It Wasn't Always Like This

by Joy Preble

  His eyes locked on to hers. There was a smudge of something on his cheek, but Emma barely noticed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got him. He knows I trust him. And he trusts me.”

  Had his father taught him to handle birds? Or was this quiet, perfect fearlessness just inside him, this knowing about birds? He was her age, but he seemed so much wiser, older. Mostly it was the way he said the word “trust.” When her father described how he “trusted” Frank Ryan, the so-called family man, he sounded like an idiot. When Charlie said the word, it sounded as he’d carved it in stone at the very moment it f lowed from his lips.

  Something wonderful and f ierce wrapped itself around Emma’s heart at that moment. Charlie. The bird. The bright heat of the day. The tanned skin of Charlie’s wrist as it peeked from his sleeve, the delicate grace of his bones, vulnerable to the hawk on his arm, yet somehow strong and secure. She stared at the goshawk’s talons and imagined she could feel something like that deep inside, taking hold.

  So strange. Emma had expected, and been disappointed by, and longed for so many things since moving here. But a boy had not been one of them.

  Neither had getting punished, of course. By the time Emma returned home, Jamie and Lucy had eaten most of the chocolate cake, and her mother was shaking her head with a scowl as she wiped up the remaining crumbs. Had her mother gone to f ind Mr. Ryan? Emma never did f ind out.

  After that, Florida seemed different. Less strange and awful. Or maybe it wasn’t different at all. Maybe it was only that now instead of seeing a swampy, foreign place where life moved slower than she wanted, and her worries felt bigger than she was, Emma saw only Charlie.

  The smoke smell grew stronger and overpowering, as Emma and Charlie ran from the dock, the unmoored rowboat drifting back to sea behind them.

  “Hurry,” she gasped. She ripped the bottles from her pockets—they were useless now—and smashed them to the ground. “Oh my God, Charlie. Hurry.”

  But by the time they reached the museum, it was too late.

  Someone had barred the doors to the reptile house from the outside. And jammed the lock on the inner off ice door. There were no windows. So when the building began to burn, there was no way out.

  They were all gone, too: the Ryans and the O’Neills. The parents. The siblings. Even her youngest brother, baby Simon, still and always two. The gators were mostly alive, having slithered out of their cages into the observation pool. But everyone else was dead, except Emma and Charlie, because Emma had insisted he row to the island with her.

  It’s a funny thing to learn about a loophole in the immortality. If you drank the tea, no disease or poison would harm you. Your body wouldn’t age. You would live forever . . . unless you died of unnatural causes. Like being burned to death. Or other horrible things Emma wasn’t sure of yet. But an escape clause, so to speak. If escape meant being reduced to a charred, unrecognizable corpse.

  And now they had to escape, because Glen Walters would soon realize that he hadn’t murdered them all. Emma stared, numb with shock, grief, and fury, at the smoldering ruins of the off ice. She could imagine Walters’s followers approaching fast, grim and angry, shouting as they swept in to f inish the job, shouting the words that until now they’d only hissed in the direction of the O’Neills and the Ryans.

  Unnatural. Abomination. Evil.

  There was no time to think. No time to do anything but f lee.

  “Run!” Emma told Charlie.

  “Run!” Charlie told Emma.

  They ran. He was all she had left now, Charlie Ryan. Loving Charlie Ryan was like breathing, an involuntary motion that would last as long as she did—which was forever.

  The horror of what had happened washed over Emma in wave after heavy wave, threatening to pull her under as they made their way north. At one point she even said, “We have to go back. We can’t leave them like that.” Then she bent and vomited, and Charlie pressed a sweaty hand to her sweaty neck, telling her it would be okay, which of course was a lie.

  “We can’t,” she repeated. “Charlie, we can’t.”

  But he urged her forward, sometimes dragging her when her feet refused to move, as though the grief and loss had sucked the life from her, too. Vaguely she registered the harshness with which he pulled her arm. “Damn it, Emma,” he said, “just keep going.”

