Nil (39 page)

Then there was nothing.

No light. No air.

No Thad.

CHAPTER

63

THAD

DAY 365, NOON

Charley was gone.

I’d lost her, and yet I’d won.

“I beat you!” I screamed at Nil. Stoke shot through me like I’d posted a perfect run. Only it was Charley who’d swept the heat; it was Charley who’d caught the gate. It was Charley who’d live—and that was the rush. I’d embraced my destiny: I’d protected Charley to the end, made the ultimate bodyguard move. I’d rolled the dice, and I’d won.

Me, not Nil.

Laughing, I punched the Nil sky. My laughter echoed over the endless black rock, Nil laughing back at me.

That’s when it hit me.
I should be dead.

I’d never been with anyone on their last day. I’d assumed that a gate came and went—or didn’t come at all—and then you just keeled over. Checked out. Done.

But I was still standing. And feeling sick, I suddenly knew how it would all shake out: I’d have to wait for midnight, suffering without Charley. I’d have to weather the twilight of my dying day alone, every minute a biting reminder of what I’d lost—and could never have.

“Why?” I shouted, pissed and bitter, fighting to keep my Charley-made-it high. In the distance, I heard Rives shout my name, but I was too wrapped in Nil hate to answer. I tilted my face to the Nil sky, choking Nil air in my fists. “WHY?” I screamed. “Tell me!”

The grizzly roared, the ground shook—and then I knew.
Because this is Nil, and she’s cruel. And because she’s not done playing with me
.

Then she whispered,
RUN
.

CHAPTER

64

CHARLEY

DAY 1, TIME UNKNOWN

My skin was stinging. No, burning. No,
freezing
.

I woke, shaking uncontrollably. From cold, from pain, from a horrible sense of loss. It was the only thing that came with me through the gate.

When I opened my eyes, a crowd of guys in parkas and goggles were bent over me; they wore helmets on their heads and confusion on their faces. And in some cruel twist of fate, the land around me was brilliant, arctic white. Stark naked, I lay cushioned on fine powder that burned like fire.

I lay on Thad’s snow.

Thad!
Every cell in my body cried for him, but there was no answer, just fading echoes.
I’ll find you, Charley! I promise!

But you can’t
, my heart cried.
Because I took your gate, your chance to escape. And now you’re stuck, condemned to Nil forever.

The men spoke quickly, murmuring in a foreign language I made no effort to understand. I didn’t care what happened to me. I was fractured, shattered and incomplete. And there was no way to put me back together, because the part of me that belonged to Thad was gone, brutally ripped away as I passed through the gate.

I closed my eyes, willing the men to walk away.
Leave
, I cried silently
. Leave me here, on Thad’s snow. He should be here, not me
.

Just … leave.

But they didn’t.

Hands lifted me, and gently slid my arms into soft sleeves full of warmth. I heard a zipping noise, and warmth spread across my chest. Damp socks slid over my feet, followed by pants that moved up my legs. The hands handled me like I might break.

They didn’t know I already had.

CHAPTER

65

CHARLEY

DAY 4, MID-MORNING

Here turned out to be France. Mont Blanc, specifically. I was found in an out-of-bounds area by a group of expert skiers who had “accidentally” veered off course into virgin powder.

Everyone kept telling me I was lucky to be alive.

Wrong
, I’d think. If I were lucky, Thad would be here, not me. If I were lucky, I’d be on Nil, with a fighting chance of catching a gate and seeing Thad again. If I were lucky, I’d have been left for dead. That would have been kinder.

But instead I’d been admitted to a French hospital.

So far I’d spoken three words: American. Charley Crowder. The rest of the time I either shook my head or nodded, when I acknowledged the doctors at all. I kept my eyes closed, alternately clinging to my mental pictures or hiding from them. They were all I had.

When Mom, Dad, and Em rushed into the room, they looked as foreign as the nurses. The minute they saw me, their words gushed like tears.

My mom. “Charley! Oh my land, it’s really you! You poor baby, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”
No, you can’t
.

My dad. “Oh, shug, we’d thought we’d lost you.”
Me too.

