Boyd was calling Krista’s name, but his voice sounded very far away. Or like it had been slowed down by one of those recording devices.
“And then you walked in,” Krista said. She wasn’t crying anymore. “With your mask and your mission.”
I was cornered now. I’d backed all the way to the roof’s perimeter wall, far from the fire escape, the twinkling patio, the potted plants, the city horizon. Far from the moon.
There was a sudden flapping. I didn’t dare take my eyes off Krista’s knife-holding hand, but the black-feathered wings clipped my peripheral vision. Then more flapping. More wings.
“What the fuck?” Krista squinted through the dark at the commotion behind me, and I took a quick glance over my shoulder.
A dozen crows had arrived. They fluttered over a power line that came right up to the warehouse. One by one, they landed on its tubular steel rungs.
They were showing me an escape route. If I wanted it. If I dared.
Krista stepped closer and jabbed the knife to indicate the crows. “You think that’s funny?”
I climbed up on the ledge. I didn’t need to look beyond my feet to know it was a long and deadly drop down. Three stories. “No, Krista, I don’t think it’s funny.”
Boyd stepped closer. We were a triangle. He was one point, astonished and helpless. One point was Krista wielding the knife. The last point was me, above them, balancing on a two-foot ledge. Edging to freedom.
Boyd shouted, “You’re going to fall!”
But I kept my eyes on Krista as I inched along. Her eyeline ticked from me to the crows, the crows to me. Her brow furrowed. Like she couldn’t understand anything that was happening.
The wind buffeted my back. I rocked for balance and Boyd yelled out. But I was okay.
I reached into my pocket. Felt for all the things I’d stolen to find Krista. Her phone, the drawing of the bird, the photo. I pulled them all out. “These are yours.” I crouched down slowly and set the scrap of bird on the ledge. I laid her phone on top of it. “You stole my wallet at City Hall, so maybe we’re even.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
“9393,” I said, tapping her phone. “That was weird.”
“How do you know that?” She stared daggers at me. “Did my mom tell you his birthday?”
9/3. September third.
“Your father’s birthday,” I said. Krista crushed her lips together. “I’m really sorry he’s gone,” I said. And I meant it.
“You’re crazy.”
“Remember this?” I showed her the photo. Her kissing my cheek. “Remember when we were friends?”
“I was never your friend.”
“Yeah, I know.” I let the photo go. The gusting wind swirled in and took it away.
Either one of us could have made the next move, but Dell came running around the elevator bulkhead. She came to an abrupt stop a few feet behind Krista and Boyd and locked eyes on me. “Messenger 93!” she screamed. White silk rippled around her like turbulent water. “I knew it was you!” A bunch of partiers and three Donation-Box Crow People arrived behind Dell. “Messenger 93!” one of them yelled. “It’s her! She’s here!”
Krista’s face went white. She had her feathered back to Dell, to the others. Only I could see the calculations that flipped across her face. What would they say? How would this look? One of us on the ledge, the other holding a knife.
Fall from grace. Wasn’t that another expression?
Krista threw the knife.
She threw it with such force that it clanged against the steel rungs of the power line that I was trying to get to. The crows flapped and screeched. Not human voices inspiring me, but birds speaking to each other in their own language. The knife hit rung after rung, clang clang clanging all the way down. One of the crows lifted into the sky. It spiraled above us.
Krista started to sob. Hunched-over, shoulder-wrenching sobs. “Help!” she cried. “She had a knife!” She jabbed her finger at me. “She was going to kill me!”
Everyone froze, stuck in some sort of gawking amazement. Boyd had his arms open like he’d lost something important. Remy arrived and joined him. Then Anusha, L.J, and Hattie came around the corner. They were checking me out. Checking with Krista. Krista was sobbing.
The crow circled overhead. I watched it, stuck in the same ring.
Dell went to Krista and put a hand on her wrenching back. She looked up at me. “What is happening?” she cried at me. “What did you do?!”
Everyone turned to me wearing the same hostile expression: What did you do?!
I was spiked to my spot. No words to explain myself.
Krista was supposed to fall. I was supposed to be here to stop it. Instead she was safe on the ground, surrounded by people who loved her, and I was balanced on a precarious ledge.
“Someone get the cops!” Dell yelled. “We need help.” Barbie-Boy was in the crowd, and he bolted to do Dell’s bidding. “Make sure you get all this,” she said, stroking Krista’s heaving back, to one of her friends who had her phone out and was filming.
The wheeling crow caught a downdraft. Its wings tipped and it spun towards us.
The same wind buffeted against me. I lurched on the narrow ledge. Everyone gasped.
Take the fall for someone. There was always another more difficult meaning.
Somewhere far off, a song started to play, a lo-fi synth riff that sounded vaguely familiar.
3
YOU KNOW WHEN SOMETHING bad happened to you once, and you felt the incision, and it hurt so much until it faded, and then later you remember it for some reason, and the pain repeats in your mind, reflecting and multiplying, over and over — maybe it will never end? Your pain expands times a million. Times infinity.
