The Shimmers in the Night (16 page)

“I'm wiped,” murmured Hayley.

Cara moved onto the other bed, though it was hard to move at all; her body just wanted to stay put. They were all collapsing without even changing into their pajamas—Cara and Jax in the second bed, Hayley tucked in next to Jaye on the first. There was a bedside lamp on, but Cara was too tired to get up and turn it off.

Nine

It seemed like only moments later that Cara heard the sound
of the lock on their door clicking, and before she could even move the door opened.

There was Hayley's mom in all her big-hair glory, sporting a hot-pink jumpsuit that made her look like some kind of high-fashion paratrooper.

Cara rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed. Morning light leaked in along the edges of the heavy hotel drapes.

“Rise and shine, girls!” said Mrs. M brightly, and then saw Cara. “Cara!
Jackson
! Well, I'm glad you're feeling better, Jax. I'm glad to see the staff at the Institute brought you two back last night instead of this morning. Though of
course
—this goes without
saying
, Cara—you should have checked in with me the very
minute
you arrived!”

“I'm really sorry, Mrs. M,” murmured Cara.

“It's only because your father trusts those people so much, and the lady on the phone seemed so on top of things, that I didn't have a
coronary.
But that doesn't change the fact that you snuck off behind my back, and we'll have to have a little
talk
later about your
escapade.
And with your daddy, too. What you did is serious, girl. You could have been real badly hurt. Or lost. Heaven
knows
what.”

She shot Cara a stern look, the kind that promised a future campaign to convince Cara's dad to ground her. Cara nodded, penitent. Mrs. M, who Cara suspected didn't like to be tough but felt she had to, cleared her throat then and reached up to fiddle with one of the beads on her necklace.

Despite the stern look, Cara felt she was getting off easy—way easier than Hayley would if her mom found out what
she
had done.

“Anyhow, it's a relief you two are back,” said Mrs. M, in a more normal tone. “I worried that if they waited to drop you off at the meet, Cara might miss her race. Of course, your older brother's girlfriend has
also
gone off-campus, Cara, as you may have heard. Quite a handful, that one, is what
I
hear. We're still working on it.”

She strode over and tugged on Hayley's blankets.

“Come on. Up and at 'em, little mermaids!”

“Mom, please,” groaned Hayley. “I'm not even
competing
today. And Jaye's an alternate. Why can't we just hang here and sleep in?”

“This is a
team
effort, Hayley. You're not going to abandon the team just because you stayed up late chit-chatting. Now up! The continental breakfast is almost over. They have those Danishes you like. Cherry!”

Hayley groaned again, and Jaye pulled the coverlet up closer to her chin.

It struck Cara that Mrs. M shouldn't see that Hayley and Jaye had gone to bed in their street clothes—which were dirty, torn, and probably smelled like smoke. So she threw back her own blankets and moved to get up, to try to keep Hayley's mom's attention on herself.

But touching the covers made her palms smart, and she jerked them back again.

“My
Lord
, what happened to your hands?” burst out Mrs. M, apparently not noticing her clothes.

“Oh,” said Cara. There again, she hadn't thought up a story yet.

“It was so hot…,” began Hayley

Cara glanced at her, alarmed.

“It was so hot in here. We couldn't sleep,” she went on, sounding more sure of herself. “From the heater—that one. On the wall under the window? So she got up in the middle of the night to turn it down, but it was dark, and I guess the metal on that thing gets really hot.”

“My Lord!” said Mrs. M again, and bent down to touch Cara's wrists delicately, turning them so that her hands were palms up. “That's criminal! That's just negligent! And a fire hazard, too! My goodness, you poor thing! We should sue the pants off them!”

“No, it's OK,” said Cara. “It's not that bad. Really. We iced it. Hayley and Jaye helped me. With—er, ice from the ice machine.”

Fleetingly, she was proud of herself for coming up with that.

