“That’s how the rest of my family reacts when they talk about cold weather,” I said. “But to me it sounds just glorious. Must be some kind of rogue gene, I guess.”
Touch looked at me, real thoughtful. After a while he said, “I guess.”
When he went into the bathroom to take a hot bath, I went downstairs to the lobby to use the computer. This time, I found what I’d been looking for in the Clarion-Ledger: a whole article on Wendy Lee and her coma, and the “disgruntled employee” who put her there:
When a bride in Jackson wants the very best, she knows who to call for her wedding cake. But summer orders are going unfilled as Wendy Lee Beauchamp lies lifeless in a coma, brought on by an attack from the night baker she’d fired just days before.
“We all knew there was something sinister about that girl,” says Maybelline Morling, owner of the business adjacent to the Sunshine Bakery. “I was so glad to hear Wendy Lee’d let her go. And now this has to happen.”
The article went on to give my name and a description. It said I was six feet tall (as if! Maybelline must’ve made this estimate, she was like a human Chihuahua) and considered “armed and dangerous.” It also said that a phone call I’d made had been traced to Altoona, Pennsylvania, and since I’d crossed state lines the FBI might get involved. Dang. I guess I shouldn’t have made that call. But how else was I to know what all had happened to Wendy Lee? And didn’t it at least show I cared? Damn Curtis. Did he happen to mention to the reporters or police that I was asking after Wendy Lee’s health?
By the time I got back to the hotel room, my heart hadn’t slowed down at all, it was thwacking against my chest so loud I figured Touch could hear it from across the room. He stood there, wearing blue jeans and plaid and his new fleece vest. I could see the blue silk long johns poking out of his sleeve, and he also wore a wool skullcap over his long hair. I’d talked him into the hat. I had this memory of Joe Wheeler, Wendy Lee’s ex, telling her the secret to staying warm is keeping your head covered.
“You feel better?” I asked.
“I do feel better,” Touch said. “I feel like I’m getting used to the cold anyway, slowly. But these clothes help me along. They definitely do.”
Surprisingly, just hearing his voice did what I thought couldn’t be done: it made me feel calmer. I sank down onto my bed and took a deep breath. Where would I be now if he hadn’t come rumbling up beside me in that old Camaro? I felt a deep wave of nostalgia for that car. Already I’d noted the Chevrolet dealer down the road. Maybe when we snuck over there tonight as per our plan, I’d see if they had a used one on the lot.
Touch hadn’t turned on the heat this time, but of course he hadn’t turned on the air conditioner either. It might not have been Mississippi anymore, but it was still summertime, and even in Ohio that meant it was much too warm for wool and leather. I took off my coat. Touch still stood over by the window. He pulled the curtains shut. Then he turned back toward me and kind of thrust his chin in my direction. He had a cleft in his chin; you could hardly see it on account of a day’s worth of stubble. It was one of the sexiest gestures I’d ever seen, or even dreamed of.
“Go on,” Touch said. “Keep going.”
Maybe if my skin hadn’t set into tingling I would’ve listened to him. At first it felt good, that tingling, but then it just felt so yearning to make contact, and so dangerous, that I couldn’t stand it. I pulled my jacket back up over my shoulders.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I really want to. But I just can’t.”
His face didn’t move. He just stood there, stock still, blue eyes wide and impossible to read. Then he walked over and sat on the bed next to mine, what was getting to be our classic pose, sitting on different beds, face-to-face, our knees just inches away from touching.
“Rogue,” he said.
“Rogue what?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m going to call you. Instead of Anna Marie. After that rogue gene that keeps you from enjoying the heat.”
Of course I could have taken this as an insult. Part of me, the contrary part, wanted to tell him he had no business changing my name. Then I thought on how the people who’d given that name to me—my mama and daddy—had disappeared searching for something they considered a whole lot more interesting than me. And I also thought on that girl I used to be, the one who dreamed of traveling, the one who had her skin exposed to the wide world because no harm but sin could come from it. That girl was a million miles and a million years away. She’d stopped existing the second Cody Robbins hit the ground underneath the tupelo tree. So why not give her a new name along with everything else? Rogue would suit me just fine.
