One of Us Is Next

by McManus, Karen M.

  I sprint for the bike path, Maeve right behind me. That’s not what I intended—I thought she’d stay by the deck, but there’s no time to argue. I’ve never run so fast in my life, and it still feels like it takes me forever to reach the edge of the path. When I get there, I pause for a few seconds, panting. Is this far enough? I really hope so, because I’m afraid of hanging on to this thing much longer, especially with Maeve next to me.

  I hold my arm out to one side, the backpack dangling from my hand like I’m getting ready for a discus throw. “I wish Cooper were here,” I mutter. Then I take a deep breath, twist my body halfway with my arm fully extended, and hurl the backpack as hard as I can over the bushes lining the edge of the arboretum. I watch it sail into blackness and I grab Maeve’s hand. “Okay, let’s get out of here and get help.”

  We’re about to turn and run when a faint, familiar voice floats out from behind the bushes, stopping us in our tracks. “The fuck was that?” someone says.

  My heart thuds to a stop, then drops to my shoes. Maeve freezes, her eyes as round as saucers. “Nate?” she breathes, and then she lifts her voice in a piercing scream. “Nate, run! This is Maeve. That was a backpack with a bomb inside, from someone who’s been threatening Eli. You have to run toward the restaurant, now!”

  We hear a loud rustling sound, and I tug at Maeve’s hand. “We have to run too. I don’t know how much time—”

  “Maeve?” comes a girl’s voice.

  Maeve gasps and screams again, loud and panicked. “Bronwyn?”

  Jesus Christ. Nate and Bronwyn picked the worst time possible for a moonlight stroll in the garden.

  Maeve lunges forward, and I wrap an arm around her waist to stop her. “Other way, Maeve! I’m sorry, but we have to go the other way!” I start dragging her backward, yelling toward the arboretum as I do. “This isn’t a joke, you guys! Run!”

  Two people crash through the bushes hand in hand, and I catch the silhouette of a flowing skirt against the dim moonlight. I’m still pulling Maeve along the grass, not making nearly as much progress as I’d like. As the figures running toward us get closer I can see Nate doing the same with Bronwyn, trying to use his momentum to pull her forward. Somehow, despite Maeve’s best efforts, I’ve managed to get her more than halfway across the grassy space between the restaurant and the bike path.

  “Come on!” I grit out in frustration. “Nate’s with her! This isn’t helping!” Maeve finally stops fighting me, and we race the rest of the way across the lawn until we’re a few feet from the restaurant. Voices rise as people start to gather at the railing, their confused faces lit by the twinkling white lights.

  “Get inside!” I gesture with the hand that’s not holding Maeve’s arm. I still don’t trust her to stay put. And then, because nobody’s paying any attention, I pull out my trump card. “There’s a bomb in the arboretum! Everybody get inside!”

  The words use the last bit of lung capacity I have left, and I pant painfully as shouts and gasps fill the air. Nate and Bronwyn are almost halfway across the grass now. Nothing’s happened yet, so I let myself feel a small burst of relief. Somebody who knows what the hell they’re doing can take over now. Maybe it’s not even as bad as we think, maybe we have plenty of time, or maybe the backpack was something else entirely—

  When an explosion rips through the air, the noise is deafening. Maeve and I both throw ourselves onto the ground as an orange ball of fire erupts from behind the bushes. I reach up instinctively to cover my head, but before my vision is blocked I look across the grass to where Nate and Bronwyn were just seconds before. I see white smoke billowing high and fast into the air, fragments of God only knows what swirling within it, and nothing else.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Phoebe

  Friday, March 27

  “Careful, not so close. You’ll burn yourself.”

  I’m eight years old, sitting between my father and my sister in front of a small bonfire on the beach. It’s a special trip, just the three of us. Mom’s staying home with Owen, who’s too little to toast marshmallows. But I’m good at it, holding my stick the right distance from the flames, rotating my marshmallow carefully until every side is bubbling brown. I’m better than Emma, because she’s too tentative and won’t get her marshmallow close enough to toast.

