by Carter, Ally
Small lines on the wall tell me what tunnels I’ve explored, so I set off down one of the branches that I haven’t yet marked.
It’s just like all the others. Rough walls and sloping floors. I turn the flashlight off and try imagining the space around me in the glow of the Scarred Man’s torch. I try to picture myself running away from it or toward.
I close my eyes, let them adjust to the black, and that is when I hear it. A low, steady whirling that I’ve heard once before.
The tunnels are so far underground in most places that the noise of the world outside disappears completely. You hear scampering vermin and dripping water, but nothing mechanical, modern, or man-made can usually permeate those old stone walls. Here, though, it’s different. The sound is like a siren song, and I don’t think. I just keep walking.
When the path branches again, I follow the sound until it stops. It must come and go, off and on, I realize. It’s probably an air-conditioning unit, something that only runs part of the time. But I heard it. I really did. I don’t think about what Noah said — I don’t wonder if my mixed-up mind has imagined the whole thing. Not when I turn my flashlight on and the beam flashes across the ladder. Not when I look up and clearly see the trapdoor that lies just over my head.
I may be wrong, I tell myself. This could be the South Korean embassy all over again. I don’t know for certain that I’ve found my way back to the place where the Scarred Man had his meeting. There’s no telling what might be waiting for me on the other side of that trapdoor.
And yet, relief surges inside me, followed by an emotion I can’t bring myself to name. And, as I climb, there is one thought pounding in my head: I wish I could tell Noah.
As soon as my fingers touch the carpet, I know that I’ve found the right building. There’s the same stiff, scratchy feel beneath my fingers, the same dim lights overhead. I have found the Scarred Man’s meeting place, but I still don’t know where I am.
Slowly, I stand and close the trapdoor. The carpet is in squares, and the door drops neatly into place like a piece of a puzzle. Even in the glow of my flashlight, I can barely make out the cracks.
I turn off my flashlight and put it in my pocket, then creep quietly down the hall. Again, there are no signs on the walls. No books. No clocks or posters or clues of any kind.
As I ease around the corner, my hands start to shake. My heart starts to pound. And that’s when I realize there are footsteps on the stairs. Someone is coming. I can’t be found here. I can’t be dragged back to my grandfather with no good excuse for how I ended up inside another building where I’m not supposed to be.
I’m turning, starting to run, when I hear, “Grace?”
I know the voice, and that’s what scares me. I’d give anything for it to be a stranger, but it’s not.
“Grace, sweetheart.” Ms. Chancellor flips a switch, and instantly the basement is flooded with light. “What are you doing down here?”
“Exploring,” I tell her as the fluorescent bulbs buzz and hum, coming to life.
“Oh, well, it’s not the prettiest part of the embassy, but I suppose it does have a degree of mystery.”
She makes a flourish with her hands and opens the door to the room where the Scarred Man had been. She flips on another light, and I see rows and rows of dusty shelves. There are books and old typewriters, a radio, and at least a dozen American flags, all packed neatly away and standing at attention.
It’s maybe the most harmless room ever, and yet my mind is running a million miles an hour and I cannot let her see.
I cannot let her know.
“What are you up to?” I say, my voice light.
“Your grandfather and I are going to watch a movie later, but we only have it on — aha!”
She pulls an old projector off one of the high shelves. It’s ancient, and dust cascades down onto her perfect suit. No one has used it in ages, and part of me thinks that it won’t even work. But she’s so proud of herself that I don’t say anything.
“You should join us,” Ms. Chancellor tells me. “Roman Holiday. It’s about a princess on the run in Rome, and Gregory Peck plays an American journalist who — oh, I don’t want to spoil it. Please come watch it with us.”
“Okay,” I somehow mutter. “Maybe.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” she says with a wink. Then she turns and starts back toward the stairs — her high heels clicking in the distance — leaving me exactly where I am supposed to be.
I am inside the United States embassy.
And so was the man who killed my mother when he found out that he was supposed to kill again.
Technically, I’m already home. I only have to go upstairs. Close the door. Lie down on my pink canopy bed and be a normal girl. But whatever chance I had for normal disappeared three years ago. It went up in smoke.
So I creep back into the tunnels. This time I do not run away. There is no pounding in my head or in my veins. It is like I am moving in slow motion. I feel like I’m walking in a dream.
Once, I stop and lean against the rough walls and try to catch my breath. I worry I might get lost again. I worry about so many things — all the time. But I keep walking. And when I finally climb out into the street, I start to run, faster and faster down the hill.
The Scarred Man was meeting someone in the US embassy. That is where his accomplice lives — or at least works. For days I’ve been worrying about where the Scarred Man had been — who his accomplices might be.
Now I’m not worried.
Now I’m terrified.
So I run faster, arms pumping at my side. Is Noah spending the night in Israel or Brazil? Brazil, I think. No. Israel. I stop mid-stride. I turn in a flash.
I’m supposed to be running in the opposite direction, but my legs no longer work. My arms can’t move. All I can do is stand in the deserted street. And stare.
“You,” I say.
The Scarred Man smiles. “Hello, Grace.”
