Altered

by Jennifer Rush

  “Dude,” Cas said, “that’s going to take forever.”

  “If we split up, it’ll only take an hour or two.”

  The others sounded doubtful, but at that point, we didn’t really have a choice. Years before, when Sam had planted the UV tattoo clue, it would have been something he knew he’d be able to figure out. So if the answer was here, we’d find it.

  We climbed from the vehicle, following the gravel road into the cemetery. Though I knew it was only my mind playing tricks on me, the cemetery felt creepier than the world outside it and I couldn’t shake the goose bumps rising along my skin.

  “Nick, head to the far back,” Sam said. “Trev opposite him. Cas to the right. I’ll take the left. And Anna…”

  “I’ll stick here to the middle, if you want.”

  “Cas, give Anna one of the flashlights.”

  I gladly took the offering.

  The others dispersed and silently I cursed myself for wanting to appear strong and useful. Now I was stuck alone in the middle of a cemetery at four AM.

  I went to the end of a row of gravesites. Marble statues rose up from the jagged line of headstones, their pale forms seeming to glow against the darkness. I passed an angel with a cascade of marble hair falling over her shoulders. Her eyes were two blank orbs, but it still felt like she watched me.

  A shiver raced down my back and I folded my arms around myself, stifling it. I read the names on the headstones as I passed, and the sentiments printed beneath.

  BEVERLY BROKLE. 1934–1994. BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER.

  STUART CHIMMER. 1962–1999. YOU WILL BE MISSED.

  Dad had promised for the last few years that we’d visit my mother’s grave in Indiana as soon as he was able to take a break from the lab. I’d never really counted on the vacation; I knew it wouldn’t happen. But now I wondered if the grave even existed.

  If my mother was alive, why did she leave me? Did she not want me? I wished I could call my dad and confront him. I wanted answers.

  Once I’d reached the end of the first row, I started down the second, running my flashlight over everything, looking for something that didn’t quite fit. I read a few odd engravings. Like Michael Tenner, whose headstone read, I KILLED THE CAT. SORRY, LOVE. And Laura Basker’s headstone, which read, DON’T CRY FOR ME. THERE IS NO LAUNDRY IN HEAVEN!

  I didn’t think Sam’s planted clue would be about laundry, but I made a mental note of the odd headstones anyway. By the time I’d reached the back part of my section, I hadn’t found anything that stood out, and I’d counted a total of eight gravesites with the name Samuel on the headstones.

  I caught sight of Cas off to the right, his shoulders hunched as he inspected a big monument with a cross rising from the top. I shut off the flashlight and stuck it in my pocket, sauntering over to meet him.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Zilch.” He stepped back from the monument and ran his hands through his blond hair, leaving it in unkempt spikes. “This seems pretty useless, doesn’t it? Don’t tell Sammy, but I think this is a dead end. Pun intended.”

  I smirked. “Yeah, but it took a while to figure out the UV-light clue. We’ve only been at this for an hour or so.”

  Cas raised his eyebrows. “And you want to hang out in a cemetery for eight hours? I don’t. I want a damn pizza.”

  “Aren’t you mildly curious to see what this all means?”

  He picked up a twig tangled in the weeds and twirled it around. “I don’t know. Who cares who I was before? Maybe I was a country club snob with one of these”—he held up the stick—“shoved up his ass.”

  I snorted. “I doubt that. Sam seems to think this is important.”

  “Maybe.” Cas looked up as footsteps scuffed through the leaves behind us.

  “You find anything?” Nick said.

  “I found a twig.”

  “No, dumbass, did you find anything important?”

  A short, shrill whistle sounded through the cemetery.

  Trev.

  We ran to the back corner. I ducked beneath the arm of a Celtic cross and fell in behind the boys at the gravesite. Overhead, the bare branches of an old tree creaked in the wind. My hair flew in my face and I turned, facing the wind, facing Sam.

  “What is it?” he asked, the moonlight catching the beads of sweat on his forehead.

