Find Me Where the Water Ends (So Close to You)

by Rachel Carter

  The thick boughs of green create a canopy overhead, blocking any moonlight that might slip down through the leaves. Wes leads our way, ducking under low-hanging branches, moving us north and east, toward the ocean. Twenty-two follows directly behind, her back straight, her shorter legs quickly scrambling over a fallen branch, around a large boulder. They never seem to tire, never seem to fade. Tim and I keep up, but barely. I hear him stumble behind me, know that he is still clutching his arm to his chest, face white as the blood continues to seep. I push myself forward, refusing to think about water or food or rest. The fire in my leg has turned to lava, hot and boiling under my skin.

  When the light is starting to streak gray and watery through the pines, Wes finally slows. It has been hours since we heard any noise from behind us, and there are only the sounds of the forest—birds singing to each other from across the treetops, the rustling of the needles in the wind. A while back we found a small stream and crossed it several times, my sandaled feet sinking into the cold water. The fragile satin of my shoes is still not dry, but it was enough to fool the dogs, to put a few miles between us and them.

  “Up ahead,” Wes says. “Through the trees.”

  I look where he’s pointing and see a barn, one side caved partway in, the roof slanted down, the red color faded and worn. A house once stood nearby, but there is only the foundation left, a slab of concrete already crumbling at the corners.

  “We can rest,” I whisper.

  “No.” Twenty-two sounds almost angry, so different from her usual blankness. “We’ll be too exposed. We need to keep moving.”

  “We can’t keep going on like this. You and I are in gowns. Someone needs to bandage Ti—Thirty-one’s wound. And we need food.”

  “Someone owns this.” She puts her hands on her hips. Her skin is flecked with dried blood, and I see tiny cuts where the glass bit into her. “What if they come back?”

  “Anyone who used to live here is long gone.” Tim is still pale, but his voice is clear and strong. “The house was probably lost in a flood years ago. This area is all floodplains now. But it’s summer, and the waters are low. The barn should be dry.”

  These woods stretch all the way to the dunes, and the newly formed beaches where the waters rose. After the string of natural disasters, people learned from past mistakes and stopped trying to rebuild near the oceans or on old floodplains. Now the waters rise naturally in the spring, spilling over from the rivers and the oceans and onto land like the woods we’ve been hiking through all night.

  The nearest town or city isn’t for miles, the old ones swept away years ago, the highways and roads rebuilt farther inland. We are in the middle of nowhere out here, lost in a wilderness where there used to be none.

  “We’ll stay long enough to get cleaned up,” Wes says. “We could all use new clothes, if we can find them.”

  Twenty-two opens her mouth, but shuts it when Wes gives her a look. She scowls and keeps her hands firmly on her hips, though she follows us through the last few feet of the pine forest. At the edge of the old lawn there is a tangle of weeds and brambles to cross, and they pull at the ruined silk of my dress, scratch the swollen skin of my ankles. After the protection of the woods, it feels overly exposed in this small clearing, and we sprint as we push through the long, untamed grass of the forgotten yard. The barn door is at an angle, and we slip through just as dawn breaks against the edge of the trees.

  Inside it smells like sweet hay and dry wood and the musky, warm scent of horses, though the barn is long empty. The caved-in wall is on the right side, resting on the wooden beams of the old animal stalls and letting in light through the splintered boards. It’s a large space, with a hayloft above our heads and a tack room in the back. I can see a strip of darker wood that runs near the floor—the flood line, where the water rose, and still rises in the rainy months. The way the color fades as it gets to the top reminds me of the rings on a tree, a slow marking of time.

  “If there are clothes, they’ll be in the back,” Wes says.

  “I’ll look.” I walk forward, the heels of my sandals sinking into the soft dirt floor. Wes moves to follow me, but Twenty-two holds him back with a hand on his arm. It is the first time she has touched him not in character as Bea, and I stop, frozen, unable to look away from where she curves her fingers into his mud-spattered black jacket.

  “Come on.” Tim stands beside me. “I want to see if they have any medicine.”

