Messenger 93

by Barbara Radecki

  Gray stood up. “If you guys don’t mind,” he said. “I’m going to crash.” He sounded easy, but I could see stress in the clutch of his hands.

  “I hear you,” Dusty said. He sat back in his chair.

  Gray unplugged his phone from the charger. He fumbled the phone in his hands, turning it on and off. He stepped one way, then the other. Distracted, he said, “It’s been a long day. I’m beat.” Then he picked up both our backpacks and went to the front door. “Thanks for everything.” He didn’t look at me or Dusty. He opened the door, stepped outside, closed the door behind him.

  I didn’t know where to go. Should I follow him? Should I crawl inside the tent and lay my body beside his? Was I going to pester him with meaningless questions and awkward condolences?

  But how could I trust myself to lie beside him and be still? How could I stop myself from throwing my arms around him like a needy girl?

  Dusty offered me a gentle smile. “I’m happy you came.”

  “Me too.” I tried to smile back. But my insides had started to spin. It was chaotic and violent. Everything in me wanted to follow Gray.

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” I blurted.

  “You don’t?” Dusty observed me. “But you are looking for her.”

  I said, “The other missing girl — Jocelyn — she was last seen in this area.”

  “Yes, I see.” He nodded his head.

  “She disappeared a month ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “But the girl I’m looking for — Krista …”

  “I hear you.” He was waiting for me so patiently, so calmly.

  “I don’t know if she’s here,” I said. “No one has seen her in this area. There’s no reason for her to be here. There was only one thing in her text — a finger pointing up — that I thought could mean she’s up north. I can’t remember anymore why I was so sure it meant that.” I met his quiet gaze, my thoughts whirling and jamming. Gray, outside, so close, pulled me like a magnet. But Dusty was nodding and waiting for me to continue. So I said, “Is it enough if I believe it?”

  He considered my question. “If you can be peaceful in your belief, if you can hold certainty in your heart, it means your belief is strong. But if you can’t be peaceful in it — if you have to force it, or fight it, or get angry, or hurt a person — it means your belief is weak. You see what I’m saying?”

  “I think so,” I said. Another lie.

  He rubbed his eyes and stood up. “I want to go to sleep now. You have another journey ahead, and I want to see it.” He pointed to his temple. “In here. I want to be quiet and still in my bed so I can see it.”

  My head was pounding. I was confused.

  “When you walk,” he said, “get yourself ready. You see what I’m saying?”

  I nodded. I wished to see everything he was saying, but I couldn’t.

  He held his fist out to me. “You can only be true. That is all you can be.”

  I had kept the pebble he’d given me in a crease in my palm. I could feel it as I touched my fist to his. A slight point pressing into my skin.

  Dusty’s eyes softened and he said, “I love you.”

  A startling buzz went through me.

  “I love you too,” I said. The first time I’d said it in forever where it meant what it was supposed to mean.

  And the weird thing was — I could feel it too.

  4

  I CRAWLED INTO THE tent as quietly as I could. I thought I’d waited long enough that there was a pretty good chance Gray was fully asleep.

  I was surprised that some ambient light filtered through the nylon walls, and then realized it was moonlight. It was a clear night and the moon was high and almost full.

  I looked at Gray for a while. How his body in the sleeping bag was in silhouette, how his chest was rising and falling evenly, how his profile was like no one else’s in the world.

  I took off my boots and set them beside his on the ground by the opening. He’d laid out our stuff in an orderly way. Our backpacks side by side. Extra blanket for if it got too cold. His knife in its leather holster.

  He’d spread out my sleeping bag too, but hadn’t connected ours together. I didn’t know how to take that. It wasn’t a cold night, and he was distracted by worries urgent enough to crowd everything else out.

  But I wanted to feel him beside me, even if it was just the accidental press of his thigh.

  I slipped into my sleeping bag. The taut angles of the tent looked like a net suspended over us. A shroud caught in that moment right before it drops.

  The close air smelled of Gray. I inhaled deeply and held my breath. Maybe that was the only way left for me to hold on to him.

  TUESDAY, APRIL 17

  TWO DAYS UNTIL THE FALL

  1

  “SHE WILL FALL IN two days!” A panicked screech in my ear. So loud it jolted me out of my dreams.

  My vision cleared and I saw the inside of the tent. Gray was sitting up beside me. Why was he awake? It was still dark. But lighter too — closer to dawn than midnight.

  “Hey,” I said. My voice cut the quiet. “You’re up early.”

  Gray was very still. I noticed he was holding his phone in his lap. The screen was dim, but its muted light was part of the reason I could see him so well.

  I sat up and touched his arm. He was wearing the long underwear. The worn wool was soft under my fingers. “Are you okay?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said without looking at me. “I had a bad feeling.”

  My stomach twisted. It was Jocelyn. They must’ve found something.

  “So I checked,” he said, lifting his phone slightly to show what he meant. “But no.”

  Hearing the no should’ve filled me with relief. Bad news would definitely be worse than no news. But he’d said it with an edge.

  “Gray — what is it? You’re freaking me out.”

  “When I searched Missing Persons, someone else came up.”

