I was thankful that we were able to talk like that, because earlier I’d been wondering if Callista would ever speak to me again. Her anger quelled itself over time: I was slowly learning that about her. I chewed my food slowly as we passed the box of crackers around.
No one spoke of what we’d discovered earlier. Callista picked the lions out of the animal crackers and kept stealing Thad’s lions too, so they had a mini skirmish on the floor. We even laughed together quietly.
When we were full, we laid around continuing to snack, me leaning against the side of the bed with Callista lying on her stomach nearby. Thad kept trying to balance his plate on his knee by placing crackers on each side like weights. It kept falling over. So in the end, he dropped it to the floor, and reached into his pocket, clicking his watch open.
“Oh, hello there,” he piped up. “It’s 11:11 right now. Make a wish everyone.”
I threw a cracker at him.
“Why are you so obsessed with that stupid watch?” I said, laughing.
The cracker hit him straight in the face: unflinching, his hand not moving to catch it as it fell to the floor. The room dropped into a hush.
What did I say this time? I thought, food still in my mouth, hesitant to chew. I looked to Thad, but he’d already caught himself. His face had gone stony.
“It’s just a watch,” he said in a hurry. Not true. He was covering something up.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Let’s watch TV,” Callista suggested, standing up abruptly and grabbing the remote from the stand. She switched it on before Thad or I could say anything else. The static burst swept throughout the room but I could feel that I’d touched a nerve.
“It’s alright, man,” Thad told me, cutting his hand in the air dismissively. I chewed slowly, watching Thad stuff the watch back into his pocket. He didn’t appear angry… but there was hurt on his face. If he’d shown a Glimpse, I’d already missed it. His teeth were clenched slightly, though he pried them apart as he turned around to face the TV.
I just can’t keep my mouth shut, I scolded myself. This was why I didn’t have many friends in real life. I just couldn’t deal with all of this, people and their problems. Their feelings.
So we watched TV. Callista had turned it to an old black-and-white sitcom, so hyper with its canned laughter and sound effects that it became the room’s anesthesia.
“We should talk about before,” Thad said suddenly.
“No,” Callista replied without hesitation.
In this, none of us had turned to each other, staring ahead as the screen fizzled lights onto our faces. It was something we’d been avoiding.
But it had to be brought up. We were here together, in some strange house, not knowing what would happen the next day, the next week…the rest of our lives. It was the three of us against everyone else; a trio who, by fate or chance, had been shoved together against our will.
“I think we do,” I said in agreement. Callista’s head bowed forward slightly—there we went again, two against one. Thad cleared his throat.
“I don’t know my parents,” he began. “Not even since I was a kid. They’re either dead or too high right now to realize I’m alive. I live—I lived—with my uncle in Washington. He won’t go looking for me, so I’m not worried about going back.”
He uncrossed his legs, tilting them in front of himself and draping his arms over his knees. “So if we get shot at again and I can’t make it, and I die, not many people are going to really care all that much. Just so you know.”
It was such a despondent thing to say. It was almost like Thad was outing himself as expendable, telling us to not worry about police being sent to search for him. He didn’t say it in a self-deprecating way: just a fact.
The TV babbled on. No one volunteered to continue. I swallowed nervously.
“I live in the Valley,” I said. “It’s this town called Arleta. I have my mom and my sister…that’s mostly it. If I can keep them safe long enough to figure this out and take them someplace else, I’ll be happy.”
And if not? I didn’t want to think about it. There wasn’t another option. I would go home, and I would get my life back in order. I could fix this. I could make all of this better and make it all go away. I’d never faced a problem I couldn’t solve, so I could solve this, right?
There was only one person left to talk. At first she didn’t, and so much silence went on after me that I assumed she wasn’t going to speak at all.
“My family is dead,” Callista’s voice cracked.
It took great effort for her to get the words out. She wiped her eyes swiftly.
“That’s all,” she said. “They’re gone. I watched them being killed. It was nighttime. I watched that Guardian with the white eyebrows—Wyck—he shot them all. He shot my mom first, then my dad, then both my brothers. They were just crying.”
A quick breath tumbled out of her.
“They weren’t doing anything but crying,” she insisted. “And he just shot them in the back of their heads. And then they put the bag over me, and Wyck took me away, and when I woke up I was in the white room.”
Callista curled over into a sitting ball. The white room. The way she said it made me feel cold inside, bumps rolling across my skin at the desperation and terror that had infused her thought of that place. It hit me how long she’d been kept a prisoner, not even allowed a few moments to recover from the death of her family before she was thrust into whatever living nightmare I could see scrolling in memory through her eyes.
“So even when this is over, I don’t have anywhere to go,” she finished.
She stood up suddenly. Neither Thad nor I acknowledged her as she left, staring at the floor, the weight in the room pushing against our chests. The door opened and closed behind her, and then it was only Thad and I. Again.
The TV babbled on.
When I regained power over myself, I stood, picked up my plate and the cans of food, and left Thad. I crossed the hall, toes sinking in to the gentle carpet. Callista had taken the blue bedroom, the door now closed, so I went into the green one. The door clicked solidly behind me.
I shone the flashlight into the dark corners, checking the closet just because I knew I’d feel safer if I made sure nothing was in there. The shelves and racks were empty, no clothes or even a single coat hanger.
The bed’s mattress was so thick that it nearly went up to my hips, and the sheets were so tightly pressed that I had some difficulty getting them pulled back. I pushed most of the pillows off onto the floor and chose the flattest of them, which was still overstuffed. I flicked the flashlight off.
In the sudden darkness, I could have easily been disoriented into thinking I was in my room, until my eyes adjusted and my surroundings proved otherwise. As I lay facing the ceiling—which had no fan on it, and made me miss my room even more—I realized that I’d already been away from home for far longer than I’d ever disappeared before. My mom was surely at the police station already, calling my friends, calling the school. She wouldn’t find any information on my clients because I kept those locked away. But she’d worry. That was the worst part. There was nothing I could do about it either.
It felt like ages ago when I’d first found the website with Spud, first heard the word Guardian from Father Lonnie, first seen his body dangling from the church. I’d only uncovered a scratch of what the Guardians did, and already I’d seen earthquakes that killed hundreds, people stuck through steeples, cars and planes blown up. What else might they be responsible for?