I just stare at him.
“But that brain gets in the way too.”
A gust of wind rushes through the car, chasing his words like the swirling tail of a Chinese dragon. Jordana starts to cough. Ron puts his hand on her chest. He pats her until it quiets.
My stomach twists. Kamal, Phoebe, and I pull our masks back on.
“How did you two meet?” I ask.
“I was working in a coffee spot called—”
“Joni’s,” Jordana interrupts.
“Shhh,” Ron says. “You need to rest, little bird.”
“No, I’m telling it,” she says, smiling. She props herself up to sit. “He was working at Joni’s, making coffee for shit tips. My mama had just passed and I was looking for a job. I’d go in there every day and get a hot tea and a piece of cornbread. That was my little piece of joy. Every morning.”
“I’d always give her a large cup when she ordered a small,” Ron adds.
“And we’d get to talking on days when it was slow and he had time.” She leans against him, softening into his body. He takes her hand. A cough threatens to explode, but it settles. “One day I told him I hadn’t ever left Georgia. Spent my whole life there, never once gone anywhere.”
“And I told her, ‘We gonna change that.’ ”
“Next morning when I came in for my breakfast, he had one of those big camping backpacks stashed behind the counter. He told me to go home and get anything that mattered to me. Said we were getting on a train that night. I got my parents’ wedding rings and a week’s worth of clothes. Left everything else, even my mama’s ashes.” Her voice crackles in the moonlight.
“We never been apart since,” Ron says. “Every minute the past three years, we spent it all together. No ‘hers’ and ‘mine,’ just ours.”
Jordana lets out a sigh like she’s lying down by the pool on vacation. Her face is relaxed, content.
“Our great adventure,” she says, looking at Ron. I feel their love well up in my own heart.
“You’re lucky,” I say. I think of Janine and what she will never experience. I think of how my parents were once. “To know love.”
“Love is what we’re here to do,” she says.
Ron lies down next to her and begins whispering in her ear.
“We’re never gonna stop. We’re gonna ride every inch of this land, see every setting sun. We’re gonna stay up all night, get in all the trouble we can find. We’re gonna fly through the morning, one train to the next. See oceans, see rivers. Swim in clear waters. Run through fields, down hills, across mountains and back again. We’re gonna have each day and the next, just us. We’re gonna laugh at nothing and cry at something and feel rain and snow on our faces. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
He keeps muttering on and on like that, building images for her word by word, like if he stops talking she’ll stop breathing.
I can almost see the pictures reflected in Jordana’s eyes. It’s like I’m watching a silent film playing across her corneas. I think of my mother’s research and the basketball player dunking the ball, how we feel the same thing watching.
Freddie is humming, rocking gently with the movement of the train. Kamal sits in one corner, his knees hugged into his chest. Phoebe sits in another. I am nearest to the door. We are like the points of a star, each riveted to Jordana and Ron by a set of invisible cords.
I suddenly feel the need to stand. Ron stops talking. Everyone looks toward me as I grab the edge of the wall to steady myself. Jordana and I lock eyes. It’s like she’s asking a question and I’m answering, all without words or gestures.
I don’t feel time; I don’t feel space. Just the sensation of being tangled together with Jordana like a mess of gold chains at the bottom of a jewelry box. Then, that warmth again, radiating from behind my ribs. And a thought: Nam’s messages. Is this what he’s talking about? Is this the moment where the impossible will be revealed as the very real? Can I save her?
I feel like a fistful of sand is slipping through my fingers and I’m trying to grab the final grain.
She breaks my gaze and turns to Ron. “I’m sorry,” she says to him. “I love you, but I’m not like you.”
Then something courses through her. A wave, like the air itself was displaced by an undulating form. Did anyone else see it?
A flicker of light passes across her eyes, then disappears. The dogs sit up and bark.
“No,” I call loudly.
But that’s it. Jordana is gone.
We all remain frozen, staring at her body.
