Ford chuckled. “I wasn’t drunk.”
“Well, I tried, but it was too noisy to hear anything, so I gave up.”
“Like I said, it was mostly just me telling you over and over how spectacular you are and how lucky I am.”
Now you say, “And I’m lucky too,” Sadie prompted her. But Cali went with “Which is exactly why I wanted to hear it. So you promise to tell me all those things on Wednesday?”
“Yep. I might even make up a few new ones. And to show you I’ve been listening, I found somewhere really special to take you. Somewhere new.”
Sadie suddenly had a lump in her throat.
Cali said, “Sounds promising.”
That’s all? Sadie demanded. What about “Thank you,” or—and I can’t believe I’m suggesting this—“You’re the best”? You love saying that.
But Cali just said, “Bye.”
Sadie found herself feeling very dissatisfied with Cali. All her words about loving Ford seemed hollow in the face of her self-centered behavior on the phone. Ford had poured his heart into that message he’d left and all she could say was that it was hard to hear, and was he drunk? That didn’t seem very loving at all. Sure, she was pretty and had nice boobs, but Sadie began to think Cali wasn’t sensitive enough to be with Ford.
Ford didn’t seem to be upset at all, though, and as he looked around the tree house it was impossible not to share the excitement spilling from him. She felt a shimmering current of sensation that started in his toes and radiated through his entire body and knew, with the new clarity of deep stasis, it was pride. The idea that he felt good about something he’d done began to fill her with her own sense of warmth. He is not your friend, he is your Subject, she reminded herself sternly. Your job is to assess and consider but not empathize.
As he gathered his tools together, Sadie thought that maybe Cali’s self-centeredness was part of the appeal for Ford, because it allowed him to stay emotionally aloof. No matter what she said, she was too wrapped up in herself to ever require more than attention and praise, so Ford never had to actually open up.
But you deserve more than that, Sadie wanted to tell him. You deserve someone who makes you stop fearing the unknown and instead want to jump into it.
Jump into it. The phrase tinkled softly around her mind like a can being blown over a cobblestone street.
Ford patted the rocking horse on the nose, said, “See you soon, sport,” grabbed his hammer, and started down the rope ladder. He was a foot from the ground when Sadie heard a shuffle of feet and felt something being pressed over his mouth and nose. There was a cloying sweet smell, his head foamed with black and white dots like bubbles, and he passed out.
CHAPTER 14
When Ford opened his eyes he was on a bed in a low-ceilinged room with powder-blue walls. He was lying on his side, staring at a radiator with something taped above it. He squinted, trying to see it, but couldn’t make it out.
Are you sure you should be this calm? Sadie asked him. You were just kidnapped and drugged. Don’t you think maybe a little panic or—
Ford sat up, making the horizon heave in front of his eyes, and Sadie experienced his nausea as hers.
Deep stasis might be a touch less fantastic in this context.
He took a breath to settle his stomach and leaned toward the radiator. Sadie saw a five-dollar bill hanging on the wall. Someone had doodled over Abe Lincoln’s portrait to make him look like Bigfoot and written “#41 of 120” as though it were a limited-edition work of art.
When Ford saw it, his heart began to pound, and Sadie sensed an emotional composite made up of gooey warmth that felt like friendship, cinnamon hope, and a dash of anger. His mind filled with sounds, not the windy ones from shallow stasis but a whole school playground of noises. Semitranslucent circles organized themselves into a bubbly picture of a young James, wearing a striped sweater and sitting at a pink plastic picnic table. Hand flat on the surface, covering something, saying, “Are you sure you’re ready to know the truth about Abe Lincoln?” and then triumphantly revealing Bigfoot.
The image fizzled now, the sounds bubbled away, and Ford, sitting on the edge of the bed, roared, “Where are you?”
Whatever Ford had been drugged with made everything in his head a little carbonated, and his voice sounded fizzy. Combined with the complex cocktail nature of the emotional experience in deep stasis, Sadie was having trouble getting a clear grasp of his state of mind.
A black kitten came and stood next to the door and stared up at Ford. “Go get someone,” he said to it, but it didn’t move.
“She’s deaf but I’m not, so would you mind not shouting, Citizen Ford?” The guy who had spoken was about the same height as Ford, but skinny instead of muscular, with broad shoulders. He slouched into the room almost apologetically, like someone who didn’t spend a lot of time around other people. His brown hair was carefully parted and trimmed. He wore a goldenrod cowboy shirt with pearl snaps and blue forget-me-nots embroidered over the pockets, a thin leather bolo tie with a gold buffalo-dollar clasp, khaki jeans, and brown cowboy boots that looked handmade. He carried a beige cowboy hat in his hand, since the ceiling was too low for him to wear it.
Hot anger, warm friendship, hard grief, and the bleachy scent of betrayal crowded each other for space in Ford’s mind. “If my head wasn’t aching I’d punch you, Bucky.”
“Sweet as ever,” Bucky said.
“What the hell?” Ford’s head was a shooting gallery of emotions, a different one flipping up every half second. “I don’t understand. You’re here? How long? And what’s with the enemy agent tactics?”
Bucky looked uncomfortable, his eyes staring beyond Ford. “Not much to say about that, Citizen F.” Sadie caught a glimpse of the bearded, wild-eyed Bucky from Ford’s memory, sitting across the table at a diner, picking invisible bugs from himself and looking over his shoulder. “I take my privacy very seriously. Why don’t we just start from scratch?”
Ford’s mind was going nuts: bleach, anger, grief, happiness, anger, but Sadie noticed the cinnamon scent she thought was hope surfacing more and more, as though Ford wanted to forgive Bucky but he just wasn’t sure how. “James was here. He drew the Bigfoot for you.”
“Incorrect,” Bucky said. “James made the Bigfoot, that’s true, and Bigfoot is here, but it doesn’t follow that James was here. Bigfoot is a good-luck charm. For safe keeping.”
“But—”
“Talk and walk,” Bucky said, heading out the door. “Places to see, wonders to learn, Citizen.”
Ford struggled to his feet and followed him into the next room, but he was almost knocked back again by what he saw.
It was a big space with light-colored walls, EvergreenLawn Superturf covering the ground, and filled with at least fifty miniature-golf sculptures. Some were set up for putting while others waited along the edge like an army ready to be called up. A couch, a coffee table, and a hot plate completed the furnishings.
Ford lost track of his anger as soon as he walked in. Sadie watched him trying to match each sculpture to a miniature-golf course he knew, eliciting cloudburst showers of memories of games with James, Willy, Linc, and Bucky.
His eye zeroed in on a dinosaur near the back of the room. “You got Daisy?” he said, skirting a castle and a UFO to reach it.
Bucky bit his finger and nodded.
Ford shook his head. “I went the next day to get her.”
“I broke in the night they put the locks on.” Bucky had moved to the far end of the room where the couch and hot plate were, and started pacing.