“Seth!” I whisper.
The bead of shadow stops. He stands just outside the door.
It cracks open, and I am blind in the flood of light behind the man standing there.
He has a cigarette in his hand.
And Freddie says, “I think we should go for a drive. Would you like to get some breakfast? You hungry, kid?”
I try to speak, but my throat is dry.
“Kid? You awake?”
“I … I’m awake.”
I stay flat, motionless, make myself small, my eyes lower, fixing steady on the paleness of my chest beneath the invading light.
It is how we do things here. No looking at his face. He doesn’t like it, and he has water.
I want water.
So I ask him, like he wants me to, “Will you please take me for a drive? Will you take me outside? Please?”
When he pushes open the door, it’s like being unearthed after centuries. The light pours over my anemic skin and I pull my chest toward my knees, jam my hands over my crotch, an instinct to grab myself and cover, and the tightening of my muscles hurts, burns like the light that blinds me.
It’s like being on the train again.
Like waking up in the Under.
Being born.
And all I can see is the burning yellow light; nothing else.
It is so hot.
When I open my eyes, I am staring along the ground, at the white Marbury ash, lying at the foot of a rock in the desert.
And someone is yelling, “A rider! Henry! There’s a rider!”
Part Five
THE ARROW
twenty-nine
The passenger arrives.
* * *
How long this time?
I stretched out, flat on my belly in the ash. My fingers were wedged beneath the pack, and I could feel the glasses in my sweaty grasp. Somehow, I’d gotten my hand covered in the cut-out pocket again. Of course, as always, I had no idea what I’d been doing or how I ended up where I was. I pressed onto my hands and knees, keeping my forehead down, resting it against the dirt.
My stomach knotted and retched.
It hurt bad.
Coming back never hurt like this.
I was afraid I’d missed something; that there were important things I needed to see, but had left behind.
It was sick—I knew it—but I honestly wanted to be back there in Freddie’s room. I was certain there was an answer for Jack somewhere in that house; that I belonged there. Maybe I knew it anyway, and I wasn’t ever going home again.
I coughed and spit, vaguely sensing the absence of the other boys, the Odds.
Sometimes you just know when you’re all alone. It was a feeling Jack knew well.
When I finally raised my head so I could see where I was, I realized that Henry was gone, too.
“Do you need me to get help?”
A finger tapped my shoulder. I didn’t know there was anyone else there, so I flinched, jerking around to see who stood behind me.
The English kid, Ethan, the bed wetter, hovered over me, straight and rail thin, like the topless trunk of a palm tree tufted in stringy amber hair.
I rubbed my head. “I’m sick or something.”
Then I turned. I could see where all the other boys had gathered above us, crouching on the rim of the rocks. Henry was up there with them. I thought about the last time I saw him, when he was fighting with Quinn on the platform in the Underground. I couldn’t help but wonder which Henry would show up here in Marbury with me. With the boys.
Ethan said, “Perhaps I can get you some of Frankie’s water.”
He looked honestly concerned. He shifted, and started to move back toward Frankie’s distillery.
“No,” I said. “Don’t do that, Ethan. I’ll be okay.”
He stopped, and I glanced at the rim again and swallowed. My throat felt like sandpaper. “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking to me, anyway.”
Ethan shrugged dismissively, irritated. “All right, then. Suit yourself. I just thought you needed help or something. Henry Hewitt told me to stay here and look after you. Now I’ve seen you. You’re alive. I guess there’s nothing more to look after.”
He started heading up to the ridgeline to join the other Odds.
Ethan said, “They’ve spotted a rider out there. Alone. Hewitt thinks it’s a fucking Ranger. I believe some of the boys are debating if we should go kill it, whatever he is.”
He kept walking away from me.
I knew the kid from somewhere.
Somewhere that wasn’t here.
“Hey, wait a second. I…”
I tried to stand up, and nearly fell face-first into the boulder I’d been hiding under. It was like my head drained itself empty when I moved. I nearly blacked out.
And I dropped the glasses into the ash between my knees.
Ethan turned around and saw them.
“What’s that?”
He saw something in them.
I tried not to look, tried brushing them away with my uncoordinated fingers. But Jack’s brain hadn’t connected yet, and I saw it, too. Couldn’t help it.
“Don’t look at that,” I said. I finally managed to swipe the glasses back under the rock. But even then, Ethan stood there, hypnotized and staring slackjawed at the pulsing vibrations of light that came from inside the crevice.
“Let me see that again,” he said.
I panicked. There was an excited energy coming from the kids on the ridge. I scanned above us, could see Ben and Griffin kneeling beside Henry.
The kid was frozen in place.
He said, “Jack.”
It was the first time any of these Odds used my name.
And Ethan pleaded, “Let me see that once more.”
“It’s nothing.”
I upended the pack, spilled everything out between my feet. As I twisted the ratty sock around in my hand, I said to him, “Ethan? Do you know where we are?”
He took two slow steps toward me, moving like he was hypnotized, falling, disconnected from his body.
“Ethan?”
The kid went down onto his knees. His face was blank, as though he’d fainted. Then he blinked, shook his head, and sat back in the ash across from me, bracing himself upright with his stick arms locked behind him.
I stuffed everything into the pack, zipping it shut, protecting the glasses again, even if it was too late for that shit. The kid spit and coughed. It sounded like he was throwing up, but I didn’t want to look at him.
I threaded my arms through the pack’s straps. A gray slick of puke spread out in the dirt next to where Ethan sat. He didn’t blink. He just sat there, watching me like I was some kind of monster.
I was.
“Where is that place?”
“It’s nothing. It isn’t real. You weren’t supposed to see that.” I lied, scared. “It could kill you.”
It made me sick to think what could happen if Ethan started talking about what he’d seen to the other Odds. He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t that kind of kid, I thought.
I kneeled down beside him in the ash. Griffin was up on the ridge, scrambling down a craggy fissure like a crab on the rock face.
Ethan wiped a forearm across his wet mouth. He looked scared, confused. “But I know you.”
“Please don’t say anything.” More boys started following Griffin down from the ridge. “It’s something bad. And I have to make it stop.”
“But we were there. You were there, too. You had to have seen it. We were there, together, all morning. Hours.”
“No,” I said. “It was a second, Ethan. That’s why you have to understand. Please don’t say anything to the others. Let me explain.”
I needed to talk to the kid. He saw something that I didn’t, and now he knew me. But it was too late. Griffin and the boys were already in earshot, coming through the pack of horses, watching us, curious about Jack and the other outcast.
But I had to know what Ethan saw; where we were.
“Please let me talk to you later, Ethan.”
He looked straight at me.
I thought I could trust him.
There’s a certain allegiance kids who aren’t wanted naturally feel toward one another.
“I want to know about it, Jack.”