Black River Falls (16 page)

It didn't stay that way, though. Soon it was as if there was this filmstrip of memories unspooling in my head all the time. Dad taking us to the sideshow at Coney Island or to those art movies at the Angelika. Dad leading us on a forced march to the Strand bookstore, where he'd press his favorites into our hands:
Harry Potter. The Dark Is Rising. The Left Hand of Darkness. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Every day there were more images, and they came faster and faster until I felt as if I were on a treadmill that I couldn't keep up with and couldn't get off of either.

The only time I could escape it was when I was running, so each night after sundown I'd leave my tent and sprint the mountain trails. The batteries in my flashlight had died—I lost count of how many times I fell in the dark. How many skinned knees and bruised elbows. It didn't matter. If I stumbled, I got up and pushed harder, ran faster. I'd run until the sun came up and then I'd pass out. Sometimes I'd get a few hours of sleep before Dad was there again, just outside my tent, calling me for breakfast or to get ready for school.

One night I finished my run at the reservoir and collapsed on the shore, my legs sore and my lungs feeling like they had sprouted thorns. When I caught my breath, I sat up and looked out at the water. It was a patch of blackness, just a little darker than the woods around it. There was a rhythmic splash as little waves fell against the beach and retreated. Owls hooted and frogs croaked. For a second the world was caught in this easy balance. I breathed in and out, calm, centered, but then there was a flash in my head and the reservoir on Lucy's Promise became the reservoir in Central Park. It was a bright summer day, and we were on our way to see the polar bears at the zoo. Dad had me on his shoulders and you were walking by his side. It was all so clear. I could hear Dad's voice. I could smell his aftershave.

I stripped off my clothes and dove in. I was still aching from my run, but I leaned into the pain instead of ignoring it, digging my arms through the water. As I swam, it hit me how all of my memories of Dad were from when we lived in Brooklyn, as if the minute we moved to Black River, he began to fade. Instead of doing his work in a corner of the living room—blasting his music while we played video games on the couch—he was in his office, usually with the door shut. Six hours of work a day became eight, then ten, then twelve. Weekends evaporated. Then it was missed dinners, missed performances, missed track meets. We told ourselves it was nothing. A temporary thing. He'd just won the Hugo, and everybody was saying the Eisner was right around the corner. People were talking movies. TV shows. Even Mom laughed that night when you said we weren't living with Derrick Cassidy anymore, we were living with Derrick Cassidy, Award-Winning Creator of
Cardinal and the Brotherhood of Wings.

But then he forgot that doctor's appointment—yours or mine, I don't remember—and Mom decided she'd had enough. The second she walked in the house, it was doors slamming and the two of them screaming at each other, and me thinking,
Is this really Mom and Dad?
They were like strangers with our parents' faces. You tried to get between them, but it was no use. I remember hiding out in your room, wondering what world we had stumbled into and if it would ever be possible to get back to our own.

Once I got out to the center of the reservoir, I flipped onto my back and let myself float with my arms stretched out. Tiny waves lapped at my ears, alternating the sounds of the surface, crickets and frogs and night birds, with the silence below. I'd heard that the reservoir was nearly fifty feet deep at its center. Every inch of that darkness pulled at me.

Sometimes late at night I'd leave my room and walk toward the slip of light coming from beneath Dad's office door. This was a few months before the outbreak, after he'd started sleeping in there instead of in bed with Mom. Only it never seemed like he was sleeping. I could hear his chair squeaking and his pencil scratching. Sometimes, standing there in the dark hallway, I'd lay my palm on the door, the way they taught us to do in school if you thought there was a fire in the house. But it didn't feel like a fire. It felt like we had a black hole trapped within our walls, like Dad had collapsed into this infinitely dense, infinitely cold thing.

Other times I'd lie in your room, staring at the ceiling while you talked.
Dad's overwhelmed. Mom's frustrated. Things will go back to normal soon enough. Don't worry, Cardinal. Everything will be fine, Cardinal.
You'd say it with a smile and a laugh, and then you'd flop into bed next to me and we'd read issues of Love and Rockets or Ms. Marvel. And I believed you. Of course I believed you. You were my big brother. You were right about everything.

