The Wall (The Woodlands) (47 page)

I stood
there, waiting for the lights of the truck to recede into the distance. Filled with new energy, I weaved through the shadows like I was air and light. Rash, I found Rash. How he was here, I couldn’t fathom but I’d found him—he was coming with me. I would let this good news cradle me against the grief that was threatening to destroy me, the grief of losing my mother, twice.

I st
ole my way through the gates without incident, noticing for the first time how empty the streets were. Even on a quiet night there were usually a few police patrols strutting down the pavement, talking loudly and being generally obnoxious. Where was everybody? My feelings of joy at finding my friend were coated in a sap of suspicion. Dust swirled up my nose as a vague breeze swept across the ground. The air never moved very far in here.

I hoped the Spider Careen retrieved
would have some answers for us. I prayed her rescue had gone smoother than my own.

Ring Eight
—the end of the line in so many ways. It was the end of Pau Brasil; it was the end of life for its inhabitants. For me, it was the end of Woodlands. I would never come back here.

I waited in the shadow
of an empty bin on the curb. I would have to wait for at least an hour so I hunkered down on my knees and rested my back against the side of the bin. It was empty but the stench of past garbage was almost too much. I took my breath in small bursts through my mouth, wondering what they did with all the rubbish.

I lifted my hand to my face
gingerly, feeling the bulge where Paulo had struck me throb under my fingertips. Paulo. I smiled darkly. By now, the police would have him in custody. Maybe that’s why there was no one in the streets. They were all attending the disturbance I’d made in Ring Two. It seemed unlikely. There should be more, I was sure of it.

I watched as two men in police uniforms set themselves up in a little shed that rested against the outer ring. They must have been on watch and had just changed shifts. They
began to play cards on a flimsy table the man had carried in under his arm, talking loudly. There was an older, heavy-looking man with big, muscled arms and stringy hair that fell in a flap over his balding head. The other had a small snip of a face and when he spoke, his voice matched it perfectly, whiny and full of pinched resentment.

“
Didn’t you want to go?” the older man snorted.

“
They said I couldn’t go, bad legs,” the snip said, slapping his thigh. “There’s a lot of walking, y’know.”

“
Sure, sure,” the older one said, punching the whiny one’s arm. “You’re just worried the scary Survivors will getchya with their magical powers.” He wiggled his fingers at the young one like he was casting a spell.

“
Shut up! You’re not going either—what’s your excuse?”

“
Too old,” he said and went quiet for a while. I shifted on my haunches. “Ha! I win. Another round?”

“
Why not? Nothing going on around here,” the younger one shrugged.

I tried to put this together
, not that it was hard. This puzzle had flat edges and only two pieces to match up. If the police were not here, they had begun their search for the settlement. Only I didn’t know how long ago they’d left and whether they’d found anything.

After about an hour of watching
and listening to this back-and-forth conversation, which mostly consisted of the big one teasing the whiny one and the whiny one, well, whining, I started to wish they had caught me or that the bigger one would slap some sense into the snippy man. He complained and carried on about every single thing. How hot it was during the day, how cold it was at night, how his leg ached in varying temperatures. It seemed to me it ached in every temperature. I was about to stand up and offer to amputate it for him when I saw Rash leaning against the gate, looking for me.

It didn
’t take him long to see me crouching behind the bin, rolling my eyes. He walked towards me and my heart started to pound. He would expose us both. But he walked straight past me without casting me a shadow of a glance and made his way up to the policemen. They had a hushed conversation and he shook hands with the older one. They walked away from their post.

Char
m can get you quite far it seemed.

The dark mischief walked toward
s me with his beautiful grin. I felt my own mouth lifting. He was here. He was real.

“
How did you do that?” I asked in wonderment as I took his hand and let him pull me up.

“
Oh, I just told them I saw an old man had carked it in the house around the corner and he had some nice stuff.”

I was disgusted but relieved at their greed.

I took both Rash’s hands and shook off the grotesqueness this place was steeped in with a shudder. I stared at my friend. My ghost. He returned my stare and then cupped his hand to my face; it felt like he might pass right through me like smoke. When I saw his eyes, the disbelief and happiness reflected there, I realized I was a ghost to him too.

“
Wow, Soar.” He traced my jaw with his finger. “No scar.”

I took his hand between both of mine.
“Not on the outside anyway.”

“
I guess you have a pretty interesting story to tell me,” he said, flashing his white teeth and winking.

I laughed quietly, touching my stomach.
“I certainly do, but not now.” I pulled out the spare gloves and booties from my pack, my fingers brushing the toy train I had shoved in there the morning I’d left my son. My heart squeezed uncomfortably. “Put these on,” I said, bounding towards the wall, feeling light as a feather and as heavy as a block of lead sinking to the bottom of a lake.

