UnWholly

by Neal Shusterman

Page 48

 

  “You did it! That was great!” he can hear Miracolina saying, although he can’t see her. “Now what?”

  “Not sure yet. ”

  Lev’s hands are still painfully tied to the metal headboard bars. He can see how badly his wrists are bleeding, and there’s rust on his hands too. He thinks about tetanus, and how they always want you to get a tetanus shot when you step on a rusty nail or something. He thinks about how, at his family’s beach home, the iron fence had rusted into nothing from exposure to salt air. Rusted into nothing . . . He looks to where the headboard bars connect to the bed frame. The bar to which his left hand is attached is practically rusted all the way through. Ignoring the pain again, he tugs and he tugs until finally the pole breaks and his hand comes free.

  “What’s going on down there?” Miracolina asks.

  He reaches up and grabs her hand instead of telling her, and she gasps.

  The bar that secures his right hand is not in the same weak state as the other, but it is rusty also, and rough. He knows he can’t break this pole like the other one, so he tries a different tactic. He begins to move his wrist back and forth, scraping the plastic tie against the jagged, rusted metal. Bit by bit the plastic is worn away, until finally the tie shreds apart and his hand comes free. He wipes the blood from his wrists on the mattress and stands up.

  “How did you do it?” she asks.

  “Superpowers,” he tells her. He looks at Miracolina’s bonds, then reaches beneath her mattress to find the same rusted metal. He pulls the bed away from the wall and, standing behind it, kicks at the bars until the ones Miracolina are attached to break free. She pulls her hands away, peeling the plastic loops over her knuckles.

  “You okay?” Lev asks, and she nods. “Good. Let’s get out of here. ” But the moment he puts weight on his right ankle, he grimaces and starts to limp.

  “What is it?” Miracolina asks.

  “I think I sprained my ankle kicking out the bars,” Lev tells her. She lets him put his weight on her, and she helps him walk.

  As they open the front door, it becomes clear where they’re being held. It’s a cottage in the woods, so isolated they could have screamed at the top of their lungs for days and no one would have heard them.

  There’s a dirt path leading out to what Lev hopes is a major road. He tries putting weight on his ankle and grimaces again—so she continues to let him put his arm over her shoulder, and he gratefully accepts her assistance.

  Then, when they’re a good distance away from the shack, he says, “I’m really going to need your help now. You have to help me warn my friend. ”

  She steps away from him, and he almost topples, but manages to keep his balance.

  “I’ll do no such thing. Your friend is not my problem. ”

  “Please, look at me. I can barely walk—I can’t make it there on my own. ”

  “I’ll get you to a hospital. ”

  Lev shakes his head. “When I went to Cavenaugh, I broke the terms of my parole. If I get caught, I’ll get locked away for good. ”

  “Don’t blame me for that!”

  “I just saved your life,” Lev reminds her. “Don’t repay me by destroying mine. ”

  She looks at him almost as hatefully as the day they first met. “That parts pirate will get to the caverns before we do. What’s the point?” Then she studies him for a moment as if reading Lev’s mind, and says, “Your friend’s not in the caverns, is he?”

  “No. ”

  She sighs. “Of course not. ”

  55 - Miracolina

  Miracolina is not a girl given to impulsive behavior. All things must be planned and have sufficient time to settle before being carried out. Even her escape from the Cavenaugh mansion was not a wild bolt, but the result of careful preparation. Therefore, she is completely unprepared for the madness that overtakes her as she stands in that dirt path with Lev.

  “I will contact my parents before I help you get anywhere,” she tells him, realizing that by saying this, she’s entered into negotiation. She’s actually considering going with him. Perhaps it’s post-traumatic stress disorder.

  “You can’t call your parents. If you do, they’ll know your tithing bus wasn’t attacked by parts pirates. It will compromise the entire Cavenaugh operation. ”

  “If you care so much about it,” she asks him, “then why did you run?”

  He takes a moment before answering, shifting his weight and grimacing again. “Their work is good,” he says. “It just isn’t mine. ”

  This baffles her. His motives—his hazy integrity. It was easy to dismiss Lev as “part of the problem” when she did not know him, but now it’s not so easy. He’s a paradox. This is a boy who almost blew himself to bits in an attempt to kill others, and yet he offered himself to the parts pirate in order to save Miracolina’s life. How could someone go from having no respect for one’s own existence to being willing to give himself as a sacrifice for someone he barely knows? It flies in the face of the truths that have defined Miracolina’s life. The bad are bad, the good are good, and being caught in between is just an illusion. There is no gray.

  “I will contact my parents and let them know that I am alive,” she demands, holding firm. “Just knowing I’m alive will make them happy. ”

  “A call can be traced. ”

  “We’ll be moving, won’t we? If my parents report it to the Juvenile Authority, they’ll only know where we’ve been, not where we’re going. ” And then she asks, “Where are we going?”

