The air rippled.
Where was color? Where was sound?
Everything went out of focus. A high-pitched ring was the first noise I heard when I could hear again, followed by muffled voices.
Through the blur, a line of men and women ran toward us. Uniforms, weapons.
The head HSI guy, Agent Chuck, was screaming at us to get out.
Feds were everywhere. Armored vehicles, police cars, fire engines, ambulances.
“Jojo and Mattey never came out!” I shouted. “We have to go back! Lobenzo took Jane and Savannah! The entrance to the tunnel—it’s in there. I told you! I told you!”
“We know!” Chuck yelled, forcibly dragging me behind police lines. “We found the entrance by the pharmacy on the other side of the border. Mexican cops and our guys pumped colored smoke through from that end to see where it popped up here. Sure enough, it started pouring out from Maddison’s warehouse here. See? Look!”
I looked up at the sky to see a plume of deep purple intertwined with the thick black smoke from the explosions.
“Seeing that purple smoke. That was our just cause to storm Maddison Electric without a warrant. But you damn fools took it on yourselves first! You didn’t give us that chance!”
Another tank blasted into a fireball of toxic orange, and we all hit the dirt.
I used the moment of confusion to wrench myself to my feet and take off running, lopsided and crooked, barely able to function on my shot-up leg. But I had to get back in there, to the tunnel, to rescue my friends, to save Jane.
“Stop him!” I heard Chuck yell.
I dropped to my stomach and crawled out of sight. I kept pushing back toward the inferno that housed the entrance to the tunnel. But there was no getting back inside the burning building. Flames danced up the wooden beams and fanned out across the debris ahead me.
I couldn’t catch my breath. I collapsed to the ground. No. Get back up. Now. Do it. Face in the dirt, my gaze fell to the sideways horizon. The dry riverbed, cracked and muddy, came into focus. The ground was uneven and angled down in a weird sinkhole, like it had caved in . . . like it had caved in on a tunnel! A burst of energy brought me back up to my feet, and I scrambled toward that gaping hole in the ground.
“Cade!” I heard a voice call out from the smoke.
It was Jojo and, beside her, Mattey. They emerged from the flames, and we collapsed against each other in a split-second embrace. There was no time to talk. They were alive. They were here. That was all that mattered.
“Mattey, get everyone down here to dig. I found the tunnel!”
He took off running. Jojo and I started picking through the rubble.
“Jane!” we screamed. “Savannah!”
I was scratching at the dirt like an animal, my hands rubbed bloody and raw. I wouldn’t stop. Not until I found her.
JANE
The blood around me was the blood that should be in me. The red was how I was ending.
I stared beyond it to the thin and thick blades of grass, either fighting or giving in to the push of the wind off the dry riverbed. The dirt was spiked with broken pilings, splintered, reaching. I tried to reach my own arms up, to pull myself out of the rubble. I had to get to Savannah. I had to show Cade I was still here.
The wind moves and moves nowhere. I could smell everything burning overhead.
Taking on the cartel. What we did was like trying to uproot a river, yanking the current from the mud, silt from the rocks. Together we wrenched and raised all that flows and tangles, spinning or winding, above the ground. Streams flowed sideways, crashing into downpours, the thunder of a sky forced into thinner air, a surface sliced from earth, trees dangling on the edges. All sense of space in space now, black, weightless, lost.
The riverbed was dry, the crater enormous. It was the only thing visible from this quiet orbit, schools of minnows reflecting, shimmering like stars. Reeds and weeds freeze with no oxygen, dry into spears.
“Jane!”
Dust and dirt crumbled overhead, and bright sky blinded. In pieces there is peace.
The river becomes ice and rock. It either shatters or is the island.
I tried to say something.
Cade’s hands reached down.
I reached up.
He pulled me into him.
Like the first day I met him.
Ten, nine, eight . . . Counting would move us backward, and we would spin and tumble and emerge squeaky-clean to last June, before all this began, before all our strands snapped and threads tangled. It was time to start again.
“Krista,” I whispered to him. “My name is Krista.”
“Krista,” Cade repeated, as if saying hello to me for the first time. “We made it, Krista. I promise. I’m here.”
CADE
It was like pulling her out of a shallow grave.
The feds caught up to me, surrounded me, and then descended into the hole, searching for signs of Lobenzo. They slid Savannah onto a stretcher, placed oxygen over her mouth.
But I grabbed Jane . . . Krista. I grabbed Krista, and even though I could barely walk, I carried her like she was about to disappear. She was bleeding and broken, like the day I first met her. She never asked me to save her that day. And I never knew she would save me every day since in so many small ways.
Home is her.
My world left perfectly askew, blown apart and put back together. I could have been run over, standing there on the tracks, but instead I jumped on this train, hauled myself in, never looked back. A couple of kids took on the wolf.
Lobenzo. His body’s burning somewhere in that tunnel.
“We’re going to be safe now.”
She was fading. I wouldn’t let that happen. We were going to be all right. We were going to be all right. I repeated it with each step I took toward the ambulances.
I remembered how once I saw a group of little sparrows take on a red-tailed hawk. The hawk flew at them singular and solo, disrupting their shape, and as they scattered, he made his strike.
But then the sparrows swung in a sharp turn together. They became one big bird, with all their beating wings and stabbing beaks moving in unison. And they came back at that hawk, and they drove him away. The flock can be a hawk to the hawk.
