I close my hand around hers and squeeze. “Listen to me. Missing Dad has nothing to do with being weak. It was never going to be all nostalgic smiles and quick recoveries. It was always destined to suck. It’s not like you’ve been bringing me down.”
“It sure started to feel like it,” she says. “Before you left for Nantucket, when you were getting all those letters from Troy, it seemed like he was the only one who could get your mind off it.”
No one gets my mind off it. Even with a killer after me. It’s always there like an anchor in murky waters. “I’ll come home eventually, Mom. You just have to give me time. And when I do come home, trust me—it will be because I’m ready.”
“Good.” She rubs my knee. “Just promise me that you won’t hesitate when you reach that point? I’ll throw whoever’s staying in your room out on their ass if I have to.”
“We’ll discuss it again over …” I start to say “the summer,” before I remember it’s November, not May. “… Over Christmas break.”
She stands and stretches. “When you’re done with your” —she glances at the mountain of petroleum jelly tubes—“uh, science experiment, would you want to give me a hand with the pies? I’ll let you roll out the dough like you used to.”
I swallow. Every minute she’s in the same vicinity as me is another chance for Osiris to take away someone I love. “I would, but I should go back to school and clean up my mess.” She looks deflated, so I add, “I’ll have Troy bring me home tomorrow after school.”
Mom kisses me on my forehead, then walks away. Before she disappears back around the side of the house, she calls back, “Just try to keep the public castration of your teachers to a minimum from now on, okay?”
With Mom gone, I speed through the rest of the balloons until I’ve filled all four of the wheelbarrows. Then I use my makeshift ramp to load Troy’s truck.
The whole drive back to Daedalus, I feel the shroud of my father’s death wrapped tightly around me, only it’s not the unbearable burden it usually is. Cancer took my father. No matter how far I turn back the clocks, I can’t stop the course of nature.
But the onus of his death is what drives me forward, what leaves hope buoyant in the face of insurmountable odds. Without Dad’s passing, I wouldn’t know what it was like to irrevocably lose someone I love.
And now I’m going to use one of my favorite memories of Dad to bring down the assassin I’ve grown to hate.
Carting four wheelbarrows into the dining hall at once is clearly not a task for one, so it’s time to enlist the help of the other Amaranthines. After I back Troy’s pickup into the cafeteria’s loading bay, I text them to meet me at the milk crates where the cooks usually smoke, and I fill them in on the plan.
Fortunately, Slade, Ivy, and Troy all seem game to get in a little trouble.
There’s no turning back as we roll the wheel barrows single-file through the service corridor, then across the tile floor of the kitchen. One of the cooks looks up from the fryer long enough to shake his head and grin before he goes back to work. Then we’re through the arches, parading through the high-ceiling cafeteria. The dining hall consists of eight long tables, forty seats apiece, stretching from one wall to the other.
We fan out and head down different aisles. Heads slowly turn to regard us, freshmen and seniors alike looking perplexed, amused, but more than anything, grateful when they sense that something is about to shake up their routine. We pass out balloons until the students get the idea and start grabbing them from the barrows on their own. I stare right back as they stock up on ammunition. I’m searching for something, searching for a flicker, searching for recognition.
Because the horrifying conclusion I’ve come to is that Osiris must be somewhere here. He isn’t strictly a hunter; he’s a chameleon. He wouldn’t sit behind a telescope, watching me from a distance, when he could get right up close and examine all the complexities of my life. To see what mattered most to me.
To see who mattered most.
When scientists release animals into the wild, they tag them so they can recognize them in the future.
Well, I’m about to tag every last one of my classmates—so I can recognize one of them in the past.
Just the one whose body, like mine, remains the same between jumps.
It’s a strategy that may not benefit me today, but if tonight’s plan fails, it will give me a distinct advantage the next time I return.
At the far end of the hall, I spot Mr. Slattery and Mrs. Darien, the chemistry teacher, rising to their feet at the faculty table. Thankfully Troy thinks fast and ushers everybody around him to their feet. It catches on like a wave, and almost immediately we have a human wall separating us from the prying eyes of the teachers.
Slade looks to me through a gap in the shoulders and heads. What now?
I toss a balloon up and down a few times. Looks like I’m going to have to be the spark that starts this war. I wind up and let the missile sail over the heads of the table next to me. Direct hit—it splatters against the side of Ivy’s head, instantly soaking her hair.
Ivy turns back to me, her mouth gaping. I shrug and smile. Rather than retaliating, Ivy lets her own balloon fly over a few rows and hits Marcie Graham right in the face.
It’s an instant chain reaction from there. The cafeteria erupts into a free-for-all. Students hitting their neighbors point blank. Students throwing Hail Mary passes across the cafeteria. All of men’s water polo gunning for the table with the cheerleading squad and the girl’s soccer team. The two teams unite and flip their table onto its side, forming a barricade for them to take cover behind.
The balloon war is beautiful in its own immature way. I wish I could slow time down and watch the aquatic bombs exploding all over the battlefield. I wish I could see the droplets spraying over the students, all their looks of pure, innocent mirth, a kind of unclouded joy I’ll probably never experience myself again.
