The Daybreak Bond

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  I took the bottle from him and took a long sip. My mouth and throat had gone completely dry. Another long drink, and I tried not to worry where we would find water to refill.

  He grinned and shook his head. “I’m sorry, you know. About earlier. I don’t think you’re a snob.”

  The fence had ripped a hole in the top of my sneaker, and I picked at a thread.

  “It’s just that … Well, there’s so much we don’t know. So much that’s different than we thought out here. And Ilana. What else aren’t they telling us?”

  “Old Harmonie isn’t some vast conspiracy.”

  “I know, it’s just that—”

  “Julia!” Benji’s voice rang out, and Theo and I turned to see the Rottweiler standing above Julia, whose body lay across the tracks.

  I leaped toward the fence. Theo grabbed my shirt. “Mori, wait.”

  I shook him off and climbed back over the fence, then scrambled down the hill. I sprinted toward Benji and Julia.

  I could hear feet behind me and I really wasn’t sure if they were people feet or dog feet. My eyes were trained on Julia like lasers. I saw nothing else. I ran with both hands in front of me and when I got to them I pushed the dog so hard it fell over. When it stood up, it growled low and guttural. “Go away!” I yelled. My heartbeat shook my body. The dog growled. “Go away!” I yelled again.

  Ilana strode past me, right at the growling dog. “Yeah!” she said. “Go away!” She took a decisive step toward it, and it turned tail and ran.

  I dropped to my knees next to Julia. Her eyes were wide in her ashen face. It looked like she had fallen in red mud. It was not mud, though. It was the flesh of her leg where the dog had taken a huge bite.

  9

  “Holy cheesecakes!” The voice came from behind us. I whipped around and there was the kid who had come so close to finding us before. He had bright blond hair—almost white in the sun—and flashing blue eyes that seemed more curious than menacing. The faces of his friends surrounded him. They were about our age, three girls and a boy. One girl had red dots all over her skin. Next to her was a tiny girl who looked at the ground and picked at her own fingers. “That was so bananas,” the boy went on. “Like on a scale of one to ten, it was a ninety-nine. The way you all chased the dogs off like, Rawrrrr! Go away! Leave our friend alone! Not bad. Not bad at all.”

  “Shut up!” I yelled. “Shut up unless you’re going to help us!”

  “Well, that’s a fine how do you do,” the boy said. McPhee, they had called him. Tommy McPhee.

  But one of the girls was already jogging down to us. She crouched next to Julia. “The good news is those dogs aren’t rabid. They’re just mean.” She pulled down Julia’s sock and revealed the mangled flesh on her calf. She kept talking as she examined the wound. “It’s wastelands between here and Lincoln. Chemical dump. Only the dogs live there, getting meaner and meaner each year.” She pressed on Julia’s leg and blood oozed out around her fingers. I swayed up against Ilana. “It might not be as bad as it looks. It’s just really bloody right now. We’ll need to get it bandaged up and we can get her home and clean it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, how far is it? Can we carry her?”

  “I can run back and get a wagon,” the other boy said.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” the girl who was crouched over Julia said.

  “Hey,” McPhee yelled after the girl. “Whose gang is this, anyway?”

  “Not now, Tommy.” The girl held two fingers on the inside of Julia’s wrist. She turned back to Julia. “My name is Naya. I’m not actually a doctor or nurse or anything, but my big sister is an EMT and I’ve helped her study and practice—”

  Tommy McPhee scoffed at that. “Playing the victim doesn’t count as helping her practice. All you do is lie there.”

  “I pay attention,” Naya said to Tommy, then turned back to Julia. “Anyway, I’ll bring you straight to her and—”

  “No,” Julia said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Anywhere we go, we aren’t safe. Leave me here.”

  Naya looked at each of us but didn’t say anything.

  “We aren’t going to leave you here, Julia. No way,” I told her.

  “If we get caught, you know what will happen. It’s just a little cut. I’ll be fine. You guys keep going, and this future ambulance driver will, you know, patch me up. And then tonight I’ll go to the hospital or whatever they have out here.”

