Fire Will Fall (29 page)

But she wasn't fine. Even with my world rock-and-rolling, I could sense her tension, her overload of USIC business. She was part of this but wanted to spring out of here. Rock in a slingshot. She gripped the sleeve of my T-shirt and twisted, something she'd done compulsively at St. Ann's a few times that I never called her attention to.

"Go. Don't argue with me." I pushed her fingers away, though some of the tension left her, like it could do when I was being Imposter Dad. Go figure.

I was glad she left. Because it got kind of smarmy in here, and I wasn't up for anyone else being here to witness it.

"Something for you," Alan said.

I felt a thump on my chest, and I put my fingers around something cold. It was a badge, obviously a USIC badge. I looked at it to make sure. Silver, with a USIC emblem in the center.

Okay ... so these guys think I'm dying and are trying to save my life any way possible.
You don't have to be off drugs to see some things. I'd hoped for something like this, though the badge was a touch I hadn't even dreamed of.

Mom's back. I'm jumping on the couch again, and
21 Jump Street
blares from the TV.

"
If you boys don't stop roughhousing, I'm turning off your favorite show!
"

"
Ma, I'm done. I'm sitting. See?
"

I want to be Johnny Depp, the teenage cop with his crew of teenage cop friends. They go to high school but work undercover. I want a badge like they have. I want to be them—

Gripping the badge, I could feel one corner of my mouth roll upward. You can laugh at the strangest stuff. I read somewhere last year that Johnny Depp had always hated playing that role on
21 Jump Street.
He had trouble believing it himself. I understood. I knew I was getting something here that was damn near impossible, might have been completely impossible for a guy who hadn't signed a DNR form, with full assurance that Alan Steckerman would hear about it.

Alan was watching me, like, maybe with a tear in his eye. I couldn't resist a wisecrack. "So. You gonna call me Nancy Drew when my back is turned?"

"Not on your life."

"Hardy Boys?"

He sighed. "Okay ... You can give it back if you want."

He reached for the badge, only to realize he'd have to pry it out of my fingers with a crowbar.

CORA HOLMAN
SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2002
8:50
A.M.
HER BEDROOM

I
DIDN'T WANT TO LEAVE SCOTT
, but it was like being forced to leave someone in a burning building when your back is already on fire. I threw myself onto my bed but couldn't bang all the bad words out of my head even when covering it with four bed pillows.
VaporStrike, house fire, tularemia, funeral, hackers, terrorists, nosebleed, bleed out, Omar...
Shutting the light out only made the images grow stronger ... Bloody tissues, morphine drips, hypodermic needles ... I had trained myself to think at the age of fourteen that my life would be peaceful again if only I could get Aleese out of it. Peace, embedded in that dream of a condo down in the marshes of Trinity, was all I'd ever wanted.

But I was drowning in muck and growing compulsive about imagining her ghost. I pulled the cell phone Henry had given me out of my pocket and speed-dialed. I got his voice mail and, trying not to show my disappointment, left a message. Aleese was behind me, suddenly.
Good going. It'll take your mind off lover boy. Steer clear of him. You know what I mean...

I shot straight up and yelled, "Marg!" loudly, though I knew it would startle Scott. Her footsteps came flying out of Rain's room, and I grabbed my lips and pulled as she stuck her head in my door, going, "
Shhh.
That's why we have buttons."

"I'm sorry." I shut my eyes, rubbing my forehead.

"What's wrong?"

"I want off a certain drug. Today."

"Which one?"

"I don't know. Scott knows. The one that keeps making me imagine I'm being haunted by my mother."

I lay back on my pillows, avoiding her gaze by keeping my eyes closed.

"The Nabilone can make patients foggy—"

"Yes. That's it."

She kept standing there, and I sensed a lecture coming. She didn't disappoint. "I can talk to Dr. Godfrey about switching you. But consider. You may continue to have whatever thoughts are disturbing you."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that generally speaking, medications don't conjure things that aren't there anyway. They just make those sensations stronger, or they make you confused about what's really going on. Maybe you need more closure. Maybe you should listen to that voice ... so long as it's not aloud—I wouldn't like that."

