Outside, a bird flew into the window. Bron looked up. Two male hummingbirds, scintillating creatures of emerald, blurred about the feeder.
"I don't have a past," Bron said.
Olivia frowned in concern. "What do you mean by that?"
"I don't have the kind of 'past' that people think I do. People always think I'm crazy, or a liar, or a criminal or something just because I come from social services. If you look into my file, you'll see plenty of weird accusations. When I was little, people thought that I was schizophrenic. One doctor said I was autistic when I was four. Another thought that maybe I had split personalities."
Bron's voice quavered. "To tell the truth, I've always thought that something was wrong with me, but I can't figure out what it is!"
Olivia reached up and smoothed his hair. "There's nothing wrong with you. You're right not to tell the sheriff that Galadriel asked you to run away. He suspects that you tried to seduce her. He can't see the truth. So keep quiet."
"Okay," Bron said.
"If he presses you, tell him that you talked about the cows and the weather. Just make up something."
No adult had ever told Bron to be so evasive before. It was refreshing to see that sometimes even adults could admit that being completely honest was foolish.
"But what if she did run away?" Bron asked. "Shouldn't we tell them where she went?"
"I could tell them for you, if you want?"
"She was thinking of going to Vegas or Hollywood."
"The usual places," Olivia sighed. "They're magnets for the young, vapid and pretty."
Bron was just finishing up his breakfast when he heard the police siren blurt out by the gate. He raced for the side door, to see what was going on, and Olivia came up to his back.
Mike was opening the gate to the pasture, while the car waited, lights flashing. His dog was leaping about at Mike's side. The siren began to scream, and Mike shouted, "We found her!"
He swung the gate open, and the car sped out, spitting gravel, siren wailing. Bron tried to see inside, and could only glimpse Galadriel in the backseat, her face pale and dotted with cold sweat. Her hair was stringy, and she appeared to be shaking violently, her lower jaw trembling.
"Oh, my god!" Olivia whispered as the car neared, and she gripped hard onto Bron's bicep, as if to keep from falling.
Bron wondered if Galadriel really had been attacked.
Officer Walton glared up at Bron and looked as if he would pass, then he stomped on his brakes and rolled down his window. In the back of the car, Galadriel was weeping and growling like an animal.
"You're involved in this, boy," Officer Walton said. "I don't know what part you played, but this is your fault, and I'm going to get you."
Bron shook his head. "I didn't do anything."
"I've lived up here for eighteen years," Walton said, "and we've never had no kind of trouble. You're here one day, and now we got this...."
From the back of the car, Galadriel shrieked, "Let me die! I just wanna die! Let me out of here!" she thrashed about, and the emergency blanket that was wrapped over her came off. Her clothes were soaked and muddy. Her hands had been cuffed.
She looks like a crazed animal, Bron thought.
As the other officer pulled the space blanket back in place, Officer Walton hit the gas and the car surged down the road, turned on Main Street, and sped through town.
Mike came jogging up to the house, panting. Olivia asked, "What happened? Where did you find her?"
Mike shook his head. "Down by the pond. We found her clothes first, all stripped off, like she went swimming. But there wasn't any sign of her, so we had to search that marshy area. We found her about a quarter of a mile away, naked, just huddling up with her arms wrapped around her legs."
"Was she okay?" Bron asked. He added, "She didn't get, like, attacked by an animal or something?"
Mike shook his head. "Nothing like that, no bruises or nothing that I could see. She's just...." He shrugged, unable to explain what was wrong. "Walton's going to take her down to the hospital in Saint George, get a rape kit done on her, have her checked out."
"Rape?" Olivia asked. "They think she was raped?"
Mike glanced at him. Bron wondered if Officer Walton really thought that Galadriel had been raped, or if the test was just a ruse to determine if Bron had slept with her.
"Just a precaution," Mike said. "I don't know what's wrong with her. Maybe it's drugs or something. She was just curled up in a little ball, and wouldn't talk, and when we tried to take care of her, she said that she wanted to die. I don't know, maybe she had a mental breakdown."
Olivia bit her lower lip, looked back and forth between Mike and Bron. Her eyes widened, and Bron realized that she knew something, that she wanted to talk privately with him.
"Hey," Mike said, as if trying to ease the tension, "is that breakfast I smell?"
"Better go in and get some," Olivia urged, "before it gets any colder."
Mike lunged through the door. Olivia closed it so that Mike wouldn't hear.
She peered deeply into Bron's eyes. "Have you ever seen anyone act like that before, like Galadriel did just now?"
"What?" Bron asked.
"Someone who no longer wanted to live?" Olivia clarified. "Someone who begged for others to just let them die?"
Bron looked at her blankly, shook his head "No."
"What about Mr. Lewis, in the third family you stayed with. He had a mental breakdown. Do you remember?"
Bron shook his head. "I was just a little kid back then," he said. "All I know is that he died in the hospital."
Olivia stammered, "You and I need to have a talk!" Bron shifted uneasily. "About what?"
"About the people who chased us in town—about what they are. About what you are."
Chapter 12
Learning the Hard Way
"Life's most profound lessons are often learned on the streets, when someone pounds them into you."
Bron grabbed his pack and dressed for school by 7:30, feeling jarred and rattled. He'd been troubled by dreams all night, dreams in which Olivia forced him to play the guitar while suction cups formed on his fingers, and now the accusations about Galadriel only muddled his mind more. He worried about the people who had tried to attack him, and about the cow that had died in the woods.
All of these things circled like wolves, and he didn't know which to fear most.
Olivia knows something about what is going on, but how much does she really know? he wondered. A worry hit him. Does she know about the suction cups on my fingers?
Those scared him most of all. He dared not talk about it.
If it was a disease, he didn't want to have to deal with it. If it was something else.... He felt overwhelmed by the possibilities.
As he prepared for school, Olivia rapped on his bedroom door. "Do you want to drive with me," she called, "or do you think that you can find your own way?"
"I'll come with you," Bron said. His thoughts were too jangled to let him drive. There was no sense getting lost on his first day. He already felt like enough of an idiot.
Olivia drove his Corolla that day, wearing big sunglasses, hidden by the tinted glass in every window. Bron suspected that he understood now why she'd purchased this particular model. The dark interior let her hide.
Bron waited for her to broach the topic of the strangers, sure that she would talk about his problems, but she never did, and he angrily tried to force it from his mind. If she could be patient, Bron decided, he could be more patient.
So as Olivia drove that morning, he silently paid attention to the route, trying to take refuge in a simple task. Getting to the highway was easy enough, and once there, all he had to do was turn left and drive for fifteen miles until he reached the first stoplight. After that, signs along the road would lead him straight to Tuacahn.