  “Fine. Let’s look.” It is such a small thing, her hand on him, so why does it make my chest hurt so much? I touch the exposed skin near my collar, remembering a time when Wes’s pocket watch would have swung there. It was the only thing that he had from his old life, from his family, who died or abandoned him so long ago. When he first gave it to me, I knew that he loved me. But then he took it back in 1989, and I was no longer sure of anything.

  I turn, knowing Wes is watching, but then Twenty-two whispers something and he whispers back. Tim and I are already too far away to hear.

  The tack room is on the left side of the barn, spared from the fallen roof. We push open the door to see a small workbench, a cot, a set of drawers. The walls are lined with old tools—a rusted scythe, a saw with rotting wooden handles. Propped against the wall is an old shotgun.

  Tim picks up a box of shells on the desk. “At least we’ll have a weapon we can use.”

  I find clothes in the drawers: old workpants, T-shirts, moth-eaten sweaters. This room must have housed a field hand at some point. Judging by the size of his clothes he was around the same build as Wes. There are also two pairs of scuffed boots tucked up underneath the cot, and a boxy TV sits on a milk crate in the corner. It is not a plasma, not a hologram, not even solar powered, and I wonder if maybe this place was abandoned long before the flooding.

  I find a bottle of rubbing alcohol in a chipped enamel cabinet on the wall. It will have to be enough; there are none of the modern 2049 bandages that automatically clean the wound and knit the skin back together, eliminating any risk of infection. Tim stands next to the high bench, finally letting go of his elbow and laying his left arm flat on the rough wood. The gash there is deep, running the length of his forearm. The bleeding has stopped, but it has not scabbed over yet, and the wound is still a deep red, the color of ripe cherries. I rip up an old T-shirt and soak a strip in the alcohol. It stings the small cuts that line my wrist. When I start to clean his arm, Tim grits his teeth, his hand clenching into a fist then opening over and over.

  There is dirt caked in the open wound and I carefully pick out the larger chunks with my fingers. “Was this from the crash?”

  “I think from when the door was pushed in, but I don’t really remember. It was hazy.”

  “You didn’t black out?”

  I glance up to see him shake his head, his thick neck barely moving. “You were the only one who did. The impact was right on your side.”

  “It felt like I was being crushed.”

  “You were.” He is silent for a beat. “Eleven was worried.”

  “Was he?” My voice is carefully even.

  “He was out of the car before we’d even stopped moving. I don’t know how he was strong enough to rip that door away from you.”

  “I’m a member of the team. Of course he’d try to help me.” I keep my head bent, my eyes on his cut. It starts to bleed again, a slow, steady trickle, and I press the cloth into it.

  “I don’t think that’s all it is.”

  I stay quiet.

  “You two have a history?”

  He says it like a statement instead of a question, and again, I do not answer. His wound is clean now, and I wrap a new piece of cloth around it, tying the ends together tightly.

  “How is it possible? We were in the same training group. When could you have met him?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I gather the bloody, alcohol-soaked rags and move to turn away, but Tim reaches out, his hand circling my wrist.

  “You can t
rust me, you know.” His eyes look almost as green as mine, soft in the morning light that creeps in through the cracks in the walls. “You don’t have to hide from me.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “Then answer one question.”

  The dust from the barn dances in the air between us. I don’t respond, but I don’t pull away from him either.

  “Were you brainwashed?”

  I shake my head, so slightly I barely move, but I know he sees it when his eyes crinkle at the corners.

  “You remember your family, don’t you? I’m not the only one?”

  “I . . . was close to my grandfather. He helped raise me.” Now I do pull away, holding the dirty rags close to my chest.

  “Where is he now? Back in your own time?”

  I shrug, trying not to think about the floor of that cell, my grandfather rocking back and forth, lost and alone.

  “I’m sorry, Seven—” He makes a scoffing noise. “I feel ridiculous calling you by a number. Will you tell me your name?”

