City of Savages (30 page)

My girls will survive this. They will live to see a better world.

My journal, my friend, my keeper of secrets. As I bury you in the depths of this safe, I promise us both that I’m burying part of me with you. So much hatred. So much hurt.

I know I need to let it all go. I need to let
you
go, along with my weapons. My gun, and my pride.

This isn’t about me, or Tom, or even Mary anymore—sometimes the past should stay in the past.

Instead, this is about the future—my daughters, the two halves of my heart. I will give them a chance at a real life in this city that’s been raped and left for dead.

From now on, nothing else matters.

51    SKY

Mom takes her last breath on the High Line.

We stayed with her, long after, into the afternoon, Phee and I asleep next to her, as if when we woke, someone would tell us that we’ve been dreaming.

Rolladin assured us that she’d make arrangements. That we were to go and never look back, but that Mom’s resting place should be Manhattan. That she’s a New Yorker, through and through. I guess it’s true.

She’ll never see Europe or Bermuda.

She’ll never see old age.

We’ll never again feel her strong arms wrap around us.

We’ll never see her again.

Someone’s cut me right down my center and stolen my heart, gutted me open.

It isn’t real.

Sometimes the grief is so intense I swear
I’m
dying, inch by inch of me burning, and there’s no water to put it out. I’m just going to keep crumbling, until one day all that’s left is ash.

*   *   *

Rolladin gives each of us a weapon and torches. She stays silent as she and her warlords escort us across town to First Avenue to brave the tunnels into Brooklyn. She doesn’t say a word after we thank her for saving our lives. It’s only when we begin to walk towards the L line stop that she dismounts from her horse and waves Phee and me back towards her. “Girls.”

We leave the guys for a minute and go to her.

Twilight is falling over the city, and the harsh cast of gray light does Rolladin’s face no kindness. We can see all the track marks and battle wounds the city has inflicted, the heavy baggage of time and compromise weighing her down.

“It was brutal, all of it. It still is,” she says to Phee and me. “But you didn’t see it all fall to pieces. So I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t expect you to ever understand why I did what I did.”

But still, she looks . . . hopeful.

And the words rumble out of me, before I’m sure of what I want to say, or at least, how to say it. “I think you’re right,” I try. “I don’t think we’ll ever be able to fully understand.”

I think of the Park, and about the Standard, and the story in Mom’s journal. I think about all the prisoners of this city, prisoners to the past, just wading through the rubble, just trying to find someone or something to fight for as we make our way through it all, inching forward day by day to survive.

So I force myself to look at Rolladin—not at her tiger cloak, not at her red rifle thrown over her shoulder like an afterthought—and find
Mary
. “But we know who you did it for,” I say, as I grasp Phee’s hand in mine. “We know.”

Rolladin nods and presses her lips into a tight line, and then she only has eyes for the cracked cement of 13th Street. “All right, girls.”

I feel a release and an absence all at once, even before she and her warlords gallop back through the East Village, towards their oasis in the middle of a dead city, taking Mom’s remains with them.

*   *   *

There’s no other way into Brooklyn but the tunnels, but still, all of us become paralyzed as we hover on the edge of the stairs to the L line. The monsters that roam the deep caverns of this city might be miles from the stretch of subway that runs from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

Or the feeders could be waiting for us.

But we can’t let the terror consume us. After everything we’ve been through, we know the only way to fight through the fear is to keep going, to push through it together.

Our group moves quickly and silently down to the platform and through the tunnels, just a chorus of soft footsteps and tight breaths as we travel under the East River.

All of us grip our guns and crossbows and arrows, the weapons slick with sweat and fear.

The darkness is limitless, extends like a scroll—my sadness and longing so crushing, it’s like I’m walking through a black hole, being pulled apart into nothing.

When I’ve nearly given up, when I hear nothing but guttural groans, whispers, taunts from the hungry darkness—
are they real are they in my mind
am I actually going crazy
—

A small beacon of light shines hopeful onto the platform ahead of us.

*   *   *

We emerge in a place called Williamsburg and walk to the Brooklyn Yard from there. We stay camped out in its shambles for a couple of days as Ryder prepares the boat to go. But it’s a blur—a lost period, someone taking over my body and propelling it through time and space, doing what I can’t imagine doing: moving forward. Moving on.