  Charlie never swore at her. But he was afraid and grieving as well.

  What a fool she’d been with all those plans, so carefully engineered. While she was looking one way, the only way she ever looked—at Charlie—Glen Walters had taken everything and everyone she cared about. Burned it to bits. Burned them. She would gladly rip the immortality out of her and give it to him and his Church of Light. Take it, she would say. You horrible bastard. You evil man.

  But she had Charlie. They were together. Somehow, they would survive. That’s what Emma told herself over and over as the sun rose in the sky and the world kept on spinning. That’s what she told herself as she understood—really understood—for the f irst time that the world didn’t care about the people who lived and died in it. Her head f illed with images of the bodies. Simon’s baby-f ine hair blackened with soot.

  Charlie tugged her arm. “Stop,” he said. Something in the roughness of his voice made her glance up, but his expression was unreadable.

  They were at a fork in the road. How far had they gotten? Fifteen miles? Maybe twenty. Not enough.

  They’d sneaked north past Fort Mose, skirting a marshy area, f leeing in the dark. She’d remembered some half-forgotten school lecture about freed black men and the Spanish, all jumbled up with Frank Ryan’s stories about the Calusas in the steamy stew that was Florida. A farmer had given the two of them a ride for a few miles but they’d jumped off his wagon when he started asking too many questions. After that they’d avoided the main roads as much as they could, but now the sun was coming up, and underneath the terror, Emma could feel exhaustion lurking.

  A few miles back, Charlie had changed their direction, muttering something about maybe hiding out for a while at Ponte Vedra and then taking more back roads toward Jacksonville. They could get a room in a local inn and then f ind the safest route from there.

  “We should go back to New York,” Emma suggested. “We could be safe there.”

  New York had been her original plan only yesterday morning when they had gone to that stupid island. They would get more of the plant and brew more of the tea, just in case the whole thing wore off, and be young and happy forever. That’s what she wanted. In a big city, they could blend in. If someone noticed them, they could just move to another neighborhood. Another borough. Like those stupid, awful gators, she thought, only half-ironically. During hot weather, they’d dig holes in the mud and hide until things cooled down.

  “Emma,” Charlie snapped, “we’re not safe anywhere. Don’t you understand?”

  She hadn’t heard that tone before. Not from Charlie.

  “Maybe Key West, then,” she said, hearing her own sharp-toned desperation. “We could double back and get someone to sail us out there and then on to Cuba, maybe. They’d never think we would do that.”

  But he was right. And besides, wasn’t the beach at Ponte Vedra one of the places Charlie’s father had said Juan Ponce de León once sighted land? Maybe the stories mentioned a hiding place. Only they hadn’t made it to Ponte Vedra. They were here—wherever here was—a clump of ramshackle wooden houses. From one of the rickety porches, a gaunt-faced woman in a dark muslin dress stared at them with too-curious interest.

  Emma turned away, peering down the road to their left and then the one to their right. No signs marked any direction or destination. Neither seemed to go anywhere. The sun was warming the air to a thick simmer of dust and heat. Her heart felt like it was beating only because it didn’t have a choice.

  Every time they stopped, she saw her family’s faces
in her head. It couldn’t have happened. They couldn’t be gone. But they were. Oh, God, she thought, I don’t know what to do.

  Beads of sweat dotted Charlie’s forehead. “Em,” he said. He paused. His jaw twitched.

  Her heart stuttered, hard, like something had stabbed it.

  “Em. Emma. We need to . . . we need to split up. It’s the only way we can be safe. We have to leave two trails, or they’re going to track us down. I know . . .” He swallowed and set his jaw. “It’s the only way, Emma.”

  Was he joking? That had to be it. She was exhausted, but they had to keep moving, and so he was telling her this awful joke to keep her going. Maybe even get her angry because she and Charlie squabbled like mad sometimes, but that was different. It wasn’t like when her own parents argued; it never lasted long, and it always ended up in kissing . . . and so that must be it. Now he was trying to make her smile even though both their hearts were shattered.