I flipped over and kicked my feet against the surface of the reservoir, diving until I was surrounded by an echoey hush. With every stroke the darkness thickened and the world above seemed farther away. I decided I had to touch the bottom, had to feel it with my own hands.

It wasn't long before the last glimmer of moonlight from the surface disappeared. The temperature dropped in bands the deeper I went. The cold seeped through my skin and into my muscles and bones. Worse, though, was the pressure. It felt like a hand had wrapped itself around my chest and was squeezing tighter and tighter. I thought it would be like when I was running, that I'd push through the pain and come out the other side, but this pain grew until it felt bigger than I was, bigger than anything. I started to turn back, but that's when I heard Dad's voice whispering in my ear, as real as if he were swimming along beside me. He said the only mistake he ever made was that he didn't go far enough. He said that if I made it to the bottom, if I touched it and didn't let go no matter what, then I'd have what he'd always wanted, what
I'd
wanted ever since the night of the sixteenth.

I tumbled end over end and pulled for the surface, clawing at water that seemed to have become as thick as wet concrete. Time stretched. My lungs burned. I felt as if I'd been swimming for hours and hadn't moved an inch. Was it too late? Had I gone too far? All I could see was darkness in every direction. What strength I had left was draining away, but then, above me, there was a faint splash and a flicker of light. I thrust my arms through the water and heaved toward the surface, but there was still so far to go. My lungs were screaming. Cramps knotted every muscle. Dad's voice was telling me that the only thing that would stop the pain would be to let go, to let myself sink. I could feel how hungry the dark below was for me to do it, how hungry I was to give in.

But then I heard another voice—a woman's voice, faint but glassy. Mom's. I couldn't make out what she was saying, but I felt a pair of hands clasp me under my arms and draw me up. The water raced by until the moon appeared above me, then individual stars, then the peaks of the trees as I crashed through the surface and gasped for air. My lungs spasmed as they filled.

It took every ounce of strength I had to swim back to shore. I collapsed on the rocks, shivering, gulping air. The last thing I wanted to do was move, but I knew I had to get dressed, had to get warm. I managed to find my clothes, and then I stumbled through the woods to my tent. I should have made a fire, but I didn't have the energy, so I curled into a ball, pulling every blanket and every scrap of clothing I had over top of me, burying myself in them.

I lay there shaking, but then a slow warmth grew in my chest and spread out through my arms and legs and the tips of my fingers. I heard Mom's voice again. Soft. Musical. As bright as a pin. The last thing I remembered before I tumbled into a dreamless sleep was the feel of her hands brushing across my forehead and down my cheek.

E
VERY NIGHT
for the next week I left Lucy's Promise and walked into Black River.

I wandered empty streets, from the shops and apartments near Main Street to the mansions at the north end of town. I tried the doorknob of every house I came to. If it turned, I'd go inside and drift from room to room, imagining myself as one of Benny's ghosts. I'd lie on unmade beds and sit at dusty dining room tables and on rumpled couches. I went through closets and explored attics and basements, digging out photo albums and children's toys and stacks of old letters. When I left, I'd put everything back just the way I found it so that it would be like no one had ever been there.

I never wore my mask or gloves, so I avoided any infected I saw, until the fifth night when I came upon a crowd gathered in Monument Park. The bulbs in the streetlights had burned out and never been replaced, so the infected had built a bonfire in the middle of the soccer field. A few dozen people gathered around it, drinking black-market booze and cooking hot dogs over the flames. I found a spot twenty or thirty feet away and crouched in the shadows to watch.

I recognized most of them, but they stood in odd combinations, as if everyone in town had been tossed into a bag, shaken up, and spilled out again. Mrs. Stewart, my sophomore year English teacher, was standing with her arm around the waist of our old mailman, beaming. Mr. and Mrs. Ellery, who'd always been inseparable, were on opposite sides of the group. Mrs. Ellery had been absorbed into an entirely new family, and Mr. Ellery stood alone near the border of the park, looking lost and confused. A few pre-outbreak families had managed to stay together, but they were few and far between. I couldn't help but wonder where I would have ended up if I'd gotten infected that first night. Would I have a new family? A new name?

