by Shannon Hale
O Mami, me siento tan sola.
By ten in the morning they had reattached Dad’s arm, and I was asleep on the hard little couch in his recovery room.
I was dreaming. I was falling. Sleep was not rest.
“Maisie …”
I woke up fast. His eyes were barely slits.
“Yeah, Dad, it’s me.”
“Your mom?”
“Not answering her phone. Did GT have her?”
His eyelids lowered, but he swallowed and spoke. “I don’t think so. They got me at the apartment. Your mom was at work. If she went home and found me gone, she would run.”
“How do we find her?” I asked.
He grimaced with pain. “I don’t know.”
His eyes closed for a few seconds and opened again.
“My arm?”
“They’re both here.”
“Did you …” He tried to swallow, his mouth dry. I swabbed his lips and tongue with a sponge-tipped thing the nurse had left. He squinted up at me, his voice a crackling whisper. “Did you hear about the man who lost his left arm? He’s all right now.”
I smiled. “It was your right arm, Dad. Just like me.”
“Oh.” His eyes shut. I thought he’d fallen asleep until he spoke again. “Did you hear about the guy who lost his right arm? He’s left with the left.”
“Yeah, work on that one.”
“I will.”
His words were barely an exhale when he said, “Maisie, I love you. And this isn’t … don’t worry …”
“I love you too, Dad.”
I watched him sleep, like maybe he used to watch me. I imagined my infant self, unaware that anything was wrong, and my parents, crying over their baby born without an arm.
Or maybe they really hadn’t minded. Maybe they were surprised that first day of kindergarten to see the other kids mocking me. And Mom—or Dad maybe—said, Never mind, then. We’ll just keep her home.
And that was why I lived a tight little life with nothing much beyond our front yard. Not what GT said, not because my mother was somebody else.
Dad always called Mom cariña, which meant sweetheart. He never called her by her name, I realized. He never called her Inocencia.
I lightly touched his bandaged arm. The tips of his fingers were a pale, grayish color and corpse cold. The doctor had said it would take time to see if the reattachment worked.
I dialed Mom again. And again.
Chapter 34
Luther.
I woke with his name on my tongue and drool from my open mouth wetting my cheek.
A nurse was coming in to check Dad’s blood pressure, so I went into his bathroom. Luther’s phone number had sat behind my eyes every day, a forbidden string of numbers. I dialed them now. One of his sisters answered. I tried to disguise my voice when I asked for Luther.
“Hello?”
Luther. My heart buzzed.
“Luthe, don’t—”
“Maisie! What the frak—”
“Shut up! Questions later. Listen now. Stuff a backpack with some changes of clothing and as much money as you can—quarters, bills, whatever, but try to get a few hundred dollars. Remember that craft box where your mom hides money? Leave your parents a standard ‘don’t worry and I’ll come home when I can’ note with no mention of me, somewhere they won’t find it right away. Ride your bike to that one pay phone. I’ll call you there.”
“Okay,” he said.
No argument? No demands? Luther rocked!
“Hurry,” I said and hung up.
GT hadn’t taken Luther yet. Maybe that meant he didn’t know what Luther meant to me. But Wilder did. I’d been vague about the pay phone just in case his phone was bugged. We used to ride our bikes to the corner market to buy Laffy Taffys and would check that pay phone for spare coins.
Seven minutes later I called the pay phone, and he answered.
“Maisie?”
“Oh man, Luthe, it’s so great to hear your voice.”
“What’s going on?”
“Bad guys got my dad and maybe my mom, and I don’t want them to get you.”
I told him to ride his bike to the downtown bus station, take a bus to Philadelphia, and meet me at the hospital.
“Okay,” he said again.
“You’re taking this very well,” I said.
“Naturally I’d been expecting this sort of a thing ever since you left. Sudden disappearance is the price I pay for being a superhero’s best friend.”
Best friend. He’d said it. I pinched the top of my nose to keep from crying.
“Be careful, okay? I really don’t want you to die.”