I will not scream. I will not run. I will not lose control. Because, right now, my control might be all I have.
The man is coming closer, the slow, easy strides of someone out for an evening stroll. His hands are in his pockets. When he nears me, his smile widens.
“I’m Dominic,” the man says. “Forgive me if I scared you. I know your grandfather, so I thought I’d say hello. I shouldn’t have —”
“I’m not scared,” I blurt.
But he looks like maybe he knows better. “I’m an old friend of your mother’s.”
The Scarred Man is here. The Scarred Man is looking at me, smiling at me, and talking about my mother.
The flashlight in my sweater pocket is heavy and solid, not one of those cheap plastic numbers. It’s hardly a weapon, but it’s better than nothing. My fingers go around it, squeezing tight. I move my feet a little, staggering my stance, balancing my weight.
“You don’t know me, Grace.”
There’s a seriousness to his words. The pretense is gone. I know what he’s really saying when I tell him, “I know enough.”
He steps closer. I step back.
“And you’ve never been wrong about anything? Ever?”
I step farther back, into the glow of the streetlight. And when the Scarred Man joins me, for a second I cannot see his scar. It stays hidden in the shadows, and I’m looking at a man with broad shoulders and dark hair flecked with gray. He’s so handsome with his strong jaw and five-o’clock shadow. And I wonder for a second if he would still look evil if he didn’t have that scar.
The answer, I decide, is a definite, resounding yes.
There is something in his eyes as he tells me, “You look like her. When I first saw you — at the ball — I thought you were her. I can see a lot of your mother in you. And that is a very good thing.”
“You don’t know that,” I say.
But then the strangest thing happens. The Scarred Man laughs.
“You sound like her, too,” he tells me.
“You do
n’t know anything about her!” I snap.
But this doesn’t throw the Scarred Man at all. “We grew up together, Grace,” he says. “I knew your mother all of her life.”
Her life. Until he ended it.
“She used to love sneaking out her window when she was your age. Tell me, is that how you got out tonight? Did you climb down the tree? Or did you use the tunnels?”
Now I really can’t say anything.
The Japanese embassy is across the street. The gates for Australia are twenty yards away. There will be a guard posted. I could yell. I could run. I could —
But before I can even finish the thought, the Scarred Man steps away.
“You should go home now, Grace.” His face is covered in shadow. His voice is soft but strong. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
It takes a moment for the panic to come. And when it does, it descends slowly. Like all the oxygen is being sucked out of the air. It doesn’t matter that I’m outside. It makes no difference that the wind still blows off the sea. I’m running out of air.
Images are coming quickly, rapid-fire in my mind. I see my mother in her shop. The way the light reflects off of the gun. I hear the shot and smell the smoke.
The Scarred Man grabs her arm and I try to yell “No!” but the word is a silent sob.
My breath comes harder and harder. I can feel my heart pounding. It’s like my ears want to explode. I move with cautious, careful steps because I don’t want to lose my balance. I cannot bear to fall.
My fingers scrape against the wall of the embassy beside me. I double over, try to breathe. When I close my eyes I see the Scarred Man’s face, his left cheek in the light. But no. It can’t be his left check because there’s no scar. And for some reason that makes my breath come harder.
I’m going to suffocate in the middle of the street. I’m going to die, betrayed by my weakness. I’m not tough enough to live.
I want to go to Noah. To Megan. I want to yell for Rosie to sound every alarm in the great walled city, but I cannot go to them. Not anymore. So I force myself up the hill, past the little house where the marines are stationed. Past the gates where I live. I don’t dare stop at the gates of whatever traitor the Scarred Man came to meet.
So I walk on. And when I reach the next set of gates, I start to bang. There is a guard who doesn’t know how to react. He speaks to me in a language I don’t know.
And I choke out the only word that I can think to say.
“Alexei! I need to see —”
“Grace.”
He’s in the street behind me. Worry fills his face.
I should know better — be stronger — but I rush toward him. And when his arms go around me, I don’t fight them.
He isn’t the boy who warned me not to climb the wall. He’s the boy who gripped my hand as I lay on the courtyard, telling me not to look at the blood. Soothing me. Telling me it was going to be okay.
I still can’t breathe and he sees it, takes my face in his hands, forces me to stare into his eyes.
“It’s okay,” he says. “You’re going to be okay.” Then the boy next door takes my hands and pulls me away from the staring guard. We are not American and Russian — not enemies or allies. We are just a boy and a girl in the mood to run away.
It takes me a moment to realize where we’re going. I haven’t been down the tiny alley in years. But it’s still here, a small space between the Russian and US walls. A gap. A no-man’s-land. A remnant of the Cold War that isn’t even wide enough for a trash can, but Alexei and I just fit. We always have.
The stones are rougher here, jutting out from the walls on either side of us, and in such a close space they’re almost like a ladder, rising to the big wall that circles the city. I can’t breathe, I tell myself. But I have always been able to climb.
“You need a leg up?” he asks with a smile, taunting me just enough to make me forget my panic and my fear. For a moment we are standing so close that I can feel the pounding of his heart.
“See you at the top,” I say.