I sat there on the hotel bed, Touch just inches away from me. He might as well have been five states away for all the chance I had of feeling his skin on top of mine. The way I wanted to.
“Rogue,” Touch all but growled. “This is going to take some imagination.”
I paused a minute, then nodded. I knew exactly what he meant. And while Anna Marie didn’t have a whole lot of imagination to spare in that department, Rogue was starting to build up a whole, wide reservoir.
The Chevrolet dealership was on a stretch of road that had nothing but car lots, one after the other. Some were big brands, like Volkswagen and Toyota, and some were little secondhand places with cars that would likely break down soon as you got halfway down the street. They all had the same kind of lighting as the pool back in Altoona—wide and orangeish, casting shadows that were easy enough to slip through in the very early morning. Touch and I walked through the rows of Chevys like we were shopping, both of us bundled up for different reasons. I could believe Touch was getting used to the climate here because of the way I’d become used to wearing piles of clothes and being hot all the time. People, I guessed, were made for adapting. That warm night I even wore my wool cap, figuring it would at least cover up the white streaks in my hair in case anyone saw me.
“Let’s go look at the used cars,” I said to Touch. “We don’t want to choose anything too flashy.” Secretly, of course, I had my heart set on another Camaro, which had to be the Cody part of me. We headed onto the back part of the lot, where I saw something that made Cody’s heart take over in full force. It wasn’t a Camaro, but a cherry-red 1965 Mustang. Hardtop. Dang but I wanted that car.
“This one,” I said. “Let’s take this one.” I put my hand on top of the roof. From what I could see it looked like original everything.
“I thought you said we didn’t want anything flashy.”
Dang. I’d thought maybe he wouldn’t be able to tell. Like maybe this would be a modest vehicle where he came from.
“What do you drive where you come from?” I asked him.
“We don’t really drive. It’s a little bit more…”
“Sophisticated?” By now I had noticed that when Touch talked about his planet he used the word “sophisticated,” and when he talked about mine he used the word “primitive.”
He laughed. My duffel bag was slung over my shoulder, and I unzipped it to get my screwdriver. Anna Marie would never have taken a risk on a shiny ’65 Mustang. She would’ve taken a Ford Taurus.
Bam! Crackle! Boooom!
It was about three times louder than when it happened at the hotel room. Along with the noise came a flash of bright, white light. Touch and I both hit the ground. We were on opposite sides of the car, but luckily I had a good view of him from underneath the Mustang’s carriage. He had his hands on the pavement, and he had turned that same waxy magnolia color. But his eyes fixed on me, like he hardly cared about himself, and the most important thing was protecting me. It hit me that the two of us would have to trade off. When it came to threats in this world, like thugs in a parking lot, it was my job to protect him, and vice versa when it came to threats from his world. I could tell from the expression on his face that he meant to do just that, and scared as I felt in that moment, I also felt precious. I knew he wouldn’t leave me behind.
Bam! Bam!
The orange hue from the manmade lights was completely drowned out by the wash of white brightness that had come with the noise, these great explosions of sound, and I couldn’t believe the whole town wasn’t waking up and running in this direction. The light itself, despite the great glare it created, didn’t hurt my eyes at all. It only made everything around us super-clear—the darkness had disappeared along with the orange glow—clearer and more in focus than anything I’d ever seen. And then suddenly—so immediate I had no sense of them ever not being there with us—three figures appeared. As soon as they arrived the light went away, returning us to the haze of middle-of-night-on-Earth and regular old halogen lights.
My heart had stopped beating for a good minute. It started up again reluctantly, with an awkward sort of lurch.