  Trev gestured at a small headstone made of granite, the front face smooth and shiny. “There are no dates.”

  I read the engraving—SAMUEL CAVAR—and gasped. “Samuel Cavar was an alias you used,” I said to Sam. “I read about it in your file.”

  “Cavar is Spanish,” he said. “It means ‘to dig.’ ”

  Cas pushed up his sleeves. “Well, then, amigos, I guess we cavar the shit out of this grave.”

  12

  SAM HAD BROKEN INTO A MAINTENANCE garage toward the back of the cemetery, where he found two shovels. Cas, Trev, and Nick took turns digging alongside Sam. Sam hadn’t rotated out yet. Sweat covered the front of his T-shirt. His pants were caked with dirt. If he’d buried something here years ago, he’d buried it deep. Only his head and shoulders were visible over the mouth of the hole.

  “You don’t think you’re digging up a body, do you?” I said, clicking off the flashlight. The sky had brightened to a chill shade of gray and the sun threatened to peek over the horizon.

  “I doubt it.” He hefted more dirt onto the pile, then struck down again. A sound rang out as the metal point of the shovel hit something metal in the ground. Cas tossed his shovel aside and got down on his hands and knees. He and Sam cleared away the wet soil, revealing a box.

  I peered inside the hole.

  “What is it?” Trev asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  Sam put his hands to the edge of the hole and hoisted himself out, biceps bulging. “Hand it up,” he said to Cas.

  Cas lifted the box and passed it off. I crouched next to Sam as, with some effort, he popped open the lid. The hinges were rusty and packed with mud, but once he got them moving, they gave way easily enough. Inside the box lay a key and a tri-folded stack of paper tied tight with twine. Sam slid the twine off and unfurled the document, leaving smudged fingerprints behind.

  The paper was old and brittle, but the writing was still legible. I couldn’t help reading over his shoulder, adrenaline spiking like a jolt through my veins. This was it. This was what we’d been searching for since yesterday.

  From what I could tell, it was the deed to a house, which would explain the key. I scanned the pertinent information. The address: Whittier, Michigan. The person named as owner was Samuel Marshall. Another alias, most likely. Which made me wonder: What was his true name?

  “Is any of this familiar?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “But it’s something, right? I mean… it’s a step.”

  He gave a barely perceptible nod.

  Behind us, the boys filled the hole in a fraction of the time it had taken to dig it. Cas and Trev patted down the disturbed earth. Nick sauntered over to Sam’s side. “So, what did you find?”

  Sam held up the deed. “It might be a safe house.”

  “Yeah, like the last one?”

  “No one’s making you stay, Nick. You got somewhere else to be, you can leave whenever you want.”

  Nick leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree and crossed his arms over his chest.

  As Trev attended to the hole, replacing the scalped sod, Cas said, “I gotta take a piss,” and disappeared. Sam returned the shovels to the maintenance shed, leaving me to awkwardly stand by as Nick sulked.

  “I think he’s doing his best.” The statement was punctuated with a white cloud of my breath.

  Nick shoved his hands into his pants pockets. He must have been freezing without a jacket. “Self-preservation is more important than figuring out these clues, like it’s some shitty board game.”

  “It’s hard to protect yourself when you don’t even know who you are or why you were
part of the program to begin with.”

  Nick pushed off the tree with one foot and set his steely blue eyes on me. “I might not remember who I was before all this, but I can bet it wasn’t all sunshine and fucking roses.”

  The hard edges of his scowl softened, but just barely. Seeing an opening, I said, “Your parents might be out there somewhere, looking for you.”

  “Or maybe not. Maybe they never cared to begin with.” He stalked off before the others returned, leaving me to wonder: Was he right? Were the answers to the questions worse than not knowing?

  13

  AFTER WE LEFT LANCASTER, DREARY clouds blotted out the sun, spitting rain against the windshield. Back at home, Dad had watched the weather report every morning. If I got up early enough, I’d make some coffee and join him in the living room. But I always knew what the weather was supposed to be like whether I watched or not. Dad warned me about the forecast if he thought it important.