Two successive balloons hit me, one in the back and the next in my arm. I spin around to locate the culprit. Wyatt stands a table away, smirking. Then he lobs a third one at me.
This one is slow enough for me to catch without it breaking. I windmill my arm around and pitch it right back. He doesn’t even try to stop it as it bursts on his chest and splatters over his face and hair.
I smile and nod at him. If only he knew what a strange and winding history we had.
The mayhem provides enough cover for me to sneak away to the exit. As I pass through the double doors, the sounds of laughter and shrieking carry out onto the quad. Soon the ammunition will run out. Soon Slattery and Ms. Darien will call for reinforcements, since two teachers aren’t enough to police the entire student body. Soon, given my erratic behavior already today, they might come looking for me.
But as I climb back into the driver’s seat of Troy’s truck, I think: I’ll be gone.
I’ll be lying in wait, somewhere else.
Springing a trap.
Here are the things I know about Osiris.
1) He’s been planning my demise for a very long time. No matter what curveballs I’ve thrown at him—diverging from the original history, changing locations, unpredictable behavior—Osiris has demonstrated that he’s prepared for mass murder no matter how far back in time we travel.
2) He has an almost omniscient sense of where I am at any given time. I don’t know how he does it. Maybe he has a locating device planted on Troy’s truck, or maybe he’s simply a brilliant tracker, but I couldn’t even lose him when I drove hundreds of miles away.
3) He likes cul-de-sacs. Dead ends. Osiris thrives on cornering me in places where my mobility is limited. A cruise ship out on the harbor. A school bus in motion. A crowded frat house. A snowed-in ski lodge. A tree house.
Well, Osiris, I’m about to prey on all three of these things.
I drive around the county for a few hours to kill time until the truck’s digital clock reads 8:30pm. Then I speed over to the candle factory to slip into the building bef
ore they close up shop for the night.
The Patriot Candle Company’s factory is one of the major landmarks in Reverie. Mom used to work as a cashier, so I’ve spent plenty of shopping trips there, especially around December, when the whole complex transforms into a big holiday festival. In addition to the enormous candle store, the factory includes a restaurant and the industrial section where they render the wax and produce the candles. The star attraction is a miniature village—not so originally named “Christmastown”—made up of fake gingerbread houses, fountains, ice sculptures, and even a pen for a few live reindeer from a local petting zoo.
I’m depending on cornering Osiris in a location where I’m more familiar with the layout than he is. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in softball, it’s that a home-field advantage can do wonders for your chances of victory, even in situations where you come in the underdog.
I park the pickup on a spot of grass off the main road. Then I tuck my knife into the belt of my jeans and pull my t-shirt over it. The truck should be unobtrusive for anyone casually driving by, but visible enough to someone who might be looking for it. After all, I want Osiris to find me this time.
It’s 8:45pm when I stroll through the automatic doors. As usual, most of the staff members are busy straightening out displays and reorganizing mounds of candles into crisp little castles of glass and wax. The one teenage cashier doesn’t even look up from her magazine as I stroll by. Good.
I avoid the other salespeople as I navigate a course toward the back. There, I find a clearance display stacked with a mountain of votive candles. With one last look around to make sure that I’m not on a sales associate’s radar, I crawl beneath the low-hanging vinyl table cloth.
Twenty minutes pass. Eventually I hear the distant words of the manager wishing the clerks a good night. The halogens overhead shut down one at a time across the store—clack, clack, clack—until darkness enshrouds my hiding place. The closing of the glass doors, the click of the locked deadbolt echoing over the empty hall, and then I’m alone.
I count to thirty to make sure no one comes back before I slip out and wander into the back room, where the little Christmas village is. Ordinarily, it’s a room full of happy memories, with the wintry sky painted on the ceiling, the big silver tinsel Christmas tree in the plaza’s center, and the cute fake storefronts that surround it in a circle. But this is a dead place now. The pen where they keep the reindeer during the day is empty. The lights that spiral around the tree are dark, the toy trains lie silent. The only light comes from two blue auxiliary bulbs and a single red exit sign, and the only sound I can hear is the babbling waters of the fountain, which the manager forgot to turn off.
I scale the service ladder an employee left propped against the wall and clamber up to the loft that encircles the village. Up here, it’s even more obvious that the storefronts aren’t made of gingerbread and gumdrops, but of painted canvas and plywood. Not enough to stop a bullet, but enough to shelter me from the eyes of an assassin.
An hour passes. Then two. Occasionally I find myself clutching the knife’s handle so tightly that my fingers have gone numb. I force myself to relax. My body aches from sitting in the same position, but I’m terrified to move for fear that I’ll give away my location. Still, I haven’t heard so much as a squeaking door or a footstep from the candle store, or the industrial factory beyond Christmastown. Maybe Osiris doesn’t have a tracking device attached to the truck. Maybe he’s waiting for me to come out first. Maybe he’s depending on the fact that I’ve hardly slept in the last forty-eight hours. Adrenaline and pure survival instincts are the only things keeping me awake now, but how long before I succumb to the dark? Even now I’m starting to feel like maybe I’ve found a place where Osiris’s supernatural hunting instincts won’t find me. It could be as good a time as any to shut my eyes, while I keep my ears tuned to the dark …
When the clock strikes midnight, I hear the music.
