Push

CHAPTER THREE

“DAMN,” LUKA MUTTERS AS WE PULL INTO A DRIVEWAY. “I WAS gonna just leave the keys in the mailbox.”

No chance of that now. There’s a woman coming out of the garage. She’s tall and lean, her honey-brown hair falling loose to her shoulders. She stops and shades her eyes and then walks toward us.

“Jackson’s mom?”

Luka nods. “We need to come up with an explanation of where he is, stat.”

“So I guess that means we can’t ask if she has any idea where her son is.”

Luka snorts. “Like your dad knows where you are when you’re on a mission?”

“Time’s frozen when I’m on a mission, isn’t it? I doubt my dad has a clue I’m even gone.”

“Ditto for Jackson’s mom. It’s a waste of time to ask her.”

“At this point, I’m a grab-any-straw kind of girl.”

He shakes his head. “I know. But there’s no straw here to grab. And asking her anything is against the rules.”

The rules that we don’t talk about the game outside the game. Stupid rules that make no sense. Rules we’ve all broken, but only with each other, never with an outsider. I tip my head back, eyes closed. “You realize that we have big neon zero when it comes to leads. Not an auspicious beginning to our rescue operation.”

“Auspicious? Can you spell that?”

I glance over and punch him in the shoulder, trying to match his halfhearted attempt at humor.

Luka pushes open his door and climbs out. “Hi, Mrs. Tate.”

“Hey, Luka.”

I get out and linger by the passenger door, not sure if I should say hi or just fade into the background.

Jackson’s mom walks over. She’s close enough now that I can see her eyes—not Drau gray like Jackson’s but dark, dazzling green. I’ve seen that color in my nightmare—Jackson’s nightmare—the one he shared with me about his sister and the car accident that dragged him into the game.

There’s a hint of wariness in Mrs. Tate’s expression as her gaze darts to the Jeep, then back to Luka. It hits me that she’s already buried one child and now here we are, in her driveway, with her son’s car but without her son. That’s one thing Dad always says about Sofu dying before Mom: that it’s better he passed before Mom got sick, that parents aren’t meant to bury their children.

I stare at my feet. Jackson’s mom isn’t going to bury another child. He’s coming back. I’ll find a way to bring him back.

“Jackson asked me to drop off his car,” Luka says. “He decided to hang out with some guys.”

She’s quiet for a second. “Are they drinking?”

Nice one, Luka. Try to shovel us out and instead dig us in even deeper.

“No, no, nothing like that. They already had a car and he didn’t want to leave his on the street.”

“You didn’t want to go with?” she asks, and I hear the questions she doesn’t ask: Did Luka take off because Jackson’s involved with a bad crowd? Is he doing things he shouldn’t? I figure every parent thinks those things once in a while, even when they trust their kids.

“It’s all good, Mrs. T. It’s a group project. I’m not in their class.” He’s sticking to the fairy tale he already spun for Carly.

The frown fades. Mrs. Tate looks back and forth between the two of us, clearly waiting for an intro. Then she surprises me by smiling and saying, “Miki,” as if she knows me. “You’re the kendo champion.”

I open my mouth. Close it.

Jackson talked about me.

To his mom.

I don’t know how that’s supposed to make me feel, but I can’t deny the whisper of warmth that melts the edges of the ice that’s been riding in my veins ever since I realized Jackson didn’t make it back.

“Um, yeah. Used to be. Not anymore. I mean, I don’t compete anymore. I still practice in the basement, though.” Okay . . . could I be any more nervous meeting Jackson’s mom? And exactly why am I so nervous?

Luka shifts his weight beside me—right foot to left, then back again. The silence stretches. Mrs. Tate tips her head, like she’s trying to figure something out.

“We should, uh, get going,” Luka says.

With a backward wave, Mrs. Tate heads for her front door and Luka and I grab our backpacks from the Jeep.

“Shouldn’t we give those to his mom?” I jut my chin at the keys in Luka’s hand.

He stares at the keys like they have fangs. “Shit.”

I expect him to sprint for the door and hand them over. Instead he tosses them to me.

“I don’t think I can spew one more lie without breaking,” he says.

Leaving my pack on the drive, I jog toward the door just as Jackson’s mom is closing it.

“Mrs. Tate,” I call. She pauses and looks at me, leaving the door wide. I can hear a phone ringing somewhere inside the house. “Jackson’s keys.” I hold them up.

She holds up one finger in the universal sign for wait, then gestures me inside and hurries down the hall to grab the phone. Not sure what else to do, I shrug in Luka’s direction and step inside. After a few seconds’ deliberation, I leave the door open behind me.

Mrs. Tate’s voice carries to me, a murmur of sound without words. I wonder if she rushed to answer because she thought it might be her son calling. That’s what my mom would have done—run for the phone if she thought it was me.

But I know it isn’t Jackson calling.

And my mom will never again run to catch my phone call.