I look down at her hand clutched in Ron’s. He places his other hand on her forehead, then slowly bends forward and kisses her lips. He exhales a big breath and looks up at Freddie. “Wow,” he says quietly. Tears roll down his cheeks. He doesn’t wipe them away. He just sits there holding her hand.
“Her time to go,” Freddie says. Tears fall from her eyes as she and her brother stare at each other. There it is, that invisible tether between siblings. I think of Ben and how in the hardest moments of my life, he’s always been there.
“I’m so sorry,” Phoebe offers. Ron nods, then returns his focus to Jordana’s face.
I turn my attention to sound. Click-clack, click-clack. The train. I think of the engine pulling the first car. The first car feels the weight of the second and pulls it forward. Down the length of the train, each car moves in sequence. Each car creates its own momentum, then pulls the car behind it, and the train travels forward as one.
Our presence here, our weight, has an imperceptible but very real impact. We make a difference to the cause and effect of the train’s motion. We matter even in this moment of feeling powerless. And we’ve become part of one another’s story.
I sit back down and look out at the passing land. The night passes slowly. I drift in and out of sleep, always aware that we are sharing this confined space with Jordana’s lifeless body. She is here but not; in this world and maybe also some other one.
Whenever I wake, I see Ron, also up. His eyes don’t seem to leave Jordana. He’ll look at her and laugh, then become more serious. It’s like they’re still talking to each other.
“It’s you and me,” I hear him whisper. “For the rest of ever.” The rest of ever. I look at Kamal. He’s up too—listening, watching. I think of my father’s words to me when I asked what he believed: Death is not the end.
CHAPTER 13
Amber rays fire up from below the horizon, heralding the sun’s arrival. The landscape shifts from the burnt orange–tinged mesas of the southwest to the pale khaki, cacti-dotted sand of the California desert.
We are getting close.
The temperature rises steadily as the light deepens, rendering everything in a matte, washed-out haze of dusty, golden gloom.
“What are you going to do with her?” Phoebe asks suddenly, her tone worn down to kindness. Ron looks up as though he hasn’t considered the issue. He looks to Freddie and back to Phoebe.
“We’ll lay her to rest, then we’ll keep going,” he says.
“Get back on the path,” Freddie adds.
“Back to Atlanta?”
Freddie smiles. “Back to somewhere. Home is wherever we are.” Ron looks happy to be reminded of that.
The sun continues to climb. Time passes. I glance down at the Bible. It’s still sitting on the floor of the car. I’ve always liked the idea of a Catholic confessional, a place to let my darkest thoughts and actions be seen by someone who knows things I don’t.
I want to tell Ron about what happened with the guy who stole our car, what happened with the wolf in the field, what happened as Jordana slipped away. I feel like he might have a way of understanding it. Maybe it would even sound normal to him. But I don’t have the words to begin.
“We lived in Boston.” Phoebe’s voice cuts sharply into the quiet—a songbird breaking the silence of the night. She pulls her mask up onto her head, her beautiful, salty face compressed in the flat light of the shade. “I was a junior and
my uncle was visiting for my mom’s birthday. They were going to the museum for a show of paintings by Gerhard Richter. A German artist,” she adds, looking at Ron.
“We left the house together. Mom, Dad, and my uncle got on the train. My sister, Juliette, and I had school, so we walked north across Copley Square, past the library and the Marathon Bombing Memorial. I always played a secret game with myself where I would try not to look at the memorial. Not because it was so upsetting, although of course it was. But it had just become one of those superstitions you have as a kid where you convince yourself something means one thing or another and you stick to it.”
She pushes her bangs aside and I notice I’m holding my breath. I exhale slowly, as if somehow controlling my breathing will help Phoebe tell her story.
“Anyway,” she continues, “we walked across the green and up the two long blocks to school. My mom and I had had an argument the day before. About me wearing eye makeup to school. So I left the house with none on and then went straight to the bathroom on the third floor before first period. I pulled out my eyeliner and poof, the lights went out. I assumed it was a fuse or something and there was plenty of light from the window facing the courtyard.
