I cover my mouth, trying not to cry. A cure. A cure for Cody. I’d do anything for that. I listen as the woman pauses.
“There can be only one champion.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I leap out of bed, heart pounding. This must be a joke. A prank. It can’t be real.
Can it?
If this is a joke, it’s the worst kind. Because I’d do anything to save Cody’s life. And this device — this woman — just told me there’s a way. Did my dad listen to this? My mom? Do they know what she said? If they did and they thought there was even a possibility of its being true, why would they ever try to destroy it?
I don’t know. I don’t care. This is about me now. The blue box was on my bed. I’m the one who received the invitation.
But this can’t be real. Can it?
My heart aches as I consider my brother. What’s crazy is — as absurd as this race sounds — I can’t stop thinking, What if it’s true? I want to believe it’s real. I want to believe there can be an end to Cody’s blood tests and MRIs. That my mom will learn to sleep again, and that my dad will stop quietly raging. I don’t want to smell antiseptic anymore or meet another kindhearted nurse who’s great at hitting a vein on the first try. How about, instead, you leave Cody alone?
How about, instead, you make him better?!
Driven by raw emotion, I weigh my choices. Ignore the woman’s message and go back to bed.
Or.
Take the chance, the miniscule chance, that my dad knew there was something to hide.
The realization that I may be onto something slams into me. My parents tried to conceal this. My brother passed it off as a joke. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone in my family stop me from helping Cody.
Assuming this is all real.
“It has to be,” I whisper in the dark.
Anger coils in my stomach like a serpent. My dad didn’t think I could do this. That’s why he tried to destroy the device. But maybe he doesn’t know his little girl as well as he’d like to believe. Because when it comes to doing something for my family, I’m not just his daughter.
I am strong.
I will be strong for my brother.
My hand grips the device I’ve removed from my ear. The woman said I needed to get to the Old Red Museum within forty-eight hours. How long has it been since I first saw the box? How long did it take to get to me?
Grabbing my old backpack from my closet, I think about what to pack: clothes, food, water, the device … maybe some nail polish. Just because I’m entering a race doesn’t mean I don’t want to look magically delicious. I throw on a black, long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and yellow ballet flats. Then I jam things into my bag as quickly as I can, knowing I want to leave before the sun rises and my parents wake up. The first thing I’ve got to do is figure out where the Old Red Museum is. We don’t have an Internet connection here, but some place in town will. I’ll be able to look it up there. At least I hope so.
A lump forms in my throat as I think about leaving. My parents will be fine, but what about Cody? Will he be okay while I’m away? I stare at the bag in my hands, then drop it onto the bed. I’m not even sure of what I’m doing when I leave my room and head to Cody’s. I stop in his doorway and listen to his even breathing.
I’m glad he’s asleep. There’s no part of me that wants to banter with him right now, even if he does like it. I just want to tell him I love him. So I do.
“I love you, Cody,” I say. And then, “Please don’t die.”
Tears sting my eyes as I run toward my bedroom. I want to keep this picture of him in my head, his sleeping chest rising and falling under the heavy blue blanket. This race may be a crock, and I may only be gone chasing a phantom for one day, but I’ll still miss him.
When I’m almost back to my room, I hear a creaking sound. Crap. Someone’s coming. I manage to wipe the tears from my eyes and throw my backpack into the closet, but I don’t have time to jump into bed before my mom appears in the doorway.
She walks over to my lamp and flips the switch. Warm light washes across my room. She looks at me for a long time, so long that I wonder if she’s forgotten who I am. Then she sits down on the bed.
“You’re awake,” she says. She doesn’t sound surprised. It’s more like a statement.
“Yeah,” I say, not sure what else to say. I consider asking her about the device, if she knows what is on it. But I’m afraid of what she’ll admit.
“I heard you moving around,” she continues. I notice that she’s holding something. Her hands work their way across it like she’s smoothing it out. She sees me looking and holds it up. In the lamp’s glow, I make out that it’s a feather of green and blue and is attached to a thin leather string.
“This was my mother’s,” she says. “I don’t remember much about her.” My mom has rarely spoken of her own mother, and it’s almost surprising remembering she had one. But of course she did. Her mother died when she was young. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t exist. Mom holds the feather up to her head and smiles. “I remember she used to wear this in her hair.”
The smile slips from my mom’s face. I sit down next to her on the bed. I’m about to tell her what I know, but she holds up a hand. At first, it’s like she’s stopping me from speaking, but then she moves to touch my hair. She pets the back of my head, and I can’t help but close my eyes. For the second time tonight, I feel like I might lose it.
“You have your father’s hair,” she says. Then she looks me dead in the face. “But you have my eyes.”
I don’t know exactly what she’s implying, but it’s not that we share the same eye color.
Mom moves the hair off my neck and onto my shoulder. Then she lifts the feather to the bottom of my scalp. Tingles shoot across my shoulders as she ties the leather twine attached to the feather into my hair. When she’s done, she lets my curls spill across my back.
“You look beautiful, Tella.”
I stand and look in the mirror. The vibrant green-and-blue feather lies over my right shoulder, mixed with a bit of my thick, curly hair. I look at my big brown eyes and wonder what she sees in them. Besides fear.
My mom stands suddenly and crosses the room. She wraps me in a hug and holds on to me for several moments before letting go. I think she’s going to confess something, but she only says, “Good night.”
I lie down on the bed, pretending I’m going back to sleep. At the door, she stops and glances back. Her eyes flick toward my open closet, where my backpack lies exposed. Her gaze returns to me and her face twists. “Your mama loves you.”
Then she’s gone.
I choke on her final words, willing myself to crawl back out of bed and grab my backpack once again. Stuffing the clothes down, I decide not to get any food from the kitchen. I need to leave now, and I can buy some in town. But I do grab the stash of money I have from months of unused allowance. I’m sure I must have almost two hundred dollars at this point. Because I have no idea of what I’ll need, I also throw in random things from my desk: pens, paper, scissors, tape. The last thing I pack is a photo of my family that’s stuck in the edge of my mirror. I can’t bear to go without taking a piece of them with me. That and my glittery purple nail polish.
When I leave, I go out the front door. There’s something definitive about it. Like if I use it, then I’m making some sort of statement. Even if I have no idea what it is.
We don’t have a garage, so my parents park in the driveway, on the opposite side of the house from my bedroom window. I round the corner and deliberate on which car to take. There’s the sleek black 4Runner with the navigator and off-terrain tires that I always pestered my parents about driving when I first got my license, and there’s Bob. Bob has been with us for a while, like, since I was born. And after almost two hundred thousand miles, the car is an utter embarrassment to the auto community.