Girl Minus X

by Anne Stone

  Eva grins at her friend then, like her old self, and Dany, seeing that crazy smile, can’t help it. In spite of the ticking clock, the one that is counting down somewhere inside of her, she grins.

  Eva is ready for her learner’s permit. She puts the car into neutral this time, before starting it up.

  Behind them, the main body of the crowd is pouring off the bridge and a couple of them raise their arms and call out, waving. Dany waves, sadly, from the back seat. But their car is moving, and Dany, she makes herself first see and then unsee the faces of those behind them. She mentally wishes them good luck.

  In the front seat, Aunt Norah has the map out again.

  “The tracks hit a crossroad in half a click. We turn there,” Aunt Norah says, folding up the map. “Antoine’s got an artesian well,” she adds. “And there are chickens and eggs and a huge vegetable garden, acres of food. Preserves in the root cellar. We don’t have to leave right away. We can hole up a while until your teacher heals up.”

  Antoine’s.

  A rest at the farm will be good for her sister and good for Faraday, too.

  Though whether or not it will be good for Dany, well, that remains to be seen.

  When she turns, Aunt Norah is looking at her, a speculative expression on her face. Dany keeps her gaze on the T-shirt, the logo for Cornell. She flicks a glance at her aunt, but already, Norah has turned to look out the window.

  She tries to find Eva in the rear-view, but the mirror is askew – and instead, Dany finds her own face looking back at her. The wind, through the shattered rear window, is teasing locks of her dark hair, lifting small strands and framing her pale, bruised face. She takes in the soiled N95 mask that covers her nose and mouth, then looks out of the window, her eyes on the dark path they are travelling.

  Outside of the car, the crickets have fallen silent.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 39

  Dany is hoping that, as they drive from one power grid to the next, they’ll find lights. Now and again, Dany sees brief flickerings of light – a candle in a window, the confined light of a torch, a lantern. And about five clicks from Antoine’s farm, they pass the perimeter lights of the federal penitentiary, the one that Antoine once called home. But she knows that the perimeter lights here, at the prison, have to be running on generators.

  Antoine’s farm backs onto a national park, and to reach it, you have to pass through a small town. There, about a mile outside of the town, at its limits, they see it. Some kind of makeshift barrier. The signs that have been hoisted onto the pickup truck are handmade. Locals, obviously. Even so, Dany feels a kick of adrenaline when Eva slows the car down. In her head, she’s already re­hearsing for a fight. But then, Dany’s always ready for a fight.

  But no one comes out of the trucks. No one tries to stop their car.

  Seeing the trucks blocking the road, Eva simply eases the car onto the shoulder and passes around. The silent trucks, abandoned in the dark, are as creepy as hell. Something about the trucks, how they’ve been simply left here, gives Dany an uneasy feeling.

  Her aunt must be feeling it, too.

  “Change of plans,” she says. “We’ll bypass town. Take the service road, up here; runs through the national park. Just an extra five minutes.”

  “Okilly Dokilly,” Eva says.

  Dany turns to look at her aunt. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, honey,” her aunt says. “Nothing’s wrong at all. I’m just being cautious.”

  But Dany knows her aunt well enough to taste the lie in her words.

  Her aunt is right. The way through the national park is clear, and only adds a few miles to their journey. Soon after they emerge from the parkland, the car’s high beams light up an old A-frame, and on the porch, she sees a huddled figure.

  Antoine has obviously heard the news from the city. Who knows, maybe he’s one of Eva’s new followers. Seeing him here, waiting, Dany almost feels bad for him. The old man has been sitting out on his porch, all of this time – doing what? Hoping that Dany and Mac will somehow get to him? Of course, she reminds herself, if they’ve made it out it is no thanks to him.

  Eva pulls up and the low beams spotlight the old man. She sees her father clearly.

  Antoine, standing on the porch, holds his lantern high, eyes shielded by one hand, trying to see past the headlights. All at once, leaning into his cane, he limps towards them. Mac’s already unclipped her seat belt and is out of the car before it comes to a full stop. The kid flings herself at Antoine’s chest. Dany follows, to keep an eye on her sister.