  “I guess you can get in touch with your parents,” Lev says, giving in, “but don’t ask where we’re going. The less you know, the better. ”

  And although that sends a red warning flag flying to the top of her mast, she says, “Fine. ” Then she puts her hands on her hips. “And you can stop pretending your ankle hurts. That will just slow us down. ”

  Lev puts his full weight on the ankle and offers her up an impish little grin. It’s in this moment that Miracolina realizes she lost this negotiation before it began. Because even before he asked her to come along with him, a part of herself—secret even to her—had already decided that she would.

  56 - Lev

  The journey to the Graveyard is different for Lev than his first time. That first trek had no definite destination beyond a slow downward spiral, and was made while his wounded spirit was so raw, he had been ripe for recruitment by the Clappers. He had been lost with no real way to cope with his anger.

  First there was CyFi, and the kid in CyFi’s head who didn’t even know he had already been unwound. Then Lev was left alone to fend for himself, prey for bottom-feeders as stealthy as mosquitoes. They would offer help, or shelter, or food—but they all had some bloodsucking agenda. A brief stint in a Chance folk rez bolstered his strength, but even that ended with a nasty run-in with a parts pirate. Lev’s time surviving under the radar had made him street-smart and resourceful. He had been toughened by a brutal baptism of life experience. In those bleak days, the idea of blowing himself up and taking as much of the world with him as he could didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

  But he is not in that dark place now, and he knows that no matter what happens to him, he’ll never be in that place again.

  To honor Miracolina’s wishes, Lev slips a cell phone out of the coat pocket of a businessman so she can call home. The call is brief, and as promised, she gives no more information than the fact that she’s alive, cutting off her mother’s rapid-fire inquiry by quickly hanging up.

  “There, are you happy?” she snaps at Lev. “Short and sweet. ” She insists he return the phone to the same businessman’s pocket, but he’s long gone, so he drops it in the pocket of a similar man.

  With no money of their own, everything they need must be stolen. Lev uses milder versions of the survival tricks he learned his first time on the streets. Smash and grab without the smash. Breaking and entering without any actual breaking. Oddly, Miracolina has no prob
lem with them stealing.

  “I am making a list of all the things we take, and where we take them from,” she tells him. “All will be paid for in full before I am unwound. ”

  However, the fact that she is allowing for the bending of her personal moral code gives Lev hope that it may bend enough to break her of her tithing fixation.

  He knows that time is of the essence. Nelson is the kind of human bloodhound who won’t give up—and he’ll be even more relentless once he realizes Lev has lied to him. They have to warn Connor.

  Neither Lev nor Miracolina can drive, or look old enough to get away with it if they could—and kids their age traveling on conventional transportation stick out like sore thumbs. So they ride in the shadows of the world. The containers of eighteen-wheelers, when they can get inside; the beds of pickups when there are tarps under which to hide. More than once they’re chased away, but never seriously pursued. Luckily, most people have more important things to do than run after a couple of kids.

  “I hate what we’re doing, and how we’re doing it!” Miracolina yells, after running from a particularly aggressive trucker who chased them with a tire iron for all of ten yards. “I feel dirty! I feel subhuman. ”

  “Good,” Lev tells her. “Now you know how a real AWOL feels. ”

  He has to admit that being back on the fringe is exhilarating. That first time it was all about betrayal, alienation, and survival. He hated it, and still has nightmares about it—but now giving in to instincts, impulses, and the rush of adrenaline feels far more like home than being a caged bird in the Cavenaugh mansion. Some of that survival excitement seems to be rubbing off on Miracolina—for every time they get away with something, she loosens up. She even smiles.

  The longest leg of their journey is in the baggage compartment of a Greyhound bus—having climbed in behind luggage when no one was looking. The bus, out of Tulsa, is bound for Albuquerque, just one state away from their destination.

  “Are you ever going to tell me where this journey ends?”

  “We’re going to Tucson,” he finally tells her, but nothing more specific than that.

  The bus leaves at five in the evening and will travel through the night. They create a reasonably comfortable place for themselves among the luggage. Then, about two hours into the trip, Lev realizes he’s in trouble. Even in the pitch dark of the cramped compartment, Miracolina can tell something’s wrong, because she asks, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” Lev says. Then he confesses. “I gotta pee. ”

  “Well,” says Miracolina in a superior voice that must have taken years to cultivate, “I thought ahead and went at the bus station. ”

  Within ten minutes Lev realizes this is not going to end well.

  “Are you going to wet your pants?” Miracolina asks.

  “No!” says Lev. “I’d rather blow up. ”

  “So I’ve heard. ”

  “Very funny. ”