  Everything went cold. Maybe the ticking I’d heard was the countdown to this.

  He turned his phone to show me the screen. My startled, flashed-out expression. “Missing for five days. Posted by your family. Your mom, your dad, your brother.”

  The truth had been tapping my shoulder all the way here.

  He stared at me. “You’re sixteen.”

  My stomach flipped with such force, I thought I was going to puke.

  “Krista isn’t even your sister. She’s some other runaway.”

  I could hardly speak. “A girl from my school.”

  Even in the dark I could see his face crumple. “You used Jocelyn?”

  Adrenaline shot through my veins.

  His voice got louder. “You stole her tragedy so you could come here?”

  Is that what I had done?

  But I’d understood what I was doing, hadn’t I? The whole time, I’d understood it.

  “Jocelyn isn’t like your friend from school.” He spit the words out. “She isn’t on some joyride. She’s not somewhere safe.”

  My legs started to move on their own. They kicked out from under me, wheeling me out of the sleeping bag.

  “Jocelyn is gone.”

  Shame exploded inside me like a bomb. It propelled me across the tent.

  “You sold me that stuff about Messenger 93?”

  If I didn’t get out of there, I would die.

  “You were using me.”

  My hands scrambled in the dark to find my boots, to pull them on and knot up the laces.

  “You used all of us.”

  I fumbled for my stuff, bundled one thing after another against my chest. The hyper-wheeze of my breath buzzed in my ears.

  “I trusted you,” Gray said.

  I groped for the tent zipper.

  “I believed you.” His
voice lost its edge. “I wanted to believe you.”

  I stumbled headfirst into the clearing. The moon had abandoned us. Dusty’s cabin was visible in the ebbing light. So were the rocks from his ruined sculpture. Beyond the circle, the trees looked like the blacked-out monsters from nightmares.

  Gray crawled out behind me. “You broke it.” His face was soft and swollen, like he had melted. “I gave you my trust — and you broke it.” His voice was agony.

  I did this. This was my fault.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  I wanted to surrender my hands to him, but they were full. My disgraceful armor.

  “Why are you here?” he said.

  I took him in. He was everything. Everything I could never be.

  HE IS THE FALL.

  “I’m sorry, Gray. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “M —” he said.

  But the explosive roar of my wrong eclipsed everything. I had to escape.

  “M —” His voice chased after me.

  I was flying away. Past Dusty’s cabin. Through the clearing. Straight into the woods.

  The tree-monsters pulled me into their world and ate me up.

  2

  GRAY YELLED THROUGH THE forest. “M! M!” The sound of his feet thrashing across the underbrush echoed. He was coming after me.

  It was pitch black, but I was running blind anyway. Gripping my bundle of stuff against my chest, getting knocked around by tree trunks and branches.

  Gray’s face, agonized and angry, flashed like a projection in front of me. I believed you. I wanted to believe you. I gave you my trust. You broke it.

  Before long I didn’t hear his calls through the dark anymore. Didn’t hear the crash and split of his misguided chase.

  I stumbled on and on and on and on.

  Loneliness shut its gate between me and everything else. How long had it been since I’d felt its steel plate inside my chest? Five days.

  The sky got lighter above the trees as day dawned. The trees reached up and shredded the light. Still I walked on and on.

  My legs gave out when the sun was high. I climbed up onto a large boulder and dropped my things. My unzipped backpack, sweatshirts spilling out, raincoat tangled in the straps. And something else. Crushed and brown. A dead animal.

  It was Gray’s holster.

  I picked it up. The leather was soft.

  Gray was gone.

  His knife was in the sheath. I pulled it out and held it up. The blade was tarnished. Perforations of rust scabbed the long edge. But it was sharp. Pointed. Usable.

  I raised the handle, pushing the blade against the neck of the world. I wished to end this. Wanted to stab the truth into another realm. Or better — turn the blade against myself.

  But I was too tired even for that.

  I collapsed onto the rock, lifted the sleeve of my sweatshirt, and strapped Gray’s holster to my arm. It was tricky, connecting the short belt and buckle with one hand. But I got it, and then the knife slipped into place easily. As if I’d worn knives against my body my whole life. I zipped on my raincoat and curled into a ball around my backpack.

  The shadows of the woods were deep. Every sound was amplified. Chirps and squawks filled the air. I didn’t care about animal attacks or threatening humans. I deserved whatever harm came to me. My eyes were blinking closed, but I searched for the crow. Listened for its voice. It didn’t come. Because I had not heeded the right call. I hadn’t done any of the right things. I’d betrayed Gray and everyone he cared about. You were using me. You used all of us. I’d left only sadness and destruction in my wake.

  The forest floor was a tapestry of matted leaves from years gone by — faded orange and yellow and red as far as my eyes could see. The branches of trees weren’t monstrous anymore, but like dancers’ arms winding and waving. Once upon a time, I had wanted to be a dancer.

  Then I’d wanted to be a singer.

  I’d wanted to be a basketball player.

  Wanted to be a leader.

  A philanthropist.

  A genius.

  A filmmaker.