  I open my mouth, but then slowly shut it again. In the hotel room when he first said his name, I felt a rush of belonging, of understanding. But now our situation is even more hopeless, and knowing his name seems pointless. I am Lydia, but whether I like it or not, I’m also Seventeen. If we make it through these woods, if we can evade the Secret Service and not get killed or captured, I still have years and years of working for the Montauk Project ahead of me. I cannot even try to escape, because they’ll kill my grandfather if I do. Will telling Tim my name only hurt me in the long run? Do I even want to remember that I’m still Lydia, when my future as Seventeen is laid bare in front of me, bleak and endless?

  I turn my face from his. “We should get back to the others. Can you carry these clothes?”

  Tim sighs but doesn’t protest as he helps me grab what supplies we can find. In silence, we walk back out into the main part of the barn. Twenty-two is speaking to Wes urgently, but when she sees us she stops abruptly. Wes has his arms crossed and he looks up as we approach. I cannot read the expression on his face.

  I dump the clothes at their feet. “I don’t know if it will fit, but at least it’s better than what we have on now.”

  Wes kneels, sifting through the pile. He hands me a bundle, then Twenty-two. She sets it on one of the wooden posts and reaches for the hem of her dress. Wes turns his back but Tim stares directly at her as she yanks the torn fabric up over her head. She is wearing underwear, a scrap of silk, but no bra, and I widen my eyes at Tim until he looks away, coughing, his face burning red.

  Her casual nudity is typical of the recruits—as though their bodies have no meaning beyond a tool for the Project. I am still more modest, and while Tim and Wes are turned away I quickly pull on a black T-shirt and jeans several sizes too big.

  The pants are too small for Tim, but he yanks on one of the T-shirts, the old cotton stretching across his biceps, tight on his abs. I do not look away when he changes, and I’m surprised at how muscular he is, like a bodybuilder with his tapered waist and thick chest. There are freckles on his shoulder that seem out of place on his stocky frame. Wes catches me looking, his eyes narrowed, and I glance away.

  When Wes changes into the rough work gear I whip around until I’m facing the wall. But Twenty-two just stares at him, taking in his long, lean form, so different from Tim’s. I clench my hands together to keep myself from grabbing her shoulder, from forcing her eyes away. I shouldn’t care, I tell myself. Wes and I are nothing now.

  “There’s some food,” I say when everyone is dressed. “Not much, but a few old cans of beans.”

  “We can eat one now, save the rest for later,” Tim adds.

  Twenty-two looks at Wes and he shakes his head. She moves two fingers in a slight waving motion, and before I can process what is happening, she lunges forward. My body rocks backward as she locks her arm around my neck, a knife—she must have found it somewhere in the barn—pressed to my throat. I gasp, twisting and trying to find leverage, but she just tightens her hold. The blade pushes forward and I know that she’s going to kill me, but then she sees that Wes has not moved and her arm stills.

  “What the hell?” Tim jerks forward. Twenty-two digs in the knife and I flinch.

  “Let her go.” Wes moves one leg in front of the other as though he is getting ready to spring.

  “What are you doing?” Twenty-two demands. “You’re supposed to grab him.”

  Tim sinks into a crouch, his arms rising, but Wes barely glances at him. “I said we weren’t doing this.”

  “They’ll slow us down. If we kill them, it’ll distract the Secret Service. We’ll be able to get away.”

  I feel the blood drain from my face as I think back to the fund-raiser, to the way she touched my arm and talked about my parents so lovingly. I knew she was acting, but I was still taken in by her, lulled into thinking we were on the same side. She tricked me, with her soft voice and her words, and without meaning to I had started to equate her with Bea. I had started to trust her.

  All along she must have been planning on killing me and Tim so they’d have a better shot at survival. But Wes wouldn’t agree to that. Would he?

  I close my eyes. I once thought I would love this boy forever, and now I’m wondering if he’s capable of plotting my murder.

  When I look up Wes is staring right at me. He tips his head forward as though he is trying to tell me something, but I just hold his gaze, letting him see my anger, my confusion.

  “Let her go,” he repeats. His black eyes flicker from the knife to my face to the tense set of Twenty-two’s shoulders.

