Black River Falls (15 page)

“Card, you're not . . .” She trailed off. She was looking at me strangely, but I didn't know why. “You're not wearing your mask.”

I lifted one hand, and my bare fingers brushed against my lips. I hadn't even realized. I set the pack down and backed away from it until I felt stone against my legs. I sat down and found myself wedged between the two boulders. Something in me eased from being surrounded by them. I drew my knees up to my chest and held them close.

Hannah collected the bag, but didn't leave. She stood by the trail, fidgeting with the strap, twisting it back and forth. Our moment standing in the moonlight the night before came rushing back to me, but it was all mixed up with looking down at that burned earth and learning about the great secret of the world.

She asked again if I was okay, but I couldn't speak, couldn't even move my lips, so I nodded instead.

“It's just . . . you look pale, and your eyes are—did you sleep last night?”

“Yo! Hannah! Time to get moving! The natives are getting rest—”

Greer came up the trail at a run and stopped behind Hannah. The palm of his hand hovered over her lower back. “Oh! Hey there, buddy! Damn, you look like crap.”

“Greer,”
Hannah said.

“What? Have you
seen
him?”

“He says he's fine.”

Greer left Hannah and headed for me. “Okay, well, I'm glad you're here! That Raney guy came up this morning to bring us those clothes he promised, and he said the Marvins are throwing this big picnic thing down in the park today. The word is that there'll be barbecue! Now, Hannah thinks . . .”

Greer kept talking, but I dropped my head, curling my hands around the back of my skull. An ache had begun behind my right eye, and my nostrils were full of the stink of charred wood. Greer's voice turned into a knifelike buzz, and then Hannah joined in too. Monument Park. Games. A party. It was the same thing over and over again. Time had folded into a loop, tied itself into a knot, and still they talked.

“You can't go!”

Shouting like that made my head pound, but it was worth it. Silence. Finally. Greer looked at me and then at Hannah, a half smile on his face, as if maybe there was a joke he just wasn't getting.

“Oh!” he said. “Don't worry, me and Hannah figured out a whole new disguise for her.
Way
better than the last one. And besides, even if those creeps recognize her, there'll be so many people around, they won't dare do anything, right? I mean it's not every day that the kids get to go to a party. A
real
party with—”

“What did I just say? You're
not
going.”

“Excuse me?”

I sprang off the rocks and stabbed my finger at Hannah. “What do you think's going to happen if Raney sees her?”

“You said Gonzalez could cover for us!”

“As long as we're not
stupid.
”

Hannah said, “We're not going to be stupid. We're going be careful.”

“Careful? You'll be
careful?
A party? You think this is a joke?”

“I don't think it's a joke. I think—”

“Guys!” Greer shouted from the sidelines. “Come on. Let's—”

“What?” I said. “You think the Marvins are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts? Throwing you a party? Giving you presents? This is for
them.
They want something, and they're using this to get it. How can you not see that? How can
neither
of you see that?”

“Using it to get
what?
” Hannah asked. “What could they possibly want from
us?
”

I steamrolled past them toward the trail. “It doesn't matter. You're not going, and that's it.”

“Come on, buddy, wait—”

Greer's hand grazed my shoulder. I jumped away from him. The muscles in my arms and my back tensed, like a steel spring twisted down tight. I thought of Dale and Tommasulo and remembered how good it felt to let go completely. My hand became a fist.

“Card!”

Hannah was standing just behind Greer, presenting a united front. The two of them against me. The world shifted on its axis. I stepped back slowly, putting more distance between us.

“We're here for
them,
” I said. “For those kids. To make sure nothing ever happens to
them.
”

“We will,” Hannah insisted. “Nothing's going to happen.”

“You were right,” I spat. “It
was
your fault. You had people who loved you—friends, family—and you threw them away and ran because you didn't give a damn about anybody but yourself.”

She went perfectly still. She barely breathed. I could have walked away, but it was as if she were standing on a ledge and some part of me couldn't resist pushing.

“Some things don't change when you get infected,” I said. “I never should have brought you here.”

Hannah said nothing, and neither did Greer. I continued down the trail.

The latch sprang open when I dropped the tackle box, sending weights and lures spilling out onto the shore of the reservoir. I'd stopped by my tent for my mask and gloves and my fishing things. All I could do was get as far away from them as possible and focus on something else.

As I gathered the tackle, that ache reignited behind my eyes. It moved to encircle my head like a belt, tightening a little at a time. I dropped the lures and filled my hands with water, then splashed it against my face and over my greasy hair, hoping it could wipe away the morning, the last couple of days, the last year. I sat back, eyes shut tight, waiting for the thrum inside my head to ease.

“Anything biting?”

Greer's reflection appeared in the water. He was leaning against a tree behind me, his hands slipped casually into his pockets. I gathered up a handful of lures and threw them into the box. Greer chuckled to himself in that annoying way of his and then took my fishing rod. He found a place farther down the shore and fiddled with the reel.

“Did I ever tell you that I'm pretty sure I used to be an expert fisherman?” he asked. “And I don't mean this pond fishing, I mean the real thing, deep-sea fishing, for like sharks and whales and stuff.”

“We live a hundred miles from the nearest ocean,” I said. “You've probably never even been.”

“Details,” he said. “I've got the salt water in my veins, Cassidy. No doubt about it.”

Greer whipped the rod back and made a perfect cast that flew nearly out to the center of the reservoir. The lure hit with a plop and vanished, leaving the red and white floater bobbing on the surface.