  It’s kind of satisfying, that I’m better than Emma at something. That almost never happens.

  “Mine is no good,” Emma says fretfully. She sounds on the edge of tears.

  “Let me help you,” Dad says, putting his hand over hers and holding her stick in place. And then I feel upset that I have to toast my marshmallow alone, so I shove my stick too far in the flames and let it catch fire.

  “I need help too!” I say.

  Dad lets out an exasperated chuckle and takes the stick from me, blowing out the flaming marshmallow. He pokes the stick down in the sand between us so it stands upright, and the charred marshmallow on top instantly starts to droop. “Phoebe, you were doing fine,” he says. “Save the cries for help for when you really need it.”

  “I did need it,” I say sulkily, and he puts an arm around me.

  “Your sister needed it a little more,” he whispers in my ear. “But I’m always here for both of you. You know that, right?”

  I feel better nestled against the warmth of his side, and sorry I didn’t let Emma enjoy her perfect marshmallow. “Yes,” I say.

  He kisses the top of my head. “And make sure you’re there for each other too. All of you. The world can be a rough place, and you guys need to stick together. Okay?”

  I close my eyes and let the flames dancing in front of me paint my lids orange. “Okay.”

  * * *

  —

  The beeping wakes me up. A machine in Emma’s room whirs to life and I do too, sitting bolt upright in my corner chair. I shove my hair out of my face as my dream-memory fades and I remember why I’m here. “Emma,” I croak. I’m half on my feet when a nurse enters the room.

  “It’s all right,” she says, fiddling with a knob on the machine behind Emma. “We’re going to give her a little more fluids, that’s all.” My sister remains motionless on her bed, asleep. The room is dim, and I’m alone except for my sister and the nurse. I have no idea what time it is, and my throat is paper dry.

  “Can I have some water?” I ask.

  “Of course. Come to the nurses’ station with me, hon. Stretch those legs.” The nurse disappears into the hallway. Before I follow, I take another look at Emma, so silent and still that she might as well be dead. Then I pull my phone out of my pocket and finally send the text I’ve been avoiding for weeks.

  Hi Derek, it’s Phoebe. Call me.

  I leave the room, still feeling groggy, and find Emma’s nurse waiting for me in the hallway. “Where’s my mom?” I ask.

  “Took your brother home to bed. There’s a sitter coming, and she’ll be back once he’s settled,” the nurse says.

  A clock in the hallway reads ten fifteen, and the floor is quiet except for the muted conversation of three nurses clustered around the central desk. “Someone needs to clear those kids out of the waiting room,” one of them says.

  “I think they’re all in shock,” says another.

  The woman who gave me the water makes a clucking noise as she leans her forearms on the counter surrounding the desk. “This town is going to hell in a handbasket. Kids dying, bombs going off—”

  “What?” I almost choke on my water. “A bomb? What are you talking about?”

  “Tonight,” the nurse says. “At a wedding rehearsal dinner, of all things. There was a homemade explosive device planted by some disturbed young man.”

  “Aren’t they all,” another nurse says coldly.

  My skin prickles, nerves jumping. “Wedding rehearsal? In Bayview? Was it—” I grab my phone out of my pocket to check for new texts, bu
t before I can, one of the nurses says, “Talia’s Restaurant.”

  I drop my cup with a loud clatter, sending water splashing across the floor. I start shaking from head to toe, practically vibrating, and the nurse closest to me takes hold of my shoulders, speaking quickly. “I’m so sorry, we should have realized you might know people there. It’s all right, someone got the bomb off the premises before it could do significant damage. Only one boy had more than superficial injuries—”

  “Are they here?” I look wildly around me, as though my friends might be right around the corner and I just hadn’t noticed them yet.

  The nurse lets go of my shoulders and picks up my discarded cup. “There’s a group in the waiting room closest to the ER downstairs.”