  “Out here?” Tommy said. “Where are you all from?”

  “No,” I told her, but even as I said it, I knew she was right. As soon as we got outside doctors involved, our journey was over. “We aren’t going to leave you behind.”

  Ilana crouched down next to Julia and looked at me. “Julia’s right. You can’t leave her. But I can go. It’s just a straight shot from here, right?”

  “Ilana, don’t you start being ridiculous, too,” I said. “I can only deal with one of you at a time.”

  Julia laughed at that, and I thought Benji was laughing along, but then I realized he was crying: big, fat, sobbing tears.

  “I’m not sure what you all are arguing about, but we need something clean to wrap her leg,” Naya said in a firm voice that made me think I could trust her.

  I opened up my backpack and dug out a sweatshirt that was still damp from my trip into the reservoir. “It’s relatively clean,” I told her. “It’s kind of wet, though.”

  “That’s fine.” With ease, Naya ripped the sweatshirt into shreds and began carefully wrapping them around Julia’s bloodied leg. Julia winced but didn’t say anything.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “We’re going to go back with these people and clean up your leg and maybe have the EMT look at it.”

  “Mori—” Julia began.

  “I said maybe. We’ll see when we clean it up. And then we’ll see what state you’re in and if you can keep going or not. And if you can, we’ll all go. And if you can’t, then we’ll figure it out. But no one is going or staying alone. You got it?”

  “Got it,” Theo said in a soft, steady voice.

  Benji nodded in agreement, and, after a moment, so did Julia and Ilana.

  Tommy marched up closer to us. “This is all well and good, but I ask again, where are you all from? And why can’t anyone know where you’re going?”

  Theo and Ilana lifted themselves up to their full heights, which made them tower over the boy. He didn’t want to, I could tell, but he rocked back. “Where we’re from doesn’t matter,” Theo said. “What matters is that we are on our way somewhere and no one can know, so you all can’t go blabbing your big mouths.”

  “Hey, I dig it. I don’t have a big mouth.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Theo asked. “Then how come we could hear you for miles down the tracks talking about your amazing hockey skills?”

  Tommy blushed, and the girl with the red dots laughed. “They’ve got you pegged, McPhee.”

  “Shut up, Amnah,” Tommy said. “Anyway, you all don’t need to tell me where you’re from. It’s as clear as if it’s written on your faces. You lot are from Old Harmonie. And that means if you want our help, you’re going to have to pay.”

  The boy came back with an old, red plastic wagon. One of the wheels wobbled to and fro. “It’s not exactly a deluxe ride,” he said. “But it’ll do.”

  “Thanks, Ethan,” Naya said.

  “I can walk,” Julia said, but none of us believed her.

  I twisted my fingers together while Ilana and Theo and the oldest-looking of the outsider girls—Amnah, the one with the red dots all over her brown skin—lifted Julia and placed her somewhat gently into the wagon. Julia winced. This was going to be a long, long ride for her. I wished I could trade places, that I could be the injured one in the wagon, that I could be the one to take on all that pain. I had the most experience with it. I knew I could cope.

  Ilana took the handle of the wagon and started to pull. Theo had to bend over and push it up th
e hill. I jogged along next to her on one side, and Benji was on the other.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I told her. “We’ll get you help.”

  Julia closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “It’s really hot out today,” she said, her voice sounding a little groggy.

  “Are you thirsty?” Benji asked. He shrugged off his backpack. He had the kind with a water sack built right in so you could drink out of it through a tube. Still walking, he placed it on her lap, and she grabbed the mouthpiece and drank deep.

  “Not too much,” Naya said.

  “Why not?” Amnah asked. The small girl trotted along beside her, watching with wide eyes but never making a sound.

  Naya didn’t answer right away and in the silence I thought I heard the dogs again. My heart strained against my chest.

  “It’s just best to do everything in moderation,” Naya finally said. “Especially when there’s a serious injury involved. We probably shouldn’t even be moving her, actually. I mean, probably.”

  “Not a serious injury,” Julia mumbled.