  Tim plants his feet and lifts up the shotgun. Maybe Twenty-two didn’t see it before, or maybe she cannot even fathom the idea that Tim or I would be a threat. “Drop the knife or I’ll shoot you.”

  “Take care of this,” Twenty-two snaps at Wes.

  “The only way we’ll get out of here is if we work together.” He sounds different now, more soothing, less cold, though he does not shift his weight from his forward stance.

  “It’s their fault we’re here in the first place.” I feel moisture hit my cheek as she spits out the words. It is a shock to hear her so angry, so emotional. “They screwed up the mission. They blew our cover. They’re too slow. Too inexperienced. We have to get rid of them before they get us killed too.”

  Wes puts his hand up. “Remember what Walker said.”

  “Oh right, destiny.” Her voice is thick with sarcasm. “She’s the special one. She has to make it out alive.”

  I picture General Walker sitting across from me in that cell, his hair speckled with gray, his large frame imposing as he leaned forward so urgently. I figured it was something he told all the recruits, that our destiny was to go on certain missions. But what does the special one mean? Am I different from the rest of them somehow?

  Twenty-two’s hand tightens, the point of the knife biting into my skin. Her other arm is wrapped tight around my chest. “It’s not true. She’s just the same as us. Worse, even. They’re dead weight, Eleven. If they don’t die now, then we will later.”

  I breathe slowly in and out. She may be a skilled recruit, but I am no longer a scared girl, waiting for someone to save me. I lock my muscles. All I need is one second, one chance.

  “Do you think we want to be here?” Tim actually laughs, though the sound is empty. “We’re not like you. We know there are people out there who miss us. We’re not mindless drones of the Project.”

  Wes’s face is like stone, his mouth a pressed line. I think of Tag, his best friend from his time on the streets, who took us in when we were in 1989 and treated Wes like a long lost brother. I want to tell Tim he’s wrong about Wes, maybe even about Twenty-two, but I don’t dare move. She is angrier now, and bound to make a mistake.

  The sunlight coming in through the boards is getting brighter by the minute, picking up the lighter brown highlights in Tim’s hair, making Wes’s skin seem golden. I wait, my muscles aching, for the
moment Twenty-two lessens her grip.

  “When did they take you in?” She demands from Tim. “A year ago? I’ve been here for six years. You have no idea . . .” She swallows hard, dropping the knife by barely a centimeter, but I am ready. I grab her wrist and spin until I have her bent over, her arm twisted behind her back, the knife fallen in the dirt.

  “We have no idea what?” I grind the words out.

  “What they’re capable of,” Wes answers softly. He reaches down to sweep the knife up off the floor.

  I let go of Twenty-two and she straightens, stepping away from me. Her olive skin is slick with sweat, her brown eyes wild. Like Wes, she doesn’t know how to handle her emotions, and her anger is a simmering pot that doesn’t boil but explodes.

  Now I know why she is so mad. It’s not just that Tim and I are inexperienced, or that General Walker wants me protected for some reason. It’s that we are not like her or Wes and she knows it. Even though Tim was tortured and brainwashed, even though I watched them kidnap my grandfather, we have not been broken by the Project and therefore we have not lost ourselves completely.

  “We have no choice in this either.” I push up the sleeve of my T-shirt, revealing a small raised mark on my upper arm. It is the mark of the traveler, the place where I was injected with the time-traveling serum. “I’ve had this scar since I was a baby. They’ve been planning to bring me in my entire life. I wasn’t taken off the street. I have a family. But I was destined to end up here, just like you. I never had a chance.”

  Wes—the one tasked with bringing me in, the one who lied about loving me in order to complete a mission—turns his face away.

  Twenty-two doesn’t soften. “You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like to forget everything and everyone you loved. To know that the Project is all consuming, that they will hunt you down no matter what happens. You learned your combat and your history lessons and you think you know what they’re capable of. But you have no idea.”

  “Can we please stop playing this game of ‘Who suffered more?’” Tim drops the end of the shotgun and it falls into the dirt. “Can’t we just agree that all of our lives suck?”