Those figures—three men, I’d just had time to make out—started moving around the cars, searching. I guessed they were looking for Touch. They all had bare, muscular arms and long hair. I couldn’t make out their faces, but they looked very determined, like they were on a mission, and they were headed directly toward us.
I pushed up on my elbows to get a better look at them. Then Touch did something I wouldn’t have expected. He stood up. Wanting to follow his lead, I started to get to my feet, too, but he gestured to me to stay down. So I kept my belly flat to the pavement and wriggled underneath the car. From that position, I saw Touch walk straight toward the men with his hands up in the air. It wasn’t a “don’t shoot me” kind of gesture. More like a “listen to me” one. And then he started speaking in that whistly, unearthly language of his. It was hard to read the tones of a language that was so unfamiliar. But something about Touch’s body language told me he was trying to placate the other men. Not only that, but he knew them, and his main goal was to divert attention from me, my presence. I inched my way farther underneath the frame of the car, hoping they wouldn’t see me.
The men didn’t look placated. They looked downright pissed. They also looked cold. None of them was bundled up the way Touch was, which seemed like a good thing. Maybe being too cold could slow them down. The one in the middle, with blond hair, seemed to be in charge. He was kind of hugging himself as he talked, if you could call it talking—that musical rush of whistles, lower and harsher than when Touch spoke. Of course I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but I could tell it wasn’t very friendly. Touch answered, gesturing like he was trying to convince them of something. Then the guy to the blond one’s right stepped forward. Touch stepped backward, real immediate, and I knew it was important—very important—that these people not get ahold of him.
But they didn’t seem to want to get ahold of him. They didn’t try grabbing him, or hitting him, or anything like that. The one who stepped forward was smaller than the blond guy, but he seemed a whole lot angrier. Something about his whistles and hoots sounded sharp and demanding. Touch stepped back again; probably he was working hard not to look back at me, give my location away. I wished he would say something in English so I could understand, but maybe that would be too dangerous.
Suddenly, as the smaller guy lectured Touch, the blond one turned his head sharply, directly toward me. As Touch stepped forward to stop him, the blond guy reached into his pocket and pulled something out, then threw it in my direction. From the way his fist closed and then opened, I thought for a second that he’d released a bird. Then I realized it was a big ball of flaming red light. When it hit the Mustang the whole thing crumbled above me in a blast of light. No noise, no explosion. Just a great, blinding flash of whiteness. And then what had been a beautiful, perfectly restored old car was no longer sheltering me, hiding me. Instead it had coated me with sharp, metallic dust. Above me there was nothing but air.
“Run,” Touch yelled, still not looking back at me. “Just run.”
Don’t ask me when I got so obedient. Maybe it came out of not knowing what the hell else to do in the face of silent, vaporizing weapons. I started out in a crouch and then set to running, fast as I could, my footsteps pounding in my ears.
Behind me I could hear the three men speaking at once, yelling at Touch, who I guess was trying to prevent them coming after me. I didn’t look back to see. By now I’d reached the Toyota lot. I ran around the building, pulling at all the doors in case one had been left open. No luck, so I started running again, toward the Jeep dealership.
And goddamn if just when I got there, those three men from Planet Touch stood right in my path, waiting for me. I skidded to a halt, with no time to wonder how the hell they’d got there when I hadn’t even heard them running behind me. Since I didn’t have whatever de- and rematerializing device they apparently did, all I could do was turn around and start running in the other direction. I don’t know if I could accurately say I was capable of feeling relief in that moment, but amid all the panic I did feel glad to see Touch running toward me.
At the same time, somewhere inside me, I did manage to think: Hey. They’re supposed to be chasing Touch. So why do I get the feeling that they’re chasing me?
There wasn’t a whole lot of time to ponder the issue, because before Touch got within twenty feet of me another of those orange balls came spinning in my direction. I put my hands over my head, ready to shatter into a million pieces, but Touch reached into his pocket and threw his little blue ball into the air. It was one of the best throws I’ve ever seen in my life. The blue ball hit the orange ball, and the two pieces melded in the air right over our heads.
