Rogue Touch
Page 27
I looked around me from up on top of that peak in Tennessee. It felt like I could see the whole wide world—so much green and so much beauty. Way up high, fall had set to changing some leaves to red and gold. I felt a pang of wishing Touch had stayed around to see the autumn colors, and I knew it was only the first of many pangs I’d have, every day, for the rest of my life.
Even though it was a mite cold, I unbuttoned the front of that coat and reached into its inside pocket. The first thing I found I knew would be there, the golden ring. I didn’t have to ask Touch in person to know what he’d want me to do with it. The second thing might as well have been a little love letter from Touch, for all it said, I need you to be OK: a plain and simple cabinet-tip screwdriver, looking for all the world like somebody had just bought it at Home Depot for nine dollars and ninety-nine cents.
Just then, there was a little break in the clouds overhead. I tensed, somehow knowing before the sounds arrived that a visitation would occur. My body braced for the usual sounds, the crackles and the bams, and before I even had a chance to worry that it would be Alabaster or King, or hope that it would be Touch, a little boy stood in front of me.
He was about seven years old, wearing clothes made from the same material as the jumpsuit I’d worn. He had blond hair and his father’s kind blue eyes. He wasn’t smiling, but I knew that when he did, I’d see dimples just like his mother’s.
“Hello, Cotton,” I said.
He nodded, too scared and sad to speak. But he also looked resigned. Like he trusted the person who sent him here absolutely.
Now, a person whose skin can send a grown person into a permanent coma has no business raising a child. But—especially if she’s been given the means to provide, in the form of one very useful screwdriver—she can certainly deliver a child to a safe place. There wasn’t any such place in my own past. I couldn’t bring Cotton back to the commune, for instance, and I certainly wouldn’t bring him to Aunt Carrie. But there happened to be a set of parents who I knew to be very kind and loving. They’d already provided one good, solid childhood. And they happened, at the moment, to be very much in need of a child.
The blue Chevy truck that I drove into Caldecott County wasn’t the same one Touch and I had stolen in Colorado, but it looked real similar. I bought it fair and square at a dealership outside of Memphis. When that used car salesman saw the stack of bills I pulled out of my pocket, he didn’t ask questions. He hardly even bothered counting. He just handed over the keys.
On my way back through Memphis, I planned on taking my time. I’d stand in line and take a tour of Graceland. I’d walk down Beale Street, and order up a plate of dry rub ribs.
But there was no time for that now. Because now, I had a delivery to make. In the dead of night I drove down the dusty road that led to the Robbins’ farmhouse. Between Cotton and me sat a bag filled with the special material Touch had invented. Mrs. Robbins was real good at sewing. She could make clothing for Cotton until he managed to adjust to the climate.
Halfway up the road I stopped the car and cut off the engine. Cotton and I walked up the road to the house. I wore gloves, so he could slip his little hand right into mine as we walked. My heart rolled over, and I sure did wish I could keep him with me.
But I couldn’t. So I knelt in front of him. “Cotton,” I said. “These people are real nice, and they’ll take good care of you.”
Cotton nodded, real solemn. He had already told me how Touch had spent the last year teaching him to speak English. I took his other hand and said, “You’re a good boy. And a brave boy. I know you won’t get a chance to have your naming, so if it’s OK with you I’d like to go ahead with that now.”
He nodded again, with a little trace of those dimples. “Your name is Conrad,” I said. “Because it means brave. Real brave. That’s you, honey.”
I didn’t dare risk hugging him. I just stood there in the driveway, where I’d stood a thousand times before, and watched Touch’s son trudge on up toward the farmhouse, and a real nice upbringing, with people I knew would always be kind, and grateful to have him.
Of course I had to get out of Caldecott County as fast as possible. Once I’d done that, I went ahead with my plan and took some time to enjoy Memphis. Afterward I drove west, toward Colorado, with the windows rolled down and whatever country music station I could find on the radio drowning out my thoughts as best they could. This time I was traveling solo, but my hands were covered. With the money the screwdriver got me at an ATM, I’d bought a good supply of leather jeans and sweaters with built-in gloves. And I had Touch’s coat. You never could take a chance that someone just passing by would reach out and touch you. Luckily the air had already grown nice and cool. I even let myself speed a little. On account of my new DNA and fingerprints, I was now safe from the law. Anna Marie was officially gone forever. Only Rogue remained.
Some things in this world you never forget. Like every single step I’d traveled with Touch. I had no problem finding my way past the Sand Dunes to the place where we’d stolen the original blue truck. Just as I suspected, nothing had changed. I don’t suppose anyone had yet noticed it was even missing. I parked it over the same patch of dead grass, and left the keys on the floor underneath the seat. Then I began the long, slow walk to Hooper, where I caught a bus to Salt Lake City. There I bought myself a used Camaro with a busted up bench seat. I drove it on to Lake Powell, and rented a boat from the same Navajo, and puttered it on out to a spot where the water was still and black.
That’s where I left the other thing Touch had given me that he didn’t mean for me to keep. The golden ring. I sailed it on out into the sky, where it hovered a moment, glimmering under the sun with all its impossible properties.
And then it fell, just like anything would, and cut through the water. Only in my mind could I see it slowly falling down to the very bottom, where no tide could ever bring it back to shore.
That last task completed, I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. What does a freak like me do after experiencing all that I had in the past weeks?
What would any girl do? I ran away, hoping to forget, and at the same time knowing I’d always remember. I drove east and north, headed to Maine, so I could finally see a lighthouse, and eat a lobster. I rented an apartment and got myself a job icing cakes in a bakery. At first they weren’t real impressed with the sight of me, you could tell, but when they saw Wendy Lee’s handiwork they couldn’t very well say no. I knew I couldn’t use the screwdriver very often, and I also knew its powers likely wouldn’t last forever. Nothing ever did.
Every day I woke up, went to work, came home. Sometimes I bundled up and walked along the cold, gray beach. It sounds like a lonely life, I know. Maybe it even sounds desperate. And honestly I did feel desperate, every now and again. But that time I’d had with Touch—that time out of time—it sure did last me awhile. The kind of happiness brought by loving someone who loves you back, it doesn’t just float away, no matter the circumstances.
Not only that. When the man you love knows how to travel across space and time, you never can be absolutely sure that he doesn’t mean to come back one day. Especially when he’s parked his child here. So I knew I had to watch myself—make sure my choices landed toward good rather than evil—so if Touch ever did decide to come back, I’d still be worthy of him.
But that wasn’t the only thing that kept me hopeful. Though I’d never got the chance to meet Gordium, I knew from Touch that he existed. Here, on this planet, ten thousand years from now. And if he existed ten thousand years away, and I existed now…
There always stood the chance that before too long, I’d run into someone else like me. Maybe that was just hope springing eternal. Or maybe, just maybe, it was what the future would hold.
CHRISTINE WOODWARD is the pseudonym of Nina de Gramont, author of Gossip of the Starlings and Of Cats and Men, and the novel for teens Every Little Thing in the World. She lives in coastal North Carolina with her husband and daughter.
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The Library of Congress has catalogued the original print edition of this book as follows:
Woodward, Christine.
Rogue Touch / Christine Woodward.—First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4013-1102-5
1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Outcasts—Fiction.
3. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.R24R64 2013
813.54—dc23
2012047321
eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0499-7
Cover design by Will Staehle
Cover art by Anton Markous
First eBook Edition
Original trade paperback edition printed in the United States of America.
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