“What is it, Josh?”
“Zolpidem,” he says, pointing at the white label. “Do you think this is what Nora and her friends are taking? Starts with the same letters.”
“I think Zolpidem is a sleeping pill,” I say, remembering all the talks my mom gave me about abusing prescription drugs when my always-in-trouble cousin got hooked a few years ago. “Let me see it.”
When I put down the photocube, he gives me the bottle, his brows knitting together in confusion. “That can’t be right. Why would they want something to make them sleep?”
“Maybe you could do a search for Zolpidem on your tab?” I suggest. “Double-check what it’s used for?”
“Sure.” Josh reaches into his pocket and pulls out the device. He types “Zolpidem” into the search engine on his touch screen, and a ton of links scroll in front of us. He clicks on the FDA site and reads the description of the medication. “It says here that . . . ‘the principal function of Zolpidem is to aid sleep, but in very high doses the drug in powder form has been known to wake people up out of a coma-like state.’”
“Aftershock,” I mumble. “If someone is inside Elusion for days, then . . .”
“The side effects are probably much stronger,” Josh concludes, sighing deeply. “So the meds must counteract it somehow.”
My body temp is rising rapidly, so I pull my hair back and twist it so it lies over my right shoulder. I look at the label again, but this time I read everything on it. When I do, my legs almost buckle beneath me.
Patient: David Welch
Contents: Granulated Zolpidem 30mg
Instructions: Take as directed.
Authorized by: Meredith Welch, APRN
A gush of nausea overtakes me as a disturbing theory starts to form in my mind, but before I can say anything to Josh, a perturbed voice speaks up from behind us.
“What are you doing in here?”
I quickly shove the pill bottle into a side pocket of my skirt as I spin around. My mom is in the doorway, dressed in her scrubs and looking at us with shades of anger coloring her eyes. She never comes into my father’s study or goes through his things—it makes her too distraught. The fact that I’m doing both has got to be sacrilegious in her mind.
Unless the theory I’m toying with is right, and she’s not upset with me, but worried I’m going to find something in here that might shed some suspicion on her.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I thought you left for wor—”
“I forgot my dinner in the fridge, so I turned around,” she snips, not even letting me get a full sentence out. “And who is he?”
I’m about to explain, when Josh pipes up and responds for me.
“Josh Heywood, ma’am.” He approaches my mother with a kind, outstretched hand, and when they shake, I think I see her face soften a little. “I know Regan from school.”
My mom gives him a semipolite nod and says, “Josh, could you please give us a moment alone?”
“Sure,” he replies, glancing over at me so he and I can share a sympathetic look.
Once he leaves, my mom charges over to the desk and begins putting everything back into the silver box, her lips pursed.
“Why, Regan? Why would you do this?” Her voice doesn’t have an edge to it anymore. It’s just filled with disappointment.
“Do what?”
“Rifle through your father’s belongings. You know how much he hates that.”
And suddenly I’m noticing the way she just referred to him in the present tense. She does that a lot.
Just like she keeps his things in order, as if she believes he’s coming back.
I glance at the box, where we found the prescription for powdered Zolpidem, which wakes people up out of coma-like states.
My dad’s body was never found.
And I saw him in Elusion.
Is my dad still alive, his subconscious living in Elusion? Or is the mere thought of something this ridiculous a sign I’m losing my grip on reality? Either way, it hurts.
I have to get out of here now.
“It won’t happen again,” I say, backing up toward the door.
I hope Josh doesn’t mind going to his place, because I can’t stay. Not when I’m plagued by thoughts that make me feel like the last few months of my life might’ve been built on lies.
Just as I’m about to leave, I hear her call out for me.
“Regan?”
For a moment, I consider pretending I don’t hear her, but instead I turn around and give her the benefit of the doubt. She walks toward me, holding the copy of Walden that Josh and I just discovered in my dad’s things.
“Looks like he saved one for you, too,” she says, offering it to me like a gift.
After I take it and say thanks, she pulls me into a long yet awkward embrace. But this time, hanging on to her doesn’t make me feel stronger.
So I’m the first one to let go.
NINE
“HOME SWEET HOME,” JOSH SAYS SARcastically, holding his helmet under his arm as he pushes open the front door to his house.
Josh’s uncle lives in a triple-wide FEMA trailer with pewter-color siding, right in the middle of at least five hundred others just like it. They are lined up in rows, like a huge box of mud-covered bullets. Above them is a tangled network of satellite dishes and power grids, a metallic weave of black electrodes stacking into the sky. The Quartz Sector wasn’t much before but the region was practically leveled by the string of tornadoes that struck it three years ago, and reconstruction has been slow, probably because most of its citizens are blue-collar workers or people on government assistance.
Josh takes my helmet, setting it down alongside his on a bare laminate booth tucked into a tiny corner of the room. I run my fingers through a few knotted strands of hair and look around. It’s a typical trailer layout, with a living-and-dining room suite that could practically fit inside my bedroom. A worn brown fake-leather couch is under a soot-streaked window with two mismatched nesting chairs facing it, so close they’re almost touching. A small InstaComm screen hangs in the opposite corner of the booth.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to live like this, displaced in what used to be a real neighborhood. Then again, I can’t quite imagine going back home to the Historic Sector either, especially since my world seems to be slowly unraveling.
“Flynn won’t be back for a while; he’s pulling doubles at Lymestone,” Josh says.
“Lymestone. That’s one of the refineries, right?”
Josh nods and then hesitates, looking away. “You sure you’re okay . . . hanging out here, I mean? You know, Flynn took me in because he had to, so . . . it’s not exactly cozy. . . .”
“I’m fine,” I assure him, trying to ease his discomfort a little. If I had to interpret the sudden halting of his speech, I’d guess there are more family secrets in Josh’s past than just Nora.