When he’s gone, I rest my forehead on my knees and cover my head with my hands.
“Let him breathe, M.”
“Shut up, Finn!” I say.
Eight
Em
My legs are starting to cramp from sitting in the cold so long. I extend them in front of me, flexing and pointing my feet to stretch the muscles and get the blood moving again. I try to focus on the ache in my calves and the tingle of numbness in my toes rather than the deep black pit in my stomach.
Finn looks up at the sky. I’m not sure why; there are no stars in the city, nothing to see but blackness and the hazy blue glow of the streetlamps.
“It must be close to time,” he says.
“I know.”
“How do you feel?”
“How do you think?”
He puts his hand over my clenched fist. My first instinct is to pull away, but I make myself stay still. The feel of his skin against mine is still new and strange, his touch strangely hot after so many months of touching no one. He rubs his fingers over mine until I start to relax, my fingers loosening.
“We can think of another way,” he says. “This is too messed up.”
I shake my head. “There is no other way. We’ve already tried everything else.”
“I’m so sorry, Em.”
“Don’t be,” I say. “I hate what he’s done. I hate him. The world will be a better place when he’s gone.”
Finn wraps an arm around my shoulder. “Okay,” he says in a placating voice. He obviously doesn’t believe me, but does he think I’m lying to him or to myself? Maybe my hatred isn’t simple, maybe it’s complicated by lots of other things, but it’s true. It burns inside of me like the bluest, hottest flame.
I can do this. I stamp down the weakness I feel building inside of me. I can do this.
I lean into Finn and inhale the smell of him. Well, the smell of Connor, I guess. Detergent with stale cigarette smoke hidden underneath. When I close my eyes, I can remember the way Finn used to smell, like soap and that terrible cologne he wore too much of on special occasions, and later the dirt and sweat of life on the run. I burrow closer to his skin. I think of the scars he’s hiding under his shirt, the bruises that are probably still visible from his last beating, anything to fan the flame of my anger until it burns away everything else.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.
“Don’t think about him,” Finn says, like he can read my thoughts. He rubs his hand up and down my arm, warming me. “Think about her.”
Her. Marina. She’s in that building somewhere, hurting and confused, probably biting her nails to the quick. Finn’s right. Marina’s the reason I’m doing all of this. More than anything, what I want is for her to be happy and have the life she deserves. My love for her is a stronger motivator than my hatred of him could ever be.
Finn presses a kiss to the crown of my head, and I shiver. His lips travel down to my temple and my cheek, skimming kisses there, too.
“Em,” he hums.
I tilt my face to look at him, and we’re so close, I can feel his breath against me. “Yeah?”
“I know you know already,” he says, “but I always wanted to be looking at you when I finally said it for real. I know my timing is terrible here. . . .”
Oh God, Finn. Don’t.
“But soon we’ll be gone, so this is my last chance.” He gives me a shy little smile. “I love you.”
He’s right, I did know, but I suddenly can’t hold his gaze. It’s too much. My face is hot in the cold air, and I look away from him, turning automatically toward the doors of the building we’ve been watching.
They’re opening, sliding silently apart, and a figure is walking out.
“It’s him,” I whisper.
I would know him anywhere, even in the dark, even with his shoulders bent and his lean frame clad in borrowed scrubs. I try not to look at him too closely. I don’t want to see his face.
I scramble to a crouched position behind the Civic, Finn at my shoulder. His rapid breathing puffs out around us. For once, he doesn’t say anything, just touches my back to remind me he’s there.
My fingers shake so violently that I can’t flip off the safety of the gun. I close my eyes and try to find a single piece of stillness inside of me to focus on.
Marina.
The shaking stops, and I flip the safety. I won’t remember who he was. That person is dead and gone. I’ll only think about who he’ll be.
I’ll only think about Marina.
With one last deep breath, I stand, aim the gun straight at James Shaw’s head, and pull the trigger.