  I wondered if she could be going into shock. It was a phrase I’d heard before. Julia had even said she thought I’d gone into shock when I was attacked by the yellow jackets the first time we’d tried to go into number 9 Firefly Lane. But I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure what it meant. I checked her lips to see if they were turning blue or anything.

  Theo and Ilana got Julia and the wagon up next to the tracks where the ground was relatively smooth.

  “We can cut across the lot,” Tommy said, and pointed to the flat blacktop that we could see shimmering in the sun ahead.

  “But that will bring us in right by Flannery’s,” said the small girl. Her voice was so soft, I wasn’t sure she had spoken. I peered over my shoulder to look at her, but she was looking out toward the horizon. The sun cut across her face and I noticed a thin red scar that stretched over her cheek. Why hadn’t it been erased, I wondered.

  “It’ll bring us in behind Flannery’s, and don’t you worry, I have a plan for that,” Tommy said.

  “It’s your plans that get us into messes like this,” Amnah said. I racked my brain trying to think of what those red dots on her face could be. Not chicken pox—I knew what those looked like. Measles weren’t quite right, either. The dots on this girl’s skin were like volcanoes with white lava erupting out of them. I was going to have to do my best to keep away from her—and definitely wouldn’t let her touch Julia again.

  “Are you sure this person can help?” Theo asked.

  “Yes,” Naya said.

  Ethan, the boy who’d gone to get the wagon, said, “Trudy’s the best. She’ll fix this girl right up. What did you say her name was again?”

  None of us had said our names, and none of us answered the boy.

  Tommy stopped walking. “Halt!” he cried out.

  Theo straightened up, but Ilana kept pulling the wagon.

  “Halt!” Tommy said again.

  “You’re not ordering us around,” Theo told him.

  Tommy’s body stiffened, and I thought maybe he and Theo would get into a fight—the fist-punching kind, not the yelling kind—but then Tommy said, “Listen, I’m Tommy McPhee. You know Naya. And that’s Ethan. She’s Amnah, and she’s Mouse. They’re sisters.” He pointed to the red-dot girl and the quiet one. They didn’t look much alike as far as I could tell. “That’s all of us. McPhee’s Boys.”

  “We’re not McPhee’s Boys,” Naya said.

  “Yeah, well, you got mad when I called you McPhee’s Girls.”

  “That was because—never mind, we need to get this girl to Trudy,” Amnah replied.

  Ilana was pulling away from the rest of us, the wagon, chuck-chucking over the rocks. Julia moaned, making my stomach twist. We needed these people. So I said, “I’m Mori. That’s Theo and that’s Benji. Julia is the one who—she’s the one in the wagon, and Ilana is the one pulling her.”

  “And where are you going?” Tommy asked.

  “Cambridge,” I said.

  “Mori!” Theo exclaimed.

  “And that’s all we can tell you, so now can we please keep going?”

  Tommy clapped his hands together. “Sure we can.”

  Theo jogged to catch up with the wagon, and he took over from Ilana, who put her hands on top of her head as she kept walking.

  Tommy fell into step with me. I noticed his sneakers had no laces even though they had eyelets. Did they have no shoelaces out here? We would have to send them some when we got back. If we got back.

  “I was only joking about making you guys pay,” he said. “I mean, if you wanted to throw a little moolah-moolah our way, I wouldn’t say no. But we’ll help you no matter what.”

  “We don’t have any money,” I said.

  “What? But you’re from Old Harmonie. You have swimming pools full of money.”

  “Geez, Tommy, give it a rest,” Ethan said.

  “He thinks your streets are paved with gold,” Amnah added. “And that all you eat is ice cream and caviar.”

  “I don’t know what caviar is,” I said, trying to keep an eye on Julia. She didn’t seem to have passed out. I quickened my pace.

  “Anyway, all I’m saying is that I was just joking,” Tommy said. “This is fun. This is an adventure. We don’t get many adventures in South Concord.”

  “This isn’t an adventure,” Theo muttered.