“But how will you
swim
?” asked Mrs. M, indignant. “You can't swim with those hands! There's no way,” and she shook her head. “I can't allow it. Your father would have my head on a platter. Nosirree. Nuh-uh. Jaye, honeypie, this is your lucky day. You're going to sub in for Cara on the relay team. And Cara, I'll get you some medicated lotion at the CVS or what have you. There's one next door. You will sit tight today with your hands wrapped or my name is not Delilah Moore.”

“I didn't know your name was Delilah,” piped up Jax. “Like with Samson!”

“Yes, dear. Well, now you do,” said Mrs. M, and groped around in her handbag till she found her cell phone, which she flipped open. “Old Testament names were very popular in my neck of the woods. I mean it, Cara. No way are you swimming with those hands. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that's the way it's got to be.”

In fact, Cara was relieved. At the moment she felt way too exhausted to swim. She shot a look at Jaye, still wearing covers up to her neck, and could tell she wasn't psyched to be taking Cara's place.

“Girls, get dressed while I talk to Coach about this injury situation. Come on. Jackson, you too. You stay close to me today. I want to be able to tell your daddy I took good care of you. Don't dawdle, Hayley. And brush your teeth, everyone. No morning breath on my watch! I'll step into the hallway right here and make a call or two. Y'all be ready to go down for Danishes in five.”

As it turned out, Hayley took fifteen minutes to get dressed, or five to get dressed and ten to apply lip gloss and eyeliner and do her hair, and they completely missed the free breakfast, which irritated Cara since she was starving. As they surged through the hotel lobby to get on the bus, they converged with the rest of the team, who were talking and joking loudly, their knapsacks slung over their shoulders. She'd given Jaye the windowleaf to store in her big duffel—the only bag they had that the book would fit inside—and Jaye was carrying the bag awkwardly, bouncing at her hip.

At the meet Cara, Jax, and Hayley headed for the bleachers with Mrs. M while Jaye went off with the rest of the girls to change in the locker rooms. Mrs. M didn't waste time; she made Cara hold out her hands and smoothed on some medical-smelling cream. She was so good at it that she seemed to Cara less like a hairdresser than a nurse. And right away her hands felt so much better that Cara was surprised.

The gun went off for the first relay heat, and swimmers hit the water. Cara's cell rang—it was Max calling; she knew from the ringtone—and Jax answered because she couldn't, with her hands slathered in greasy lotion. Mrs. M was sitting right beside them, so Jax couldn't tell Max what had really happened; Cara had to listen to him giving Max the made-up homesickness story. Just as their school's team, including Jaye, assembled behind the starting block for their heat, Jax changed the subject.

“Hey. But with Zee,” said Jax, and met Cara's eyes. “You know she left the meet, right? I mean, she's going to be in trouble. Um, do
you
know where she is?”

Mrs. M turned and looked at him, waiting for Max's answer, but after a moment Jax shrugged and shook his head, like Max wasn't saying anything important.

“Why don't you just
text
Max?” said Cara, and nudged Jax's foot with the side of her own. “It's so
loud
in here.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, and hung up.

The heat was ending—it looked like the team wasn't out in front, so Cara stopped paying close attention, but the other teams vying for first and second place cheered louder. When the swimmers touched the wall, their team had placed fourth, which meant they hadn't made the final. The cheers trailed off, and the last swimmer hauled herself out of the pool; she and Jaye, who stood dripping nearby with red circles from her goggles around her eyes, shook their heads ruefully as they slipped off their swimming caps.

“I think,” said Mrs. M suddenly, pronouncing it
Ah thank
as usual, “that since none of you have any more races—and since we have Jackson to get home and your hands are injured, Cara—that we should go ahead and take the ferry back this afternoon. We can swing by the hotel first to pick up our things. There are plenty of chaperones; Mr. Abboud has already taken over the other kids on my list. So we'll just scoot to the ferry dock on the T. It goes right there. And I bet your daddy can pick us up in P-town. We can squeeze into y'all's Subi if someone sits in the way-back. OK?”