  He wasn’t his father, who’d still sneaked glances at Emma’s mother while he prattled on and on with his endless nonsense, right up until yesterday—was it only yesterday? And now Mr. Ryan and her mother and the others were all—

  No. Charlie was good and solid, and he loved Emma. He had given her that crazy pocket watch. He had told her all the secrets of his true heart. When they walked together, his hand would slip protectively to the small of her back. When they f inished each other’s sentences, she would laugh, because how amazing was it to know someone so well you could see inside the other’s head?

  She tried to see inside Charlie’s head now. He didn’t mean for them to separate. How could he? He was just trying to protect her.

  “Don’t,” she said, and managed to smile at him, holding his gaze even though she could see his eyes shifting this way and that. “I’ll be f ine, Charlie. I’m strong. You don’t have to—we’re together. We’ll manage.”

  “Emma.” He did look at her then. Her throat felt constricted, as though the thick air refused to f low to her lungs. “I mean it.”

  “You don’t.”

  He was saying more words, but her ears buzzed, and she had to shake her head a few times to actually hear him.

  “No,” she said. “That’s something your father would say. That’s not you—” Her hand f lew to her mouth. She shouldn’t have mentioned his dead father. She shouldn’t mention any of them; it was too much, too soon.

  “It is me,” Charlie said. “And you know I’m right.” Already he was turning, walking away fast.

  What? No. They were here at this crossroads because he really meant to leave her, to go one way and force her to go the other? No.

  She ran after him, skirt f lapping against her legs, clasping his arm until he faced her, searching his face for something, anything to prove the lie.

  “You have to go the other way, Emma.” Charlie wrenched his arm away, abrupt and cruel, like his words. Then he added, “I can’t do this. Not with you.”

  She didn’t understand what “this” was, except that it somehow meant her. Them. But how was that possible? They were together. He was all she had left. “I don’t believe you.”

  He walked a few more paces. She followed, her shoes leaving smudgy prints in the dust.

  This time when Charlie turned, his face was ghost white, and his gaze settled somewhere over her right shoulder.

  “Em,” he growled, “it’s not just that. It’s—you know it won’t work. Being together, just you and me forever. It’s like the hawks, you see? They can’t be held to one place. When I tie their jesses so they can’t f ly away, it’s not natural. I love you, Emma. But it would never be enough. Not when we have to hide because of what we are. Better to split up now when it will keep us both safe. There’s nothing left for us, Emma. It’s all gone. You know it’s the right thing to do. The only thing. Even if you hate me for it.”

  She shook her head violently. “I can’t hate you. Charlie, I—”

  His nostrils f lared. “I’m my father’s son, Emma. I mean, really, what did you expect?”

  She knew it was a lie. She knew it. Because this wasn’t the authentic Charlie. This was an impostor. But he wasn’t backing down, even as his voice broke. She thought she might cry, too.

  Something awful wormed itself into her heart. What if he was right?

  From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the woman on the porch, still staring. Maybe they did need to split up. Maybe they would be safer. If the Church of Light came after her then at least Charlie would be safe. Or if they followed him . . . She couldn’t think about that. No.

  “We’ll meet up somewhere, then,” she said, to herself as much as to him. “In a few weeks. Just tell me where, and I’ll f ind you.”

  He shook his head and started back down the road he had chosen.

  “Charlie?”

  But he kept walking. Emma could see how stiff ly he held his back, as though forcing himself not to turn around. The panic inside her welled larger, swirling with the grief and confusion. Could she be wrong? Maybe she had been fooling herself to think she could be happy forever with him. And what did he see in her now besides this girl who had taken him away so he couldn’t even try to save his family?

  “Please, Charlie.” Emma was crying now, tears having formed somehow even though she was hollow and dry. When he didn’t answer, she turned in the opposite direction and started down the other road, forcing one foot in front of the other. She listened, half-expecting to hear him running after her. But all she heard were the buzzing of insects and the occasional squawk of a bird.

