Push

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“I CAN’T HELP FEELING THIS NIGGLING SENSE OF EXPECTATION, like something bad is waiting in the wings. Like the other shoe’s about to drop,” I tell Jackson later that day, trying to explain it.

“Wings . . . shoes . . . that’s quite the mix of metaphors,” he says, taking a bite of his sandwich.

I roll my eyes.

Despite the cold weather, we’re sitting at the top of the bleachers, sharing the lunch I made for both of us. I shiver, partly because talking about this makes me nervous, mostly because I didn’t dress warmly enough for the weather. Jackson shrugs out of his jacket—the brown leather worn and faded to beige in spots—and drapes it around my shoulders.

“You’ll be cold,” I say.

“I have my hoodie.” Last word.

His jacket’s still warm from his body and I hug it close, watching Luka and Carly and Dee race one another up and down the stairs. We haven’t been pulled since the time I almost died—the time I thought Jackson’s dead sister saved my life—and that’s freaking me out.

Jackson bites off half a sandwich, chews, swallows. “I’ve gone up to three months without getting pulled,” he says. “A few weeks isn’t unusual. Be happy for the break.”

“How do you handle the not knowing?”

He shrugs. “I can’t control it. I know that, so I don’t even try. When it happens, it happens. I’m not going to waste my good moments by obsessing about the bad. The Beast in the Jungle, right?”

“What’s that?”

He finishes his sandwich and eyes the half of mine I haven’t gotten to yet. “You going to eat that?” he asks, reaching for it.

I shift the container out of his reach. “Yes.” Then I dig through my pack and pull out another container. “But I made extra.” I hand him his second sandwich.

“You are a goddess,” he says around a mouthful.

“Your turn to make lunch tomorrow,” I remind him. “And no cheating by buying crap in the caf like you did last time. So . . . The Beast in the Jungle?”

The wind catches my hair, blowing it all around. I reach back and gather it in my fist, then tuck the length under my collar, down the back of my—Jackson’s—jacket.

“It’s a story by Henry James.” Jackson catches a stray strand and tucks it in with the others. “It’s about a guy who’s obsessed with the belief that something catastrophic is going to happen to him, like a beast waiting to pounce, so he wastes his whole life, afraid to do anything that’ll encourage it. Terrified. Waiting for it to happen.”

“So what happens? What’s the catastrophic thing?”

“Nothing. That’s the point. Nothing terrible happens. The catastrophe that gets him in the end is the fact that he didn’t really live. He was too afraid.”

“Sounds like an uplifting read.” And it sort of sounds like my panic attacks.

I put my empty container back in my pack, watching Carly run down the stairs shrieking and laughing, with Luka a step behind.

“Sometimes everything feels too big,” I say. “The Drau. The threat. Knowing that they’ve already destroyed at least one entire species and now they’re after us. The future of the whole world weighing on our shoulders.” Carly shrieks as Luka catches her, then breaks away and darts off. I gesture at them. “Regular high-school life just doesn’t seem important.”

“It’s the most important,” Jackson says. He shifts us both around so we’re straddling the metal bench, my back against his chest, his arms wrapped around me from behind. He rests his chin on my shoulder. “When we beat the Drau, this is the life we’ll still have, Miki. This is what matters most. Our families. Our friends. This is exactly what we’re fighting for. This moment, and a thousand others just like it.”

I twist my head to look back at him over my shoulder. “When we beat the Drau? You say that like you have insider knowledge of the exact day and time. You know something I don’t?”

Jackson looks away, like he’s avoiding an answer, and for a second a chill grabs hold of me, turning my blood to ice. What isn’t he telling me?

Then I look where he’s looking to see Dee sprint past Luka and tackle Carly to the ground. Luka trips over them and all three land in a heap, laughing, caught up in their game. Luka lifts his head, catches my eye, and for a second he looks almost guilty. For what? For having fun?

His gaze shifts to Jackson and it’s like the three of us are connected, thinking about another game where it isn’t about fun.

“Two against one. Unfair advantage. Take ’em down,” Jackson yells, and Luka grabs Dee’s ankle just as she gets to her feet. She’s back on the ground, laughing.

Her joy is infectious, pushing past my barriers and doubts and fear, trickling through me like sunshine.

“You’re right,” I say. “This is what we’re fighting for. This moment. That’s what matters.”

I jump to my feet and toss Jackson’s jacket in his lap.

“Race you!”

And then I leap from bench to bench, tearing down toward the field with Jackson hot on my heels.

The ringing of the phone wakes me. I roll over, the last vestiges of a great dream about me and Jackson and a dog and a beach still clinging to my thoughts. I check the time—1:00 a.m.—then check the number. Carly.