Em. “Charley, I’ve missed you so much. When we got the call they found you, it was the best day of my life.”
And it was one of the worst days of mine.

They huddled around my bed, pouring out their stories. They thought I’d been kidnapped. My clothes were found in the Target lot; my dad’s Volvo was discovered in downtown Atlanta, stripped and trashed. My purse and wallet were never found. It was clear that my entire family had expected to find me dead—not alive on a French mountainside. No one could figure out how I got there, but they didn’t seem to care. They were too happy that I was alive.

More babbling. More questions. More. More. More. Too much. Too soon.

I closed my eyes, shutting my family out. I couldn’t tell the truth; no one would believe me. So I did the next best thing.

I claimed amnesia.

CHAPTER

66

CHARLEY

DAY 10, LATE AFTERNOON

Walking into my room was surreal. It was like a time capsule from another time, from another girl’s life.

Em’s bed sat neatly made and empty, exactly as I remembered it. UGA had one more day of classes before Thanksgiving break, so Em was away at college, just like on the day I left. My bed was made, too, not as perfectly as Em’s but made nonetheless. On top of my covers, my iPod lay near my pillow, exactly where I’d dropped it over a hundred mornings ago. The book I’d been reading sat beside my bed, bookmark in place, waiting.

Nothing had changed—except me.

I dropped my bag and turned on my computer.

At the Google prompt, I typed “Thad Blake, snowboarder.” There were tons of archived stories, all documenting a promising Canadian snowboarder who went missing days after he was named to the Canadian National Snowboard Team. One had a clear headshot of Thad. Same blond hair, shorter than I remembered, same sapphire eyes, same lazy grin.

Reaching up, I touched Thad’s cheek. It felt flat and lifeless, two-dimensional and cold like I knew it would.

With Thad smiling at me, I finally read the article. Then another. I devoured them all. Regardless of the article, the theory was the same: he was lost on the slopes, on expert terrain. His body was never found.
Duh
, I thought. One article speculated suicide, noting a devastating breakup with his girlfriend, but his family and friends rejected that idea.

“Thad would never commit suicide,” his mom was quoted as saying. “He loves life more than anyone in this world.”

Maybe in
this
world
, I thought, fighting the hollowness inside. But Thad wasn’t in this world, and hadn’t been for a year. He’d been on Nil, where you lived like you were dying. And while Thad had sacrificed his chance to live, it wasn’t suicide.
Suicide
was an ugly word. Selfish. And what Thad did was completely self
less
. But either way, the result was the same: he’d died. For me.

Thad smiled at me from the screen, cocking his lazy, knowing grin
. I love you, Charley from Georgia
.

I love you, too. With all that I have, with all that I am. I love you.

I wished that had been my good-bye, but in the end, our bye was anything but good. I stared at Thad’s picture, aching to be with him. Abruptly, his image disappeared, replaced by my stupid screensaver, which was, of all things, a tropical beach scene. I jiggled the mouse, bringing Thad back.

If only it were so easy.

Unwilling to lose his smile, I printed the picture, and when a tear fell, blurring Thad’s face, I printed another one. Then I crawled into bed, holding Thad.

Salt on my cheeks, salt on my lips … a taste of Nil, it was all I had left. Tears soaked my pillow, but I didn’t move. I lay there, drowning in loss and pain, desperately wishing Em were here and deeply relieved she wasn’t.

That was the night I finally understood there were worse things than being alone.

CHAPTER

67

CHARLEY

DAY 19, AFTER DARK

There’d been no news, no calls. Nineteen days of complete Thad silence. I was still counting; I couldn’t stop, and last night I’d dreamed of the Wall. This time the space beside Thad’s name was filled—with a cross. And I held the knife.

I’d stolen his gate. He’d pushed me, but I was the thief.

Rubbing my eyes, I minimized Firefox. Even my browser’s logo seemed mocking. A warm-blooded fox, circling the globe, as fiery as a gate, as elusive as Nil. His eyes were shrouded, giving nothing away.

