“Stephen.”
I stopped where I was. Violet was standing in the hallway, with Marcus in the dimness behind her.
“You’re not leaving. We won’t let you. We’ll—”
Violet leaned forward, but Marcus’s hand shot out from the dark and clamped around her wrist.
My eyes locked on Marcus’s hand, rough and tan. It seemed to glow in the low light as he held her back.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Just take care of my dad.”
I took the doorknob, but something stopped me before I could turn it. Dad was lying there in his bed, pale and still as always. There was a twist deep in my chest, a hand wrenching at my heart. There was something I still had to do.
“The second night I was here,” I said, “I stole two bottles of medicine and some instruments. There’s a lightning-struck tree overlooking the highway a couple miles to the west. You’ll find them buried just behind it.” I looked back at Violet and Marcus. Neither of them had moved. “Thanks,” I said. “For everything.”
Before either of them could say anything, I forced myself out the door and closed it softly behind me.
When I reached the foot of the steps, I turned and looked up at the house. Jackson’s window glowed with a candle’s flame. I hoped he was there, reading quietly in the calm of his room with no idea how close he’d come to another overturning, this one far worse than the last. I wished I could have said good-bye. I wished I could have explained.
I went out past the houses and driveways and neglected mailboxes until I came to the town’s iron gates and let myself through with a rusty squeak. I stood on the other side, facing the long plain and the wall of the forest.
Where to now?
I put my hands in my pockets to warm them and skimmed the edge of a piece of folded paper I had forgotten was there. Jenny’s note.
I pulled it out and opened it. The dark letters shone in the moonlight.
…it’s like I can feel the whole world spinning so fast beneath me, and I’m thinking, what am I doing here? Is this where I belong?
I folded the piece of paper, returned it to my pocket, and got moving.
NINETEEN
The trees grew thicker as I went, choked with deadfall and thornbushes. I pulled myself over the fence that marked the northern edge of town. All around me were the night sounds of the woods: owls hooting and lizards skittering through the underbrush. Farther out were the heavier steps of larger things — deer or wolves or bears — making their own way through the dark.
I leapt over a fast-running stream and then stepped out into a clearing, caught in the silvery wash of the moon. On the far side were the remains of a barn. Its arid wood slats were pockmarked with nail holes and overgrown with moss and creeping vines. There was a large ragged hole in the roof.
The whole place was surrounded by rusting farm implements, hoes and shovels and pitchforks, and what I thought was an old tractor that was covered in vines and weeds.
This old barn, Jackson had said. North of town.
I crept up to the barn and slipped in through half-opened doors. The inside was lit with a few flickering candles that sat near an old mattress in one corner. I looked around but there was no one there, just piles of hay bound into moldering blocks against the walls, and rakes and a long rusty scythe hanging on pegs. Something rustled in the loft above me. “Jenny?”
An owl exploded out through the hole in the ceiling, startling me enough that I almost cried out. I steadied myself and crossed the barn to the mattress. It was covered with a quilt and a couple thin pillows. Scattered around it were scraps of paper, clothes and stubs of old candles, another dog-eared chemistry book. Near the head of the bed was Jenny’s sketch pad.
I peered into the dark corners of the barn to make sure I was alone, then set the rifle to the side and knelt down. I opened the sketch pad, tipping its face into the candlelight. The drawings at the beginning were mostly of people. Tuttle glowered from one page, surrounded by a dark halo, his ruler in hand. Sam sat in soft candlelight holding a pipe, a half smile on his face and a book draped over one knee. As I got toward the end, the people began to disappear and were replaced by trees, the barn, the school building, empty fields. If there were any people at all, they were seen from far away, their backs turned — dark, faceless walls.
“What are you doing here?”
I twisted around so fast I lost my balance and fell in a heap onto the bed, scrambling backward away from the voice. When I looked up, Jenny was standing over me in a bloodstained T-shirt, with a cat’s grin and a black eye.
“Nice squeal, tough guy.”
“I didn’t—”
“Whatever.” Jenny snatched the sketch pad off the floor next to me. “What are you doing here?”
I stood up warily, awkward in my backpack and coat. I searched the ground for an explanation. “I was… walking.”
Jenny turned and peered into the dark outside the doors. “There’s no one else here,” I said. “It’s just me.”
“I thought you were pissed at me.”
I shrugged. Jenny set the sketch pad on a pile behind the bed. “How’s your hand?”
I raised my right hand into the light and flexed my fingers. The bleeding had stopped, leaving my knuckles crusted with dirt and blood. The joints ground together when I moved them.
“We should clean it up,” Jenny said. She retrieved a plastic box from her bedside and stood in front of me. I just looked at her. “What? You want gangrene? Sit down.”
I slipped out of my coat and pack and did as she said, sitting down on the edge of her bed. Jenny grabbed my hand, examined it, then started scrubbing away with a rag. I hissed and tried to pull back but Jenny held my wrist tight.
“Take it easy, you big baby. If it’s not clean, I’ll have to amputate.”
I held my breath as she worked the dirt out of my wounds. Once my hand was clean, she spread some ointment from a small tube on it.
“How come Violet’s not doing this for you?”
“Caleb was there when I got back after detention.”
Jenny looked up with one arched eyebrow.
“They were going to have a vote tomorrow,” I said. “I left before they could.”
Jenny stopped what she was doing. Her dark eyes smoldered and she cursed under her breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“You didn’t make me do anything.”
“Your dad, is he —?”
“He’s with Violet.”
“Good,” Jenny said. “They won’t mess with her about a patient. Wouldn’t dare.”
Jenny tossed the tube of ointment back in the kit and took out a roll of gauze. She began carefully winding the bandage around my hand.
“Well, at least we denied them the pleasure of tossing us out,” she said. “That’s something, right?”
“Yeah, that’ll show ‘em.”
Jenny smiled and her breathing slowed as she looped the bandage around my fingers and across my palm. It was strange to see her hard surface swept away. Before, she seemed like a giant. A hurricane. Here she was just a girl. The air around her felt still.
“So you’re not going back?” she asked.
“No. You?”
Jenny glanced up at the rafters. “And leave all of this? It’s easier for everybody if I don’t. No place for me in their American fantasy camp.” She shook her head with a dark laugh. “I mean, it’s hilarious, right? Baseball games. Thanksgiving. American flags. They’re the ones responsible for blowing all that stuff up in the first place, and now they love it so much and want it all back? They even took Fort Leonard and built themselves a little nemesis.”