Worry uncoils, rattling and baring venomous fangs.

“Hey,” I say.

She doesn’t answer right away.

I sit bolt upright, tightening my grip on my phone as I flick on my bedside lamp. “Carly?”

A gasp followed by a shaky exhalation.

Images flash through my thoughts of blood and death and the Drau darting through Carly’s house like bright reapers.

“Carly, what’s wrong?” I throw back the covers and jump to my feet, ready to wake Dad, to head over there. I reach for my jeans, dragging them on one-handed. I’m struggling to get my second leg all the way in when she lets out a gasping sob.

“Miki.”

“I’m here, Carly. What’s wrong?” I demand, my voice hard and tight with fear. I get my jeans the rest of the way on and pace the length of my room, waiting for her answer.

“Grammy B,” she whispers.

Grammy B is Carly’s mom’s mom. She’s funny and fun, and I have great memories of her from before she moved to Florida to help Carly’s aunt Melanie through her divorce. That was three years ago. She stayed on to help watch Carly’s little cousins while Mel works. She says she likes feeling needed and she was here to help Carly’s mom with her brood when they were small, so it’s Mel’s turn now.

I know Carly misses Grammy B even though they talk on the phone all the time. On the phone isn’t the same as in person, and Christmas visits and a week in the summer just aren’t enough.

“Is she okay?” I whisper back, a reflex even though it isn’t the brightest question. If she were okay, Carly wouldn’t be calling me.

Everyone leaves.

I press the back of my hand to my mouth. Carly stood beside me at Mom’s funeral—Dad on one side of me, Carly on the other. She held my hand. She held me up when my knees went weak. She slept in a sleeping bag on my floor beside my bed for a week afterward, waking up with me every time the nightmares ripped me open, sitting on one side of my bed while Dad sat on the other.

I’ll do the same for her. I’ll go to Florida, go to the funeral, unless they’re bringing Grammy B’s body back here—

“She’s in the hospital,” Carly chokes out. “CICU. They said it’s acute myocardial infarction.”

Hospital. Not dead.

Myocardial infarction is a heart attack. That’s bad.

But people can recover from that. I know they can. Mr. Shomper had a mild heart attack a couple of years ago and he’s still here—still teaching, even.

“That’s good,” I say, fighting my own tears. “That’s great.”

“What?” Carly chokes out.

I shake my head, then realize she can’t see me and my words aren’t making much sense to her.

“It’s great that she’s alive,” I say, all the hope in my heart coming through in my tone. “She’s alive, Carly.”

“You’re right,” Carly says after a few seconds. “She’s alive. She has a chance.”

“A good chance, right?” Please let her have a good chance.

She sniffles. “They say that if she makes it through the night, that it’s a good sign.”

I close my eyes and silently hope that she makes it through the night. That she doesn’t pass in her sleep without ever waking up like Sofu did.

“They’ll take care of her. They’ll make her better,” I say even though I’m not convinced of the last part. I don’t exactly have the best track record with hospital outcomes. But I want Carly to have hope. And I desperately want my words to prove true.

“What do you need?” I ask. “What can I do to help?”

“We’re heading to the airport in a couple of hours. We’re all going. The whole family. Just in case.” She pauses. I can hear her crying—big, snuffling sobs. Tears prick my lids and I blink against them. “I don’t know how long we’ll be there.”

You’ll be there till she’s well enough to go home. Or until she can never go home . . . The thought rips me up inside.

“I’ll get your homework,” I say, needing to be able to do something. “And I’ll tell your teachers.”

“And Kelley and Dee. Sarah. Amy. I didn’t call anyone. Just you.”

“I’ll tell them.” I feel so sad for her.

“And can you watch my Daimon?”

Daimon. Her fish. It’s a betta—a Siamese fighting fish.

She swears he’s brilliant. That he does tricks. Personally, I think that he comes to the surface when she dips her finger because he’s genetically programmed to attack.

“You know where Mom hides the spare key. Can you come get his bowl and keep him till I get back?”

“I’ll get him first thing in the morning.”

“You need to feed him once a day. I do it right before I leave for school. Don’t overfeed him,” she says, her words rushing together. “Just give him what he can eat in two minutes. No more. Or bacteria will get in the water and that’s not good.”

“Got it. His food’s in the freezer on the door, right?”

“Yes. Take care of him. Promise.”

“I promise.”

A promise I’m destined to break.

Four days later, Carly calls with the awesome news that Grammy B’s going to be okay.

