With Love from Cody
I didn’t know how else to sign it. At this point it wouldn’t do any harm to write Anna Marie, too, but I’d left that girl so far behind that writing her name felt like a lie. And I sure couldn’t write Rogue. So I just left it at that, “With Love from Cody.” Then I printed out the letter, and bought an envelope and stamp at a grocery store. This time it didn’t matter where all it was mailed from. If ever anybody bothered to track this spot down, by the time they sent anyone for me, I’d be long gone. Given the location, they’d likely figure I’d disappeared into Mexico. But none of them would ever find me there, because none of them knew how to go looking ten thousand years in the future.
Truth is, back in that parking lot, I’d cried to hard I didn’t think my face would ever go back to normal. By the time I’d finished with my last errands, when I looked in the rearview mirror, the puffiness had mostly gone down, but my eyes were still a little red, my skin a little blotchy. I put on my Salvation Army hoodie. Touch had left his Red Sox cap on the seat of the truck, and I pulled it onto my head and stuffed my hair underneath. Staring back at me now was a girl, a regular American girl. A little sad, that’s all. So long as he didn’t look at my eyes too close, the border patrol officer wouldn’t need to notice anything peculiar at all.
I pulled my truck back onto 85. That’s how I’d come to think of it, my truck, even though I’d only had it a few days. Time had pretty much lost meaning, just as a result of going forward a few hours those two times. I had no sense what had happened when, or how long I’d been on the road. Hell, I didn’t even know the day of the week. All I knew was that I was traveling south, heading toward Mexico, heading toward the future. Generally that’s the only way possible to travel, toward the future, unless you know someone very brilliant, someone with a golden ring and an angel’s touch.
Sun slanted through my windshield, warming up my face. I zipped my hoodie till it wouldn’t zip anymore, and cranked up the heat. No part of me at all wanted to roll down the windows and enjoy the cooling air flowing in. The heat reminded me of Touch. The trickle of sweat on the back of my neck made me feel like he was right beside me. And anyhow: I had to get used to it, didn’t I, being hot, if I was to go join him in his time?
That’s how I had to think of it. That I was going to join him in his time. If I’d thought of it any other way, like Touch being gone for good, I would have cracked wide open, my innards exploding in the cab of my beloved blue Chevy truck.
And still I felt the damn tears spring up in my eyes again. Even if I’d been a normal girl, it would have been unlikely that I’d ever find anyone even close to him again.
The highway disappeared and reappeared under my wheels in stretch after identical stretch. The plants around me were like nothing I ever saw in Mississippi—cactus and yucca, everything sharp and low and thorny, except for these real tall cactus that looked like prickly people, standing guard at the side of the road. The rocks and dirt were red and dark gray. Even the sky looked different, so much bigger, gaping over my head like a window looking out on the whole universe.
I wondered when it would happen, the doom Planet Earth was headed toward, the one that would wipe all traces of us away. If Touch never came back for me, would I live to see it happen? I shook my head, like I could shake that thought right out of it. Touch was coming back for me. There couldn’t be any question about that, no sir, because I just wasn’t willing to go on living without him.
By now this part of the atlas had implanted itself in my brain. The truck rumbled along, getting closer and closer to Lukeville, where I’d cross the border to Sonoyta, Mexico. After that I could head west, to Puerto Peñasco. Only a two-hour drive there, to the Gulf of California, and I’d soak my feet in the ocean for the very first time. Maybe by then Touch would’ve found me, and he could show me the sea himself, just like he’d wanted to.
I reached the border crossing sometime after lunch, not that I’d managed to eat anything. Lately it had started to amaze me how a person could keep going on so little food. Part of me wanted to make some declaration in my head, like I wasn’t going to eat till Touch found me. But I knew that would be stupid. I could hear Touch’s voice in my head telling me I had to eat, I had to take care of myself, I had to stay strong. Up ahead a long line of cars waited to cross into Mexico. I did a little calculating in my head and figured it must be the start of Labor Day weekend.
There was a little hot dog stand on the side of the road, so I pulled over and bought myself two hot dogs, a bag of potato chips, and the Coca-Cola I’d wanted back in Gila Bend. Once I got back into the car and took my first bite, I realized how hungry I was. I practically swallowed that first hot dog whole, then I went ahead and eased the truck into the line of waiting cars and munched down the rest of the food.
It kind of surprised me, how long this was taking. A couple of border patrol officers stood up at the front of the line of cars waiting to pass through what looked to me like a tollbooth. From what I could see so far, you either got a green arrow or a red arrow. If you got a green arrow, like most people, you got to just drive on into Mexico. If you got a red arrow, you had to pull over just past the booth—almost in Mexico. I couldn’t see what all happened once you got there, but I pulled the baseball cap down close to my eyes. I’d put on Touch’s lambskin gloves and tucked my T-shirt sleeves into them, just on the off chance someone tried to grab me by the wrist.
My heart beat hard inside my chest, thump, thump, thumping away. There goes one car on through, then another and another, and whoops—stopping that one. It looked to me pretty random when they stopped people, and I prayed that I wouldn’t be one of the unlucky ones. The good news was those officers didn’t look super-official, like law enforcement, they just looked like tollbooth people. It didn’t seem like they’d recognize me as a fugitive is what I mean by that.