I closed my eyes.
The end credits of my life scrolled by.
Why had I ever left my house?
I didn’t save Krista.
Krista would always hate me.
I didn’t find Jocelyn.
Jocelyn was still gone.
I’d betrayed Gray.
Gray would never come back.
Everyone at school would know me now.
They would see that I made everything worse.
That I stole what wasn’t mine.
That I chased what wasn’t there.
It wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough.
A familiar voice came in through the void. “Don’t jump.” It was Boyd. “I’ve got you.”
“Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it.” Anusha, L.J., and Hattie.
People running. Calling out. Yelling for order.
“What are you doing?” Krista’s voice in the noise. “You said it was going to be me!”
She will fall.
I felt the crow land at my feet. Felt it lift its wings against my legs.
The end was so close, I could hear the shush shush of its veins.
She will fall.
Even Joan of Arc had to die.
Maybe that’s what the crow had meant all along.
I lifted my arms and let go. A falling star.
ONLY YOU CAN SAVE her.
The moment I dropped over the edge was the moment I understood.
She is me.
Right from the beginning, it had always been me.
She will fall in seven days.
You must find her.
Only you can save her.
The crow had never once said her name. I had chosen her.
I didn’t want to die. Especially not like this. Random people gaping from the roof of a random warehouse at my spattered body.
My arms wheeled frantically. My legs were weights pulling me down.
The tubular power line was only inches away.
Her skill can be slow motion.
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I swung my arms out. One hand caught a steel crossbar. My body jerked to a stop. A g-force so strong, it rattled my everything. Something in my arm ripped. There was a terrible howl. A monster coming. Then I realized it was me screaming.
I dangled and lurched in agony, trying to get a hold on the tower. Pain scorched my shoulder. Threatened to burn off my grasping hand. A dozen crows screamed and fluttered with me. They were sharing my pain. Coaxing me on.
My free hand caught the crossbar. My feet, left first, then right, landed on the rung below. I pulled myself over the steel girder and collapsed. When I took my next breath, it felt like my first one.
The song got louder. I definitely recognized it from somewhere. A repeating refrain. Stuck on the same chords. Not a song, but a siren.
I knew then that it didn’t matter that I didn’t matter to people like Krista.
I wanted to be here.
You will go where you would not go. You will see what you would not see.
I looked at the sky.
The sky was blue.
The full and perfect moon was watching me.
See her, a voice whispered in my ear. See her, see us all.
AFTER
1
THE AMBULANCE BROUGHT ME to a hospital, siren racing, flat white light. They rolled me down hospital hallways, past traumatized people and their people. They transferred me to a bed behind a pink curtain in a large room shared with other patients. Medical staff bustled in and out. They checked me, touched me, murmured to each other. Connected me to monitors and an I.V. My roaring misery was the only sound I heard. I lost track of time. Was it night? Had morning come?
They injected me with drugs, then manipulated my shoulder back into place. Pain scorched and flared through my left arm, into my neck. Excruciating agony. My arm was cradled against my body as they tied a sling around it to keep it in place. Soon the intense twitching in my muscles relaxed, and then the moaning stopped.
The nurses left and the doctor stayed. She eyed me, her clipboard clasped against her chest. I wondered if she used her work as armor too. She asked me some questions in a low voice, all of which made me want to laugh. By then, I was delirious. But I understood she was checking to see if I was suicidal.
“It was an accident,” I told her. “I didn’t jump,” I said. “I fell.”
She nodded and murmured, “All right, thank you.” She jotted notes.
“I swear,” I said. “I was just trying to help.”
She asked if I’d be willing to see a therapist for some follow-up assessments, and I agreed in a too-sunny way. I wanted her to leave — I was epically tired. But, really, how bad would it be? Maybe a mind-expert would have some answers, some enlightening perspective. The doctor smiled, patted my hand, hugged her clipboard to her chest again, and slipped away through the pink curtains.
I was ready to fall into the deepest sleep, but then my parents came in. And that was catastrophic. In an instant, every tear I’d ever smothered or hid or regretted surged to the surface.
My dad took my hand and squeezed it. My mom hovered over my beaten body. They stared at me with such wide eyes it was as if they were trying to pull me inside.
How had I forgotten them? My mother and her sweet-serious face. My father and his dorky dad grin. The comfort and security they gave me. Their tentative questions meant to prod me out of the dark. I had completely erased them. Gone for seven days.
I dumped my head in my mother’s chest as the last week rushed back. All the jolting forces that I didn’t want to remember: alone at night, humiliated at school, getting punched on a back street, not knowing what to do, belt being loosened, dirty jeans coming down, thumb in my mouth, shivering with cold, aching with fatigue, running from terrors, dangling from a roof, preparing to die. And all the things I never wanted to forget: Lily and Walter, Vivvie and her friends, finding Infinity Girl again and again, the stars and the moon, so many black crows, a feather tattoo, his face close to mine, his eyes, his name, Gray.