“Catch it!” Touch yelled. I held out both my hands and the ball landed in my palms like it knew exactly what to do. Those three men were running in our direction, shivering all the while, and meantime a kind of warmth was pulsing through me on account of the swirling lights I held in my hands. For a second I felt afraid that I would dissolve and disappear, but then it was like the lights were speaking to me, and I knew exactly what to do. Touch wasn’t running toward me anymore, he was running toward the Toyota building, and I lifted up my hand and threw the orange/blue ball at the front door. In that very instant the door disappeared, letting Touch through.
As I ran toward the open door, the three Planet Touch men seemed to be coming toward me in slow motion. Touch must have done something to them to slow them down. But from the way he was moving, that effect wouldn’t last forever. I saw him scoop the little ball up off the floor and then dive behind the wheel of a Prius that sat in the middle of the display room. The next thing I knew, he was breaking glass walls the old-fashioned way: by driving right through them. The front wall of the dealership shattered, raining glass down on the car. I could feel a few shards scrape my face as I ran to the passenger seat. Touch floored the gas and we went flying down the road.
“How come they didn’t just grab you?” I yelled. “How come they didn’t just rematerialize right in front of us?”
“Rogue,” Touch yelled back. “Do you ever stop asking questions?”
That shut me up for a minute, which made me remember that I needed to catch my breath. While Touch drove, he searched his inside pocket, then pulled out a gold ring—about half the diameter of a pie plate. He held it out in front of me.
“Grab on,” he commanded.
I hesitated. It would bring our knuckles awful close.
“Grab on!” he yelled again. Through the rearview mirror I could see those men had disappeared, which I guessed meant they were going to reappear right in front of us, in the road, or maybe even in the car. This was no time to ask questions, or to argue. I grabbed on to the other side of the ring and closed my eyes. A whirling sort of sensation came over me, and for a moment I felt terrified that I had somehow touched him.
When I opened my eyes, Touch sat in the driver’s seat, both hands on the wheel. I held on to the golden ring all by myself. I dropped it onto the seat next to me and brushed glass off my shoulders.
We were driving down the same road. That much hadn’t changed. Now we were past the car dealerships, in the land of box stores and chain restaurants. But the
light had totally changed, from dark to dawn, rays of the sun rising up over the pavement and the asphalt roofs. There were no tall, long-locked men to be seen anywhere. Except the one sitting beside me.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“I bought us a couple hours,” Touch said. “That’s all.” He pulled the car over to the side of the road. “I need you to drive,” he said. “That took everything I had right out of me.”
I wasn’t exactly feeling chipper myself, but it didn’t seem like the time to argue. We got out of the car and switched places. When I’d buckled myself in, I turned toward Touch. Somehow we’d made a silent agreement that for now, anyway, he was in charge.
“West,” Touch said. “Drive west.”
This surprised me since he hadn’t seemed to know or care about directions up till now. I wasn’t sure which road led directly west from here, so I headed south first, figuring we could cut over on 70 and start making our way west.
As I pulled onto the highway, the engine of the bright red and brand-new Prius revved high and the sun rose in earnest, shedding its light on the pavement, the trees, and the white lines of the highway. Car-wise, it’s not like Touch had had a whole lot of choice. The Prius was red, but at the same time it was just a regular sedan, something like any soccer mom would drive, plus it would save us a whole lot of money and stops on gas. Soon as I had a chance, I’d pull over and rip the dealer price sheets off the window, but for now I couldn’t stop checking the rearview mirror to see if those men were following us in a manner more sophisticated than this primitive vehicle. When I looked back at the dashboard, I saw the speedometer registering 94, and I lifted my foot up off the gas. It was important to remember that Touch wasn’t the only fugitive in the car. If I got pulled over, that could be the end of our little road trip.
Rogue Touch Page 8