I
’d lost my mother and gained my friend. But loss is loss. It wouldn’t be so easy to exchange one for the other. My grief would follow me.

But for now, I had to show Ras
h how to climb the wall like a lizard.

Rash took to climbing
fairly easily, swearing under his breath at how unfit he was when he slipped. But he didn’t slip much. We got to the top and looked back at Pau. I was about to say something meaningful. To say farewell this place I’d called home for sixteen years when Rash gripped my wrist and held up my hand, making it wave jerkily. “So long, suckers!” he said, way too loudly, and swung himself down the other side, shimmying down the wall impressively quick.

I smothered a giggle, rolled my
eyes, and followed. Finding the wall a bit slippery with morning dew, I slid down the last part of the wall and landed on my butt in the mud.

“
Graceful as always,” Rash said, extending his hand. I slapped it away and was about to make a snide comment about his lack of gentlemanliness when I heard footsteps coming towards us. Careen’s face appeared, floating in the half-light, illuminated by her handheld. A dark figure walked beside her. Tall and lean. They were muttering to each other. Even at their hushed tone, I could hear a melody in his voice. It was familiar but in a removed kind of way, like an overheard conversation. The voice grated. It grazed the edges of my memory and tried to pull something reluctantly to the surface.

I
ran at Careen and jumped, knocking her to the ground in a fierce embrace. She was shocked to say the least. “What’s wrong with you?” she exclaimed, but her voice was relieved and she responded to my affection with a squeeze, our chests squishing together.

I shuffled backwards
. “Sorry, I’m just glad you’re ok,” I muttered, embarrassed, realizing we were being watched by a stranger. The figure chuckled lightly, a sound that rang bells in my ears. I shook my head to clear it.

“
Where’s your mother and the baby? And who’s this?” Careen said as she lurched towards Rash threateningly.

I scrambled to my feet and put myself between them. Rash
stood there with his hands up, smirking. “Hey. Settle down there, lovely lady. I’m a friend,” Rash said. He leaned over to me and whispered, “Are all the Survivors this gorgeous?”

Careen
’s head snapped towards me questioningly.

I rattled out the quickest response I could, blurting out too many details and not enough, laughing hysterically as I explain
ed how Paulo had tried to kill me with a telephone. The dark figure lurked in the background, swaying from foot to foot like he was going to run at me. I squinted at him as I spoke, but I couldn’t make out a face in the squandering light. “She wouldn’t come,” I said, starting to sob, the pressure of my failure wrenching my insides. “She didn’t want me.” I was pathetic.

Rash and Careen put their arms around me.
“It’s ok, you tried,” Careen said soothingly.

“
Yeah and you got a great consolation prize,” Rash said.

“
You’re hardly a prize,” I snorted.

“
That’s the spirit!” he said, elbowing me in the ribs playfully.

“
Ouch.” I was so sore from my scuffle with Paulo.

“
Whoops, sorry,” he said sheepishly.

Careen touched my ribs again and I winced.
Her voiced sounded terribly serious when she said, “I think he broke a rib, Rosa. Can you walk?”

I
was confused. I’d been walking, running for hours. I was walking right now. I took a deep breath and again felt that sharp, strangling pain I’d taken to be my heart breaking. Careen ran her hand along my jaw and up to my temple. “You probably have a concussion too.” Her words seemed far away. I felt fine. I focused on the shadow man.

He
was silent, too silent, and it bothered me. I took the torch from my pack and walked towards him, my legs jabbing out from under me like they weren’t my own.

“
And who’s this?” I asked suspiciously. Something about him didn’t sit right. I flicked the torch on, the stream of light blinding. His eyes were tightly shut as the brightness showered his face. I lowered it a little so he could see. So I could see him.

He opened his eyes and smiled
nervously. I drew in a breath and it poisoned me. My heart refused to beat.

Finally,
I held the missing piece of the puzzle. But as I placed it in its rightful spot, the picture shook and changed. Old realities shifted, confusion dominated. Suddenly, half my life made a whole lot more sense but just as surely, the other half of my reality split open spectacularly.

He blinked and opened his mouth to speak.

Don
’t speak.

Shadows darkened and light penetrated.
Could you feel insane with rage and full of joy at the same time?

One blue eye and one brown.

The world was spiraling down or I was plummeting through the earth—I couldn’t tell. But as I fell to the ground, shock and exhaustion pulling me under, one thought pushed its way to the surface like an oily bubble and burst.

My life, my whole life
…

My father was a S
pider
.