“It’s good to see you,” she said. “I’m so happy to be back.”
But the more I looked at her, the more I came to realize that this wasn’t Rav’s mother at all. The truth was in her voice; it was in her eyes; it was in her breath—that flow of warm air drawing toward her, cold air flowing away.
“You’re not Mrs. Carnegie!”
Rav grabbed me, squeezing my arm to get me to shut up, but I just shook him off. “I don’t know what you are, but you’re NOT Rav’s mother!”
She slowly breathed in. . . . She slowly breathed out. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do!”
Then the smile left her face. She looked at me with cool calculation, and I thought at that moment she could either grab me and hug me or she could reach out and rip my heart out of my chest. For her it would make no difference. But she did neither of those things. Instead she said, “I have her body; I have her memories; I feel everything she felt: her frustrations, her fears, her hopes. And her love. I am her in every way that matters.”
“Except for one,” I told her.
“Stop it!” Rav shouted. I turned to him and shook him, trying to make him see.
“This is not your mother!”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Rav snapped. He looked at the woman sitting in the booth, then he looked back to me. “My mother’s soul is gone. I get that, okay? But now she’s got a new soul. It’s not evil, it’s just . . . different. It wants to be whatever we want it to be. She wants to be my mother.” There were tears in his eyes now. “Who are you to tell me that it’s wrong?”
When I looked back to Mrs. Carnegie, she was smiling at me, tilting her head. Then she said to me, just as that other woman beneath the porch had:
“I know you. . . .”
“Of course you do, Mom,” said Rav, “it’s Anika.”
“No,” Mrs. Carnegie said, still smiling. “That’s not what I mean.”
Then she reached toward me as if she wanted to grab me with those pale hands.
“No, Mom!” Rav said.
She stopped short. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot.”
And when I looked at Rav’s right hand, I understood. He had touched her. How could he have kept himself from doing so? His fingertips, all the way down to the first knuckle, were white and dead. Frostbitten. The result of touching a spirit colder than a frigid arctic night.
I turned and ran.
“Anika, come back,” Rav called, but I wasn’t turning around. I burst out into the street, and as I ran I could see the truth all around me now, everywhere I looked.
In one window, I saw the mailman dancing in circles with his dead bride, his hands frozen to the wrist and he not caring in the least.
In another window, Mrs. Mason, my English teacher, spoon-fed a baby in a high chair—a baby that had not survived to its first birthday.
And on a porch, a woman I didn’t even know sat in a rocker, gently creaking—but it wasn’t the wood creaking; it was her frozen bones. She waved to me, smiling that “I know you” kind of smile.
I just wanted to get home now, grab my brother, leave this place, and never come back.
I pushed through the gate and fumbled with my keys at the front door, only to find it unlocked.
“Sammy!” I called as I burst in. I could see that Dad wasn’t home yet. He was still off soaring over the glaciers with no idea what was going on in town. I didn’t know where we could go that would be safe, but anywhere was safer than here. We could leave Dad a note and hide up in the woods until he found us. “Sammy, wake up!” But when I went into his room, he wasn’t there. Sammy loved to play hide-and-seek with me; however, this was not the time.
“Samuel Randall Morgan,” I demanded, “you come out right now.” The one thing that always ended hide-and-seek was calling him by his full name. It was always my admission of defeat—proof that he had stumped me. Then he would bound out of his hiding place in victory. But not this time.
And then I began to think, What if they got him? What if one of those things got him? My head was spinning—I was hyperventilating, so I made myself sit at the kitchen table. They’re not zombies, I told myself. They’re not zombies; you said it yourself, Anika. They’re not monsters; they’re just . . . other. After all, Mrs. Carnegie didn’t hurt me. . . . They won’t hurt Sammy. Still, I couldn’t convince myself.
I splashed cold water on my face, trying to slow my racing thoughts. There had to be a logical explanation for Sammy’s absence. He got scared. He watched something on TV that frightened him, and he went over to one of the neighbors. Of course! That’s what happened! It was just a matter of finding out which neighbor’s house he went to, that was all.