“I pulled one eyelid closed and began gliding the soft gray pencil across it. I remember the sound of the old radiator gurgling. I took out my mascara, rolled the brush up the length of my lashes, and spread out the clumps with my fingernail. Then BOOM. There was a sound like fireworks. That’s weird, I thought. But I kept going with the mascara, doing the other side and checking myself in the mirror.” Phoebe pauses, looking out the door. Her expression is cool and composed. The rest of us sit completely still.
“There was another boom and then some noise out in the hall, like a murmur. Then a roar. I came out of the bathroom. The halls were dark and full of people. Out a classroom window you could see the smoke. Everyone was screaming, crying, pushing past each other, reaching to hold each other. But I just stood there. I just stood there with my makeup on, feeling like the floor was dropping out from under me. It was only four stops from Copley to the museum. Just a ten-minute ride. If it hadn’t been winter they would’ve walked. But it was long enough for them to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Long enough for me to never see them again.”
I watch Phoebe through a lens of cocoa-colored light. Tears tumble from my eyes and my mouth parches. I glance at Kamal as she shifts her seat and seems to gather herself.
“A few weeks later when things started getting back to normal, I went to the museum and I looked at those German paintings. Each one was different from the next. Portraits, landscapes, abstractions. But there was one that made me stay for a long time looking at it. It was called “Betty” and it was a picture of the artist’s daughter. Her face was turned away though; it was just the back of her head.
“There was just something about it. Maybe that it was a father’s view of his daughter. Or the idea that I couldn’t see her face. I sat in front of that painting and cried until they turned the lights off and told me I had to leave. And then I was done. I decided that everything that came before was like a separate life and it was over. I was gonna be the girl in the painting, looking forward, not back.”
“And that’s when you stopped talking to G?” I ask.
“Yup. The whole thing was like the Marathon Memorial. I just pretended it wasn’t there. I told myself that when you lose everything, you can do anything. And that meant I was free.” She stops talking. Her eyes meet ours like a swimmer’s bubbling up from underwater. “I’ve never actually said all that out loud before.” She looks at Ron. “And I’m just so sorry for your loss.”
“I give thanks to you, beautiful sister,” Ron replies, rubbing tears from his leathery cheeks.
Kamal pulls his mask up onto his head and wipes his face with his T-shirt. “I’m glad you said all that out loud.”
“Me too,” I echo.
“And me,” adds Freddie.
“I know how you feel,” Phoebe says, still looking at Ron. “Except I don’t. Because you seem sad, but you don’t seem angry. You don’t seem to feel like your entire world just imploded, like you’re stuck in some lifeless void where everything you care about has been taken from you. I don’t understand why you don’t feel that way.”
“You felt better being angry?” he asks.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
Ron smiles. “You always got a choice. ’Dana’s dead; she’s not gone. What do I have to be angry about?”
“I’m not religious,” Phoebe says. “I don’t believe in life after death.”
“I don’t believe in death after life,” Ron counters. “That’s not religion; it’s reality. Clear as any science.”
“Science?” I smirk. “There’s no science to support life after death.”
“Well, that, wolf girl, depends on who you ask.” We stare at each other. I want to know what he knows. I want to believe what he believes. I want him to help me, to save me, to save all of us. “They want you to be afraid to die, so they can control you,” Ron says.
He sounds like Evans and my body shudders with recognition. I hear a deep droning sound. A rush of different colors pours over me and that heat rises behind my heart. Suddenly I understand what Evans meant in that video, what Ron is saying now.
“The world is not flat,” I murmur.
Everyone stares at me.
“What if someone made ARNS?” I say quietly. “Like, engineered it. Engineered it to create panic and fear in order to take control?”
Phoebe looks intrigued. “To take control of—”
“Everything,” I say.
“Believe that!” Ron exclaims.
“So, like terrorism?” Kamal says.