KRISTA
Cade’s voice brought me back. My eyes flickered open to the flashing lights, the faces that promised me protection. I registered each person. The boy I love. My friends. My only family.
No matter where we would have to go now to be safe, to move on, to rebuild, home was us. And we would certainly need that in the months to come. Hospitals. News cameras. Courtrooms. Testimony. Witness protection. The fallout from an accidental war.
Life as we knew it in Tanner, Texas, would be over now. But the life we would know instead glimmered hope.
The horizon shifted in and out of focus as we picked our way to safety, uneven steps on uneven ground.
The ground beneath us can be dry or dead.
Or the ground beneath us can be carved out. A way out. Toward something better.
There is the earth you stand on. And then there is what you unearth—tunnels to the darkest places that lead you out into the brightest sun.
We fought through the storm and made it to land.
Cade is the shore. Unconditional. Jojo, Mattey, the way we learned to love. We are the gravity that holds us to the earth. We are the beginning of the light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the team at Razorbill, I’m so incredibly lucky to go on this journey with you. You are forward-thinking, edgy, and relevant, and create the perfect balance between commercial and literary. From cover art to edits to marketing, I’m so proud and grateful to bring my debut novel to life with you.
Jess. My editor. My superhero. Do people know about all your powers? You turned my story into a book. You’re destine
d for an incredible career and I’m beyond lucky to have gotten to work with you on Hide with Me. My writing is forever changed for the better because of you.
Tamar, you are a secret bolt of lightning. When you called and said that you missed your train stop because you were reading my manuscript, I knew I had just won the literary agent lottery. Thank you for loving my story, selling my story, and making my dream come true.
Jarrod, my husband, my backbone. Thank you for believing in me, pushing me, and picking up the pieces of Boni bombs as I tried to juggle it all. You gave me Texas. You gave me Cade. And you helped me discover that I even had a Lobenzo in me. This story would not exist without you.
Mom and Bap, you showed me the world and filled it with wonder. From the stories you read to me, to the ones you told me . . . thank you for the great gift of imagination. You are the roots I draw from and stars I reach for. Everything I achieve is because of you.
Dev, my little brother. From the first stories I told you about Stinky the lizard, to our radio stations, to all of our crazy games, you inspired so much of the childhood creativity that turned me into “me.” Thank you for reading early drafts, and for your invaluable feedback and unconditional support.
Aimee, you (somehow) made it through my time-traveling lifeguard book. I love you for that and for your unwavering support. You keep me laughing. You keep me striving. You keep me sane.
Lisa. Thank you for Rome. From the first drafts of Keystone to last drafts of Fallow you’ve helped me craft every story that fills my heart. I am beyond grateful. There’s a lifetime of collaboration on books and filmmaking ahead for us. A friend like you is what empires are made of.
Chris, there are three things we always need to do: eat, drink, and go to the bathroom. Thanks for always taking care of me. You can’t write a book without a big brother having your back.
Dominique, my YA writing partner, the best discovery of the century. What if? Find it! Thank you for brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms. Your passion and knowledge have been an incredible blessing. Tour bus filled with unicorns and coffee, here we come!
Tuki. You’ve always known my heart. His Eyes Shine of the Sea was my first “novel” and you were my first fan. Thank you for encouraging me to follow my dreams. Budu, the stories we spun to get out of trouble is probably where it all began. Kakima, Norkaku, both master storytellers, I wish you were here to celebrate.
Mom Holbrook, you never blow smoke, so I know when I’m on fire! You make me believe in my worth and challenge me to up my game. Dad Holbrook, there’s nothing more encouraging than when you announce “that’s my daughter-in-law!!!” always with a million exclamation points.
My early readers and best cheerleaders, your critiques, feedback, and excitement made this happen: Misty, for reading my book in a day (at work, sshh). Christine, my “person.” Julie, my perfect combo. Marcia, for asking all the right questions. Martina, you always knew I wanted to be an author, and knew better than me I should go for it. Thank you for reading every story and idea I send your way. Islay, thank you for teaching me that “sometimes you have to throw up your art and make this ugly thing, to make way for the great thing.”
Steven Cramer. You said once a poem is simply words that never danced together before. This book is full of dances you helped me find.
Justin. A long time ago you pulled the raw honesty from the sticky angst. Thank you for celebrating every success (including kindertransport and wheelchairs rolling down the stairs).
Mrs. Gray—for your creative writing unit back in fifth grade. Getting to read aloud to the class and have them lean forward and say, “what’s next?” all excited and vested in my stories, is what made me “want to be an author when I grow up.”
“Agent Chuck”—you know who you are. Thank you for the true accounts of border conflicts, violence, and cartel takedowns. Thank you for the purple smoke that inspired it all.
Jase, the little love of my life, everything I do is for you. If I wasn’t pregnant in the pool house, taking a little break from news, I never would have had time to pursue my passion and finish this book. You’ve taught me what matters in every possible way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sorboni Banerjee is an Emmy Award-winning television news reporter and anchor. She spent a decade on the air in Boston, before moving to Tampa as a consumer reporter and anchor. She's the daughter of an Indian physicist who made her a storyteller and showed her the world, and a mother from Maine who taught her to love books and save the world, and she has a little brother who probably will. Sorboni lives in Florida with her investigative reporter husband, adorable son, and giant dog. This is her first novel.
Visit Sorboni online at sorbonibanerjee.com. And connect on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @sorbonified.
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