Finally it was my turn. Mexico, just inches away. Leaving the United States behind me forever. I hardly had time to wish my Spanish was better, or to pray for a green arrow, before I pulled up to the booth. The patrol officer in his yellow neon vest looked over at me. I smiled and waved, trying to look innocent. Up over my head: red arrow.
Dang.
I pulled the truck over behind the others that were waiting to be inspected. Talk about so close yet so far! I could see the little road that led on into Mexico; I could see the little stores, and even a couple scrawny dogs rooting in the garbage. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, wondering if I should just throw the backpack over my shoulders and make a run for it with my new wildebear speed. But then I’d have the Mexican officials after me, which would pretty much destroy the whole point of coming to Mexico in the first place. So all I could do was sit there, waiting for my fate to be decided.
Finally the agent stuck his head in the window. I rolled it down and tried to smile real friendly—not that that had done me much good before.
“Hola,” he said. He had a nice bright smile himself, and I felt a little comforted. “You going on vacation?”
His accent was thick enough that it took me a second to understand him. “Yeah,” I said. “You bet. I’m going on vacation. Down to see the Baja Peninsula. Do you know I’ve never in my whole life seen the ocean?”
He nodded. “You got any weapons in the car?”
“Weapons! No sir, I sure don’t.”
He waved his little clipboard, like I was supposed to get out of the truck. My whole body started to shake. The guard stepped back so I could push the heavy door open, and I climbed down to stand next to him. He came up to my earlobe. And damned if my knees didn’t start knocking together. Seriously shaking and rattling together. The guard’s eyes got kind of wide.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just I’m so excited to see your beautiful country.”
He climbed on into the truck with a flashlight and peered into the air-conditioning vents, then shone the flashlight behind the seat. He leaned over to look under the seat. Touch’s backpack had g
otten kind of wedged under there. The guard gave a little tug to pull it out, and when he did, a couple twenty-dollar bills spilled out the top where it hadn’t quite zipped shut. He got the backpack all the way out and stood by the car, letting it dangle from his fingertips for a minute before he pulled at the zipper. I could see from where I stood—and from the other bills that fluttered off the top—that the whole thing was stuffed with cash. Touch must’ve got it when he went into the gas station without me.
In other words: I should have thought to look in his backpack.
And I should have let Touch know, just in case, that crossing the Mexican-American border with a backpack full of money was a piss-poor idea, there being pretty much only two reasons a person in that situation would have that kind of cash: buying drugs or buying weapons. Oh, yeah, and a third one: starting a new life for yourself because you were wanted on criminal charges in the U.S.
Meanwhile the guard stood there, the backpack open, staring over at me. Then he pulled a little walkie-talkie off his belt and spoke into it. I could hear the words in Spanish, and the crackle from the static. There was only one thing left for me to do. I turned on my heels and started running, fast as I could, down the road toward Mexico.
Who knows if all those border patrol agents had time to admire my speed? The problem was there were plenty of them stationed in the direction I started running, and wouldn’t you know they all had weapons of their own. The next thing I knew I had border patrol guards on all sides of me, Mexican and American alike, all pointing rifles in my direction.
The truth is a girl can have skin that brings men down with the slightest touch. She can have the strength and speed of two wildebears. But none of that matters much when she’s faced with the barrels of ten good old American assault rifles.
I put my hands up in the air, not knowing what on Earth I was going to do next.
Stupid or unlucky. Stupid or unlucky. Those two words kept bouncing back and forth in my brain. Trying to think which one applied to me seemed a whole lot easier than figuring out how the hell I’d get out of this predicament.
The border patrol officers had managed to handcuff me without doing any harm to themselves on account of my sleeves being tucked into Touch’s gloves. Now I sat by my lonesome in a holding cell, waiting for them to find out that I was not in fact Mary Ginsberg and that the blue Chevy pickup truck was stolen.
“Where’d you get that money?” three different border patrol guards had already asked me.
“My boyfriend gave it to me,” I said each time. They could hook me up to a lie detector for that one!
“And what’s your boyfriend do for a living?”
“He’s in electronics.” Pretty sure I’d pass with that answer, too.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
They went ahead and tossed me in the cell, waiting on processing me, I guess, so they could deal with the less complicated arrests—the ones who had come quietly without trying to flee. When someone finally came to get me, I would have to make some decisions. But what decisions those would be I couldn’t have told you. I didn’t know much about being arrested. They had already taken away my personal effects, including Touch’s magic screwdriver, leaving me with nothing but the clothes on my back. But I suspected that when an officer came to collect me, and process my arrest, he’d want me to take off my gloves to fingerprint me. And then who knows what all damage I’d end up doing, and what they’d do to me—remembering those guns—when officers started hitting the floor.
I sat down on a hard metal bench and closed my eyes. Touch, I thought. If you are planning to ever come fetch me back to your world, now sure would be a good time.