“Affirmative.”
“I missed you, Luthe.”
“Yeah, me too.”
When I came out of the bathroom, the nurse was gone. Dad was awake.
“Mom?” he asked.
I shook my head. Her phone no longer rang when I called. No way to contact her, and she wouldn’t know where to contact us. I only just stopped myself from punching through the wall.
“What is the Yellow Flag?” I asked.
He sighed. “La Bandera Amarilla. A militant group. They live in el Gran Chaco, a desert wilderness between Paraguay and Bolivia. Your mom grew up with them. Her parents …”
“Were soldiers?” I asked.
“In a way.” He adjusted in bed, wincing. “Paraguay was controlled by a dictator for a long time. Your grandfather saw his brother tortured. Your grandmother’s farm was seized by the government, much of her family shot. They joined an opposition group. That’s where your mother was born. Her parents were killed trying to raid an armory when your mom was eighteen. She was wanted too, so she had to leave.”
“She’d … she’d killed?”
Dad grimaced. “I don’t think so. But whatever she did, she was just a kid.”
Like me, I thought.
Did that mean I was innocent of Ruth’s and Mi-sun’s blood? If I, oh, I don’t know, murdered Wilder, in twenty years would people say, “Sure she killed the guy, but hey, she was just a kid!”
Dad was saying, “After her parents’ death, her community managed to get her falsified papers and into a university in New Mexico. That was where we met. But she was wanted. After we had you, she became even more cautious. She worked from home, made no friends, did nothing to draw notice. She lived in fear of being taken from us and dying in a Paraguayan prison.”
“You knew this all along?” I asked.
He nodded. “But I loved her so much.” His voice cracked. “I love her …”
I climbed onto his bed, curling up on his left side, as maybe I used to when I was little. He put his left hand on my cheek, pressing my head to his, and I could feel the wet of his tears.
“We’ll find her,” I said.
I could feel him nod but he didn’t speak. We lay there for a time.
“What’s her real name?” I whispered.
“Let’s wait until she’s back, okay? Let her explain.” He shifted in his pillow and groaned with pain. “It can wait.”
I hated the word “wait.”
I could go to Florida, but how would I find her if she was hiding? Every time I left just to go to the cafeteria, I worried GT’s guys would take Dad again, or Jacques would come claim another limb. And who knew what Wilder’s plans were? At night I barely slept on my cot, footsteps in the hall bolting me upright.
But at least one knot of worry relaxed when, two days later, Luther stepped into Dad’s room.
Late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the window, slicing dust motes in the air. The dust animated with the motion of his entry, dancing around his shoulders, and I imagined they were giddy-happy he was here too.
Personified dust motes, Maisie? I was more tired than I realized.
“Miss,” the police sentry started.
“He’s okay,” I said. “He’s family.”
The officer shut the door.
Luther was wearing sunglasses. He had Laelaps. I dro
pped to my knees to pet him. Pet the dog, that is. Not Luther.
“Pretending to be blind so you can bring a dog into a hospital?” I asked.
“And onto a bus. Surprisingly effective.”
Dad was asleep. Luther took off his sunglasses, and we stared at each other. I wondered if he thought I looked changed. Luther seemed the same. He wore his puffy orange parka and green knit cap, and with his cheeks ruddy from the cold outside, he looked like an alarmed pumpkin.
He said, “You think I look like a pumpkin.”
“No I don’t.”
“You do. You always make fun of this coat.”
I laughed without meaning to.
“Maybe I want to look like a pumpkin, did you ever think of that?”
I play-punched him on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“My parental units are probably freaked out.”
“They’d better be.”
Luther’s mom once told me that even as a baby Luther didn’t like to be hugged or kissed. I gathered that once she had some snuggly little girls, she just kind of gave up on her son. He was smart enough to do his homeschool work on his own, and she let him. His dad kept long hours at work, his mom took her girls shopping, and Luther just hung out with me.