“See?”

I tore up a root beside me and threw it into the water.

“So if you're so great at it, why don't you do it once in a while?” I asked. “Maybe cancel one of your Super Bowl dance-a-thons and pitch in. I could use the help.”

Greer laughed. “Oh, no argument there. You need help, buddy.
A lot
of help. You're not sleeping. You barely eat.”

This again.
“I've told you a hundred times, Greer. I
eat.
”

“No you don't,” he said. “I asked Tomiko.”

“You're having Tomiko spy on me?”

“Oh, not just her,” Greer said. “The whole camp does it in shifts. There is literally not a second in your day when you aren't secretly being watched by a twelve-year-old.”

“I don't need to be watched.”

“Dude, the things you said to Hannah—”

“Greer.”

“—the words ‘titanic jackass' keep coming to mind, and I
know
you, you are not a titanic jackass. Buddy. Seriously. I remember like two percent of my entire life, and I'm still pretty sure you are like the
least
fine human being I've ever met.”

Greer set down the rod and turned to me.

“Look, man, I don't know what all happened to you on the sixteenth—”

“Nothing happened.”

“Card—”

“Nothing happened that didn't happen to a thousand other people.”

“Yeah, but you remember,” Greer said. “Whatever it was, you
remember
it. And, hey, if you don't want to talk to me about it, that's fine. As your friend, it hurts me deeply, but fine. But you should talk to somebody.”

“I don't need to.”

“Ha!”

“You and Hannah—” I clenched my jaw to bite off the rest.

“What?” Greer said. “Say it.”

“You two think this is a game.”

Back when Greer was his old self, he almost never had to use his fists. Remember? He would fix his eyes on any of us, either at the bus stop or in the schoolyard, and we would wither. There was something in the way he looked at you that said he saw right through whatever sad little defense you were trying to mount, whatever bluff. It also said that what was inside of him was no bluff at all. Greer looked at me like that as we sat by the reservoir.

“You really think you know what's going to happen because you know what
did
happen?” he said. “You think you know who people are because you know who they
were?
Trust me here, man. You don't know a damn thing.”

I turned away. I could feel his eyes on my back as I watched ripples of water strike the shore. He got up and headed back down the hill.

“You know what?” he said. “Forget it. I'm going to go find a nice green-haired girl and try to convince her that, no matter what stupid thing you said to her, we all want her here and she shouldn't take her things and go live in some Guard rooming house full of rapists and pedophiles. And then, if I can manage
that,
I'm going to take her and all the kids down to the park to eat some barbecue. Because if I don't, if I spend all my time on this stupid mountain worrying that it's all going to come crashing down around me any minute, I honestly think I'll just go ahead and blow my brains out. Okay? If that means I think all this is a game—which, by the way, is an incredibly freaking insulting thing to say to your best friend—then so be it. Now, you wanna come or you wanna sit here moping and pretending to fish?”

“I'm not—”

He held up one finger to silence me. “No. Come or mope. Those are your choices.”

I got up and grabbed the fishing rod. The line hissed as I reeled it in and then recast it.

“We
are
friends,” Greer said from behind me. “Right, Card?”

I watched as the floater bobbed on the water. Greer turned away and headed back to camp. I dropped the fishing rod. Soon the ripples faded and the reservoir spread out in front of me, as flat and bright as a razor.

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, I did what I should have done the minute Greer and the others showed up on Lucy's Promise. I packed my things and moved as far away as possible.

I found a spot on the opposite side of the reservoir. It was in the deep forest, far from any trail, a tangle of brush and vines and deadfall. It took me a full day to hack a path through it and then another to carve out a spot big enough for my tent. It was worth the effort. The woods around me were so thick that I couldn't hear a sound except for my own breathing and the occasional rustle of a bird's wings up in the branches. Even at noon on a cloudless day, it might as well have been dusk.

I spent my days fishing and foraging for mushrooms, crabapples, and blackberries. I even started gathering firewood in preparation for my first winter alone on the mountain. It was tough with just my knife, but there were enough dead trees and branches around that I got a decent pile going. The best part was that, for the first time in almost a year, I didn't have to wear my mask or my gloves. The air tasted like earth and wood instead of hot plastic. It was so strange to touch things without gloves that I compulsively ran my fingers over tree bark and flower petals and my own skin, just for the thrill of it.

Time had a strange way of expanding and contracting. A morning would seem to last a year, and then all of a sudden it would be past midnight. Sometimes I pretended I was living millions of years in the future and was the only human left alive. I imagined walking a thousand miles in any direction—up into Canada or down into Virginia and the Carolinas—and seeing nothing but empty houses and crumbling highways. It was strange how comforting the idea was.

In the beginning I thought about Hannah and Greer and the kids all the time, but as the days went by, they emptied out of my mind one by one. Pretty soon I figured there'd be nothing left in my head but
find food, find water, build a fire.
I couldn't wait for that moment to come, but it didn't turn out that way. Once they were gone, someone else appeared and took their place. Dad.

It wasn't even like I was thinking about him at first. Not exactly. It was more like he was this presence that hovered around me all the time. There, but not there. I'd walk into a stand of trees, certain that I was going to find him on the other side, waiting for me. Or I'd think I'd heard his voice, but it would turn out to be a flock of birds or a tumble of dead branches blown by the wind. During the few hours a night I managed to sleep, he moved in and out of my dreams.