Minders

CHAPTER 13

WEEK 2

Sadie opened her eyes and screamed. The ground was rushing toward her—

“Whoooosh!” Ford cried as they abruptly stopped falling and started to dangle eighteen inches above the pavement.

He started to laugh, and her terror instantly changed to pure, undiluted joy. Welcome back, she thought.

Ford hung there for a moment, catching his breath, watching a line of ants moving a piece of leaf along a crack in the asphalt. Sadie tasted the tart sweetness of cherries on his lips and felt his heartbeat knocking against hers like knees on a first date. She shivered with pleasure as a breeze blew gently across his forearm, and the last two days were forgotten. She was not going to think about failure, about how close she’d come to not being there, she was just—

Ford took a deep breath, filling her nose with a mix of nutmeg, warm honey, and musk that made her feel light-headed. His skin, she realized. My god, that’s how he smells.

Deep stasis was extraordinary.

He put his fingertips down, careful not to interrupt the supply line, and got his feet under him in a squat. Sadie was astonished by his weight and power. He tilted his head backward and looked up along the trunk of an old oak tree to a wooden platform under construction among its branches. A tree house, Sadie thought—knew—as though his thoughts were running directly into hers now. A piece of the platform corner was dangling by a few splinters, and Sadie heard him think Right again, Bucky, as he unhooked from his belt the safety rope he’d been wearing when the wood gave.

Standing below the tree, he glanced over his shoulder through the yard at the dilapidated house. Sadie recognized it as one of the places Ford had visited while he was looking for Bucky. It was the old hideout with the turret and the hidden room through the fireplace. Sadie now watched his mind strip the place like a puzzle, assessing each piece of lumber and spare wood as a possible fix for the platform corner. It happened at blinding speed, with a soundtrack of words—“too big,” “bumpy,” “sawing,” “maybe,” “smell bad,” “diagonally?”—that she heard intuitively now.

Find the address, Sadie told herself, determined not to repeat her failure of the day before. The house was on one of those abandoned blocks that existed like pockets of forgotten tranquility in the middle of City Center. There was no street sign visible but there was also no traffic, and between the quiet and the way that the uninhabited buildings and their plants had merged into one another, it felt a little otherworldly.

It was balmy, the air buzzing with the sound of the insects tucked into the overgrown yard. Ford spent the next three hours cannibalizing the surrounding houses and yards for parts and hauling them up and down with the dumbwaiter, which he’d installed on the side of the tree trunk. Sadie’s mind was working feverishly to assess all the new physical sensations she had access to: the smell of warm pavement, sweat running down his back, a bug in his mouth. He worked constantly, pausing only to swig water from a gallon bottle he’d suspended so it could be easily accessible from the treetop or the bottom.

It was like watching a performance, Sadie thought, the sleek motion of his mind as he thoughtfully chose pieces from the other buildings to realize his vision. He had a specific idea, but what fascinated her was his flexibility, his willingness to change as the reality evolved, taking advantage of a whole window with a pane of glass he found hidden inside a ruined house, compensating for a door that had looked solid but was rotted through. He knew generally where his final destination lay and trusted he would get there.

By the time he was done there was a roof with a window as a hatched skylight, four walls, one of them hinged so it could open completely like an awning, a short table with two chairs, a rope ladder, and his favorite part, the head of a rocking horse he’d cut off and, mounted like a piece of taxidermy. Now the place has some class, she heard him think to himself, and she laughed.

Cali called as he was finishing the last of his water. The sensation of strength and ease she got as he crushed the bottle with one hand gave Sadie a little rush.

It was clear from the warmth in his voice when he said, “Hey, babe,” and a few gossamer images that Sadie caught that his dinner with Cali on Friday had gone well.

“Hi, lover,” she said. “What are you up to?”

He glanced around the tree house. “Nothing. Working. You caught me on my break.”

And yet, Sadie thought, he was lying to her.

Tiny perfect points of color filled in the rest of the tree house in his mind, adding candles, a picnic basket, plates, and Sadie realized that he was building it for Cali, to take her to dinner. As a surprise. That’s why he was lying.

Wow.

He did all this for her, Sadie marveled, aware of a strange tight feeling in her chest. He built the entire thing, just for her. Of course, Cali loved him so she knew how special he was.

“I just wanted you to tell me again that I’m going to be great at my new job and everyone will like me,” Cali said. “I’m nervous.”

“You’re going to be great at your new job and everyone is going to love you,” he told her.

And you’re getting a tree house, Sadie said. Which shows that one person in particular loves you very much.

“Thanks,” Cali said tremulously. “I tried listening to your message from the other night again—are you sure you weren’t drunk? It was really long, and you know how when you’re drunk—”

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.