For me, I’d only been gone one night, so it didn’t feel like he’d waited long enough. But in reality, five years was a crazy long time.
Besides, every time I forced myself to think of him and Cat together, some other random memory would bubble to the surface and ruin all hopes of staying angry. Like the one time when Austin’s mom decided he and I should dress like Batman and Catwoman for Halloween, which would’ve been adorable in the fourth grade, except that I’d decided it would be even better if we switched costumes instead. Austin hadn’t even complained, because, back then, he’d done almost everything I asked. And the moment I pictured nine-year-old Austin stuffed into my shiny, skintight black suit with those precious cat ears perched lopsidedly on his head, all of my focus vanished and suddenly I was homesick all over again.
I tried being mad at my mom’s new husband, Grant, too. But even that failed, because as much as I wanted to blame him for ruining my family, deep down I knew that was all my fault too. If I hadn’t gotten out of the car that night on Chuckanut Drive, I never would’ve vanished and my parents might still be together.
Agent Truman didn’t work either.
Three days had passed since our run-in at the Tacoma facility, which meant the poor schmuck was probably dead by now. And no matter how I tried to look at it, no matter how blameworthy he was for luring us there and trapping Willow, I couldn’t choke down my own guilt for what I’d done to free her—that whole Code Red thing.
I bent down and plucked the paperback I’d stolen from the library back in Columbia Valley from the back pocket of my discarded jeans, my mind drifting to Tyler instead. He would never have chosen Cat over me. He would never have given up on me the way Austin had.
Wasn’t that what he’d written in chalk on the street in front of my house, what he’d promised?
I’ll remember you always . . .
And to repay him, I’d gone and let Simon kiss me back.
It turned out Simon had been right: getting pissed was the key to my telekinesis. Only I didn’t have to be mad at someone else. Apparently self-loathing was enough.
I was barely concentrating when it happened: when my T-shirt lifted off the tent floor, hovering in midair for several long, and otherwise impossible seconds.
Natty yelped from her spot near the entrance, and a flush of adrenaline coursed through me.
I did it! I totally did it!
My heart was fighting tooth-and-nail to escape my chest as I reached out and stomped on the T-shirt, suddenly worried that someone—Buzz Cut or Griffin or anyone—might bulldoze their way inside and see it there, floating in the air.
When I turned to Natty, her smile grew. “I knew you could do it,” she breathed.
I didn’t know if I shared her confidence or if I was convinced I would be able to do it again, but inside, I was positively giddy. It was enough that I’d made that shirt float like that, and I was claiming it as a giant-exceptional-ginormous victory. My little telekinetic thing was gaining momentum.
Morning drifted into late afternoon as I sat on my bunk and paged through the book I’d discovered in my jeans pocket. I’d given up trying to read it hours ago. I hadn’t expected to have such a hard time getting into it, especially since it was about a guy who believed aliens had abducted him. You’d think it would be right up my alley.
Not to mention Tyler had read it, so surely it should have been worth pushing through.
But instead of reading the actual book, I found myself flipping to the back, to the tiny paragraph about the author. To where there was this guy with wild, curly hair who didn’t look like such a big deal, even though I knew this book, Slaughterhouse-Five, was kind of a huge deal—one of those award-winning books that teachers and librarians loved to shove down your throat and find hidden meaning in.
His bio mentioned his other books, and I skimmed over the list until I got to the part about how during World War II he’d been a German prisoner. That’s where I kept getting stuck, like that was the thing we had in common, he and I, not stuff about the alien abductions.
That we’d both been taken against our will. That we’d both lost significant chunks of our lives.
And so it goes . . .
That was a line in his book, something his main character, Billy Pilgrim, says whenever something just was the way it was.
As in, such is life, or it was out of his hands and there was nothing he could do about it.
I didn’t know if I could have that same attitude, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t get into the actual book. I wasn’t sure I felt like that: And so it goes.
Because, to me, you shouldn’t just accept whatever came your way. I wasn’t willing to have things happen to me, and just shrug and say, “And so it goes.” I didn’t want to be passive.
For my sake and for Tyler’s and my dad’s, and anyone else I cared about, I wanted to be willing to do more. To risk more. To stand up and say, “Screw that. It won’t go that way. I won’t let it.”
So rather than reading, all I’d really done for the past several hours was to use the book as a journal of sorts, since I’d left mine back at Silent Creek. I made notes in the margins—thoughts about my time here, and about Griffin, and everything she’d told me about Simon and Thom and Willow. I wrote random things about Tyler and my dad.
And for the first time in days, I had the chance to draw.
I drew pathways and birdcages and feathers, like the ones Tyler had drawn for me in chalk—although mine looked more like a kindergartner had sketched them.
I drew fireflies. Everywhere, fireflies. On the inside flaps, on the cover, all over the pages of the book . . . even on the palm of my hand.
And so it goes, I guess.
The tent flap wavered and Buzz Cut’s voice filtered into our musty space. “Drills.”
