Clementine tried to wave goodbye, but Dobbs didn’t look back.
Pay grounded her for two weeks. No TV, as if that was something she’d miss. But she also wasn’t allowed to leave the house except to go to school.
That night, lying in bed, confined to her room, she took out her book again. She’d checked it out from the library months ago. Eventually, she guessed, they’d stop sending notices, asking for it back. Feet on the wall, she turned again to her favorite part. The sixth extinction, already under way. She’d read this chapter a million times. The planet heating, ice caps melting, species dying, ecosystems collapsing. The sixth extinction would wipe out everything now living, changing the world forever.
Through her window, she watched the sun set behind the empty house next door. The roof looked as though it were engulfed in flames. The heat was rising. The new ice age was coming, and Clementine imagined a girl slapping at a cell phone with fins instead of fingers, a kinder, gentler version of Car.
Eleven
The lectern was cut from a refrigerator box, a slab of cardboard creased twice to form three sides. They’d topped it with a square angled slightly toward the back. There Myles had laid his single sheet of paper, just a little too far away for him to be able to read it clearly. But if he were to lift the sheet or the hand that was holding it, everything would have blown away — paper, cardboard, and all. Almost Memorial Day, and a storm had blown in overnight from what felt like the arctic, blasting through the flat, open plaza in front of the HSI Building. The lectern clung to Myles’s legs like a terrified child. The hand that wasn’t pressing down on the paper hovered above his head, above the dancing locks of his powdered wig. The loose sleeves of the black robe snapped around his upraised arm.
Over the snapping, over the screeching wind, over the rumble of the traffic, over the hurried patter of leather-soled shoes, there were the shouts of interrupted cell phone conversations.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Wait.
I can’t.
The wind, I can’t.
Hold on.
Their heads were lowered, hunkered down. Nobody so much as glanced Myles’s way, which meant, to Holmes’s relief, that no one noticed him, either. Too busy, too cold, too busy.
It was Friday, just before nine in the morning, and the eastern edge of the HSI Building was aglow. Holmes stood several paces to Myles’s right, aware that he was visibly swaying but unable to do anything about it. His problem had nothing to do with the wind. He barely felt the cold. He was focused instead on trying to keep his knees from giving way beneath him.
Myles was the judge. Holmes was the bailiff, a plastic star from the dollar store pinned to his chest, an army surplus patch on his sleeve. Shiny black thrift store tie to match his shiny black thrift store shoes. Every piece of the ridiculous costume felt as though it were pressing in on him, cutting off his circulation.
All this had been Myles’s idea, another little surprise for McGee, another bit of theater. Holmes had spent the previous night trying to talk him out of it, as he had earlier with the video. Stunts like these never worked, especially on McGee.
“But she’s tired of picket signs,” Myles had said. “She told me. She thinks we should try something else.”
“Fine,” Holmes had said, “but I don’t think this is what she had in mind.”
“Then what?” Myles had demanded. “What?”
And Holmes had been able to see his desperation. How could he say no? His oldest friend. A pointless action was one thing, but love was something else. And underlying everything lately was Myles’s fear he was losing her.
Across the plaza, the revolving door of the HSI Building slowly turned, and out of the gap stepped an unsettling vision. Holmes had to look and then look again to make sure it was reaclass="underline" his twin, a black man dressed in an almost identical getup of polyester and vinyl, right down to the patch on his sleeve.
But not really a twin after all. When the guard turned and the wind stopped billowing into his shirt, Holmes could see he wasn’t as big as he’d seemed. But he more than made up for that with the gun holstered on his hip.
Holmes felt himself teeter. It was now or never. He nodded to Myles. At least he tried to nod, but his head was so heavy he couldn’t be sure it moved.
There was an excruciating pause, and then Myles cleared his throat:
“Today, before this gathering of witnesses,
Here in the shadow of this great obelisk of capital,
We find thee guilty of avarice, of arrogance, of deception, of murder,
Of pressing benevolent tools into the service of enmity.
“For thou hast filled thy belly at the tables of tyrants.
For thou has lent thy back to indiscriminate burdens,
Not as a servant, but as a mercenary.
For thou hast reaped profit in damnation.
“We, the jury of thine infamy, have espied
Thee building empires upon the swollen catacombs,
Have beheld thy bitter seed
Aborting thy neighbor’s fertile pastures,
Have heard thy chants and prayers
To summon storms of poisoned rains.
“For thou art duplicitous.
Thou art both pillar and pillage.
And we, those of us gathered here upon this solemn day,
And those whose headstones pave
The paths of thy secret gardens,
Are ready to receive thine head and hands
Into this, our hallowed pillory.
“May God have mercy on thy soul.”
Throughout Myles’s recitation, the world to Holmes had seemed to stand still. The wind, the traffic, the shoes, the chatter — all of it had melted away. Even Myles’s words had seemed distorted. Holmes had been aware of him speaking, or at least of Myles’s lips moving, but there was no discernible sound. Now, however, the indictment had been read, and now Myles’s lips had stilled, and now the world began to reawaken a bit at a time. First there was the piece of paper flopping like a fish in Myles’s hand. And then the suits and the leather soles became animated again. But the bodies wearing them were different from before. The revolving doors of the HSI Building continued to suck them in. The guard had left his post by the entrance, heading straight toward Holmes.
Holmes realized now, in fact, that almost nothing had stopped, that almost no one had noticed anything. Aside from the guard, there was only an older white woman in a burgundy skirt who stood a few yards away, the only still body in the entire plaza. The suits swerved around her. Even the wind appeared to leave her alone. A strange expression consumed her face — a cramped, bemused smile. She was looking from Holmes to Myles and back again. She seemed to be waiting to see what would happen next. It was only when the guard reached her side, and she turned slightly to speak to him, that Holmes recognized her. Hers was the face from the picture Fitch had shown them. This was the woman McGee had been coaching him to meet.
Ruth Freeman had hair like a librarian: gray and short, boyishly sweeping across her head. She held her briefcase in both hands, like a child with a basket full of eggs. And in the moment the guard came forward to grasp Myles’s arms, the woman’s expression changed to something that looked to Holmes like pity.