, and then one corner of his mouth turned up in a rueful smile.

  “Wow,” he said. “Life can be pretty complicated, eh?”

  I knew, then, what he thought had happened to me. He was wrong, but I wasn’t about to tell him so. At least it was the kind of tragedy that would make sense to someone like Milo, something he wouldn’t find hard to believe.

  If only it were half so easy to explain the truth.

  0 0 1 0 0 1

  March made one last halfhearted attempt at snow, but it melted as soon as it hit the ground. Then April arrived in force, stealing the chill from the air and washing the grit-dulled streets to a sheen. I took my mom’s umbrella to work three days in a row, until a freak gust turned it inside out and I had to huddle inside my coat instead.

  Jon kept offering me rides, and I kept declining them. Milo and I didn’t see much of each other, but whenever our paths crossed, he gave me a nod as if to say, Don’t worry. I’ve got your back. Mom pulled up the carpet in the living room and refinished the old wooden floor, which turned out to be gorgeous. Dad coaxed her into going out for dinner and a movie every Friday, and after their first couple of dates, she stopped worrying about leaving me alone in the house. All seemed well, except for one thing.