A familiar voice called out over the crowd. “Okay, I'll see you tomorrow, then. No! I have to go! I do! I have to!”

Mom was standing at the edge of a small circle of women. She laughed at something one of them said and then waved and headed toward the park exit. I left my spot and followed from a distance, losing her briefly when she slipped out of the circle of firelight. A second later I saw her climbing the rise that led to the street, and I settled in behind her.

The noise from the park faded as she turned onto Maitland and then Belvedere, where she stopped by a tall white fence. On the other side of it was a grassy slope that was covered with rosebushes. They were overgrown, spilling thorny runners and flowers out over Mom's head. She reached up for one of the blossoms, but her fingers barely touched the lowest petal. She tried again, and this time it seemed like there was a helium balloon trapped inside her chest. As it ascended, it drew the rest of her body along with it. Her chin lifted, and so did her shoulders and her hips. As she rose up onto the balls of her feet, one leg floated off the ground behind her, forming a straight line that stretched from the tips of her toes to the tips of her outstretched fingers. The phantom sound of violins started up in my head as she stood there perfectly poised. I felt Dad beside me, and you too. I could smell the perfume of the flowers as if I were standing right beside them.

And then, all at once, it was over. Mom plucked a flower off the branch and continued on her way.

We came to the end of a cul-de-sac and Mom climbed the front steps of a small two-story house. She pushed open the front door, calling out to someone as she went inside. The lights were on, but the curtains were drawn, so all I saw was her shadow moving toward the rear of the house. I circled around to the backyard and found a spot behind an oak tree.

Two windows looked into a living room. The shades were open, so I could see Mom as she came in and leaned against the window frame, the flower in her hand, its petals against her chest. She looked distant, thoughtful, as if she were searching for something out in the dark.

A man I'd never seen before came down the stairs behind her. He was about her age and built like a wrestler, with deep olive skin, and bald except for a fringe of black hair above his ears. Mom turned to him as he came into the room. He smiled wide and threw his arms around her, squeezing her close before leaning back to look into her eyes. He said something, and Mom nodded. And then he leaned in and kissed her.

Mom didn't flinch. She didn't resist. The man moved one hand to the small of her back while the other cupped her face. When he was done and they parted, he brushed his fingertips down her cheek and then stepped back and held out his hand. Mom took it, and they climbed the stairs together.

A few seconds later the lights went out and the house was dark.

My head buzzed as I walked back to Lucy's Promise. My arms and legs felt thick and numb. Sitting in front of my tent later that night, I replayed every second of what I'd seen. Mom turning toward that man as he came down the stairs. Mom lowering her head to his shoulder, then lifting her chin so he could kiss her. I watched it all over and over, hundreds of times, and as I did, the strangeness of it started to come into focus. The way she moved—it was as if she were under a spell. Or as if she were afraid. And hadn't she seemed that way the day I saw her in the alley too? Hadn't she been anxious as she looked over her shoulder?

An idea settled inside of me until it seemed so obvious, there couldn't have been any other explanation.

Since the first days of the outbreak, men like Tommasulo had targeted the newly infected. They were so trusting, they could be made to believe almost anything, made to
do
almost anything. What if this man was like that? All he would've had to do was get to Mom early and then hide her from the Guard until he convinced her that she was his wife. She'd never have any reason to suspect the truth, would never go to the Guard to find out who she was before the sixteenth—because she already knew. Mom hadn't abandoned us; she hadn't abandoned herself. She'd been stolen.

Everything in me wanted to run down the mountain and kick in their door, but I had to be smarter than that. The wait through the next day was excruciating. As soon as the sun was down I took everything I needed and went back to the house.

I hid in the yard until all the lights went out and a deep nighttime stillness settled over the neighborhood. I checked my mask and gloves and then zipped up my black sweatshirt, bringing the hood down low over my forehead. As I made my way around the side of the house, I slipped my knife from its sheath.