I can’t look at or talk to anyone. But I stay attached to Phee and Ryder, constantly next to one of them, as if our bodies are saying what words can’t.
You have me. You’ll always have me. You can lean on me, as I’ll lean on you
.

But my mouth doesn’t move. I don’t speak.

A few times I find Phee huddled into a tense, tight ball behind a wide storage unit, her sobs more like the clipped howls of a wild animal, her hair a golden net, trapping her in despair.

But I can’t go to her—I’m too broken.

Until the day I know I need to.

Until the day I can see her need like it’s a third person, motioning for me to sit with them, and see what I can do.

I sit down beside Phee and pull her into my arms. My little sister. My wonderful, brave and brutalized, hero and child of a sister. She’s lost her mom, like I have. But she’s lost her home—for as much as I want to leave this city, she wanted to stay. And she needs me, like I need her, to get through this. To get through anything, we need each other.

We’ve found that out the hard way.

“I’m so sorry, Phee.”

She claws at me, her tears coming down quickly, her sobs muffled by my shoulder, and I pull her in tighter.

“I love you,” I tell her.

“I love you, too. Sky, I miss her. I don’t—I don’t know how to do this. I don’t . . . I don’t—”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. I taste my own tears, and my rage. My grief, my melting loneliness. I taste it all. “It’s all going to be okay.”

*   *   *

A few days later the boat is finally ready to leave the dock. Our food’s been stored and budgeted, the route to Bermuda—Sam’s choice, though no one argues—charted and settled. And we’ve also settled into some kind of balance, an odd cast of characters for a second chance.

Like Phee, Sam’s on the road to recovery from the heavenly blue. He doesn’t share much about what happened to him, just bits and pieces.

That every day he waded through nightmares: nightmares of things that had happened and things that hadn’t.

That with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, the past caught up to him.

That the only thing that kept his world right side up was thinking about Ryder, and getting a chance to make things right with him.

I guess we all have our compasses that lead us out of the darkness.

After the few days of rest, Sam says he feels strong enough to captain our journey. Naturally, Phee’s declared herself his first mate. Sometimes I think the matchup is a terrible idea, that they’re actually going to kill each other. But after the bickering, they settle as well, almost as if they speak a language of barks and jabs that the rest of us just don’t understand. And Trevor, begrudgingly, has settled for the role of junior sailor. For now, at least.

*   *   *

Now Sam and Trevor are perched at the helm of the ship, and we’re about to break from the Yard. I rest on the thin shelf of seats on the deck, pull the blanket Phee and I are sharing over my shoulders, and look out over the water.

“I think I can do it,” Phee says, breaking the silence. It sounds like it’s out of nowhere, but really, she’s answering a question I posed to her days ago.

“We don’t have to.”

“I want to,” she says. “After all, it’s like Mom said. We’re the reason she stuck through it. We’re the reason she got up every day and faced the city. We’re the second half of her story.”

Ryder emerges from the small bedroom chambers below the boat with fresh water and extra blankets. But as soon as he sees the two of us talking, he veers off and joins the boys. He’s giving us space, something he’s learned Phee and I need. Something
I’ve
learned we need. I think Phee and I both took it for granted until recently.

“So who’s going to write it?” I ask Phee, relieved that she’s okay with this. I miss Mom desperately, and putting the rest of her story on paper, letting it breathe and see the light of day, feels like a way to keep her with us forever. “Me or you?”

She gives me a trademark huff. “Why’s it have to be one or the other?”

I lean my head against the rail. “That’s the way stories work, Phee. Somebody has to tell them.”

Phee puts her head beside mine and gives a little cackle. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard her laugh, and I’ve forgotten it’s what home sounds like. “For being so smart, Sky, you’re awfully one-way sometimes,” she says. “Come on, you’ve got to know there’s two sides to every story.”

I think about what she’s said, until her words settle around me. Until I feel like I’m floating on their calm, simple truth.

She’s got a point, of course.

There are two sides to every story. And maybe there’s not always a clear right and wrong, hero and villain.