It’s faint, and I can’t quite make out the song, but it’s so quiet in the building that any noise will carry. It’s leaking through the ventilation duct in front of me, which I’m pretty sure leads to the candle production area.
It has to be a trap, something to lure me out while the music covers the sound of Osiris’s movements. He’s going to have to do better than that.
Then I hear the girl’s scream. It’s shrill and familiar and is cut off with the sound of a body hitting something solid, hard. Metal clinking against metal, maybe chains. Some quiet crying.
Please don’t be Ivy, I pray. Please …
Between the sobs, I hear Ivy’s plea. “Just tell me what you want. Just …” Then she breaks off into more sobs.
Of course Osiris would have brought a sacrifice with him. He may even have others nearby. How could I have been so shortsighted? If part of his M.O. is to punish me by killing those I love, he would never come to the factory empty-handed.
I take out my phone and press Send on the message I prepared earlier. It’s a pre-recorded voicemail about a bomb threat at the candle factory, and I forward it straight to the F.B.I. and the local police force. That way if something goes wrong and Osiris succeeds tonight, at least maybe the S.W.A.T. team will surprise him with a bullet when he walks out the front door.
The rungs of the ladder will be too noisy, so I dangle myself over the edge of the storefront and drop the remaining six feet to the ground. I free the knife from my belt and hold it out in front of me as I slip into the service corridor.
Both the low sobbing and the music grow louder with each step down the pitch-black hallway. I can make out the lyrics now, make out the song, make out the part of my life that Osiris is mocking.
It’s another Billie Holiday song, just like the one that Troy and I danced to right before Osiris put a knife in his back. This one is supposed to be a romantic song, but thanks to Osiris, the title has taken on a whole new, vile meaning:
“I’ll Be Seeing You.”
The other end of the corridor is draped with sheer plastic strips, which will clack noisily together if I try to push through them, so I drop onto my belly and slither underneath the gap at the bottom. I emerge behind the stainless steel production line. Across the way, I can see an old phonograph playing the record brassily into the cavernous factory. And against one of the pillars in the back …
Ivy is chained with her hands pulled behind her, too tight to even stand up. She’s illuminated by a single spotlight. It’s bright enough to make out her dark tangled hair. The bruises all over her face. Her quaking body as she sobs.
But Ivy’s just the bait. Osiris knows I’ll stick my neck out time and time again for my friends. Sorry, I telepathically message her. Hang tight for now. I’m going to need to turn the bait intended for me into bait for Osiris. I can wait, too.
As I peer out between the steel wax vats,
I see the faintest twitch in the darkness by the record player,
the steel nose of a revolver emerging from the shadows,
the leather glove holding it,
the black robes of a man wearing a cowl,
the twisted, howling sun mask,
with the glint of two brown eyes,
the eyes of a viper,
the eyes of a killer,
peering out through the slits.
He looks even bigger than I remembered him, even in the expanse of the candle factory. Osiris sets a direct course for Ivy. The gun rises the closer he gets to her. I know this is his way of leading me out into the open. Maybe he’ll really kill her. Maybe he won’t.
But when he passes my hiding spot and keeps going, I know that this is the last time I may ever have the element of surprise. His back is to me now.
I aim to stick my knife right through it.
I slip through the crack between the vats, and faster than I’ve ever stolen any bases in my life, I charge at him with my blade raised.
Osiris doesn’t hear me until I’m a few feet away. He spins around like a tornado, and my knife,
which had been so perfectly aimed to pierce his back, sinks into his gun hand instead. He roars, and his revolver clatters to the floor.
I crash into him. It’s not until I connect with his chest that I realize how big and muscular he really is, but my momentum is enough to flatten him to the floor all the same.
When Osiris’s head cracks against the cement, his mask pops off and skitters under the steel machinery …
… and Wyatt’s face is left staring up at me.
All the while, I have the knife poised over his heart, ready to plunge down.
Wyatt holds up his bloodied arm and screams, “Wait! Renata, it’s me! Wait!”
And I do. I hesitate just for a second, wondering whether I can really slide this blade between his ribs, really murder this man that I know, this man who pretended to be my friend, who wanted to be my boyfriend.
All he needs is that one second. I feel the air of the candle factory, the fringes of reality, dissolve around me. I want to scream, because for once I don’t want to escape to Patchwork. I try to focus, to keep my foothold in reality, but Wyatt is too powerful.
As he seizes the reins of time, I feel him rip us both out of the stream. The title words of the Billie Holiday song echo down the abyss after me:
“I’ll Be Seeing You.”
Patchwork Fractured
I emerge out the other end of the temporal wormhole screaming one word at the top of my lungs:
Patchwork Page 20