"No, it's not aloud. It's just very annoying."

"Is there some problem with dwelling on your mom sometimes? Maybe ... thinking of why you're, um, hearing what you're hearing?"

"Only the fact that I couldn't stand her, and when she died, I had great feelings of relief." I felt like a caterpillar who's supposed to become a butterfly, only I was becoming a bat. It was a horrible thing to say.

"What I mean, Cora, is that the voice you're attributing to your mother could be some part of yourself."

Just what I need to hear. I have a gremlin side, and, oh, I enjoy leading myself to make bad decisions.
"And will you please close the door again on your way out?"

She hadn't said she was leaving. "I'll talk to Dr. Godfrey..."

I laid the cell phone on my nightstand so I could hear it if Henry returned my call, and I went to sleep.

No relief. I kept dreaming of Aleese or of Mrs. Kellerton rising out of the pond, sometimes the two of them. At times they were covered in muck. At times they shone like angels. In one, Jeanine Fitzpatrick was standing beside an RV camper, shouting, "Rise, rise!" In all the dreams, Aleese would reach her hand out and try to talk me into coming in swimming. She knew I couldn't swim and would break out in harsh cackles when I tried to run from her.

I awoke with a disgusted sigh, probably for the dozenth time, rolled over, and was just snuggling into the soft mattress and pillows yet again when Marg brought in a big arrangement of roses.

We hadn't gotten any flowers in over a month. I sat straight up and reached for the card, dizzily finding a smile.

"They were hand delivered," Marg said, setting them on the table beside me. "Red roses. I don't know about this ... How old are you again?"

I glanced at her in confusion, opening the envelope. I didn't see the need to be a certain age to receive flowers. "I'll be eighteen September second."

"I didn't think I read that wrong in your file." She smiled, befuddled.

The card read,

Sorry you weren't feeling well enough to go walking today.

I hope to see you soon. All the best, Henry

A tidal wave of relief poured out of me. Henry had done better than call. Life wasn't all bad.

"They're beautiful," I said, but pinched at my throat, which was starting to hurt.

"They're
red.
" she said. Then she added in a singsongy voice, "Red is for romance."

My eyes flew to her sneaker, which was tapping with some sort of anxiety. And I was starting to think Marg's hands had a permanent home on her hips.

"You sound like Scott," I said dryly.

"He's not so very stupid about the ways of the world."

You should hear what he dreams about you.
"How is he?"

"Better. Gave us a good scare. You should be able to see him in an hour or so."

I wanted to, so badly. And yet he was tied up with thoughts of medicine and symptoms and terrorists and USIC schemes. I just wanted to sleep. "Please tell him I'm glad he's all right."

"You don't want to tell him yourself, huh?"

I had no answer. Fortunately, she said it for me. "You're sick of sickness, aren't you? That's perfectly understandable. Let's bring Henry up here and give you a few minutes of relief. Just keep in mind: Red roses mean romance. You didn't know that?"

I shook my head, embarrassed by my lack of working knowledge of all things romantic. "He'll be thirty soon. That's ... very old," I said dismissively. "And as an absent-minded, brilliant professor, he probably knows less about color schemes than I do. I'm sure he understands the situation with our health."

"He's not stupid, but he's probably an optimist. Your condition shouldn't last forever."

I turned my fiery cheeks from her gaze to glance at my clock. It was already after three. I'd been asleep for more than six hours. She pulled a thermometer from her pocket, stuck it in my mouth, and waited for the beep. I felt achy and feverish, but she merely shrugged as she read the results. We didn't worry about fevers under a hundred and one.

"Other symptoms?"

"Just throat," I said.

"I'll bring you a slushy, and I'll bring him, too." She sized up the red roses again in a wary way that made me realize,
She's serious. She's taking these red roses at face value.