It’s a familiar feeling as I rise slowly to my old place on top of the wall. I sit, gripping the edge, while Alexei takes his place beside me, one leg dangling over the wall’s edge, the other at my back.
I’ve been surrounded by boys and men my whole life, always there, making me feel smaller, weaker. Different. None of them has ever sat as close as Alexei is sitting now. None of them has ever leaned forward like he’s leaning forward, like life itself might hang in the balance of my every word.
“Grace” — he leans down and finds my eyes — “breathe.”
It is an order. A command. And I know that I must follow it. So I do. I close my eyes and suck the sweet sea air in through my nose and out through my mouth. I let my heart keep pounding deeply, evenly.
I am alive and strangely grateful for it. By the time Alexei says, “Just so you know, you don’t have to tell me what’s going on,” I’ve almost forgotten he is here. “You don’t have to say a thing. You just have to sit here. And breathe.”
So I do. And, true to his word, Alexei doesn’t talk again.
I listen to the ocean and feel the breeze, and soon my breath comes without thinking. Soon, it is like talking to the wind.
“My grandfather hates me. Did you know that? Is that in the Russian daily briefings? Well, he does. Really. He hates me.”
“Your grandfather adores you.”
“He used to. When I was little. And cute. I used to be cute once — not that you’d remember.”
“He called you Snowball,” Alexei adds with a laugh. It’s a detail I’d almost forgotten, how it never snows here and my grandfather would watch me run around, my white hair blowing in the wind like dandelions. Like snow. He loved me then. But now … now I am something he despises.
He’s a smart man.
I despise me, too.
“Grace, breathe. All you have to do is breathe.”
And for a second, I let myself believe him.
I am safe, high above the city. No one can find me here. No one will get me. I can run and run and run around the wall. No one — not even my own ghosts — are fast enough to follow.
“Tell me something,” Alexei says. “About you. About the past three years. Tell me what I’ve missed.”
So I say the only thing that matters. “My mother died.”
“I know.” Alexei sounds like he now regrets asking the question. He looks out at the sea. “I wanted to go to the funeral, but my father said it wasn’t appropriate. I should have been there. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I wasn’t there either.”
He doesn’t ask me why, and I am glad. I don’t want to tell him that I was in a hospital, strapped to a bed, chemicals fogging my brain and making me dream terrible dreams.
I reach down and touch my wrists. I can still feel the cuffs of the restraints, the shearling lining that was probably soft once but had grown stiff from too many years of sweat and blood and terror. He doesn’t know that I would jump from this wall and gladly break my other leg before I would ever let my wrists be bound again.
“Grace?” Alexei says when the weight of my silence becomes too heavy.
“I saw the man who killed my mother. He’s here. I talked to him.”
I wait for Alexei to tell me that I’m wrong. I wait for his eyes to say that I’m lying. But he stays silent, watching. Listening.
So I whisper, “And he’s going to do it again.”
The lecture is supposed to come now, but it doesn’t. Alexei shifts and leans slightly forward, hands braced between us.
“And you discussed this with your grandfather?”
I shake my head. “He doesn’t believe me. But I heard it, Alexei. I swear. I saw him. And I heard him. And I —”
“I believe you.”
It’s like he’s speaking to the sea. I’m almost certain I’ve misheard him. I want to lose respect for him, call him a fool. But I just keep talking. About everything. About nothin
g. I tell him about the tunnels and the Scarred Man’s late-night trip to my embassy, about the new threat he poses and seeing him on the street. I talk like I’m not talking to Alexei at all.
“You should have told me,” he says when I’m finished. But Alexei doesn’t know what I know: that telling people doesn’t get you help. It gets you strapped to a bed in a psych ward. It gets you three years of looks and fears and dread.
“You wouldn’t have believed me.” My voice cracks and I hate myself for it. I hate myself so much.
“Yes, I would have. And then you wouldn’t have been on your own.”
I think about Noah and Megan and Rosie. Telling Alexei about them feels more like telling a grown-up. Like maybe I might get them in trouble. But I don’t want to hide anything from him either. So I tell him.
“Now” — I wipe my runny nose on my sleeve — “not even they believe me.”
“Listen to me, Grace. Listen to me,” he says slowly. “You don’t talk to Dominic again. You don’t go in the tunnels by yourself. You don’t go anywhere by yourself. Do you hear me? You’re going to be careful. And you’re going to include me.”
“I —”
“No, Grace. You don’t get to be stubborn this time. This time you have to be safe. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, knowing it’s bigger than me and my multitude of issues.
“From now on, we’re a team. Right?”
When the wind blows my hair across my face Alexei reaches up and tucks a piece behind my ear.
“Right.”
“Now, come on.” He scoots back the way we climbed up. “I guess I should walk you home.”
He doesn’t mention Jamie.
There is no lecture in his tone or his eyes. We’re almost to the embassy’s gates, and then he’s closer than he was. I feel the gate against my back. The gaslight goes dim, and there is nothing but the pounding of my heart in my chest. One more time I cannot breathe, thinking about how — right now — he doesn’t look like Alexei. He doesn’t feel like my brother’s best friend. He is old and familiar and he is new and alive. Both. I feel it now. I feel everything.