  When I was very young, I’d wanted to be a fairy. But that was back when I thought everything was true and good. Including me.

  IT STARTED AS A knocking on my chest. Thwack thwack thwack. I woke up in a groggy fog and immediately felt for Gray. But then I remembered he was gone, and it was like he was being ripped out of my veins in real time.

  Thwack thwack thwack. It knocked against my chest like an outside heartbeat.

  I bolted up and looked around. The rock was cold under my body. I wrapped my arms around my chest and tried to orient myself.

  I opened my backpack and took a halfhearted glance inside. I had no sleeping bag, no tent, no food. At least I’d refilled my water bottle at Dusty’s. I searched for the sun and found it through the branches. It was still pretty high in the sky. Not so late then.

  Thwack thwack thwack. It was coming from up there. I focused my attention through the labyrinth of branches. And then I saw it: a helicopter crossing overhead.

  “Aaaah!” I called out and jumped up. I scooted down the side of the boulder and ran in the direction it was traveling. “Aaaah!” I screamed at it, believing the pilot could hear me through the mass of trees, above the sound of its rotating blades.

  I screamed at it and followed through the woods. A helicopter out here in the backwoods, searching for something. Maybe they were closing in on Jocelyn. Maybe Krista was somewhere out here after all. Maybe they’d found the serial killer.

  I ran and screamed and jumped and flapped my arms, but the helicopter was too fast and there were too many trees and I was too small. In ten seconds, I lost sight of it. Still, I kept running in the same direction, hoping for a clearing, hoping it might turn around and come back.

  I ran until my foot caught on a twist of exposed root. It sent me sprawling to the ground.

  Nothing was broken. Everything hurt.

  The shock of it unzipped me.

  My sobs echoed in the wild. They didn’t sound real. They were coming from a place so deep inside my body, they could’ve been my organs rejecting me.

  If a girl falls in the forest and no one is there to see her, does she exist?

  But then I remembered: I still had Krista’s phone. With the push of a button, I could alert that helicopter, could get it to turn around, come back. In the next moment, I could be sitting in its warm belly, speeding home.

  I opened my bag and scrambled through the glut of stuff inside until my hands wrapped around the most obvious and ordinary tool in the world. Krista’s phone. I almost laughed, almost kissed it. Classic twist — me running around on a mission, channeling some idea of Joan of Arc, only to have my enemy swoop in at the last second to save me.

  I pushed the home button.

  Nothing happened.

  I pressed it again. Nothing.

  I pressed the power button instead. The screen stayed black. I held the button down longer. Nothing.

  I shook the phone. I banged it. Knocked it against my knee. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Of course the battery was dead. It had been sitting in my bag for days.

  I hysteria-laughed for five minutes. Then dragged myself off the ground. I was back at the beginning. But if I had learned one thing it was that when you don’t know what to do you just have to start.

  THERE WERE NO HOUSES, no farms, no shelter of any kind. There were no wire fences that showed that people owned the land. I searched for a road. I could follow a road until I got to a town. Then I’d call my parents and wait for them to come get me. I would go home with them. I would tell them some story. Then I’d crawl into bed and it would all be over.

  I walked another few hours without stopping. My pace was slow, steady. I still hadn’t crossed a road or fence — and then I r
emembered Dusty and the trucker both mentioning the national park. I wondered if I’d stumbled into it. Instead of looking for roads and fences, I started looking for park signs, for signs of trails, for hikers.

  After another long stretch of nothing, I came to a narrow stream. It was something like the one near Dusty, but narrower, more quiet. It wasn’t running fast and the water was clear, its crystalline surface winding over speckled rocks and roots of trees. The clearing for the water-path allowed some sunlight to get through, and I badly needed to feel the sun’s warmth. I found a rock on the shore and sat down.

  I opened my bag and pulled out my water bottle and took a few sips. The cool liquid felt good going down. Water for lunch. Sunlight bounced off the metal rim and something about it reminded me of Infinity Girl. How I’d always imagined her mirror-panels bouncing all the light away from her.

  I rifled in my backpack for a pen and something to write on. There were only two scraps of paper in my bag: the bus ticket that Lily had bought to send me back to the city, and the newspaper page with the ad I’d already drawn across. I turned the paper over to the side that was covered with print. Stories about wars and corruption.

  I scratched a bunch of panels across the newsprint. This would not be the same day as the one with Infinity Girl stuck in Double Kross’s mansion. This new scene would be set somewhere else in the story, at some later point, yet to be determined.

  Infinity Girl has failed in her mission. She is a sitting target for Double Kross.

  Establishing shot: Infinity Girl arrives at the owl in City Hall Square. She’s looking for the person who has the secret code for thwarting Double Kross. It’s written on a tablet that he guards night and day. He keeps it because he knows Double Kross has enemies, and also that she is dangerous. But this agent will not kill Double Kross either. He has no idea that Infinity Girl’s life depends on his information.

  Infinity Girl stumbles through the square. She will reveal herself to him today. She is ready. But her powers have grown weak and she is steadily losing strength.

  Cut to: A face in the busy crowd. Infinity Girl locks eyes on him.