My eyes fluttered open, and I half expected to see him standing right there in front of me, his blue eyes twinkling, his lips pulled into that little half smile of his. Instead I just saw an empty cell, and heard heavy booted footsteps coming down the corridor.
“Mary?” the officer said. It was a woman, not much older than me, with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She looked like she had a pretty nice shape under that uniform she wore, and I wondered what had made her ever want to go into law enforcement. Border patrol seemed to me like a particularly mean branch of law enforcement. Truth be told, the way she said Mary sounded real sarcastic, like she knew that wasn’t really my name. Plus I didn’t approve of her line of work. That didn’t mean I wanted to send her into a permanent coma, so I kept my distance as best I could.
“You want to tell me what your real name is, honey?” Despite the term of endearment, she did not say this in a nice tone.
“Not particularly,” I said, wishing some kind of plan would pop into my head. Honestly, the best chance I had seemed like running. If I could get to a place upstairs where I had a clear shot of the door, I’d not only have my super-speed, but an element of surprise, on my side. This time I bet I could make it before anybody drew a gun.
And what the hell would I do after that?
“Turn around,” said the snotty officer. I did as I was told, offering her my wrists so she could cuff me. “A little chilly, are you?” she said, talking about the sleeves tucked into my gloves.
“I got a skin condition.” This shut her up. She put her hand on the middle of my back and pushed me forward with her fingertips, out of the cell.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re going to get you fingerprinted then bring you on into interrogation.”
We walked past the other cells, with forlorn and anxious-looking people—all of them men—crammed in there, waiting to be deported or incarcerated. My brain was working as fast as it could but coming up with nothing. This girl next to me—Officer Jeanne Sincero, according to her nametag—she looked so calm and unafraid, business as usual. But I felt like I was marching her to her death. What would happen when I took off those gloves and she reached over to press my finger into the ink?
There it was. I stood there looking down at it, a regular old ink blotter. Officer Sincero took out a form and put it on the surface beside it. Then she uncuffed me. Her face looked pretty, in a hard, regular kind of way. I wondered what special abilities she might transfer to me, what memories.
“Well,” she said. “You gonna take off those gloves so we can get this done? Mary?”
“Sure,” I said. I pulled off my right glove real careful, and Officer Sincero reached out to grab my wrist. I pulled it back from her. “Better let me do it,” I said. “It’s real contagious.”
This made her snap her own hand back pretty fast. I pressed my finger into the blotter, and she pointed to the little spot for me to make the mark. “Press down hard but not too hard,” she said. She handed me a paper towel, and I took it with the hand that was still gloved. “Don’t look to me like anything’s wrong,” she said.
“You got a degree in dermatology?”
She snorted a little at this as I pulled the glove back over my hand and tucked my sleeve into it. From where I stood, I could see people coming in and out the door, but I couldn’t bring myself to make a break for it. At some point I would have to figure something out, though, because not every officer I came into contact with would be as easy to manipulate as Officer Sincero was proving to be (a pretty girl hears the words “skin condition” and you can be sure she won’t touch you anytime soon).
“If I were you,” she said, snapping the cuffs back on me, “I’d be a whole lot less of a smart-aleck with the detectives. Mary.”
This sure as hell reminded me: It wasn’t only the officers that needed protecting. Because once they figured out who I was, there were a whole lot of charges that would be leveled against me, including but not limited to car theft, assault and battery, bank robbery, and maybe even attempted murder.
Officer Sincero led me to a little room. There was a table and a couple chairs, and a long mirror that I figured was one of those two-way deals. She uncuffed me and told me to have a seat. “You want coffee or water or anything?” she said. You could tell th
is was the part of her job she hated most, offering lowlifes like me refreshments. For this reason only, I told her I wanted a cup of coffee, and she went off to get it with a scowl on her face.
I tapped my feet on the floor while I waited for her. Stupid. That was the answer. I was a moron for not checking Touch’s backpack, a moron for trying to go to Mexico in the first place. Hadn’t Touch told me that where he came from you could track a person across space and time? Too late it occurred to me that he’d be able to find me no matter where I was. Unless—and this was the thing I couldn’t bear thinking about—something had happened that would prevent him from searching for me in the first place.
I looked down at my hands, encased in his gloves and resting on my knees. Was it just last night that these gloves had held his hands? I closed my eyes and whispered out loud: “I’m right here, Touch. Right here in Lukeville, Arizona. Come find me. Come get me.” And then for good measure I added, “I love you.”
When I opened my eyes I saw a man in a white button-down shirt, with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a big fat file in the other. No doubt about it, that file was mine. Suddenly I was very aware they hadn’t let me use the bathroom since they’d brought me in.
Sure enough that man kept walking straight toward my door, and when he opened it he gave me this knowing little smile and placed the coffee cup in front of me. I wanted to drink that coffee about as much as I wanted to give the person who gave it to me a big wet kiss. Which is to say, not one bit.
He took the seat across from me. Then he said, “Hello, Anna Marie.”
Shit.
“You want to tell me what you’re doing so far from home?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I told him.
“I mean that you don’t belong here in Arizona. You belong way back east in Caldecott County, Mississippi. There are some folks back there who are real frantic to find you.”
Rogue Touch Page 21