“Yes, but with a bigger plan than just the initial destruction. Blackout was about killing people and crippling the economy. The event and its immediate aftermath were the whole thing. This is about preparing us for something else.”
“How do you know that?” Now Phoebe’s looking skeptical. So’s Kamal.
When Albert Einstein was my exact age, sixteen, he began to think about someone chasing a beam traveling at the speed of light. Before he’d even learned the physics that would make it possible, he knew there was a phenomenon of perception—relativity—that needed to be reconciled mathematically. He was like the boy in “The Night Shadow.” He was like the wolf that knows when it’s time to venture into the field, and when it’s time to retreat into the woods. He just freaking knew it.
“I don’t know, but I know,” I say firmly. “There’s more to this, I’m telling you. ARNS is about power and control.” I turn and glance out the door. Telephone poles, palm trees, roads, and buildings. Civilization. “Maybe it’s Nam. Or the government. A foreign government. Maybe it’s all three.”
Everyone follows my gaze to the landscape outside.
“We’re almost there,” Kamal says.
Phoebe’s watch trills. Phone service. But my battery’s still dead.
“I have a video from Nam,” she exclaims. Kamal and I scramble to see her screen.
It fills with thick swirls of black and gray smoke, obscuring everything behind it as the camera creeps through space and then settles. Through the haze, flitting flashes of fire emerge, along with a rhythmic sound. Thunk, pause. Thunk, pause. The smoke clears a bit, revealing a large pit. It’s maybe the size of a small house’s footprint. In it, a fire blazes and through the flames we see: the bodies of the dead.
“Oh God,” Kamal whispers.
The thunk sound becomes wed to the image of lifeless human remains being hurled into the pit, landing on the pyre, then being swallowed by flames. Their clothes and hospital gowns erupt on contact. Their hair sizzles and dissolves instantly, rendering their burning heads bald as their bodies crumple slowly into a heap of blackened limbs.
We turn away gagging as Phoebe drops the phone and runs to the door. She vomits off the side of the train.
“Shit,” I mutter. I
grab my head in my hands and shut my eyes. I try desperately to conjure the sensation of my feet in cool sand as my stomach twists violently and colored flashes pummel me. In this moment, I just want it all to stop.
“What is that?” Ron asks.
“A picture of hell,” Kamal answers quietly as Phoebe sits back down. “You all right?” he asks. She nods. “It’s one thing to be told that’s what’s going on, but to see it. It’s—beyond comprehension.” Kamal’s breath is short. “The disrespect is—Cremation is forbidden in Islam. Muslims will be outraged.”
“Everyone will be outraged,” I add.
“If you’re right, Lu,” Kamal continues, “then it’s obviously Nam. He made the videos, which he sent to Phoebe so Front Line would put them in front of people and create panic.”
“Very possibly. But not necessarily,” I reply. “He said he made the Hugo video to help.”
“Why should we believe anything he says?”
“Why would he send Lu messages to help her figure it out if he were the one behind it all?” Phoebe asks. “Yes, the information creates fear and panic, but without that you have an uninformed public with an underestimation of the threat and the danger, which makes the threat and danger bigger. It goes both ways.”
Ron bellows with laughter.
“What’s funny?” Phoebe snaps.
“You all like to think,” he says.
“Yes, that’s how you solve problems,” she retorts.
Ron chuckles to himself. I glance outside.
“What’s that?” I ask looking at what appears to be a dried-out riverbed.
“The LA River,” Phoebe replies.
“Where’s the water?” I ask.
“Global warming.”
On the far side of the pale silt ravine, an empty freeway snakes by. We glide past a tall mess of sunbaked brush and the asphalt disappears and reappears in spurts. We cross a small bridge. The smell from a eucalyptus tree fills my lungs and makes it easier to breathe.
The train slows and we come parallel with our destination: Front Line’s massive tent city known simply as The Pulse. It stretches out forever, encased by a tall fence topped with razor wire. It might be a commune, but not just anyone is allowed in.
Light Years Page 17