“She has to take aspirin every day and beta-blockers and something else that’s a blood thinner . . . it starts with a P. She was only in CICU one night; then they moved her to a regular room, and then they let her out of the hospital today. We’re flying home tonight,” she says, sounding happy and relieved. “Can you bring Daimon by? I miss his wavy blue fins.”

I glance at the bowl on the end table. “Sure.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Good.” Sort of a white lie. He didn’t eat yesterday. I ended up having to scoop all the food out after a few minutes so it didn’t taint the water. He didn’t eat this morning, either. I take a step closer to the end table. “He’s good.”

“Did you do the little trick where you put your finger in the water and he bumps up against it?”

I’m standing over the bowl now, looking at the fish. He’s not moving at all. Not even the flick of a fin. I dip my finger in the water and bump it against the little blue body with its fins sagging toward the bottom.

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.

“Yep. Bumped the fish in the water. Doing it right now. As we speak.” Truth. Sort of.

She laughs. “Gotta go. The taxi’s here to take us to the airport. See you soon.”

I stare at the fish, willing it to move. “You’re sleeping, right?”

Right. Sleep of the dead.

With a sigh, I text Luka. Twenty minutes later, he’s at my door. “What’s up?”

“I need you to look at something.”

“Okay.” He steps into the hall as I pull the door open. “How come you called me instead of Jackson?”

“Two reasons,” I say. A few weeks ago, Luka acted all territorial a couple of times in the game. It made me wonder if he was into me. But lately, I’ve had the feeling he’s into Carly. Hard to tell. “First, I just think you have this relationship with Carly.”

His eyebrows shoot up.

“I mean, a friendship . . . that you’re friends with her—”

“So’s Jackson.” He gives me a weird look.

“Second,” I continue as if he hadn’t interrupted, “Jackson took his mom grocery shopping because her car’s in the sho—” I break off as Luka laughs. “What?” I ask.

“When you met him, did you ever picture him taking his mom shopping?”

“Honestly? I never pictured him having a family.”

“You thought he just sort of arrived in the world preformed. Spawned.”

My turn to laugh. “Pretty much.”

Luka’s expression turns serious. “So what’s going on with Carly? Did you hear from her? She okay?”

“She’s okay.” Until she finds out about the fish. “Shoes,” I remind him.

He toes off his sneakers. House rules. Mom never let anyone wear shoes in the house, so I don’t, either. Just like Sofu never let anyone wear shoes in the dojo. It just isn’t something you do.

I lead him into the den. “Well?”

“Well what?” he spreads his hands.

“Is it dead?”

He looks at me. Looks around again. Finally spots the bowl sitting on the end table.

“Uh . . .” He stares at the bowl, reaches in, stirs the water in circles, stares at the fish, then pulls his hand out and looks for something to wipe it on. He’s reaching for the afghan that’s draped over the back of the sofa, the one my mom made when she was pregnant with me. I lunge for it and get it out of harm’s way.

“Use your jeans,” I say.

“It’s either dead, or”—he wipes first the front then the back of his hand on his jeans—“There’s no ‘or.’ It’s dead.”

“Oh God.” I bury my face in my hands. “I killed Carly’s fish.”

“Are you sure you killed it? If this is the same one she had before I went to Seattle, it’s, like . . . what . . . more than two years old? Maybe it just died of natural causes.”

“It’s still dead. After I promised I’d take care of it. What do we do?”

“We?” Luka’s brows shoot up. “You just tell her you’re sorry. I don’t know. Offer to hold a fish funeral?”

The front door slams. “Miki?”

“I killed Carly’s fish,” I wail.

Dad wanders into the den. Luka offers his hand.

“Don’t shake that,” I warn Dad. “He just had it in the water with the dead fish.”

“Right. Because it isn’t like I haul fish out of the lake all the time,” Dad says with a grin. Which is true, him being a fishing fanatic and all.

Still, he does this sort of half-wave-half-salute thing instead of shaking Luka’s hand.

Luka scrubs his hand on his thigh, then shoves it in his pocket.

Dad peers at the fish. “Buy her a new one. Make sure you look for one that has the same red tinge on the front fins.”

“You mean, like, don’t tell her the old one died?” Luka asks. “Just get her a replacement and try to pass it off?”

Dad shrugs. “That’s what I did with Miki’s turtle when she was six.”

“What?” I gasp. “Yurtle? You tricked me? What kind of thing is that to do to a six-year-old?”

“Better than having you freak out over the dead turtle. You never knew a thing. Yurtle one, two, and three kicked off within a couple of months of one another. Four stuck around for a while.”

I stare at his back as he wanders to the kitchen.