The gun kicks violently in my hand, and it throws me back.
And back and back and back . . .
A fist tightens around my belly and jerks me away, wind rushing through my hair, the world blurring around me. I’m flying and falling at the same time. Finn and the gun and the hospital smear into gray streaks, and a different world materializes in their place.
I’m going to do it this time, I’m sure.
Other kids get their parents to give them a push to start out, but I don’t have that, so I poise my bike at the top of our inclined driveway and let gravity do the job. I fly down the driveway and into the quiet street, and I’m finally riding. My heart soars. The houses on the block whoosh by impossibly fast. I’m free.
No. I’m not riding. I’m falling. The big wheel beneath me wobbles out of control, jerking the handlebars to the left and the right, nearly pulling them out of my little hands. So little. The ground rushes up at me, and before I can cry out, I’m sprawled across the pavement, my palms and knees stinging. I roll over and pull one knee up to my chest, see the abraded skin and blood through my ripped tights. These are my favorite pair, the bright pink ones with the white polka dots. When I pictured this moment in my mind—flying down the street on my bicycle, riding away from this place with my hair streaming loose behind me—I was always wearing my favorite tights, so I insisted on putting them on this morning. And now they’re ruined.
Hot tears roll down my cheeks, and I don’t try to stop them.
“You okay, kid?”
I look up and see the boy next door through my watery eyes. When we moved in a few weeks ago, Mom told me I should ask him to play, but I was too scared. He’s a boy, and at least eight. He would laugh at me.
My jaw tightens. “I’m fine.”
“You forgot to pedal.” He grins and offers me a hand.
“No, I didn’t!”
“Yeah, you did.” He sits down on the curb beside me. “It’s okay. I did the same thing when I was learning to ride. Fell into a big bush.”
“Really?”
He nods. “It was full of stickers, too. You hurt?”
I shrug, but he takes my hands in his and turns the palms to face him. They’re scratched and covered with grit from the road. He leans forward and blows across them, clearing away the dirt and cooling the burn in my skin.
“Want some help?” he asks.
I nod. He stands, and this time he looks like a giant to me. I gaze up at him in wonder—in worship—before he loops his arm under mine and helps me to my feet.
“I’m James,” he says.
“I’m Marina,” I say.
Far away, someone is calling my name. I turn. It must be Luz or Mom. . . .
But no. They’re not calling for Marina. They’re calling for someone else.
There are hands on my shoulders, shaking me. I look up into James’s face, and it blurs, becomes another. I blink, and James becomes Finn.
“Em!” he says.
“Finn?” I slam back into my body from whatever strange place I was in. I’m on the ground, the barrel of the gun resting in my lap, the metal hot even through my jeans. Finn is crouched over me, his eyes wide with panic. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he says, hauling me to my feet, “but we’ve got to run.”
Finn is dragging me away, but I stop and look back at the ho
spital, where there’s a sudden swarm of people. “Did I kill him? Is it over?”
He pulls on my arm. “Run, Em!”
And we do.
Nine
Marina
After James storms out, Vivianne excuses herself to the restroom, and I wander to the waiting room window, watching the back entrance of the hospital. It only takes a minute for James to emerge. He looks like any other hospital employee in his blue scrubs and black coat, but I could recognize him with my eyes closed. He paces back and forth beside the ambulance bay and then sits on the low stone wall that lines the driveway. His head sinks down into his hands.
Behind me, Finn is shuffling and reshuffling the deck of cards. Even the sound is an angry one, the impatient fuht-fuht-fuht of the cards seeming to judge me for not being able to let James have even this tiny moment to himself.
My eyes unfocus, and in my mind I see James standing in the doorway, barking at me to leave him alone. The stupid puppy always following at his heels.
This is not how I imagined this night would go.
