Earthbound

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

My lungs ache—I can’t breathe.

Wake up!

Wake up!

Finally the dusky gray of sunrise pierces through my eyelids and I sit straight up, gasping for air. My head spins and an ache lingers in my chest as I suck in breaths as fast as I can.

The drowning dream again. Again I was flailing about in desperation, reaching out for things.

But it makes a little more sense now; I’m reaching for things I made. Just like the ChapStick and pencil and water. I’m trying to save myself—to survive. My brain figured it out before I did.

I blink away the murky blackness of the water and my room swims into focus, illuminated by the just-rising sun. My nightgown is damp with sweat, but I’m so cold I can’t feel my toes or fingers. I stagger to the bathroom and scalding water pours over my trembling limbs for several minutes before I can feel all my digits.

Then I remember. Reese is leaving today.

Samantha. I raise my face to the steaming shower and try to let the water wash Jay’s voice away.

Downstairs, Reese and Jay are having coffee: Reese getting ready for the cab to take her to the airport, Jay to go to a normal day of work.

Despite the storm last night, the day is bright and clear, the sun shining. Perfect—I’m going on a long walk today.

I hide upstairs, waiting for both of them to clear out. It’s cowardly, I know, but I’m going to need all my courage to deal with everything else in my life. Finally I hear the clack of the front door and that unmistakable thud of the dead bolt turning.

They’re gone.

I tiptoe to the end of the hallway and pull the edge of the curtain back with a tentative finger, watching them share a goodbye kiss—that makes me feel conflicted all over again—before Jay heads up the street on foot and the yellow cab rolls in the other direction.

My chest loosens and I breathe easily for the first time since … I don’t even know.

When I’m dressed and ready, I go downstairs and see a pot of coffee with two or three cups still warm in the bottom. I grit my teeth against the thought that it was a considerate gesture. I switch off the burner plate and wish that switching off my brain—or better yet, my problems—was so easy.

But a note on the refrigerator incinerates that wish.

Dr. Stanley, 10:00. Don’t forget!

As if I could.

When I reach for my house key, my hand pauses at the sight of Reese’s key chain hanging innocently beside it.

I reach out a finger to touch the enormous key ring—Reese has more keys than my old high school janitor, I swear—and my fingers begin to tremble as all sorts of possibilities race through my mind.

Terrifying possibilities.

I don’t take the keys.

Not yet.

As I stand on the porch, a cold wind cuts through my hoodie and I almost unlock the door again to grab a windbreaker. Despite the clear, sunny sky, the wind is unusually frigid. But it’s not that far, and as I make my way down the sidewalk, I realize the bitter wind is eating away at the fog that has enveloped my thoughts all morning.

Better than coffee.

I almost pull up short when I see Sunglasses Guy again. Once is nothing, twice could be a coincidence. Three times? I don’t think so. And I am nowhere near Park Street or Elizabeth’s office. He’s just standing there, leaning against the sign for the rarely used bus stop about two houses down, but I’m not fooled. He’s watching me.

I act like I haven’t noticed him even as my heart races, the beats pounding in my head, blocking out the rush of the wind. But I can’t bring myself to actually walk past him, an arm’s length away, so after a quick glance I cross the street and watch him out of the corner of my eye, each of us pretending not to see the other.

As I round a corner, someone falls into step with me, but I’m so distracted wondering how long it’s going to be before Sunglasses Guy is on my trail again that it takes a good thirty seconds before I realize it’s Quinn, rather dashing in all dark gray and black.

“Quinn!” I gasp, stopping completely as I feel my pulse pounding in my fingertips. “I was coming to find you.”

“Walk with me,” Quinn says out of the side of his mouth, as though he doesn’t want anyone to notice he’s talking to me.

Resentment flares—like I’m the embarrassing girlfriend or something—but I shove it away and hurry to catch up. “Quinn, I have to talk to you about—”

“’Tis trouble,” he interrupts.

“Excuse me?” I ask. ’Tis? What the hell?

“They’ve discovered us.” He pauses and looks over at me for the first time. “You know it.”

I swallow hard and nod, his words confirming my suspicions. I don’t actually know for sure who they are—Reese and Jay? The people they’re hiding me from? Sunglasses Guy? But someone has definitely found me.

“We must go to Camden. We’ve no cause to wait any longer.”

I clench my teeth, not wanting to be mad at him but hating the way he jerks me around. Jerks my emotions. But I’m helpless to resist. And I resent that.

Not that I’m giving up. “You said you’d bring something. Something to help me understand.” I want to stop, to put my hands on my hips and refuse to walk anywhere else with him until he gives me answers, but a quick glance over my shoulder shows me a distant smudge of black that I’m pretty sure is Sunglasses Guy and I don’t want to take the chance that he’ll catch up.

In fact, I’d rather quicken my pace.

“Camden. Everything waits in Camden.”

“What is in Camden? Where is Camden?” I snap, the tension of Quinn’s mystery act and the fact that I’m being followed not a very happy-making combination.

“I’ll meet you there,” he says, as though I hadn’t said anything.

“Why can’t you just talk to me?” I ask, exasperated.

He says nothing, only lengthens his stride. “Tell no one,” he hisses.

“Quinn!” I reach for his arm as he turns from the quiet neighborhood street onto a busy boardwalk in the touristy zone, but at the last second he skirts out of reach. I try to follow, but there are people in my way now, though he weaves through them nimbly. My bad leg twinges, as if in warning. I’m not sure I could have caught him even with two good legs.

I curse under my breath. Curse myself, Quinn, my heart and its wild beating. Why can’t he just stay in one place? Or, at the very least, give me a straight answer? In regular English. I guess he’s left me in a better place than the empty street we were on, as it’s hard to lose a tail in a nonexistent crowd, but it wasn’t what I wanted! He knows something and I have to find out what it is. I have a suspicion—a rational one, under the circumstances—that my safety hangs in the balance, and he runs away. Jerk.

Still, based on the direction he took off in, I’m pretty sure he’s going to the same place I was headed before I ran into him. And I am not letting him get away this time. Today someone is going to tell me something.

I take a circuitous route and after about six turns, I’m pretty sure I’ve lost Sunglasses Guy. I go straight for a few blocks, glancing behind me every hundred feet or so, but no tail in sight. I let myself breathe just a little easier and get back on track. It takes another ten minutes to reach my ultimate destination, but finally I see the specialty food store that started the whole fiasco my life has become.

But Quinn’s house isn’t there.

The white porch, the red door, the triangle, even the cheery maroon and gold tulips—all gone. The whole space is covered with grass and a couple of trees, and I think it’s actually part of the yard of the house to the right … and has been for a long time.

The minutes fly by as I stand in the middle of the parking lot thinking about everything bizarre I’ve seen this week: the house, Quinn, the triangles, the alley that disappeared, the flickering woman, the vanishing ChapStick and pencil.

Benson saw them too, I remind myself. Some of them. My chin trembles as I fight back tears of despair. I clench my fists and suddenly there’s an icy, cold weight in one of them. I open my palm and drop its contents to the ground as though it would burn me.

It’s the locket my mother used to wear—one she got from her mother. She was wearing it on the plane. I never saw it again. Couldn’t bring myself to ask about it.

Now it’s here. On the ground. I made it. Without even thinking.

Like the water. The water that could have killed Benson’s roommate.

Terror makes my whole body shake. How do you run away from yourself?

“I’m not crazy,” I whisper into the wind, then stand and stare at the curlicued silver on the ground until the locket pops out of existence.