  By the time she allowed herself a f inal glance over her shoulder, he was gone.

  Had she been older, Emma might have understood that Charlie was telling her at least one truth. Having lost everything but the one person he treasured most, the only thing Charlie had left to live for was keeping her safe. He’d abandoned her in this godforsaken place to protect her. That much was real. This is what happened in the worst of times. People hurt one another, said awful things, even as they tried to be brave. Gave up what they loved in order to save it.

  But Emma was not older. Wouldn’t be, couldn’t be. She had yet to learn that the hero and the lame-brained idiot often wore the same face. And by the time she f igured it out, she would have gained a fuller and more colorful vocabulary to def ine both Charlie Ryan’s behavior that horrible day and her own. She would have remembered some other, important things about goshawks. But she also would have learned that both she and Charlie were actually quite excellent at dropping out of sight.

  By the time she realized that, she would also realize something else: the only thing she knew for sure—the only thing the girl who prized certainty could be absolutely certain of—was that she was alone.

  Chapter Four

  Dallas, Texas

  Present

  “Turn right in two miles,” the GPS chirped.

  Emma adjusted her sunglasses. The hangover was long gone but the day still seemed a little too bright. She tried not to think of Matt. That whole thing was best forgotten. It was time to focus on what mattered, on what could matter. A clue.

  Elodie Callahan, age sixteen, had been found f loating face down in a gated subdivision swimming pool. Elodie Callahan, who was supposed to come straight home after her youth group’s holiday party, the next to last day of school.

  No one remembered seeing her after the Secret Santa gift exchange. No one remembered a thing until she was naked and dead in a stranger’s backyard. She hadn’t drowned, though. She’d been poisoned.

  Happy almost New Year, indeed.

  “Keep right,” the GPS lady announced.

  She was a bossy thing. In Emma’s weaker moments, the GPS lady reminded her of her own mother, who took a great delight—as Emma remembered it—in telling her daughter exactly what to do and how to do it. Sit up straight. Smile. Don’t smile. At least pretend you’re list
ening. But unlike her mother’s view on what and was not ladylike behavior at any given time, the GPS was generally accurate, which Emma appreciated.

  Her thoughts turned back to Elodie. Emma tapped a f inger on the steering wheel. Cars had come a long way over the years. They’d probably go a long way more in the years to come, but a wrinkled ninety-year-old Elodie Callahan, tottering around at the turn of the twenty-second-century, would never know about that. Or about the sharp-as-a-needle, turquoise-colored Avanti Emma had driven for a few glorious months in the ’60s. Emma was fond of a pretty car. And fast ones, too, which had surprised her. Her current used Volvo was depressingly utilitarian, a box with Swedish safety engineering.

  But she wouldn’t be able to tell Elodie any of that, either. Like Emma, Elodie was frozen in time, but with one crucial difference: she was no longer alive.

  Someone had given her something to see if she would die. Same as the other girls. Yes, Emma had f igured out the pattern, but she had yet to f igure out how to stop it. How to keep dead girls from turning up. No one would be safe until she did. Including her, although she worried less about that these days than she used to.

  They were still after her, the Church of Light. They would never stop, so long as they had their zealots. More than once since she’d landed in Dallas, Emma had pondered calling Pete. But she hadn’t. He already knew more than it was safe for him to know. Better go it alone as long as she could.

  When they f irst met, Detective Pete Mondragon asked, “This a vengeance gig for you?”

  “Not exactly.” It was not the truth but also not a lie.

  Even then he knew better than to push her to elaborate. He knew when to keep his mouth shut. Besides, it had started as an accident—the investigating, that is. The poking and prodding of people and facts, the uncovering of stuff that wanted to stay hidden, like evil men with no obvious motive forcing poison down a teenage girl’s throat. But it became something she was good at, something intimately personal, more than something that just passed the time.