Children of the Uprising (31 page)

Nobody came to
meet Christopher and Reggie at the airport. Christopher knew that it was silly to expect anyone there and he didn't care when no one showed. They were home. He could feel it, even though he'd never been to New York before. Christopher and Reggie could once again walk through the airport without standing out like creatures from another planet. Reggie was no longer a head taller than everyone they walked past. Christopher's skin was no longer two shades paler than every person around them. They were normal again, even if only on the surface. JFK Airport was busy, and Reggie and Christopher made their way through the crowds quickly and with purpose. Reggie walked in front. Christopher followed a step or two behind him. At the taxi stand outside the concourse, they got into a cab. “Brooklyn,” Reggie told the cabdriver. “Eighth Street and Second Avenue.”

The cabdriver turned around in his seat and looked at Reggie. “Are you sure you have the right address?” the cabbie asked with a thick Pakistani accent that Christopher actually recognized. “I can take you, but I must warn you. There's nothing there—just warehouses and empty buildings. Maybe you want Eighth Avenue and Second Street, on the park? No?”

Reggie waved a hand at the cabbie, motioning for him to turn around and start driving. “No, it's Eighth Street and Second Avenue. We know where we're going. You don't have to worry. I'm from here.”

“Okay,” the cabbie said before putting the cab in gear.

They rode in silence at first. Christopher stared out the window. Nothing Christopher had seen had looked like this—not Singapore, not Istanbul—nowhere else looked like New York. Reggie sat fidgeting in the seat next to him. “Are you okay, Reggie?” Christopher asked. Reggie's face looked ashen and long.

“I'm okay,” Reggie answered him. “It's just that we're finally coming to the end.”

“One way or the other, right?” Christopher laughed sardonically.

“One way or the other,” Reggie agreed softly.

It took them forty minutes to get from JFK to the low area around the Gowanus Canal. When they drove over the Pulaski Skyway, Christopher got his first unadulterated view of the Manhattan skyline. It didn't look real to him. It looked more like a comic book or the set of a science fiction movie. Christopher wanted to tell the cabbie to pull over, to stop right there on the bridge, traffic be damned, so that Christopher could stare at the view longer, at the tall buildings and the bridges. His eyes darted from skyscraper to skyscraper. Until that moment, Christopher had never thought about what the word
skyscraper
literally meant, but now, as he stared at the true leviathans reaching into the air, he understood. Those buildings really did scrape the sky. He didn't know it then, but it was going to be his job to blow one of those buildings out of the sky. Christopher didn't actually ask the cabbie to stop. He rode and stared and didn't think for a second about what was going to happen when the cab ride ended. But it did end.

“You sure this is where you want me to drop you?” the cabbie asked again as he pulled up in front of a graffiti-covered warehouse.

Reggie took a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket. “This is good,” he said, handing the bill to the cabbie. “Now, forget that you dropped anybody here.” They got out of the cab, stood on the empty sidewalk and watched the cab drive away. When it disappeared from view, Reggie turned toward the building and waved. Only then did the building's loading dock door begin to open.

After Indonesia and Istanbul, Christopher had believed that he had outgrown the ability to be surprised. It had only taken him a couple of weeks to come to that conclusion, but that's what happens when every day begins as if you're peering over the edge of a roller-coaster car. So Christopher wasn't surprised when the loading dock door opened to reveal an interior that looked nothing like an abandoned warehouse. He wasn't surprised to see Brian standing behind the doors, waiting for them. “Welcome back,” Brian said to Christopher and Reggie, greeting them with a salesman's smile. Brian approached Christopher first. He stretched out his hand for Christopher to shake. “We've heard amazing things,” Brian said to Christopher. “You've done so well, Christopher. Your father would be proud.” Christopher shook Brian's hand without saying anything. “I hope you now believe that you did the right thing coming with me.”

“I do,” Christopher finally conceded. “Have you heard anything about Evan and Addy?” He had avoided asking Reggie the question, knowing that there was nothing he could do about them when he was halfway across the world, but now he was back.

Brian put his hand on Christopher's shoulder. “Heard about them? They're here,” Brian said, to Christopher's relief. “They're excited to see you.” Brian squeezed Christopher's shoulder and gently guided him into the building. Once Christopher was over the threshold, Brian turned to Reggie. He shook Reggie's hand too, leaning in toward him and whispering something in his ear. Seeing Reggie and Brian together for the first time, Christopher thought about how everything seemed to be tightening around him. He had once read somewhere that the difference between fear and paranoia was that fear was rational. He'd always wondered what good that was when the world was fucking crazy. Reggie nodded to Brian and whispered a reply in Brian's ear.

“Secrets?” Christopher said out loud, admonishing Brian and Reggie.

“Nothing you won't hear about soon enough,” Reggie promised him. Christopher wondered if Brian and Reggie would even know each other if it wasn't for him and his birth parents.

Christopher stepped into the building and wasn't surprised to see the silent faces of two dozen people staring at him. Alejandro was there from Costa Rica. So was Simone from Rio de Janeiro. So were so many others. Yet even as Christopher's world expanded, it seemed to be shrinking. His past was becoming part of his present, and his present seemed merely to be becoming a foil for whatever was in store for him in his future.

“Brian's going to take you to see Evan and Addy,” Reggie said to Christopher. “I have some things I need to take care of.”

“Okay,” Christopher said, too eager to see his old friends to argue. He followed Brian up a flight of stairs and into a small, windowless room. The room was a stark white color, with a white conference table and white chairs.