  I take off for the stairs before she can say anything else, my sneakers pounding against the linoleum. I know exactly where to go; I sat in that waiting room last night after the EMTs brought Emma in. It’s one floor down, and when I push through the stairwell door into the hallway I’m immediately hit with a buzzing noise, much louder than upstairs. Several scrub-clad people are standing with their arms folded in front of Liz Rosen from Channel Seven, who looks camera-ready in a sharp red suit and perfect makeup. “No media beyond this point,” a man says as I slip behind them.

  The waiting room is packed, standing room only. My heart squeezes at the sight of so many people I know, looking more devastated than I’ve ever seen them. Bronwyn, her face stained with tears and her pretty red dress torn, is sitting between her mother and a middle-aged woman I don’t recognize. Cooper and Kris are holding hands next to Addy, who’s hunched forward and gnawing on her cuticles. Luis is on Addy’s other side with Maeve on his lap, and he’s holding her while she slumps motionless against his shoulder, eyes closed. Her right arm is wrapped in a white gauze bandage. I don’t see Ashton, or Eli, or Knox anywhere.

  Only one boy had more than superficial injuries…

  I pick my way toward Maeve first, my throat tight with worry. “Is she okay?” I whisper.

  “Fine,” Luis says. “Sleeping. She crashed ten minutes ago.” His arms tighten around her. “Long night.”

  “A nurse upstairs told me about the bomb.” Saying the word out loud doesn’t make it any less surreal. “What happened?”

  Addy runs a hand over her face. “How much time do you have?”

  Kris gets to his feet and gestures to his chair. “Here, have a seat. I need the restroom. Anybody want a drink or anything else while I’m up?”

  “I’d kill for a Diet Coke,” Addy says wearily. Kris circles the room taking additional requests as I drop into his chair.

  “Is Knox okay?” I ask anxiously. “Why isn’t he here?”

  “He’s fine,” Addy says, and I exhale with relief. “The hero of the night, in fact, along with this one.” She reaches over to lightly stroke Maeve’s arm. “He, Ash, and Eli are talking to the police. Maeve was supposed to go too, but she conked out and they said to let her rest. Knox can give them the whole story, I guess. They were together all night.”

  I file that away. “Who’s hurt? The nurse said someone was hurt,” I say, glancing around the room and trying to catalog who’s missing. “Is it—”

  My eyes catch sight of Bronwyn’s distraught face again right before Addy says, “Nate.” I gasp and she quickly adds, “He’s going to be all right, they say. It’s just—he and Bronwyn were closest to the bomb when it exploded. He was basically a human shield over her, so he took the brunt of it.” She reaches up a hand to twist one of her small gold earrings. “It was…do you remember the Boston Marathon bombing? How it was this pressure cooker thing with nails and stuff inside?” I manage to nod, even though I can’t believe we’re actually having a conversation in the middle of the Bayview Memorial Hospital waiting room about bomb techniques. “Same type of thing. They were pretty far away, thank God, but Nate’s arm is kind of torn up, so they have to remove…”

  She hesitates, and my breath catches in my throat. “His arm?”

  “No! No, no,” Addy says quickly. She tugs harder at her earring. “God, sorry. I was trying to remember the word for, like…flying bits from a bomb.”

  “Shrapnel,” Luis says. I go limp with relief as Addy nods.

  “But he’ll be okay?”

  “That’s what they say. I don’t know how bad his arm is injured, though.” Addy lowers her voice, flicking her eyes toward the middle-aged woman sitting next to Bronwyn. “It’ll be terrible if he can’t work. Nate needs that money so he can stay in his apartment. His mom’s living with his dad, even though they don’t really have a marriage anymore, because his dad’s still in and out of rehab and somebody has to take care of him. It’s so tense in that house. That can’t be Nate’s life again. It just can’t.”

  There’s too much information coming at me all at once, but still so much I don’t understand. “Why would anybody do something like this?” I ask. “You said Knox and Maeve are heroes. What did they do?”