I’d spent the last four hours scouring news sites. I didn’t bother with the Atlanta paper anymore. I started with Canadian ones, then went international, searching for news of Thad. But any specific search turned up articles I’d read a thousand times, and my generic searches turned up nothing. No news of a missing Canadian found anywhere, no word of a naked boy showing up somewhere strange. The only unusual story I’d found was in yesterday’s edition of Britain’s
Daily Mail
. Titled “Rhino Raises Hell in Helsinki,” the article reported the capture of a rare black rhino found charging down the streets of Helsinki. Local zoos denied responsibility, claiming all their animals were accounted for, and the incident sparked a national outcry demanding investigation into the exotic animal trade. “People shouldn’t be housing rhinos in their backyard for sport,” argued one Finnish man, whose bakery shop was damaged in the ensuing chaos. “What’s next, tigers?”

Maybe,
I thought.
But I’m still hoping for a naked person. Over six feet tall, blond, with brilliant blue eyes and a selfless streak a mile wide.

I stared at the flaming fox, wondering what angle I was missing. Then an idea sparked. Bringing up a fresh tab, I typed the word
Nil.

A flurry of results appeared. Most were definitions by online dictionaries and encyclopedias, followed by a few businesses that for some inexplicable reason had named themselves Nil. But one result caught my eye: a personal blog titled
Nil Nightmares
. Maintained by a South African man in his late twenties, the blog detailed his eerily familiar account of eleven months on Nil. He posted links to a private Nil survivor support group, various missing persons sites, and even a few crackpot wormhole theorists. The comments were scathing. Some questioned the man’s mental health, others urged counseling, still more begged for details to get to Nil themselves. It was an abyss of information that confirmed my decision to claim amnesia. Better forgetful than crazy. And Thad was still lost.

With nothing left to search for, I turned off my Mac and climbed into bed.

Even though everything told me Thad was dead, I refused to accept it. Because even though everything about Nil screamed temporary, Thad and I had always felt permanent. I kept thinking that perhaps Thad had miscounted his days, or that somehow Nil had granted him immunity, giving him extra time before his clock ran out. I hoped that any day Thad would show up, flashing his easy grin, flesh and bone, in
this
world. But with each day that passed, my hope shrank, collapsing on itself just a little bit more, like the pinpoint black dot of a gate right before it vanished for good.

A soft knock intruded on my thoughts.

“Charley?” Em’s voice. The door creaked open. “You have a phone call.”

I sat up with a jerk. “Who?”

“A girl,” she said, and just like that, my lingering hope died. Instantly, painfully. Irrevocably.

“She swears she’s not a reporter,” Em was saying, “and that you know her.” Em paused.

“Her name is Natalie.”

CHAPTER

68

CHARLEY

DAY 35, TWILIGHT

Over the past fifteen days, I’d seen a neurologist, a psychiatrist, and a famous psychologist who specializes in victims of violent trauma. She’d actually made a house call after reading about me in the newspapers. Apparently it’s not every day that a seventeen-year-old American from a middle-class family, on track for a volleyball scholarship and with no record of crazy behavior, disappears for months, only to be found naked in a foreign country.

I really needed to pay more attention to the news.

But that would have meant getting my hopes up, something I could no longer handle. I’d stopped my dates with Firefox, refusing to scour news sites for an article I’d never find. I also refused to see any more counselors. They’d all come to the same conclusion: whatever had happened to me was so traumatic that, as a protective measure, my mind had walled off all memories of the incident.

But I did remember. And as painful as the memories were, I’d rather die than forget.

The only effort I made was to go running. It made my parents happy that I actually left my room, not to mention my bed. I’d run for hours, reveling in my memories.
Thad running beside me, his hand wrapped around mine … Thad placing a lei around my neck, his sapphire eyes burning … Thad’s lips on mine, warm and sweet, hungry and wanting
. I sifted through each moment one at a time, reveling in the joy and pain of it. I’d run until the fog of physical exhaustion settled over my brain. This morning I’d run sixteen miles, and I only came home because the drizzle became a torrent. I’d forgotten what it was like to get caught in the rain.