“Wait here,” Brian said to Christopher. Christopher nodded and Brian walked back out of the room. Christopher sat down in one of the chairs. He didn't know why, but his heart was pounding in his chest. He felt like he could hear the sound of it beating as it echoed around the room. Of all the things to be nervous about, Christopher couldn't understand why he was so nervous about seeing his friends again. They were alive. Brian had told Christopher that they were excited to see him. Christopher knew that, if what Brian said was true, Evan and Addy must have forgiven him for leaving them the way he did. None of the rationalizing Christopher was doing in his head had any impact on the beating of his heart. Reggie had been acting so strange. Something else was up, something that would test Christopher's newfound immunity to surprises. The thing was, Christopher was pretty sure that he didn't want to be surprised anymore.

Maria stood alone on the roof of the warehouse, waiting for Reggie. Brian had brought her there. He told her that Reggie wanted to talk to her first. The roof was the only place Reggie knew that they could be alone. The roof wasn't very high, but Maria was surprised by how much she could see from that vantage point. Everything in this part of the city was low. A warm wind blew around her, and she could hear the distant sounds of the city on the breeze. She walked over to the edge of the roof, looked down at the empty streets below her, and waited.

Maria remembered the first letter she'd gotten in prison from Reggie. It was the first letter she got, period. The whole time she was in prison, eight years all told, nobody except Reggie wrote to her. Maria was nervous when she received that first letter. She was nervous that it would be from her father, nervous that her father might have found out what had become of her. But she never heard from her father. Her father never found out, and by the time Maria got out of prison, she didn't have to worry about her father finding out anymore. He died in the middle of her prison sentence.

Reggie didn't put any details in that first letter. Maria didn't even realize it was from him until she saw the name “Reggie,” with quotes around it, at the bottom of the page. At first she didn't know how she felt about getting a letter from Reggie. After she had saved Christopher, she wanted to disassociate herself from the War. But she was so glad to find out that Reggie was alive and okay and so happy to have a connection to somebody. So she wrote Reggie back. They didn't talk about much in their letters, either while Maria was in prison or after. They rarely mentioned the War or Christopher. They wrote to each other, from the vantage points of two people living idyllic, ordinary lives. It was a game, a pleasant distraction, a way for both of them to make the world seem bearable.

The letters were almost entirely fictional, but sometimes some truth leaked through. Eventually Maria surmised from some of the hidden details in Reggie's letters that Reggie was working with the Underground. So for one letter, Maria stopped playing the game. For one letter, she wrote as herself, as Christopher's mother and as the woman who once saved Reggie's life. She made one request of Reggie, a request that Reggie agreed to without hesitation. One request that Maria had been relying on ever since she made it.

Maria heard the door on the roof open behind her. It was an old door with rust on its hinges and it squeaked as it swung open. She didn't turn at first. She wanted to say something before she faced Reggie and lost her resolve. She heard Reggie take a few steps toward her. “You promised me that you'd protect him,” Maria said to Reggie without turning to face him. “You promised me that you'd keep him out of the War.”

“I know,” Reggie said, and she remembered his voice. “I never should have made that promise. I had no right to make promises that I couldn't keep. At the time I didn't have any idea what Christopher would become, what either of you would become.”

Maria turned to face Reggie now. She was shocked by how old he looked. She had half expected to turn around and see a teenage boy standing behind her. What she saw instead was a man, a strong but weathered man. “Christopher didn't
become
anything,” Maria said to him. “He's just a boy, Reggie.”

Reggie shook his head. “That's where you're wrong, Maria. Christopher is a boy, but he's not
just
a boy. He's so much more.”

“You're going to break him, Reggie. You're all going to break him.”

“I tried to keep him out of all this, Maria. You have to know that I tried.” Reggie stepped closer to Maria. They stood facing each other.

“What do you mean you tried? You flew him around the world to convince people to join some sort of revolution. How is that
trying
to protect him? You used him, Reggie.”

“Yeah,” Reggie admitted, “but at least it was me using him and not somebody else. I'm not going to waste him like other people would have. We're actually going to do this, Maria. We're actually going to end the War.”

“And what if you don't? What happens then?”

“I gave him a chance to run, Maria. I put my best people on it. It didn't take.” Reggie decided not to tell Maria about Max and about how Max died protecting Christopher. He couldn't see what good it would do. He was using Christopher. He wasn't going to win the argument that way. “Did you ever imagine that your son would get to see the sunrise in Indonesia or eat dinner on a rooftop in Istanbul?”

“No,” Maria admitted. “Do you think that's worth it?”

“You'll have to ask Christopher that.”

“But do
you
think it's worth it?” Maria pressed.

“No,” Reggie answered her, “but it's something.”

Maria thought about it for a second. “Do you still need him? Hasn't he already played his part? Can't you finish the rest without him?”

Reggie nodded. “We can. Christopher already did his part. He did it miraculously. He needs to meet with people here tomorrow, but it's only a formality. They've come from all over the Americas to see him—to see the legend with their own eyes. After that, if you can convince him to stop, he can stop.” Reggie paused for a moment. “But you're not going to be able to convince him. I tried already. He wants to see this thing through.”

“And if you can't convince him, what chance do I have?” Maria said with only a tinge of sarcasm.

Reggie shrugged off the sarcasm. “He's stubborn,” Reggie said. “Like his mother.”

“Where is he now?” Maria asked.

“He's downstairs, in a room, waiting. We wanted you and Addy and Evan to go in to see him together. We think it might help alleviate the shock.”

“The shock?” Maria flinched. “Does he know about me? Does he even know that I'm alive?” Her voice suddenly got weak.

“No,” Reggie said. “I managed to keep some of my promises.”