My mom wasn’t thrilled with Luther’s parents. Every time Mom saw Luther, she kissed him on each cheek. She called him mi hijo. She stocked our kitchen with his favorite foods.
Thinking about Mom hurt my throat. I blinked rapidly and looked up.
“So tell me what in the frak is going on.”
That conversation took us through dinner. We were eating nachos in the back booth of the cafeteria, and I found myself smiling. Despite my dad’s arm, my missing mom, my general dead-or-alive status, Luther was here.
The newspaper certainly wasn’t giggle-inspiring. A full-color photo of Jacques in a havoc helmet graced the front page under the headline “BLADE RUNNER” ROBS SECOND BANK. The reporter described a young man in a shiny bodysuit who carried two swords. Jacques must have been on his own. GT would never let him be so sloppy.
“Blade Runner,” Luther said. “Clever.”
“I called him Jack Havoc.”
Luther shrugged. “I like Blade Runner better. It’s the name of that old sci-fimovie, and you know, Jacques has blades and he’s on the run.”
“Whatever.”
“If we’re seeing this, then Wilder is too.”
“If Wilder gets to Jacques, he’ll either kill him for his token or persuade him to help take me out. I wouldn’t have a chance against both of them.”
“But cutting off your dad’s arm? It seems extreme.”
I shivered. “I keep thinking about how Jacques was unbeatable at Name That Tune and then one day he couldn’t play it anymore. If the token changed his brain that much, what else did it do to him?”
“But it hasn’t changed you. Besides, you know …” He stabbed a butter knife against my hand.
“Enough stabbing me!”
“You have to stop that psychopath,” he said. “Wilder was right about that much.”
“I can’t leave Dad to go after Jacques.”
Luther held up the newspaper and pointed emphatically at Jacques’s face. “Either Wilder will kill him or together they’ll kill you. And me. And your dad and mom. At any rate, a lot of killing will go down. You have to go superhero all over this guy.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Part of you is loving this.”
Luther folded up the paper, keeping his face carefully still, but his eyes were smiling.
Chapter 35
I told Dad, made sure the police planned to keep a constant guard, and set out with Luther.
We needed transportation. I resisted calling Howell. Maybe it was GT who had gassed our house, but I still couldn’t rule her out.
Wilder had left stashes of cash hidden around the city, just in case he ever got cut off from the lair. I chose a location he’d told me about on a busy corner of downtown Philly. I moved in quickly, felt around the backside of an ATM machine, and ripped free a fat envelope.
“A thousand dollars in bills,” I told Luther as we headed to a car rental agency. “Not a bad day’s work.”
Neither of us had a driver’s license, so we had to risk using the same rental place Wilder did, where the morning shift guy would take a bribe to look the other way.
We followed new reports of Jacques headed north. It was chilly out but not so bad that we couldn’t roll down a window for Laelaps. He’d snap at the wind, his tail thumping the backseat.
Luther bought a police scanner. Jacques’s latest assault was a grocery store. He’d filled up his cart, then at the checkout grown a blade from his hand and demanded the cash from the register as well. The store manager stood up to Jacques and got sliced. It sounded like the guy was in pretty critical shape.
“The police can’t stop him, Luthe. He’s bulletproof when he’s armored. If he did get caught somehow, he could grow a blade on his wrists to slice through handcuffs or chop his way out of a jail cell.”
“So call the police and warn them.”
I looked at Luther hard. He put up his hands.
“I know, I know, you don’t have to yell. If someone did believe you, they’d be after your tokens too.”
I told him everything as we drove—even Jacques’s “no arms, no cake” joke.
“I don’t get it,” said Luther.
“It’s not just me, right? It’s not brilliant and witty humor that only the two-handed understand?”
“But then again, I don’t get lots of things. Like chicks. And why people say ‘chicks.’ And why American football isn’t called throw-ball. And how come no one’s invented a good jet pack yet.”
Jet pack! Why hadn’t I thought of that when my techno token worked?