  She gets out of the car and, when Antoine sets down the lantern and takes in her face, his gaze zeroes in on the bruises. His eyes move over Dany’s bruised eyes and swollen mouth, and he opens one of his arms to her – the other wrapped tight around Mac. But Dany stays where she is, merely nodding at him with her chin. There is nothing he can say, nothing he can do. Just looking at his arms, wrapped around Mac, has made the anger well up.

  Maybe she thought, for half a second, that he might be some kind of answer to their problems, but seeing him, she knows that isn’t the case. Because no. It isn’t that she hasn’t forgiven Antoine for not being there. His absence was unforgivable.

  There’s a big difference.

  Eva stands at Dany’s side, taking her cue from her friend. She nods at Antoine. But even Dany can see it, Eva is keeping her distance.

  “It’s you I have to thank,” Antoine says to Eva. “You got my girls out.”

  “It was a joint effort,” Dany hears Aunt Norah say.

  When she steps into the light, you can see, as clear as day, that her oversize Cornell shirt is soaked with blood.

  Antoine’s face changes.

  Still holding Mac in one arm, Antoine raises his lantern with one hand, casting its light over Aunt Norah. Behind her, barely distinguishable in the darkness, Dany can just make out the slumped form of her history teacher. And in the lamplight, for the first time, she sees just how much blood he has lost. There is a math she might use for this, calculating volume from the area of the bloodstains on the back seat.

  “Salut, Antoine,” her aunt says.

  “Mon Dieu,” Dany hears him say. “What have you done?”

  “You sure you can be out here?” Dany asks. “You don’t want to set off the alarm.”

  Dany, of course, knows that the monitoring device he wears around his ankle isn’t as unforgiving as that – he is allowed to walk to the property line – but her words do their job. They remind him of what he’s done to earn that ankle bracelet.

  Antoine looks at his daughter, but Dany refuses to meet his eyes.

  “I need your help,” her aunt says, “to stitch up a wound.”

  Antoine holds the lantern high and examines the torn flap of skin on Aunt Norah’s forehead, the goose egg emerging beneath.

  “Not me,” she says. “Him.”

  Antoine walks to the car, and the lantern casts its soft glow into the car’s interior. “What’s this?” he asks quietly.

  “Gunshot,” Aunt Norah says.

  “My history teacher, Mister Faraday,” Dany says, because the man is, after all, more than a walking wound.

  Dany looks at her aunt’s face. It’s neutral, like her own, but there’s a tension in the muscles of her face, and Dany knows that her aunt is bracing herself for Antoine’s reaction.

  “Postscript: There’s a killer virus outbreak,” Eva adds. “So, just FYI, a little context for the whole prison break thing.”

  Dany turns to look at her father, watches, as his expression completes its journey – and the welcome in his face slowly dies.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 40

  Eva is standing in the kitchen, trying to get her mom on the phone again.

  “Nothing,” she says, setting the phone down. “I just wish Mom was more … mobile. I wish I knew she and Bianc
a were safe.”

  Dany touches her friend’s shoulder. “Bianca will get her out. She’ll take care of your mom. She will.”

  “I know,” Eva says and smiles sadly. “Yeah, I know.”

  Between attempts, Eva tries to use her eGlasses – and though she juiced them up while they were at Faraday’s, a lifetime ago, the little thing is unable to connect to the invisible ether-world that binds every last one of them together. And so, useless. Except, maybe, as glasses.

  So, no more updates on her follower count.

  “Let’s check on Faraday,” Dany says.

  Eva shrugs and the two of them make their way to the doorway of the small guest bedroom where Antoine is preparing to stitch up a wound the size of a dollar coin.

  Eva peeks in, nods weakly and backs out. “Yeah, no,” she says. “The surgery channel was never my thing.”

  Dany looks at her friend. The blood has drained from Eva’s face.