I shoved the book beneath my pillow and bolted upright. I was more than ready to get outside, and wished they hadn’t waited so long to come get us. This part of our day, joining the rigid workout routines of the other campers, even if it meant heading out beneath the blazing hot sun, had quickly become my favorite part. A bright spot amid the dull routine of aimless pacing, scratching out games of tic-tac-toe in the floorboard dust, and our one daily trip to the cafeteria, where we ate even if we weren’t hungry because it was more interesting than sitting in our tent.
Plus, I had my book-slash-journal now too, so there was that.
For a camp of not-troubled teens, Griffin kept these kids in tip-top shape. The drills were brutal. On the first day, after only an hour, I thought the combination of exertion and heat would make me puke, and I wanted nothing more than to collapse on the ground, but the athlete in me knew that would only make the cramping worse, so I’d forced myself to take small sips of water and walk it off, until the excruciating stitch in my side had faded to something closer to a dull ache.
Still, when Buzz Cut had called us to drills again yesterday, I’d jumped at the chance.
I’d do it each and every day we were here if it meant not staying cooped inside this musty tent all day. Or if there was even the slightest chance I might get a glimpse of Willow or Simon or any of the others.
So far, though, they’d managed to keep us separated enough that we never ran into one another. And Buzz Cut refused to answer whether it was only Natty and me who were allowed outside.
I was this close to changing her name to Buzz Kill.
Slipping on the athletic sneakers we’d been given, Natty shot me an eager look. We’d been doing our best to speak as little as possible, trying to develop our own silent version of communication in order to avoid being eavesdropped on. But Natty wore her emotions all over her face. Her codes weren’t all that hard to crack.
“Me too,” I told her while I drew my hair back into a ponytail, not bothering to hide my enthusiasm from Buzz Cut.
When we got outside, I leaned my head back, absorbing as much of the sun’s radiation as I could until my cheeks were good and smoldering. According to my
pink watch, it was nearly six o’clock, and there wasn’t a whole lotta sun left for the day.
We were passed off to the drill instructor, the same short guy who’d smacked me with his rifle when they’d ambushed us in the desert. His freakishly developed body made sense now that I knew the workout regimen he put his people through on a daily basis.
He rolled his eyes, making it crystal clear we were a burden he didn’t care to be hampered with, but he stepped aside nonetheless, letting us join the rest of his squad, where they were already on the ground doing push-ups.
Training like this made me feel alive. And if I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was back in Burlington, on the softball field with my coach calling out the drills and blowing her whistle. The only difference was this coach had a squat body and Popeye-sized forearms.
By the time we were running, I had sweat dripping down the center of my back and stinging my eyes. I was buzzing with energy even while I was wilting from the heat. But from day one it had been obvious Natty wasn’t exactly built for this kind of conditioning, and it was a challenge for her just to keep up. For her the only benefit of the exercise was being outdoors. Watching her run, the way she clomp-clomped along like her feet were made of iron, was almost painful, and the actual act of sweating repulsed her, something she complained about so much I wouldn’t have felt totally guilty to leave her in the dust.
Unfortunately, part of us being prisoners meant we were also bound to the buddy system, and Natty had been assigned as my official “buddy.”
“Look,” she panted. “Look.” The second time she said it, the word came out as an airy wheeze.
It took me a second to follow her rising and falling finger, and eventually see what she was trying to point to.
I almost stopped moving then, which almost surely would have gotten me banned from the daily drills, messing them up like that, but I caught myself in time and found my stride again.
She’d been pointing at Griffin. But not just Griffin—Jett was there too.
I squinted, trying to get a better look from where we were, which was suddenly far too far away from where they were on the opposite side of the field, over near the cafeteria. “What do you think they’re doing?” I asked, never taking my eyes away from Jett, who was walking alongside the Blackwater Ranch leader. He was clutching his laptop to his chest, and from where we were, it looked like Griffin was carrying something too. “Is that . . . ?” I lifted my hand to my eyes, trying to shield them from the sun. “It looks like she has Simon’s backpack,” I told Natty.
Natty saw too, and she nodded. “Yeah,” she rasped. “Think . . . so . . .”
“You think Jett’s helping her? That they finally cracked the codes to those files?”
I glanced quickly at Natty. She lifted her eyebrows and I realized it was her equivalent of a shrug.
“I wish I knew what the hell was going on here. And why they’re keeping us apart.”
Griffin and Jett stopped outside one of the few non-tent buildings here, one with a real foundation and wooden walls and crisp white paint that I’d noticed on our way to the cafeteria. I watched as Griffin knocked once before letting herself, and then Jett, inside. It was weird that she’d have to knock at all since she was the leader here.
I was about to ask Natty what she made of that when I realized we were no longer alone. Our drill instructor had joined us, keeping pace alongside Natty. Unlike Natty, whose cheeks were flushed so red she looked like an enormous sticky tomato, he’d hardly broken a sweat.
Even though he was several inches shorter, he somehow managed to look down his nose at us. “Since you ladies can’t seem to keep up, why don’t you hit the showers?”
“What? No, we’re fine. Really.” I knew I was only speaking for me, but I wasn’t ready to go back to our tent for the night.
But Natty was more than willing to take the out, and her plodding stopped and she bent at the waist, gasping for breath. We didn’t need a secret language to know she’d had enough “fresh air” for one day.