Luz leaves off her knitting to squeeze my hand, but I don’t want to be touched right now. I cross my arms over my chest and pinch the inside of my elbow to keep from crying. I won’t cry in front of Finn Abbott again. Down below, James stands and starts to swing his arms to keep warm.
Then there’s a bang.
It’s not like the sound from the hotel ballroom. Three floors up, filtered through the city noise and the thick panes of glass, it’s more like a pop than an explosion, but I still shriek. I’m back in that ballroom, watching blood spread across Nate’s chest, only this time it’s James, and I can’t breathe.
“It was only a car backfire,” Finn says.
“No, it wasn’t!” I press my face to the window. James is still standing, still whole, but he feels a hundred miles away. I put my hands against the window, like I could reach him somehow. I follow his gaze out into the parking lot, and that’s when I see her. A girl, her face obscured by shadows. Holding a gun.
The air leaves my lungs, and time slows to a crawl. The girl falls behind a car, and a boy I hadn’t noticed before bends over to haul her back to her feet. They start to run, but the girl stops under a streetlamp and turns back toward the hospital. Her face and that of the boy with her as he tries to pull her away are suddenly illuminated, their features clear.
The world sways in front of me, and I clutch my head with my hands. I’m hallucinating.
Officers in black uniforms run out of the hospital, and things move quickly again. They surround James and bundle him back inside even as he’s pointing at the parking lot and struggling against them.
I didn’t imagine it.
Someone just shot at James.
I run from the room.
I skip the elevator and take the stairs down to the first floor two at a time. Somewhere behind me, I hear Finn saying my name. I run through what I saw again in my head: a girl with a gun, a boy helping her up, stopping under a streetlamp to look back at the hospital—
That’s where my mind judders to a halt. Because the faces I saw, even with the distance and the darkness, were so familiar, looked so much like . . .
I hit the first floor landing and run into the ER, where James is seated in the waiting room, surrounded by a cloud of black suits and uniforms. The hospital is swarming. The agent in charge is barking orders at a nurse, who relays everything he says through the PA system. They’re putting the whole building into lockdown, no one allowed in or out, and I’m swimming against the stream of panicked people to try to get to James.
“James!” I call. “James!”
“Marina!” He spots me in the crowd and waves me over, and the officers surrounding him part to let me through.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “What happened?”
He looks a little dazed, but unharmed. “Someone shot at the hospital.”
Finn’s caught up to me and hears him. “Oh my God.”
I shove him. “See! I told you. I saw them shoot at him.”
An officer standing at James’s side abruptly stops speaking into his radio. “Excuse me, miss, you said you saw the shooter?”
“Yes, I was watching out the window.” I turn back to James. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt?”
“I’m fine,” he says. “You’re white as a sheet, though. Are you okay?”
I nearly laugh, but it comes out as a kind of strangled sob, and I throw my arms around his neck. Even with my eyes closed, the world is still spinning. I bring a hand up to his head to hold him tight and feel something warm and slick between my fingers.
“Miss, what did the shooter look like?”
I pull away and look down at my hand. It’s smeared with blood, vivid red against my skin.
“He’s bleeding.” My voice comes out small and weak, and I have to work to raise it. “Someone help, he’s bleeding!”
James touches his dark head and pulls back bloody fingers with a bemused expression. The swarm descends on him once more and sweeps him off into a nearby exam room. I go to follow, but the agent who was giving orders earlier blocks my path.
“Miss, I’m Special Agent Armison,” the wall of a man dressed in black says. “I need to know now: what did the shooter look like?”
Em
“Damn it!” I slam my hand against the side of a brick building six blocks from the hospital. It stings, but I deserve it.
“It’s okay, Em.”
I pace back and forth. “It’s not, and you know it! That was our chance, and I blew it. I can’t believe I missed.”
“Did you miss,” Finn asks, “or did you jerk away?”
“I-I don’t know.” I clench my fists until my nails bite into my palms. “I really don’t.”
