“You didn’t say please,” I’d said, relishing the feel of my heart pounding under my T-shirt. I was eight or so, and it was such a novelty to see someone who made people even more uncomfortable than I did.
“I know him,” I said now.
“He was your mom’s friend. She was always nice to him. She taught him to talk.”
“What do you mean?”
Prairie shrugged. “He didn’t talk much, only a couple of words. Clover got him saying whole sentences. Just another kind of healing, I guess. I played here too, when I was little. Mary used to bring us. There’s a shortcut-just a little ways,” Prairie said. “Or at least there used to be. Here, I think this is it.”
She led the way off the path, down to a series of flat stones set into the creek bed, barely visible in the moonlight. We didn’t need them to cross, since the creek was dry, but I stepped carefully so I wouldn’t twist an ankle as we eased down the bank.
I was thinking about Claude… and about Chub, who was also not a talker. Could Chub be… healed? That way?
Prairie led us up the other bank. “This comes up on Ellis land. You know the Ellises?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Their kids went to school with me and your mom… but here… yes, I think this is it…”
The path continued on the other side, a tramped-down, narrow trail that led up over the bank and toward a cluster of lights far ahead. As we drew nearer I saw it was another farmhouse with a barn and some sheds set back a few hundred yards.
“How did you know to do that?” I demanded. “How did you crash into the right part of the barn and all? How did you know the car would break through and not, like, hit a beam or something?”
“Luck,” Prairie said, and I could almost hear a faint smile in her voice. “Don’t you think we were due for some luck? Besides, barn doors, Hailey, they’re just big pieces of wood.”
“But how could you see the doors? I could hardly even see the barn. But you had to have hit it just exactly right, or-”
Or we’d be dead.
Prairie slowed, turned on the path in front of me.
“I just remembered,” she said simply. “I thought about Clover… and how she and Claude liked to play cowboys here, and I shut my eyes and tried to picture it in my mind, where the doors were-”
“You shut your eyes?” I was dumbfounded.
She flashed me a grin, and it only lasted a fraction of a second in the weak moonlight. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
The thought of Prairie flying across the field with her eyes closed was terrifying… and maybe just a little bit thrilling. At least, that was what I figured the zip of sensation was that snaked up my spine.
Prairie continued on the path, striding confidently, and for a crazy moment I wondered if she had her eyes shut now. If she was leading us away from trouble with nothing but a feeling to guide her.
I don’t know why I didn’t feel more frightened. Weirdly, the thought almost made me feel a little safer. Chub was so heavy in my arms that everything from my wrist down had gone numb, but at least he had quieted, his sweat-damp forehead radiating heat against my face.
I reached out and touched Prairie’s pretty tailored jacket, and then I gripped it tightly and closed my eyes and willed my feet to walk in her footsteps, Rascal staying right behind me. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything. She never stumbled, and neither did I, as we approached the cluster of buildings.
The Ellises’ barn was in better shape than the Burnetts’ barn, with hay stacked high in the loft and a couple of tractors parked neatly, gleaming in the moonlight, when Prairie and I opened the door.
“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll try not to be too long.”
I didn’t even ask her where she was going. I sat on the seat of the smaller tractor-really more like a big riding mower-and it felt good to relax my arms, aching from the effort of holding Chub. Rascal lay down next to the tractor, ignoring the scrabbling and scratching of creatures in the barn.
I used to be scared of things like that, mice and rats and bats. Now I was happy for the company.
I closed my eyes and tried to sort through the emotions swirling in my head. I felt as though my defenses were starting to fall apart at the edges. The past few days were like some sort of horror movie, and I couldn’t quite believe that I was a part of it, that any of it had even happened.
But I had blood on my clothes to prove it. Gram was dead. A lot of people were wounded in our kitchen and in the wreck of a car less than a mile away. And the life I had led before-the one I had hated so much-was in the past.
I wondered how I’d stayed calm enough to get through the past few hours. Maybe I was in a state of shock, or maybe I had just gotten so used to dealing with the challenges of life with Gram that I’d built up more defenses than an ordinary person would have in a situation like this.
But I wasn’t sure how long I could maintain my calm. What would happen if I started letting things bother me again, if I let myself start feeling things? The thought was terrifying. At least as terrifying, I realized as I sat shivering in the dark barn, as being shot.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but when Prairie slipped back into the barn and said my name softly, I jumped.
“Let’s go,” she said, her voice full of urgency. I lifted Chub and followed her to the front of the barn, where a gravel drive led to the road. A car idled there, exhaust billowing up white against the first pink streaks of dawn. I was surprised to see the car waiting, but Prairie did things. She got what we needed. I didn’t know exactly how, but at the moment, it didn’t matter.
“Is this the Ellises’ car?” I asked.
She frowned, her eyebrows pinching together. “Yes… yes, it is. I’m sorry we have to take it, Hailey. We won’t damage it, and they’ll get it back. But…”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t have to. We needed the car. We needed to get away. Even if I didn’t understand exactly what we were escaping from, I understood that.
When I opened the door, Rascal jumped into the car and lay down on the floor, and I got Chub settled under the seat belt. I was getting good at strapping him in, but as Prairie drove slowly down the gravel drive toward the main road she shook her head and said, “We have got to get that boy a car seat.”
I sank down low in the passenger seat and watched the farmhouse as we rolled by. The Ellises had a carport, so it would have been easy enough for Prairie to take the car-except she would have had to unlock it and start it, unless she knew how to hot-wire it.
And if that was what she did, I didn’t want to know. Not quite yet, anyway. I wanted to think of her as someone who worried about Chub having a car seat. Because if she was thinking about Chub, he would be that much safer. As far as I knew, I was the only person who had ever cared about him, and I knew he was a hard kid to fall for. He was behind in so many ways. But Prairie cared about him, and as we pulled out onto the main road and picked up speed, I was grateful.
I was so tired, riding in the Ellises’ Buick. You wouldn’t think a person who’d been chased and shot at, who had watched people die, would be able to lie down and sleep, but that was what I wanted more than anything. Just to sleep.
Prairie didn’t look so good. Her mouth was pulled down in a thinking frown and her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“We should make it in about seven hours,” she said. “Six and a half if we really push it hard.”
“Where are we going?”
Prairie was silent for so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer me, but eventually she gave me a smile that looked like it took a lot of effort.
“Home.”