I stood up, steadied myself, and went out the front door.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to look far for Sammy. Not far at all.
“Dad’s gonna do a low flyby and wave to us,” I had told Sammy. “Maybe even take us with him to the ice field.”
And then I had left him alone. What do little kids do when they’re left alone? They come up with ideas, and not all of them are good. It would be hard to see a passing helicopter from a bedroom window—but other places might have a better view. A place like the roof, for instance.
Somehow Sammy had climbed onto the roof. I don’t know if he ever saw Dad’s helicopter go by. Maybe he did. Maybe Sammy got so excited, he jumped up and down, waving. Maybe that’s what made him slip.
While I was off with Rav, Sammy had fallen off the roof. But he didn’t break his neck like I was always warning him he would. He didn’t break any bones at all.
I hadn’t seen him when I first ran into the house because I wasn’t looking, but he had never left home. He had been here all along, speared on Dad’s perfect picket fence. Now he lay there limp, his arms and legs dangling. The tip of a single picket stuck through his torn Spider-Man pajamas. The cloth, the fence, everything, stained a horrible, shiny red.
I ran to him screaming, praying that it wasn’t what it looked like—that it was just a trick of the light. “No! No! No!” I wailed. “It’s okay, Sammy; you’re going to be okay.” Even though I knew it just wasn’t true.
I lifted him off the picket and laid him gently on the ground. “Sammy! Sammy!” I howled, as if screaming his name could change things. As if calling him could wake him up—but not even calling him by his full name would bring him out this time. I knew because his eyes were half open and there was nothing in them. I knew because his skin was as chilled as the night. And I knew because when I tried to stanch the flow of blood, it did nothing—because there was no blood spilling from the wound. Because there was no beating heart to pump out that blood. Because my brother—my annoying, awful, sweet, wonderful little brother—was dead. Dead.
I knelt there and cried. This was my fault. Mine, mine, mine. What if I hadn’t left him? What if I had taken him with me? I was my dad now—a ball of “what ifs” wrapped in regret.
Dad!
How could I tell Dad? Once he found out, it would kill him. It would worse than kill him! My grief was unbearable, but mine would be nothing compared to his. This would destroy him.
It was thinking about my father that brought some clarity to me . . . and then something occurred to me. Something horrible, but at the same time wonderful. Sammy was dead. His spirit had left him, and with all my heart I hoped that he was with our mother and that she was already holding him in her arms, comforting him, and bringing him into the next world.
Yes, Sammy’s soul was gone. . . but his body was still here.
Somewhere far away I heard the beat of helicopter blades. The landing pad was a good mile from here. Once he landed, Dad would have to drive his date back to her hotel. Maybe I had some time.
I went inside, got a sponge and a towel, and washed down the pickets until enough of the blood was gone that it couldn’t be seen in the moonlight. When I was done, I looked to my brother, still there on the yellowing lawn, and took a dee
p breath, steeling myself for what I was about to do. I knelt down, grabbed him, and lifted him up in my arms. So many times I would carry him as he clung to me, but now he was a dead weight heavier than a boulder.
I carried him out of our yard and across town. My arms ached, but I withstood the pain because it was nothing compared to the ache in my soul. I looked straight ahead as I made my way down the darkest streets of Seward, not looking in any windows on the way, ignoring the cars that passed me until I was finally standing at the face of the glacier.
Then I laid my brother down on the jagged ice at its base. I took a few steps back and looked up at the frozen wall. It shone so brightly in the moonlight; it almost seemed to give off its own glow. The air around me was silent. Too silent. And that’s when I realized the glacier wasn’t breathing anymore.
No, I told myself. No. It’s just holding its breath. It’s waiting. It’s waiting for me.