“It’s okay. We’ve still got two days before the doctor comes back for us. All we have to do is follow him and wait for another moment when he’s alone.”
I shrug off the hand Finn’s put on my shoulder and lean my forehead against the rough wall. “I just . . . I saw his face. And he was James again, you know?”
“I know.”
“And whatever that was that happened to me . . .” I turn to look at him. “What the hell was that?”
“As soon as you pulled the trigger, your eyes went blank, and you started blinking like crazy.” He shakes his head, like he’s trying to stop himself from picturing it. “You couldn’t hear or see me. It was like you were gone.”
“I saw the first time I met James,” I say. “It was like I was living it again.”
“Oh man,” he whispers. He reaches for me again, but stops himself. “I’m sorry.”
“He just . . .” I bite the inside of my lip. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Not yet.” Finn takes my face in his hands, so gently that he must think anything more will break me. “But we both know it won’t last. The James we knew is already gone.”
For the first time in months, I cry. Not the girlish tears I used to shed, sniffling and pouting, letting the tears roll down my cheeks like someone in a movie, but deep, guttural sobs that shake my whole body.
Finn holds me tight, like he’s afraid I’ll shake myself to pieces and his arms are the only thing that can hold me together.
I think maybe he’s right.
Marina
“The shooter,” Agent Armison says again. “What did the shooter look like?”
“I . . .” I can’t think with James on the other side of that wall, bleeding, maybe dying. I try to follow him, like I’m caught in the pull of his gravity, but the agent steps in front of me. “I-I don’t know. . . .”
“Yes, you do.” Agent Armison bends his face close to mine, so that his eyes are the only thing I see. “Focus, now. What did the shooter look like?”
I have to do this. It’s the only way they’ll catch the people who shot at James. But how do I say it? How do I tell him what I saw? “There were two of them. . . .”
He gets on his radio. “This is Armison
. Stand by for description.” He looks back at me. “Okay. What did they look like?”
“One was a g-girl, and one was a boy,” I say. “They looked like . . .”
“Like what?”
“They looked just like”—I turn to Finn—“the two of us.”
Agent Armison stares at me for a second. “You mean they were about your age? Had your same hair color, what?”
“No, I mean they looked exactly like the two of us. Maybe a little older, but otherwise . . .” I stop at his expression. “I know it sounds crazy, but—”
He gets back on his radio. “This is Armison. Disregard my last.”
“No, don’t!” I say. “You have to catch them!”
“Marina . . .” Finn touches my elbow.
“Miss, you’ve had a shock—”
“No!” I pull my arm away from Finn. “I’m not imagining things; that’s what I saw!”
“I know. It’s okay,” Agent Armison says. “Let’s go into one of the rooms here, and I’ll ask you some more questions, all right?”
“What’s the point?” I say. “You won’t believe me. Is it even legal to question me without my parents here?”
“You’re not under arrest, Miss . . . ?”
“Marchetti,” Finn oh-so-helpfully supplies.
“Come with me, Miss Marchetti,” Agent Armison says, “and you can explain to me exactly what you saw. Your friend can come with us, too.”
“He’s not my friend,” I say, but I go because I can see there’s no getting out of this.
We’re at the door of the employee break room where Agent Armison is leading us when Luz and Vivianne find us. Vivianne, who’s a lawyer but also the closest thing James has to family right now, is clearly torn about where she’s needed most. She turns to Luz.
“Can you go be with James?” she says. “And come get me if he’s badly hurt or asks for me?”
Luz nods, and I point her toward where they took James. At least someone will be with him. Armison leads us into the employee break room, but my mind follows Luz to the exam room down the hall. If James isn’t okay, I don’t know what I’ll do. I once saw a woman on Good Morning America who was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife by an ex-boyfriend and walked around the mall, totally oblivious, for an hour before someone in the food court suggested she go to the hospital. If that could happen, maybe James was shot and didn’t even know it.
All Our Yesterdays Page 9