  “So we’re going to come in behind this pub, Flannery’s. And there’s lots of people there—”

  “But it’s not even ten o’clock in the morning,” Benji said.

  “So it will have been open for an hour,” Tommy replied. “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to get another wagon. And we’ll put Mouse or someone in it. You’re pretty small compared to those giants,” he said to me. I realized then that he was shorter than me by a good three inches. Only Amnah was taller.

  “What’s the point of the second wagon?” Benji asked.

  “That’s the genius of the plan!” Tommy said. “We’ll pretend we’re having a race. We’ll have a bunch of us around each wagon pushing. All of you can have your heads down, and anyone who sees us will just see a pack of kids.”

  “They won’t notice we’re from outside?”

  “Outside where? Outside South Concord? There’s always kids coming and going—cousins and second cousins and friends from before. We just don’t want them to get too close a look at you and start wondering. A curious adult is a dangerous thing.”

  “I guess that’s an okay plan,” Benji said.

  “It’s a brilliant plan! Right, Mori?” Tommy asked.

  Up ahead, Theo and Ilana switched off again pulling Julia. “Sure,” I called as I ran up next to the wagon. Julia was curled over her knees, her cheek bouncing on them as she rolled along. Her face was white and glistening like unnatural clay. The blood from her leg had soaked through my shirt, making the cloth a strange magenta. It was all so bizarre, like one of those plays they made us watch, the kind that were supposed to awaken our artistic sensibilities but mostly just made us giggle. I wanted to tell her that, but her eyes were squeezed shut and I doubted that she would even be able to hear me.

  10

  The last obstacle before South Concord was a ravine. “We call it the moat.” Tommy laughed.

  “There’s no water,” Ilana said.

  “Come back in the spring.”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever be coming back.”

  Tommy laughed again, and Theo said, “We can’t take Julia down in the wagon. We’ll need to carry her.”

  So Ilana and Theo lifted her out of the wagon and made a chair of their arms. I walked behind them just in case—though what I expected to be able to do, I don’t know. If she fell back, I would just fall with her. I could feel myself shrinking with my sheer uselessness. Smaller and smaller until I was like a snail hiding in its spiral shell. Why had I ever thought I would be able to get Ilana all the way to Cambridge?

  A whir
ring sound came from behind us, then a blur of red, black, and yellow. It was Tommy, riding the wagon down the incline toward the ravine. It crashed and he tumbled out. “Bananas!” he yelled.

  Theo muttered, “That kid is questionable.”

  And I felt smaller still. Down to a microorganism. “It’ll be okay,” I said. But my tiny voice made no sound.

  Tommy righted the wagon by the time we got down the hill and dragged it up to the flat part on the much smaller upward incline on the other side. Ilana and Theo placed Julia back in the wagon. Julia left a slash of her blood on Ilana’s white T-shirt.

  Theo grabbed the handle and pulled the wagon to a gap in the fence where the other local kids were waiting. There were buildings that backed right up to the fence for as far as I could see. We were near an alleyway, and I got a glimpse of some more of the town. Faded banners hung from the streetlights and there was a little convenience store with a statue of a pony outside.

  “Ethan went for the other wagon,” Tommy explained. “When he gets back, we can put the plan in motion. It really is a good plan. I mean, I come up with a lot of stellar plans, but this one takes the cake. Sincerely.”

  No one replied. None of his friends, and none of mine. He turned and held on to the chain-link fence, looking down the alleyway.

  “What’s your fence for?” I asked.

  “You have a fence, don’t you?” Amnah asked me.

  “Sure, but—” I started to say that’s because we had something to protect, but then I realized they were the ones we were protecting it from. “I just didn’t realize every town has a fence.”

  “Not every town,” Naya explained. “It’s mostly because of the dogs.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  Julia murmured something through gray lips. “It’s okay if I don’t make it as an athlete,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  I crouched down next to her. “It’s not okay.”

  “My chances weren’t so great anyway. You know most of them come from the warmer Kritopias. Or outside.” She rubbed at her eyes.

  “You’re going to be fine,” I told her. “We’re getting you help.”