With a sigh I take a couple of steps deeper into Jackson’s house, curious. On the outside, it’s a few decades old, like mine. But inside, it’s been renovated. I think a wall or two has been taken down to create an open flow from living room near the front of the house to dining room near the back. Slate tiles in the foyer. Hardwood floor stretching down the hallway and through the rooms I can see. The walls are the color of cappuccino.

I sidle in another step, my gaze darting to the staircase. I wonder if I could get away with running upstairs, finding Jackson’s room, searching it. I could say I lent him some school notes. Or a textbook. Maybe a copy of Bleach. Or—

Right. Like I’ll get away with that. Back on the driveway, I got the feeling that Mrs. Tate’s already suspicious or, if not suspicious, wary.

I take a step back toward the door, which brings me alongside a narrow, rectangular console table with a bunch of photos with brushed-nickel frames. I step a little closer, wondering if I should just drop the keys on the table and go.

But I can’t resist those photos.

Leaning in, I examine each one. A little girl and an even littler boy, holding hands, smiling wide, impossibly cute. Same girl and boy a few years later, standing in the surf as it laps across white sand, bright pails in their hands. A family of four: mom, dad, older sister, younger brother with the Grand Canyon in the background. I’m guessing I’m looking at twelve-year-old Jackson. That would be around the time he was first pulled into the game.

I can’t help it. I trail my fingertip lightly over the image of him, then move to the next. A picture of the girl, looking about fourteen or fifteen, sitting in a kayak, smiling at the camera, the sun reflecting off the water around her. Her hair’s light brown, streaked gold by the sun, tied back in a ponytail, her eyes hidden by sunglasses.

The final picture is a close-up of the same girl’s face—a face I recognize. I’ve seen it before, eyes closed, skin pale. I’m dragged back to the cave where dozens of clones with that exact face lay lifeless and rotting on rows and rows of gurneys. Please don’t let Jackson be somewhere like that. Please. I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly chilled.

“We took that shortly before she . . .” Jackson’s mom says softly, right beside me. I almost jump through the roof. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, I . . . I’m sorry.” I hold the keys out to her and drop them in her upturned palm. I can’t stop myself from shooting a last glance at the picture.

“Lizzie,” she says. “My daughter.”

I nod. I almost say I’m sorry again. But I know how I feel when people say that to me. Why are they sorry? It isn’t their fault.

Instead, I say, “Time doesn’t heal all wounds. It’s a lie people say to make us feel better. Make themselves feel better.” As soon as the last syllable trails away, I want to reach out and catch it and take it back. I don’t know why I said that.

The expression on Mrs. Tate’s face is an odd combination of sad and surprised. “No,” she says, drawing out the word, “time doesn’t heal all wounds. But it dulls them. Remembering hurts less. The good stays bright and sharp. The bad gets pushed to a place it can’t hurt us as much anymore. You’ll see.” She touches my arm in sympathy.

I open my mouth only to find that I don’t know what to say.

Jackson must have told her about my mom. I haven’t even told my dad that Jackson exists, never mind anything personal about him.

“Go on, now.” A dismissal, but not an unkind one. Mrs. Tate smiles at me. “Luka’s waiting.”

I take a step toward her instead of away and before I know it, I’m hugging her. Really hugging her. And she’s hugging me back.

After a second I duck my head, pull away, and bolt.

Luka has his backpack slung over one shoulder, mine over the other. I don’t say a word. I just start walking and he falls in beside me.

“I thought of something while you were inside,” he says after we’ve walked a couple of blocks. “That thing I couldn’t remember earlier.” He rakes his fingers back through his hair. “Tyrone told me about a guy on the team who didn’t come back.”

“Nothing unusual about someone not coming back—not in our world.”

Luka waits a beat and then adds, “Yeah, but then he did.”

I stop walking. “What?”

“Tyrone said he thought the guy broke some rule and he got put on trial or something, and they decided to send him back in the end.”

Broke a rule and got put on trial—that’s why Jackson’s law text triggered the memory.

“Put on trial by the Committee?”

“The Committee,” he echoes. “Weird hearing you say that. So . . . every time Jackson made some snide comment about decision by committee, he wasn’t just being an asshole.”

“That about sums it up.”

“So there actually is a committee—”

“With a capital C.”

“And you’ve already met them.”

I nod. “You haven’t.”

He shakes his head. A kid’s high-pitched shriek of laughter cuts the quiet. Luka’s lips thin as he glances around. “Let’s go.”

My turn to look around. There are other people on the street. Some kids playing basketball in a driveway. Some other little kids riding their bikes up and down the sidewalk while two moms stand on a lawn, talking and watching. Luka doesn’t want to be overheard. Can’t say I blame him.

“This guy,” I say once we’re out of earshot, “is he the one who . . . I mean, did I take his place?”

“No.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“No, he was before my time.”

Which means he either died in the end or got transferred to another team. Or earned his thousand points and made it out.

“Who put him on trial? And why? What else did Tyrone say?”

“Don’t know. Don’t know. And, not much.”