The scanner had an update: “Blade Runner” spotted in a stolen car. Soon a police barricade blocked the road. The car was abandoned off road, the front end crumpled against a tree.
“He must be on foot,” Luther said.
“What’s around here?”
Luther opened a map. He muttered about farms and highways but when he said “Spackman Caverns,” I perked up.
“Jacques hates heights. He’d feel safe deep down.”
I hopped out. Luther started to get out too.
“Stay with Laelaps. Jacques would use you two against me.”
Besides, this was a fireteam matter.
I ran through some woods, keeping away from the police and their dogs. Night was coming on. Against the blue-black sky rose a grand house on a bald hill. A sign read SPACKMAN CAVERNS.
I paused. No sense of Wilder.
The place was closed up and dark. I saw a security guard and hid behind a tree. When the guard ambled around the corner of the house, I ran to the nearest door. The deadbolt was sliced through.
Darkened gift shops, empty corridors. I took the stairs into the cavern’s mouth. The rock ceiling started low and then opened up like a basketball arena. Emergency lighting cast a whitish-blue pallor and brown shadows. It was eerie, lonely, and easy to imagine I was the last person on earth.
A massive stalactite hung in the center of the chamber, a spectacular chandelier. I knew from a geology project that stalagmites and stalactites grow only a couple of centimeters every century. A messy fight here would cause irreparable damage. Just in case, I eased the metal bar from a handrail.
Looking over the cavern map, I noted a tunnel leading off from the main chamber that was closed to visitors.
I crawled through the narrow tunnel and into a smaller chamber lit by a single lantern. Jacques was sitting on the far side next to a heap of food, devouring a moon pie. He jumped up when I entered, armor streaking over his limbs, his head. Only his face remained uncovered.
And his face made me angry. I’d come here all set to be calm and convincing, put aside my hostilities in order to lead Jacques away from hurting people. But this was the bleeper who cut off my dad’s
arm.
I took a deep breath. “Hey Jacques.”
“Hey Maisie,” he said with no emotion.
I put my hands in my pockets and leaned against the cave wall, trying to imagine what Wilder would say. “Kind of a weird place to hide?”
“I came here on my first trip to the US.” His eyes didn’t leave me as he finished off his moon pie and tossed the wrapper.
“It sucks that you’re doing all this.”
“You broke off way before I did and took Ruth’s token. Nothing could be the same after that.”
“And as you recall, you cut off my father’s arm.”
Panic washed across his face, but he replaced it quickly with a smile.
“How’s the old man doing?”
“We’re not going to talk about my dad.” I stood up straighter, no longer able to affect a casual posture.
“Hey, you brought him up.”
“You’re not going to talk about my dad.”
“So what should we talk about? Are you hoping I’ll open up, swear to be a good boy, then we’ll hug and forget the bleeping mortal combat?”
That was pretty much exactly what I was hoping. Except without the bleeping part. Or the hug. He did cut off Dad’s arm.
“Pre-token Jacques wouldn’t do all this,” I said.
“Yeah? Well, pre-token Jacques was a bleepity-bleep coward.”
“There are police crawling through those woods, Jacques, and they’ll shoot you in your Achilles’ eyeball. Don’t you think it’d be better to turn yourself in?”
“What, so they can cut my token out of me and follow up with a lethal injection?” His dimples creased with a painful smile. “There’s no going back. And there’s no more fireteam. Not after Ruth. Not after I watched our illustrious thinker kill Mi-sun for her token.”
Until that moment, I’d been harboring a wish that Wilder was somehow innocent. Jacques’s words melted that tiny frozen hope. Wilder had gotten Ruth killed and tried to take her token. He’d killed Mi-sun for hers. And he’d lured me away from my parents to help him kill Jacques.
“The tokens lie,” Jacques was saying. “Mine made me feel like I’d be okay if I just stayed with the team, stayed with Wilder. But then Ruth died, and Wilder wouldn’t even try to save her. Even after all that, leaving him ripped me in half, Maisie.”