I knew better, but curious thoughts drifted through me that had a
Well, what if?
undercurrent to them. The only boy who'd ever shown any interest in me was Jon Dempsey, and as Jon's tastes were basically indiscriminate, I never paid any attention. The idea of somebody older being interested had never crossed my mind. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it. But Henry was so completely unaffected by all that went on around us that I craved his company.

She disappeared, and I found myself groping in the nightstand for my hairbrush and running it through my hair so numbly that I didn't feel the smile forming on my face again.
Older men.
It was an entirely new concept for me in my denseness, but it was like the door to a whole new world had opened just a crack and a line of sun was trying to break in.

Marg arrived with Henry—and she put a slushy down on the table and left again.

I thanked him for the flowers, watching his face, which looked friendly, cheerful—not with that piercing stare Jon Dempsey could give, which left me feeling like he was looking through my clothes. I figured Marg had made too much of it.

"I won't stay long. I was concerned and wanted to see for myself that you were all right. Getting lost in the woods would have to be stressful to you."

I rolled my eyes. "That was the
easiest
part of the day," I said, before realizing I shouldn't tell him about Griffith's Landing or the scary staring men.

"You had worse adventures than getting lost in the woods?" He was taking off a summer windbreaker, mumbling about it being warm up here. All I could feel was the breeze, which was again making me cold.

I felt that biting annoyance that USIC could come between me and what could conceivably amount to my first romantic interest, however unlikely the odds.

"Well ... Scott came down with the kind of headache that is really cause for concern," I said, avoiding our secrets with enough grace that I felt surprisingly proud.

"So I heard from Mrs. Starn. She was here this afternoon. But he's all right now?"

I nodded, sending off a prayer of gratitude, which I hoped would make up for my lack of interest in going back in that room. I was about to point out a chair on the far side of the huge bed, but he sat down on the bed beside me.

"I brought you something else." He was close enough that I could smell him, smell soap and fresh spring air, which left me feeling like I was perched on a swing. I lay nearly frozen as he pulled a sizable frame out of a large shopping bag he'd been carrying.

He turned the frame around, and it was an enlarged print of the picture he took of me yesterday. I've always hated pictures of myself, thinking my eyes were too dark and I looked stoned on some drug that dilated my pupils. But in this enchanted wooded setting, they fit. I looked mystified and yet somehow...

"Alluring," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"I may hang this in the gallery at school. You're supposed to give it a name. I can't think of one except...'Alluring.'"

He didn't watch me or touch me or do anything to make me feel uncomfortable, but he sensed my discomfort, I think, because he went on about the
woods
being alluring, seeming to beckon people, and I was the Guardian of the Keep.

I thanked him again, and he set the picture by the side of the bed. "I went down to the basement today to leave you some organic chemicals in the darkroom. I thought they would be better for your health."

"Organic chemicals," I repeated. "I didn't even know there was such a thing."

"You can find organic just-about-anything these days if you're willing to pay. I've been using them this year. Of course, the ultimate answer is to give up film development and switch entirely to digital. But what fun is that?"

"No fun," I agreed, feeling my heart sinking over Tyler and Shahzad. Their needs and mine had been miles apart yesterday. Today, we were eternities apart. I forced myself to mumble a thank-you.

"You're welcome. The problem was, I couldn't get in. The door was locked." He chuckled. "I've been using that room for two years and didn't even know it had a key."

"I didn't either," I said in confusion, then remembered Mr. Tiger saying he would put electricity down there. I wondered if he'd moved that quickly, getting electricity and locking rooms where important prints were being kept.

This time, I almost sighed in aggravation. I said, "It's probably Rain's dad. He's ... you know, the Mounted Police."

"Ah, Mr. Steckerman." He nodded in continued cheerfulness, being a sport. "Well. The house belongs to the State now. I suppose those with a vested interest can park themselves wherever they want and the rest must bow to the inevitable."

I said remorsefully, "Maybe we can find us a darkroom in one of the outbuildings."

"Good idea. I'll look around. And you should probably rest now." He grabbed both my hands in his, pulled them to his mouth, and kissed the backs of my fingers. I didn't know whether to dance or fly. He moved through the doorway.