  Addy exhales. “It’s still sort of jumbled up. We haven’t had much of a chance to talk to either of them, so we don’t have the full picture, but…there was this guy Jared Jackson, I guess? His brother is one of the police officers in the news for framing people on fake drug charges. He’d been sending threatening letters to Eli, and he decided to follow through on them tonight. Knox and Maeve were tailing him—I’m not clear how they knew to do that, to be honest—and followed him straight to Talia’s.” She shudders and hunches down in her chair again. “We’d probably all be dead if they hadn’t. The bomb was literally right below the deck we were standing on.”

  “At least police arrested the guy pretty fast,” Luis says grimly.

  “Thanks to Maeve and Knox,” Addy says. “Knox caught the whole thing on video. The worst thing is, police were there, at the restaurant. Eli took precautions because of the threats. But they were inside. Nobody planned for this.” Her lips form a tight line. “Like, is this my sister’s life now? She has to deal with terrorists and death threats? I love Eli with my whole heart, I really do, but this is horrible.”

  Maeve stirs but doesn’t wake, and Luis presses a light kiss on the top of her head. “Is the wedding still on for tomorrow?” he asks.

  Addy sighs. “I don’t even know.”

  My phone starts ringing in my pocket. I pull it out and stifle a groan when I see that it’s Derek, calling me back already. His timing sucks, but I don’t want to play phone tag with him. Might as well get it over with. Maybe by the time I’m done, Knox will be back to explain more of what happened tonight. “I have to take this,” I murmur to Addy.

  I stand and pick through the crowded waiting area until I’m in the corridor. “Hello,” I say, plugging my free ear with my index finger.

  “Phoebe, it’s Derek. I’m really glad you got in touch.” His voice sounds far away, and if I didn’t already know who it was, I’d never have recognized it. I have no idea who this person really is, I think as I lean against the wall.

  “Why,” I say flatly.

  Derek clears his throat. “Well, to be honest, the thing is…ever since that party at your friend’s house, I can’t stop thinking about you. I feel like we could have something special if—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I don’t realize I’m yelling until a passing nurse gives me the evil eye. I lower my voice. “Do you realize Emma is in the hospital?”

  “She’s what?” Derek sounds bewildered. “No. How would I know that? I haven’t talked to Emma in months. What happened?”

  “She’s falling apart! And I think it has something to do with what happened between you and me—which, by the way, was not special. It was stupid. But anyway. Emma found out about us last month, and now she’s suddenly drinking herself to death. So who did you blab to? Did you stop to think for one second that running your mouth might get back to Emma?”

 
“I…” Derek falls silent, the sound of his breathing the only sign that he hasn’t disconnected. I’m feeling a surge of righteous satisfaction that my words must have hit their mark when he adds, “Phoebe, I told Emma. The day after it happened.”

  I plug my ear harder against the noise of the corridor. I can’t have heard him right. “Excuse me? What did you say?”

  “I told Emma about you and me. I felt like shit and I figured you were gonna tell her, so I just…wanted to get it off my chest, I guess.”

  “You told Emma,” I repeat. I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it, like that’ll help me make sense of his words, and a series of texts from my mom flashes across the screen:

  Phoebe, are you still here?

  The nurses said you went downstairs.

  I need you back in Emma’s room.

  Right now.

  Oh shit. That doesn’t sound good. I bring the phone back to my ear just long enough to tell Derek “I have to go” before I disconnect and retrace my steps upstairs.

  * * *

  —

  I was steeling myself for lots of things when I reached Emma’s room, but a police officer wasn’t one of them.

  “Um. Hi,” I say nervously, clutching my phone as I step inside. Mom is sitting beside Emma’s bed and the police officer is standing at its foot. The gray-haired nurse is writing something down on Emma’s chart. Emma herself is still asleep. I gaze at her peaceful face, wishing I could see directly into her brain. Emma knew about Derek and me. She knew. Even when she confronted me in Café Contigo, red-faced and almost crying, waving her phone like it was the first time she’d ever heard the news.

  Unless Derek is lying. But why would he? My head aches, my brain working overtime trying to connect the dots on all the new information that’s hit me tonight.

  Mom’s strained voice pierces my tangled thoughts. “Phoebe, this is Detective Mendoza with the Bayview Police. He has some questions for you.”