  “I don’t like needles,” Eva adds. “A fish hook of a needle, driven repeatedly through human flesh? Not my jam.”

  Dany leans against the door frame at the edge of the room.

  She is finding it hard to breath. The room is too small and smells like a wound. Still, the bloody passage of the needle doesn’t bother her too much, it’s the smell that does. But Dany has to be here. She has to see that Antoine does right by Faraday.

  Antoine’s huge form is perched on a dainty stool next to the bed.

  The sharp metal hook pierces the bloody lip of the wound, pulling the pucker wide, and then the black thread is pulled taut. Over and over, stitch after stitch, as he sews the bullet up inside of her history teacher.

  Dany’s little sister is sitting cross-legged on the end of Mister Faraday’s bed, right next to his feet. There is a look of utter fascination on her small face. She’s taking all of it in. Every last bit.

  “People aren’t machines,” Dany tells the kid, just in case.

  Mac looks up at her big sister, a frown on her face.

  “You can’t take people apart and put them back together – not until you’ve gone to medical school, ’kay?”

  Mac crosses her arms. Antoine grins at the kid, then goes back to his sewing. Stitch follows stitch, as if her history teacher is a sock with a hole in the toe.

  Aunt Norah comes into the doorway. “Could you do that?” she asks Mac.

  The girl nods, her expression grave.

  For a moment, Mister Faraday looks like he is aware of his situation – because, for just that second, his face changes to a look of alarm.

  “Don’t worry,” Dany says. “She’s really smart.”

  “I’ve got a different job for Mac,” her aunt says. She turns to her little niece. “Later, ’kay.”

  “Can he just leave the bullet in Faraday like that?” Dany asks her aunt.

  “It won’t hurt him,” Norah says. “He can use it to tell the weather.”

  When Antoine sets down the needle and the thread, Mac loses interest – as if humans are not nearly so fascinating with the holes in them stitched up. The kid heads for the door and Antoine gives her a pat as she goes by.

  Dany scowls. “Why do you do that?” she asks.

  Antoine sighs, but doesn’t look up from his patient.

  “I mean, act like her dad,” Dany clarifies. “Why?”

  “I’m as much of a father as she’ll ever know,” he says with a shrug.

  “Not much,” Dany says and looks at his face. She wants to see her words land.

  Antoine sighs again. She can see it, a flicker of hurt, but the hurt doesn’t satisfy her half as much as she thought it would. Instead, she feels a momentary shame.

  “Your mother,” he finally says, “she took my sentencing hard. After I was gone, there was a patch, where –”

  “I was there,” Dany reminds him, her voice rising in anger. Then she eats it, she eats the anger and the bitterness and swallows it down. Dany shakes her head and picks at loose paint on the door frame.

  “Yes. Oui, vraiment,” he says. “But you must remember this too. We loved each other, and I don’t know. I would like Mac to be mine. Ça va, Danielle?”

  “It’s Dany now,” she says. “Just Dany.” She shakes her head, examines the flecks of paint on her fingertip. “What, so you just decided one day. You’re Mac’s father now, click, you’re a pacifist, click, is that it?”

  “Yes, that’s the sum of it,” Antoine says. “Now, tell me everything there is to know about this virus.”

  And Dany, looking at the old man, knows that if she tells Antoine she’s infected, he’ll drop Dany like she is nothing. Because Antoine always saves himself. Always. Here’s a man who gave up his kid so he didn’t have to betray his activist friends, and then gave up his activist friends to save his own skin.

  So there is no way she is telling him what’s happened to her. No way. She tells him about the new variant of the virus and about the island, but she doesn’t tell him that she’s infected. Because if she tells him the truth she knows exactly what he’ll do.

  For a long time, Antoine is silent.

  “So, we’ll go to this island,” he says. “Bien. Done.”

  Dany looks up at Antoine through narrowed slits. Because for the first time ever, she and the old man agree on something.

  “Is he going to be okay,” Dany asks, with a quick glance at her teacher.