I guessed my buddy and I were hitting the showers.
I was frustrated with Natty for getting us kicked out of drills, and with the drill instructor, who gave me a cheerful wave as he took off with the rest of his squad, only too happy to be rid of us, and then with Buzz Cut, who swooped in the second we’d been eighty-sixed so she could escort us to the showers. It wasn’t that I couldn’t use a shower—I totally could, I stunk as bad as Natty, maybe worse after that sweat fest out there. It was just that I wasn’t looking forward to another all-night tic-tac-toe marathon.
We took our time, just like we did with everything now that time was all we had, and when I was finished, I wiped the steam from the face of my watch. It had to be dark out by now, I realized, as I tossed my sweaty clothes in the hamper, following Natty on our way out the door.
It was cooler now, too, as I trailed after her, letting her lead the way along the path to the cafeteria, which was our next stop.
Buzz Cut stiff-armed me across my chest. “Not you,” she said, her voice low. And then she nodded toward another girl who’d been waiting in the shadows. “Take her.” The her in question was Natty, and Natty shot me a questioning look, but I didn’t have the answers she was looking for.
“Why? What’s happening now?” Suddenly tic-tac-toe with my buddy didn’t sound half-bad.
Buzz Cut just thrust her chin at the other girl once more, and Natty was towed away through the gloom, toward the cafeteria.
I told myself it was fine and tried to channel my inner Billy Pilgrim—the whole And so it goes attitude. But telling myself it was fine and convincing myself were two different things, and the acids in my stomach surged with anticipation.
Although I could see fine in the dark, it would be easy to get turned around in a camp like this, where the tents were so packed together, each looking like the next. I stayed close to Buzz Cut as she slipped in and out among them.
The night air was crisp with the smell of scorched clay, and my feet crunched lightly in the sand beneath me. Above us, the night was perforated by thousands of white lights that were somehow brighter out here in the middle of the desert, probably because it was so dark.
When Buzz Cut finally stopped, somewhere near the edge of the tents, I examined the stars. From where I stood, I could almost imagine they were far-off fireflies, swarming, and emerging from the sky to warn of a taking.
The last time I’d seen the fireflies, I’d been holding Tyler’s hand and assuring him everything would be okay, while wishing with all my heart that was true. I’d give anything—anything—to undo what I’d done to him—taking him to Devil’s Hole, exposing him to my blood . . . falling in love with him in the first place. If I hadn’t done that, then he never would have been hurt at all.
And then, I wouldn’t be here right now.
“I thought maybe we were gonna have to send a search party after you.” Simon’s voice was barely a rustle, stirring the cooling night air around me.
When I spun around, he was there, watching me intently with those copper eyes of his. His arms were crossed casually over his chest as he leaned against the canvas wall behind him. “Simon,” I exhaled on a shaky laugh, breathing easier now that I knew he was alive. “You’re okay.” I still had about a million and one questions for him, but I started with “What about Willow and Jett and Thom? Have you seen them? Are they okay too?”
“I haven’t seen them, but they’re fine,” he assured me before I could ask anything else. He looked to Buzz Cut, who nodded, almost like she was confirming what he’d just told me.
But that couldn’t be right, could it?
My gaze shifted, alternating between him and Buzz Cut. “I . . . I don’t understand . . .” I faltered.
Simon’s eyes crinkled as he pushed away from the wall and sauntered toward me, his eyes appraising me as if he could see as clearly in the dark as I could.
“I told you . . . we have allies here.”
No. Uh-uh. No freakin’ way.
I’d seen the way Buzz Cut had smacked him with her gun. I mean, she’d shattered his nose. And, honestly, if looks could kill . . . Simon would’ve been lying in a ditch somewhere, not standing here grinning like he’d pulled one over on me. On everyone.
“Shut. Up.” But I was already starting to believe it, because she was just standing there, wearing that same stupid grin on her face. “But I thought . . . ,” I stammered. “Don’t you hate him?”
Simon shrugged. “An act,” he said.
“You broke his nose.” Even I had a hard time thinking an ally could do something so brutal.
The corner of her mouth slid up. “Had to make it believable.”
Simon frowned at her and rubbed his nose. “Yeah, well, it was believable, all right. Maybe next time you could take it down a notch.”
She lifted one shoulder. “We’ll see.”
And then Simon did that same chin-lift thing at her that she’d done at the girl who’d taken Natty away. “Can we have a minute, Nyla?”
Nyla.
It was weird not to think of her as Buzz Cut. To give her a name—a real name.
But it was another thing altogether to see her as an ally.
I guess you never knew about people, and where you’d find someone you could count on.
“Sure. But only a minute. I gotta get her back,” Nyla answered, glancing around vigilantly.
“I knew you had a name,” I couldn’t help mentioning under my breath before she’d sidestepped us.
She just curled her lip at me—a very Willow-like response.
Out here, beneath the stars, was about as private as you could get. We were on the edge of their desert camp, where it was dark and isolated and quiet. I breathed deeply, taking stock of the distant landscape of withered trees and rocks and an endless black sky.
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