Maybe there’s just people.

I study my sister, think about how different we are, and I know that we’re two sides of the same story. How easy it could have been to lose each other, like Mom and Dad, Dad and Wren. Or Mom and Rolladin. And how lucky we are to be here, together, side by side.

From the little I’ve seen of this world, it seems quite selective with second chances.

The boat starts bobbing off the dock and into the restless water, and Ryder finally joins us. He kisses me without thinking, and I instinctively look to Phee, judge how she’s reacting. If this is too much, too soon. If she’s okay.

But instead of balking, she smiles and looks up at me with big, genuine eyes. I let the air I’ve been holding fall right out of me.

“So how are we going to start our story?” I ask her.

She shrugs her shoulders, knocks hers into mine with a little nudge. “Well, the story starts with me, of course.”

Ryder gives a little chuckle beside me as he perches his head on my left side, so we’re three ducks in a row. “Typical,” he says. But it’s a loaded “typical.” A grateful “typical,” a “typical” that says things are on their way to getting better.

Phee cackles again and hits Ryder on the back playfully. Then she drapes her arm around me and whispers, “But it’ll end with you.”

*   *   *

Dawn is just breaking across the dark skyscrapers in the distance, a charcoal scrawl of a skyline flanking the river on each side. But for the first time in my life, the dark towers don’t remind me of impartial watchmen, stoic in their guard, their border as closed and claustrophobic as a fence.

Instead I see a gateway, long forgotten, swinging open and whispering, welcoming us to the world. Our small ship bobs forward, closer and closer to the unknown, and I think of all we’ve seen, all we’ve lost, and dream of all we might gain.

And then I let my mind go to that deep, fragile place inside me, and I let myself see her with us. See Mom as I want to remember her. Her tan, taut arms hanging over the side of the boat, her long auburn hair streaming in the wind. Picture her laughing beside Phee, eyes blazing, finally at peace as her daughters sail forward into the future. A future she paid for dearly. A future she fought for, tooth and nail. I close my eyes and thank her, not with words, but with the beating of my heart, the rise and fall of my chest. The life that pulses inside me.

I take Ryder’s hand with my left, and grab Phee’s with my right—

And I wait for what’s beyond our city.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book, at its heart, is a story about family, and so I would especially like to thank mine. A huge thank-you to my dad—my life coach and biggest fan—who taught me to chase my dreams and that the secret to success is persistence, and to my mom—my champion—who read this manuscript way too many times and declared from day one,
This will be a book
. Thank you to my sisters, Bridget and Jill, for not only inspiring this story but for making my life so much better by being in it, and to my son and sweet pea, Penn, for being totally lovable and the world’s best distraction.

And a million thanks to Jeff, my partner, my rock, my best friend—thank you for telling everyone you know that your wife is a writer, for your limitless support, and for handling the household on weekends while your wife keeps plugging away at her dream. You are incredible.

Endless thanks to my talented, insightful, collaborative editor Navah Wolfe, for never making this feel like work, for her excitement and tireless commitment to this story, and for her partnership in making this novel the absolute best it could be. And thanks to the rest of the phenomenal team at Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press, including cover designer Michael McCartney, production manager Elizabeth Blake-Linn, production editor Jenica Nasworthy, and copy editor Valerie Shea.

City of Savages
would not exist without my wonderful agent, Adriann Ranta, who took a chance on me and who never wavered in her dedication or enthusiasm for this book. She is a superagent, and I’m beyond lucky to have her.

I’m also indebted to the Freshman Fifteens, the Class of 2K15, and the Fearless Fifteeners, my YA author debut groups, for their camaraderie and support, especially my amazing critique partner, Kelly Loy Gilbert, my fellow bloggers and confidantes Chandler Baker and Virginia Boecker, and the fabulous Kim Liggett, Jen Brooks, and Lori Goldstein. More thanks to my writing buddies Erika David and Lisa Koosis—for their friendship and their excellent notes on early drafts—as well as Loretta Torossian, whose infectious enthusiasm kept me committed to seeing this story through to the end.

And finally, thank you to the readers. I still can’t fully believe my words are in your hands. And for that, I am wildly grateful.