  It bothered me that I hadn’t prepared for this weather, never mind the fact that we weren’t in New York. I was so used to knowing everything. The weather. My school schedule for the day. My to-do list for the lab. I didn’t know anything anymore. I didn’t even know where my next meal would come from.

  Using the map Sam had bought at a gas station, we drove through Whittier—a small town with country charm fit for a nostalgic postcard. A big banner strung up over the main road said the town’s Pumpkin Palooza was scheduled for the following weekend. Scarecrows stood like sentries in front of the little shops.

  The downtown strip faded behind us as we headed farther and farther north. When we started down the road indicated on the deed, Sam reached over and turned off the pop song playing on the radio. Silence inflated like a life raft, filling the spaces around us. I wrung my hands. What would we do if this house was a dead end?

  We drove up and down the long dirt road, checking mailboxes. None of the addresses matched the one on the house deed, but maybe that was deliberate. Finally, we spotted an overgrown track leading back into the woods, the drive located where our address should be, between 2156 and 2223.

  As Sam pulled into the driveway, Nick racked a bullet in the chamber of one of the guns. Cas and Trev followed suit, all of them working in perfect synchronization.

  About a mile from the road, the trees thinned out, giving way to a clearing. A cabin sat in the middle. Even in the shade of the storm clouds and in its state of disrepair, the cabin still managed to look homey. The shake-shingle exterior was weathered and faded to the perfect shade of red. A few rusty lawn chairs sat on a crooked porch, an empty flowerpot forgotten between them. A dead tree branch hung off the porch as if it had fallen there in a storm and had never been moved.

  The windows were dark and covered in a thin sheet of dust and dirt. The only car in the driveway was ours. The place looked empty, but despite that, it felt empty, the loneliness hanging in the air like old tobacco smoke, waiting for someone to blow it away.

  “What now?” I said. Rain continued to plink against the windshield, the drops becoming fatter and more frequent.

  “Nick and Cas around back,” Sam said. “I’ll take the front door. Trev, stay here with Anna.”

  I didn’t want to sit idly in the vehicle, but I didn’t want to search the house, either. I was afraid of what I’d do if I found more evidence of my mother.

  The boys exited the vehicle with the sort of silent agility that contradicted their size. Nick and Cas ran around back, guns at their sides. Sam went right, to the tiny garage that sat detached from the house. He checked the lone window there before leaping onto the house’s front porch and sliding along the wall.

  At the front door, he pulled out the key he’d found in the cemetery and tried the lock. The key worked, the door opened, and he disappeared inside.

  “What do you think?” I whispered.

  Trev propped an elbow on his knee. “It seems safe.”

  “More so than the one in Pennsylvania.”

  “Agreed.” I felt him watching me. “There’s nothing wrong with hoping.”

  I turned around. “For what?”

  “Your mother.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Hearing someone else talk about my mother made it more real, like it was possible she was inside that cabin, waiting for me.

  “What if she isn’t alive?” I slumped against the seat. “What if all this wishing is for nothing?”

  “ ‘In all things it is better to hope than to despair.’ ”

  “Whose quote is that?”

  Trev smirked, folding his hands together. He loved it when I asked him for more information, when I gave him the opportunity to show off. “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”

  “What’s the Aristotle one? The one about hope?”

  His eyes lost focus as he dug for the quote I wanted. I could see the moment when he remembered it, the glimmer returning to his amber eyes. I’d never met anyone with a real lightbulb expression like Trev’s.

  “ ‘Hope is a waking dream.’ ”

  I let the words echo in my head. The quote reminded me of that feeling you get when you start to wake from a dream you don’t want to leave. That crushing sensation in the center of your chest, like you are losing an important piece of yourself you won’t ever get back.

  That’s what hope was. Clinging to something you weren’t sure would ever be yours. But you had to hold on anyway, because without it, what was the point?

  That fit my life perfectly, in so many ways. Even more so now.