“Could you be less helpful?”

Luka shrugs.

We walk for a few minutes in silence as I mentally run through scenarios. “So you think Jackson broke one of the endless stupid rules and now he has to pay the price? That there’s going to be some sort of trial?”

“Makes sense, right?”

It does.

“But what rule . . . ?”

Luka shrugs again.

“Wait . . .” I skid to a stop, worry uncoiling like a cobra. “If the Committee tries Jackson and finds him guilty, they won’t be able to keep him imprisoned indefinitely in some sort of alternate dimension prison. His parents will notice him missing. They’ll freak out, look for him. Call in the cops. Our teachers, our friends, they’ll all notice he’s gone. I don’t think the Committee wants that sort of attention.”

Luka makes a chopping motion with one hand. “He’ll be another statistic. Another kid who ran away.” He shakes his head. “But it won’t come to that. If they decide he’s guilty, decide not to send him back, they’ll just make certain that everyone forgets.”

Forgets all memories of him from the time he was conscripted to the game. Like everyone forgot Richelle. Because she was dead.

And that terrifies me. But it terrifies me less than the possibility that the Drau have him.

And then it terrifies me more.

“You think they’ll kill him?” I ask. I know what the Committee’s capable of. They take kids—kids—to fight in a war against aliens. Their explanation is that adult brains have fully formed neural connections, which means getting pulled—making the jump into the game—is too difficult for them. But still-developing teen brains handle the shift much better. Makes sense, sort of. Doesn’t change the fact that the Committee’s ruthless. Any decisions they make are colored by their single-minded determination to defeat the Drau.

“If they think the rule he broke is worth killing him for, then, yeah, I think they will,” Luka says.

I picture Jackson lying cold and lifeless, his gold-tinged skin gone gray, the tiny muscles that make his face so expressive gone slack. Dead. People don’t look the same once the spark that powers their cells is gone. They’re not really that person anymore, just the wrapping left behind.

I trip over the edge of an uneven paver and grab Luka’s arm. “We have to find him. We have to—” Words fail me. I tip my head back and stare at the sky, fighting tears, feeling helpless and impotent and angry.

“Yeah.” Luka sounds broken. He sounds like I feel. “And how the hell do we do that?”

I meet his gaze. “I need to see the Committee.”

Luka starts walking again.

Stop, start, stop, start. I feel like we’re on a malfunctioning conveyor belt—which pretty much reflects my life right now.

“How do we get to see them?”

“I think I have a better chance than we. But I don’t know how I get to them. I don’t have a clue. I have to—” I exhale in a rush. “I’ll figure it out. I just need to think.”

Luka says nothing.

Finally, I break the silence. “No suggestions? No questions?”

“No to the first. As to the second, would it be safe for me to ask? Would it be safe for you to answer? Are you allowed to tell me about them? Jackson never did.” He doesn’t sound bitter, just curious, and a little concerned.

It’s a reminder of the whole cone-of-silence rule. No talking about the game or the Drau in the real world. I remember how earnest Luka was the first time he told me that.

Guess we’re breaking all the rules now.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s better that you’re not asking. I don’t want to break any rules.” Luka might not sound bitter, but I do.

Rules and rules and rules. The ones Jackson told me about. The ones he implied. The ones that make no sense because they keep all of us in the dark when bringing us into the light—illuminating us with knowledge—would surely serve our mission far better than having us stumble around without a clue.

“What rule did the guy Tyrone told you about break? What was bad enough to get him put on trial?”

Luka shrugs. “Tyrone didn’t say. Probably doesn’t know.”

I think about that for a few minutes, sorting through all the rules I’ve broken personally, all the ones I know other people have broken both in and out of the game. “You and Tyrone tried to sneak stuff out to try to prove the game’s real, right? And nothing happened to you. You and Jackson both talked to me about stuff outside the game, explained things, answered my questions. Rule breaking without consequences.”

“Okay. Yeah. So where are you going with this?”

Where am I going with this? “You and I are talking about it right now and we’re not getting arrested, or whatever. And when we were alone in the caves, Jackson told me a ton of stuff about the game and the Committee and the”—I lower my voice—“Drau. So if he’s in trouble for breaking a rule, it has to be bad. Worse than any of that.”

“Jackson told you stuff?”

Is he angry? Hurt? His tone’s completely neutral so it’s hard to tell.

“He told me about . . . them. About their planet. About our ancestors. But none of that’s the reason he’s missing, not that I can see, because he told me all of that before my first meeting with the Committee.” And, if anything, they’d been even more forthcoming when I questioned them. So if that was the rule he’d broken, why didn’t they discipline him back then?

“So it has to be something more recent,” Luka says. “Something that happened in that building in Detroit.”

Detroit.

Jackson shouldn’t even have been there. He’d already traded me for his freedom, so he should have been out of the game.

But he wasn’t.

He was there.

He took the Drau hit meant for me.

And now he’s gone and I have to find him before it’s too late.