I remember my parents telling me Yurtle got out of his tank, that we might not find him. And I remember freaking out. Next morning, there was Yurtle, back in the tank. Was that version two, three, or four?

Was it better to let me blithely believe it was the same turtle all along? Or should my parents have told me the truth?

I agonize over the fish thing for hours. Actually, Luka and I rent a movie and I agonize intermittently during the slow parts.

As the final credits roll, I shift on the couch so I’m facing Luka with my legs crossed. A quick check reveals Dad to be nowhere in the near vicinity; he wandered upstairs about an hour ago and hasn’t come back down yet. Still, I lower my voice to a whisper. “Can I ask you some stuff?”

Luka narrows his eyes at me. “Depends on what sort of stuff.”

“Have you ever had nightmares about the game?”

“Not lately, but in the beginning, yeah. I was pretty freaked when I first got pulled.” He’s told me that before, when we finally talked after Richelle got killed. He studies my face for a few seconds, then asks, “Are you having nightmares?”

I nod. “Some. Not a lot. One that was different, though. It was weird. I know you said you didn’t see the girl who helped me when I got hurt last time”—and the Committee had claimed the same: that they hadn’t sent any other teams on that mission, that I was alone—“but I dreamed about her. She looked like Lizzie.”

Luka just stares at me blankly.

“Lizzie,” I repeat. “Jackson’s sister.”

“Jackson doesn’t—whoa,” Luka says after a pause. “You’re seeing the ghost of your boyfriend’s dead sister. That’s—” His brows shoot up and he shakes his head.

“She’s trying to tell me something, Luka. Something about the game. I saw Marcy and Kathy, and Marcy was laughing and Kathy was really small, like, smaller than my baby finger and—” I break off and stare at Luka as he starts laughing. “What?”

“You sure the nightmare was about the game? I mean, Marcy’s obviously . . . her and Jackson . . .” He holds up his hands as he realizes what he’s saying. “I don’t mean that the way it sounds. I know there is no her and Jackson. It’s just, she watches him all the time. She’s not exactly subtle. Actually, she watches both of you.”

“I know. I feel like every time I turn around she’s there with her posse, and it’s creepy.”

Luka stares at me, the laughter fading from his expression. “You don’t mean stalker creepy, do you?”

I shake my head and whisper, “Drau creepy.”

“You think Marcy Kern’s a shell?”

“No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” I exhale in a rush.

“Her eyes are blue,” Luka says. “Light blue. Kind of icy. Not Drau gray.”

“Do shells have Drau eyes?” I ask.

Luka holds my gaze. I could ask him if he knows about Jackson’s eyes, if he’s seen them. We’ve never actually talked about that. It’s something Jackson and I keep between ourselves. At least, I think it is.

“Drau eyes?” He frowns, shrugs. “I have no clue. But I still think that if you’re having nightmares about Marcy it’s because she’s trying to get into Jackson’s pants—” At my chilly look, he finishes, “Just saying.”

I uncross my legs and cross them in the opposite direction, so my right foot’s now on top of my left. “Let’s forget about Marcy for a second. There’s something else. Near the end of the nightmare, I got pulled, and it felt real. Not like the rest of the dream. Real and . . . important.” I try to line up the details in my thoughts. “Have you ever been pulled somewhere other than the lobby?”

“All the time. So have you.”

“No, I’m not asking this right. I don’t mean pulled on missions. I mean pulled somewhere like the lobby but totally different. White and cold and . . . cold,” I finish lamely.

He shakes his head.

“Have you ever . . . brought your injuries back with you?”

“What? No. If we come back, we come back healed. What’s going on with you, Miki? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing. Seriously, nothing.” I rub my left shoulder even though it doesn’t hurt, even though the marks that were there are gone. “Nothing,” I say again and cover my unease by stacking our empty glasses and offering Luka the last piece of sliced apple on the plate.

A little while later, Carly calls from the airport to tell me they’ve landed.

The pet store will be open for another half hour. I could make it. I could buy Daimon 2.0.

In the end, I decide the hard truth’s better than the easy lie.

I get in the Explorer and drive Daimon’s corpse—which is no longer floating and has sunk to the gravel at the bottom and started to turn white at the edges—over to Carly’s.

“I’m sorry,” I say, holding the bowl out toward her, barely able to get the words out because I’m crying so hard. Over a fish.

Or maybe it isn’t over the fish at all.

And maybe she’s just so grateful that Grammy B’s going to be okay or maybe she’s the greatest friend ever, or maybe it’s a combination of the two. Whatever the reason, Carly wraps her arms around me and we cry together.

And then she forgives me.