My parents didn’t say a word, just held me as everything overfilled me and spilled.
One anguished wail escaped my mom, only once, but she caught herself.
“I’m sorry,” I said to them when I was able to speak.
“It’s funny,” my mom said, dabbing a tear that was caught on the brim of her nose, “every time it seemed like we’d lost track of you, a little light would shine from somewhere. You’d used the credit card to buy dinner the first night. The next day, you bought some clothes and supplies at that drugstore. The day after that, Clio found your phone, so then we knew to track Krista’s phone. We didn’t know exactly where you were up north, but we could see that you were moving around. You were always just out of reach.” She stroked my face. “But you were always there.”
Little lights, I repeated in my mind. I had seen them too.
“They brought that Krista girl in,” my dad said. “She’s pretty messed up.” He squeezed my hand. “Did you actually find her?”
I tried not to laugh. “No, Dad. She did that all by herself.”
“Huh,” he said like it was a whole essay on runaway girls.
It got quiet again, and then my mom said, “Your friends are here.”
“What friends?” I said.
“Boyd, the girls,” my mom said like of course it was them. “They’re not pushing to come in, but they say they want to see you when you’re ready.”
But I wasn’t ready. I remembered Anusha saying to me in the field outside our school, Everything breaks. And she was right. You have to be careful with the pieces.
“And your new friend too,” my mom went on, gently holding my hand. “The one who told us that you’d come back to the city, that you were at that party.” She took in a breath and held her hand to her throat. “I don’t know if I was supposed to tell you that.”
I guess it could’ve been seen as a betrayal. Him sharing the private messages I’d sent him. Back in the city. Have one more thing to do. One last Crusade.
Saving me from myself.
“Do you mean Gray?” I said. I could hardly say his name. “Is he here?” It didn’t seem possible.
“He was helping us look for you. We had no idea you were on the roof — That you were —” Mom let out another involuntary wail. She put a hand over her mouth to stop it.
“No, Mom. I didn’t — I would never —” It was my turn to stroke her arm. “I fell. It was an accident. I’m okay.”
She took in a breath of air and held it and nodded at me.
“I’d like to see him,” I said.
2
THE PINK COTTON CURTAINS they’d pulled around my bed popped and flailed. Hands rooting for the split. And then Gray stepped through. He stood on that one spot, just inside, not too close, clutching his black hoodie in front of his body, staring at the ground. I took him in, every curve of his face, every shift of its shape and color.
“Gray —” My throat jammed against another push of tears.
“You ran away.” He wouldn’t look at me. “You screwed up — and I got mad — and you ran away.”
“I know. I should’ve taken your anger.” I could barely get the words out. “I’m so sorry.”
He closed his mouth in an uncertain line.
I said, “Did they find Jocelyn?”
“I don’t want to tell you about her.”
“I want to help, Gray. Please let me help.”
“So, help, yes. You should help. Just not me. Not us.”
My face was trembling so much, I had to use my hand to hold it in place. “I understand.”
He looked at me for the first time. “You and that girl you were chasing?” The light in his eyes was fierce. “You’re lucky to have everything you have.”
“I know.”
“You get to make choices.”
“Yes.”
“Jocelyn — girls like her — they have to fight.”
“I know that now.” I wiped a pool of wet from my chin.
“Everything she’s done, everything she’s still going to do, that’s her life, her doing. You don’t get to feel good about it.”
“Wait —” I corralled my tears. Saved them for later. “Does that mean they found her?”
His breath was shaky. He spoke quickly. “The trace on her phone — Vivvie and the girls — They wouldn’t leave the station until —” His voice broke and he took a long time to collect himself. I waited, not daring to hope. “They found her. Near Deerhead.”
I wanted to laugh the way we’d laughed before he knew who I was.
But Gray kept his expression in check. “Her family is with her. She’s safe.”
“She went undercover, didn’t she? Trying to find her dad’s murderer.” I couldn’t stop filling in the blanks. “She found him. The guy in the blue Chevy?”
Gray was nodding. A quick tremor. A million times yes. But he caught himself and said with conviction, “It’s not my place to talk about it. Jocelyn’s story is her own to tell.”
My heart spun. “You’re right.”
“Let Jocelyn tell it. Please —” He was pleading with both of us. “Listen to her.”
There are so many things we don’t understand until it’s too late.
Gray loosened his grip on the hoodie. “We’re on our way up there right now — Lily, Walter, my parents.” For the first time, I could feel his hope. It was on the other side — where I wasn’t allowed.
“You shouldn’t have to be here for me,” I said, my voice weak.
“It was on the way.” He almost-smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
It was quiet between us for a few moments. I expected him to walk out, but he shifted his weight, checked his boots. Then he locked eyes on me again and said, “The Messenger 93 stuff? Was that just to mess with my head?”
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