  Sam reappeared on the front porch and waved for us, which I thought revealed enough of what he’d found. If my mother had been inside, he would have come out to warn me himself. So she wasn’t waiting. And even though I’d told myself I wouldn’t believe she’d be there, I had. The eagerness burned out and crackled.

  We entered into a living room, where a few armchairs faced a brick fireplace. A couch rested against the far wall. Cobwebs hung like Spanish moss from a brass lamp.

  A large kitchen took up the back corner of the other side of the house. A long, rectangular table filled the space to the right of the front door. Directly in front of me, stairs led up to the second floor.

  Thunder followed a flash of lightning, the low rumble reverberating through the bare wood floors. Rain continued to patter against the windows, washing away the dirt. I pulled my jacket closed as the wind kicked up and crept through the cabin’s cracks.

  “Is it safe?” I asked as Sam walked by.

  “As far as I can tell.”

  My shoulders relaxed. We’d just left the lab the day before, but it felt like we’d been on the run forever. Being in an actual house, tucked in the middle of nowhere, drained some of the pent-up anxiety from my bones.

  I dropped onto the couch and was greeted with a cloud of dust. I coughed, clearing the air with a wave of my hand. This place needed a good scrubbing. My fingers itched to do something. I’d been in charge of the cleaning at home, and I worried about it now that I was gone. I couldn’t imagine the house surviving on its own without me there to look after it. Or maybe what I really meant was that I couldn’t imagine my dad surviving without me to take care of him.

  Was he worried about me like I was worried about him?

  I jumped from the couch, restless, and joined Cas in the kitchen. A cobweb stretched over his hair. I nabbed it, holding it in front of him so he could see. “Sometimes I think you’re hopeless.”

  He put an arm around me. “That’s why I have you. You’re good at keeping us in line.”

  “And by us you mean you.”

  “Sure. Whatever.” He left my side and tried the burners on the stovetop. Nothing happened. “Damn it. I’m frickin’ starving.”

  “You are perpetually starving.”

  “I’m used to having three square meals a day.”

  “If the house has been untouched for years—and it looks like it has been—I doubt anything is usable.” I moved around the L-shaped kitchen counter to the window that lo
oked out on the garage. “Have you been out there yet?”

  “No. But I’m game for an adventure. What do ya say?”

  I grinned. “Game.”

  The others were in the living room, inspecting the fireplace and the chimney. Cas let Sam know where we were headed before we eased out the back door. We ran from the porch to the door at the side of the garage. A kiss of rain hit my face and I shielded my eyes with one hand. Cas rammed his shoulder against the door and it swung open, scraping against the concrete floor. Poor light stole through the two small windows, but it was enough to see what we were dealing with.

  “Look.” I hurried to the far left corner. “A grill. We could barbecue.”

  Cas’s expression was nothing short of ecstasy as he caressed the black steel dome that made up the grill’s hood. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I had a grilled steak? Or a barbecued chicken leg?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Um… a long time?”

  He ignored me. “All those damn barbecue commercials on TV. Dangling it right in front of my face like a frickin’ carrot in front of a donkey.”

  “How do you even know what barbecue sauce tastes like? You never had it in the lab.”

  “A man never forgets the taste of barbecue. I probably had it before the lab.” He hoisted the grill hood and took a whiff. “Oh, God—it still smells like charcoal and sizzling meat.”

  “It’s amazing you don’t weigh three hundred pounds.”

  He pushed up the sleeve of his sweaty, muddy shirt and flexed his biceps. “All that food gave me this svelte figure, I’ll have you know.”

  I eyed the bulkiness of his arm, the broadness of his shoulders. “Svelte means ‘slender.’ ”

  “But it also means to have clean lines. Which obviously I do.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  I left him to drool over the grill while I surveyed what else might be useful. Some yard tools had been organized on rubber-coated hooks on the far wall. Different-sized boards were stacked up below the tools. Directly across from that, I spotted a power box and a bulky contraption on the floor beneath it. “What is that?”