A slideshow of images resumed in Ford’s mind, the group of friends at a winter formal, a spring dance, hayrides, joyrides, prom. “Why are you doing this?” he croaked.
“I said no questions. Leave. Now. Before I change my mind.” Linc stepped back and Ford staggered against the building.
He stayed there, rubbing his neck, trying to gauge what would happen if he lunged at Linc.
Walk away, Sadie shouted.
“Go,” Linc said.
Ford started down the alley, bleach-scented betrayal washing over him. Stepping into the street, he was engulfed by the noise of cars and people arriving at the club. The voices roared in his head, and his eyes flicked from one dark building to another, like an animal seeking refuge.
He turned at the first major intersection and zigzagged back toward the noise of the elevated train tracks. Sadie realized he wasn’t wandering idly, and after ten minutes she sensed there was something familiar about the street they were on.
They’d passed Huang’s PawnIt and were in front of DollarDollarDollar when it clicked: This was where Ford had been in the video footage of him she’d seen at the Survaillab before entering Syncopy. He’d been standing with his back to the camera, a little farther along, looking through a fence into—
Ford stopped in front of Your Neighborhood Drug and stared straight ahead into the playground that filled the space between it and the corner. Even though the CCTV video had been shot during the day, the playground had been deserted, and she saw now that was because the gate, which opened off an alley behind it, was padlocked shut.
It was lit with one light that blasted the middle, creating a weird pastiche of peeling red and blue paint and stark shadows. There was a swing set with three swings, a tube slide, a set of monkey bars, and two large plastic animals, a rabbit and a turtle, on thick springs for kids to ride like horses. In the center was a merry-go-round, and when Ford’s eyes reached it his mind started to vibrate.
Sadie couldn’t figure out what was happening at first. The pressure in his head built quickly, but not in the contracting, suffocating way it did when he was angry; this was more expansive, like something on the verge of exploding. Dots and colors ricocheted around, starting to settle into an image one moment and knocked out of it the next, as though some force was deliberately interfering with what his mind wanted.
All at once the pressure gave way. The dots fell into place, forming an image of a man in his underwear propped up on the merry-go-round. His feet were bare, toes turned outward, his mouth made an O shape, and there were two dark holes in his head where gunshots had entered. His eyes, above the O, were wide open. They looked like Ford’s eyes, the eyes she remembered from that first day in the video, only they weren’t. This was James.
This was where James had died.
Ford gave a low, agonized groan and shut his eyes, turning to rest his head on the brick wall of the pharmacy for support. A tornado of sound rose inside of him, blotting out the image. Voices whipped by, faster and faster, and Sadie struggled to tease them apart. She caught Ford’s mother, “. . . such a good boy…” Official-sounding men’s voices, “. . . found this morning…” “. . . gunshot…” “. . . drugs…” “. . . sorry for your loss…” “. . . come around to see if there’s anything you need…”
And then the dots pulled together into the interior of a wooden shack, white winter light, everyone wearing parkas and hats and mittens. Years ago, six or seven, Willy big even then, saying to Ford, “And what will you do with your part of the fortune?”
“Build a nice house for me and James and my mom and Lu.”
The memory of everyone laughing, Linc the hardest. “You think you can get James to come live with you forever?”
Ford, confident, nodding. “The house is going to be sweet.”
James smiling. “That’s my brother. Me, I’d get a motorcycle, throw a huge going-away party for all my friends, and then take off and ride around the world. What about you, Willy?”
“Gun range and rabbits.” Willy, needing no time to come up with an answer. “Never be lonely or hungry.”
Linc set apart even in the memory, nervous, balking when they ask him about his plans for the fortune, saying, “If I tell, you’ll laugh.” Heads shaking, hands raised in solemn promises not to so much as giggle or fake cough. “I want to be a pastor. I’d use the money to go to divinity school and give the rest to my mom.”
The dots dispersed, and Sadie saw a faint image of a golden rope spiraling downward, with a black glove reaching toward it.
Ford turned and slammed his fist into the wall of the drugstore.
The stinging seemed to clear his head, help him focus. He slid down the wall and lowered his head, his left hand clutching the prickling knuckles of his right. There were tiny beads of blood on it, but Ford didn’t seem to notice. He was shaking, wracked with grief. “I’m so sorry, James,” he said aloud. “I should have been there. I should have paid attention. I’m so sorry.”
The pain in his hand was no match for the pain inside of him. It was huge but also somehow weightless, leaving him feeling hollow and vulnerable.
Light strafed his eyes. Sadie felt every muscle in his body tense, immediately on guard. It was just a Royal Pizza delivery van, he saw, and relaxed, but it brought him back to reality.
He pushed himself to his feet and began walking, navigating around knots of people trying to outbid one another to win the favor of the scarce taxis. Crossing the street under the tracks he headed up a block, where the absence of the train made it slightly quieter, if no less busy. While Ford waited to cross at an intersection he pulled out his phone and checked for messages. There were none from Cali.
Sadie expected him to get angry and decide to wait her out, but instead he surprised her by dialing Cali’s number.
Between the noise on the street and the way his thoughts were still subdued, almost muffled, Sadie had no idea what he was going to say. Apparently he didn’t either, because when Cali’s voice mail picked up he hesitated so long he was disconnected. He dialed again, and this time he was ready.
“Cali, it’s me. Ford. Your stupid boyfriend. God, I hope I’m still your boyfriend.” He walked as he spoke, weaving between people. “Look, I know you’re mad at me for… it doesn’t matter for what. I was an ass, and I’m sorry. I—”
Watch out! Sadie yelled in his head as he stepped off a curb in front of a car, and Ford jumped back. The driver yelled, “Pay attention, idiot!” and Sadie braced for Ford to do something dumb, but he just waved and kept talking to Cali’s voice mail.
“Did you know when my mom was younger she wanted to be a painter? She had an art scholarship and everything, to go study in Paris.”
He came to another corner, but this time he stopped before stepping into oncoming traffic. “That’s where she was heading when she got pregnant with James. Can you imagine? She wanted my dad to go with her, said they could be a family in France, but he said his prospects were better here so they stayed. Prospects,” Ford snorted. “He was an accountant at a fertilizer factory, did I tell you that? When I was in kindergarten someone noticed he’d been giving himself an unauthorized weekly bonus. After that the only job he could get was as a janitor. And he always blamed it—”
Ford turned a corner and was standing on the edge of an eight-lane street with thick, fast-moving traffic.
“—on me,” he finished his sentence.