“You know me!” I called to the glacier—because it did. I had played in its shadow all my life. I had picnicked there and read my favorite books, feeling its breath numbing my neck. It watched as Rav gave me my first kiss, and I remember feeling the glacier smile as it breathed in, as it breathed out. We were connected. I had always felt peace in the glacier’s presence, and although I felt anything but peaceful now, I knew I could recapture that feeling if I tried.
“I understand now,” I told it. “All those lives you took. The jealousy you must have felt—to be near us, yet apart. With us, but not among us. But you’re not taking lives anymore, are you? Because you found a way to see through our eyes. You found a way to be human.”
Still nothing from the glacier. Nothing at all.
“You know me!” I screamed. “I’ve never asked anything from you all these years. But I’m asking now. Please . . . if there’s any life left in you, set it free. Set it free, and give me back my brother. Become my brother.”
The ice was silent and still. How big was the spirit of a glacier? Into how many pieces could it divide itself? Even if it had brought back everyone in that graveyard, there still had to be a spark of life deep within its ancient heart. There had to be!
“Please . . . ” I begged.
And then I heard something—felt something resonating in my bones. An icy breeze flowed over me, smelling fresh and crisp . . . and the glacier began to move.
I felt the calving of ice, and instinctively I jumped back. The glacier surged—a sudden lurch—and rolled forward just a few feet. Ice plunged and frost filled the air, settling on my hair like snow. Once it was done and the wall of ice had fallen silent again, Sammy was gone. He had been taken under the ice.
The glacier then breathed one last time—a slow wheeze of icy air that faded into nothing. I knew it was truly dead now. Whatever life force had been inside, it was gone.
Now Exit Glacier, like so many glaciers, would wither, melting back year after year, until it was gone completely. The glacier was dead. It had spilled out the last of its spirit.
And Sammy was beneath the ice.
I don’t remember walking home that night, but when I got there, Dad was furious. “Where were you? Do you know how worried I was? Where’s Sammy?”
“I was with Rav,” I told him. “And Sammy. . . Sammy’s with a friend.”
And since it wasn’t really a lie, he couldn’t read any deception on my face. He told me we’d talk about my punishment in the morning. Then he told me to lock up.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I unlocked every door, every window in the house; and even though I went into my bedroom, I didn’t go to sleep. I just sat on my bed forcing my eyes to stay open, holding a vigil.
At three in the morning, I heard the faint creak of door hinges, and I bolted upright in bed. Had I really heard it, or was it just my imagination? Slowly, I went out of my room, down the hallway, and into the living room. The front door was open just a crack. There was a chill in the house now, and it wasn’t hard to find the source. Frost spilled out like smoke from Sammy’s open bedroom door.
Fighting the shivers that threatened to overtake me, I crept toward Sammy’s room and peered in. Sammy was sitting on his bed, looking out of the window at the setting moon.
“Sammy?”
He slowly turned to me. His skin was pale and blue, and his eyes were as dark as a glacier crevasse.
“Can’t sleep,” he said in a voice both gruff yet gentle, childlike yet ancient. “Why can’t I sleep?”
“It’s all right, Sammy. Don’t worry about that.”
Then I went to the front closet to get my heaviest winter parka and my best fur-lined gloves, and put them on. Back in Sammy’s room, I sat down next to him and reached out to touch his frozen face with my gloved hand.
“I’m scared,” he said, with ice-crystal tears falling from his eyes.
“Don’t be,” I told him. “You’re home now.” Then I took him into my thickly padded arms to comfort him. And I comfort him still.
Dad will have to face this. He will somehow have to come to terms with it, making peace with this new reality. And once he does, the three of us will leave Resurrection Bay, because although winter is long here, it’s not long enough. We’ll have to go someplace that’s always cold. I’ll bet they could use a good helicopter pilot way up north, in Prudhoe Bay.
But for now, I hold Sammy, gently rocking him back and forth, feeling his breath numbing my neck. Warm air flowing in, cold air flowing out.
“I know you . . . ,” Sammy says.
It only makes me hold him tighter, closer. “Yes you do, Sammy,” I whisper, ignoring the chill that pierces all my layers of protection. “And I know you.”