  “He’s going to need strong antibiotics,” Antoine says. He shakes his head. “You don’t happen to have any?”

  “No,” Dany says quietly. “Nothing like that.”

  Antoine passes a glance over Dany before settling his gaze on Faraday.

  Dany leans in and examines the black thread that is holding Faraday together. Her teacher’s shoulder has been darned like a sock. Soon, the skin will heal, and Faraday, he’ll carry with him a little bit of history. There, in his shoulder. Probably carry it the rest of his life.

  “Get some sleep,” Antoine tells her. “I want to keep an eye on him for the next bit. What is it he’s called?”

  “Faraday,” Dany says quietly. “He’s my history teacher.”

  Antoine nods and Dany, she grabs her copy of The Wizard of Oz and heads off to find the kid.

  | | |

  That night, she reads to Mac for a long time. She’s read The Wizard of Oz to the kid twice already, but weirdly, when she picks up the book, she finds herself reading it as if for the first time, as if each line is new to her, a tiny revelation.

  But she’s tired, that’s all. She’s just wiped clean.

  Finally, when she’s sure the kid is good and asleep, and the house is silent, she sets down the book and heads in to check on Faraday. On the bedside table, beside him, Antoine has left a glass of water and a couple of OxyContin. Faraday will find them in the morning.

  She looks at her history teacher. He isn’t unconscious, but sleeping. She doesn’t know how she can tell, but she can. Dany unzips her backpack and digs deep, pulling out the pill bottle that holds her mom’s mood ring and broken watch. She looks at the name printed on the worn label. Munday, Philomena.

  She opens it and puts the ring on. Waits for the warm blue glow.

  There is a wrought iron chair at the end of the bed, and it’s as good a place for her to wait as any. She sits down, checks the seal of her mask and, thoughts on a woman called Phil, settles in to watch her history teacher sleep.

  An hour later, when her teacher calls out Dany is by his side in an instant.

  She takes the glass of water in hand and holds it to his mouth. “Thirsty?” she asks. Without waiting for an answer, she tips the glass. “Drink this,” she says. “You need liquids to make blood.”

  The water hits his mouth and Faraday chokes it down. “Thanks,” he says, holding up his good hand. “But that’s enough.”

  �
�Pain?” she asks, and he nods. So she gives him the OxyContin, too. She plants the pills in his open mouth, and holds the water for him.

  “If you need anything,” she says.

  “Sleep,” he says.

  Dany sits back down in her chair and, seeing his gaze, lowers her own.

  “It’s not your fault.” His voice is a hoarse whisper.

  Dany leans the old wrought-iron chair back, angling it so it tips against the wall of the room and holds. Just barely. And for a long beat, she looks at the wound on Faraday’s shoulder, gives it a look of deep skepticism.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 41

  Dany wakes just before dawn.

  She’s slept, yeah. But that sleep hasn’t been empty. In her dream, Dany’s head slowly filled with words – but the words were a kind of fire.

  It was a dream about Zeke.

  Dany barely ever dreams about Darling-­Holmes anymore – at least, not dreams that she can remember. Or, maybe it is this: in her dreams, Darling-­Holmes, the source of her night terrors, is made so strange, so surreal, it’s hard to connect the dream up to the real place, to the real people, to the waking world.

  And this dream was strange. The dream felt like it came from somewhere outside of her, like a message from another world.

  In the dream, Dany was stuck on top of a pole – like one of those medi­eval hermits. Pillar saints, they called them. The pole was so tall that there was no getting down.

  In the distance, she could hear voices – people calling out to her, but she couldn’t see anyone. Still, they were voices she knew, like Jasper and Liz and Bea. But as hard as she looked, she couldn’t see anything but the endless drift of the river below.

  And Dany, she was stuck on her high pole – and, in the distance, there was Zeke’s voice. And she turned towards the sound of his voice and he hadn’t spoken to Dany then, so much as placed the burning word in her mind.

  “Hello,” he whispered. But in the dream, Dany knew something.