“That'd be good,” said Jax, nodding.

At home we'll have more room to breathe
, he thought at Cara.
We need some privacy. I texted part of it to Max but not all and so he's kind of freaking out.

“Exactly, privacy,” she blurted out.

“What's that, sweetie?” asked Mrs. M.

“Oh, nothing. That sounds great, going home early.”

Although she had to admit, her hands felt so much better it was almost as though they hadn't been burned in the first place.

“What
was
that lotion, Mrs. M?” she asked. “It made my hands feel completely better.”

“Just cooling gel!” said Mrs. M, and turned away to beckon to Hayley, whose attention she was having trouble attracting. She stood up on the bleacher to wave her over.

Hayley wouldn't be happy about leaving Boston early, Cara realized. Jaye would; there was a rehearsal for the school play tonight, which she'd complained about having to miss in order to make the trip. Now she wouldn't have to miss it. But Hayley would be mad; she'd been looking forward to tonight, when the team was scheduled to have a social hour in the hotel restaurant with the teams from the other schools. Hayley lived for things like that.

“Should I break it to her?” Cara asked Mrs. M. “Or should you?”

Sure enough, Hayley sulked on the ferry. While the others went out on deck, she sat hunched up with a shut-down frown, texting rapidly on her phone.

With Jax on one side and Jaye on the other, Cara stood at the rail and smelled the salty spray.

“So?” asked Cara. “What did Max tell you about Zee?”

“He didn't know anything,” said Jax. “He sounded pretty worried.”

“It really looked like her!” burst out Cara. “I saw her again when we were stepping into the book, off that oil rig—I could have sworn it was her. Seriously.”

“So we think Zee is mixed up in all this, too?” asked Jaye.

“It has to be because of us,” said Jax solemnly.

“Like they could have taken her because she knew us, you mean? Like, say she's a hollow. Like you were. And I was, too. So then, maybe they picked her because she knows us. Maybe
you're
the target they want to aim her at! Or Mom is!” said Cara.

“I guess that wouldn't be such a stretch,” said Jax. “If it really
was
Zee you saw…”

“We have to find out,” said Cara. “We have to go and get her! And bring her out of it, like you brought me. Right? You stopped me from being a hollow—you brought me back. If we could find her, you could you do that to her, too, right?”

“But I don't
know
her that well,” he said. “I
know
you. It works through accessing a
memory.
Remember?”

“But you do
know
her,” said Cara, though she felt uncertain.

When they'd sent her to find her mother, the teachers at the Institute had assumed that even Cara's memory of Jax, her little brother, wouldn't be enough. So what were the chances her or Jax's memories of
Zee
would be?

They all stared off the rail at the gray ocean. The mainland was too far behind to see anymore.

“Is that the only way to help them?” asked Jaye, after a minute. “The memory thing?”

“It's the official way the dissenters have,” said Jax, thoughtful. “For curing the hollows. I mean the hollows have only existed for a few years. Most of the dissenters' methods are
way
older than that. I don't even
know
how old. But my point is, they may not have figured out the best way to fight the hollows yet. So…maybe I could try something else. It's possible. But it could be risky.”

“What could you try?”

“I think maybe I could
go
there. Go to where they are. The Rift Valley. The Rift Valley of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.”

“Go there?” echoed Jaye.

Her nose was red and running in the cold wind off the water, Cara noticed, but she wasn't complaining.

Unlike Hayley, who was warm and comfortable inside the boat and in a worse mood than anyone. Because of Cara, she and Jaye had both had to go through this—but in fact, she'd had a way easier time of it than Jaye. No one had tried to strangle
her
.

Still, here was Jaye, cheerful and friendly, and there was Hayley, the prima donna.

“With my mind, I mean,” explained Jax. “And if she's there, I think I could find Zee's mind, too, in with the other hollows. Because when I was a hollow and went there, I could read them all around me.”