Don’t miss Neal Shusterman’s suspenseful novel of friendship, family, and the sacrifices we make for the people we love.
EXCERPT FROM BRUISER
TENNYSON
1) SYMBIOSIS
If he touches her, I swear I’m going to rip out his guts with my bare hands and send them to his next of kin for lunch.
What is my sister thinking? This guy—this looooser—has got no business breathing the same air as her, much less taking her out on a date. Just because he asked doesn’t mean she has to accept.
“Are you afraid that if you say no, he’ll bury you in his backyard or something?” I ask the question over dinner, while I’m still steaming from the news.
My sister, Brontë, gives me a look that says Excuse me, but I can take care of myself, and she says, “Excuse me, but I can take care of myself.” She learned that look from our mother, God rest her soul. I give Brontë back a look that says I think not, and I say, “You gonna eat that piece of pizza?”
Brontë peels off the cheese, throws it on Dad’s plate, and eats the bread. She’s on a high-carb diet, which basically means she eats everything that Dad can’t on his low-carb diet. It makes them part of an evolved symbiotic relationship. That’s science. Just because I’m an athlete doesn’t mean I don’t have brains.
Mom, God rest her soul, is still on the phone. She’s negotiating with the next-door neighbor, hoping to get him to stop mowing his lawn at seven AM on Sunday morning. I don’t know why she needs the phone; we can hear the other end of the conversation through the window. In order to get to the point, Mom has to strategically weave around the field, breaking down the neighbor’s defenses by talking gossip and being generally friendly. You know—lulling the guy into a false sense of security before going in for the kill. It’s such an all-important conversation that Mom had to order a pizza rather than cook. She also had to order it online, since she was already on the phone.
Mom doesn’t cook anymore. She does nothing much motherly or wifely anymore since Dad did some unmentionables during his midlife crisis. Brontë and I have become convinced that Mom, God rest her soul, kind of died inside and hasn’t come back from the dead yet. We keep waiting, but all we get is Domino’s.
“I’m sixteen,” Brontë says. “I can spend time with whoever I want.”
“As your olde
r brother, it’s my sacred duty to save you from yourself.”
She brings her fists down on the table, making all the dinner plates jump. “The ONLY reason you’re fifteen minutes older than me is because you cut in front of the line, as usual!”
I turn to our father, searching for an ally. “So Dad, is it legal for Brontë to date out of her species?”
Dad looks up from his various layers of pepperoni and breadless cheese. “Date?” he says. Apparently the idea of Brontë dating is like an electromagnet sucking away all other words in the sentence, so that’s the only word he hears.
“You’re not funny,” Brontë says to me.
“No, I’m serious,” I tell her. “Isn’t he like . . . a Sasquatch or something?”
“Date?” says Dad.
“Just because he’s big,” Brontë points out, “that doesn’t mean he’s apelike; and anyway, you’re the lowest primate in our zip code, Tennyson.”
“Admit it—this guy is just one more stray dog for you!”
Brontë growls at me, like one of the near-rabid creatures she used to bring home on a regular basis. Our house used to be a revolving doggy door, until Mom and Dad put their feet down and we became fish people.
“Is this a boy we know?” Dad asks.
Brontë sighs and gnaws her cheeseless pizza in frustration.
“His name is Brewster Rawlins, and he is nothing like what people say about him.”
This is not the way to introduce your father to a prospective boyfriend, and I figure maybe Dad might be terrified enough to forbid her to date him.
“Exactly what do people say about him?” Dad asks. Dad always begins sentences with the word exactly when he suspects he doesn’t want to hear the answer. I snicker, knowing that Brontë is stuck; and she punches me on the shoulder.
What do they say about the Bruiser? I think. What don’t they say? “Let’s see . . . in eighth grade he was voted Most Likely to Receive the Death Penalty.”
“He’s quiet,” says Brontë. “He’s inscrutable, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. You know what they say: Still waters run deep—”
Resurrection Bay Page 3
