The Taking (25 page)

Tyler was reaching for his keys now, too, understanding clear on his face as he snatched the phone and chucked it out the driver’s side window. “Let’s get outta here.”

Standing at the open door to my dad’s trailer, it was hard to say for sure if his place had been trashed or not.

Using the disposable cell phone Simon had given me, I had dialed my dad’s number at least half a dozen times on our way to his place. When he didn’t answer any of my calls, I’d finally turned off the phone and thrown it on the seat between us.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Tyler had offered consolingly. “When we get there you can talk to him in person. If anyone’ll understand, it’s him.”

“Yeah?” I’d challenged, in no mood to be comforted. “That’s what you said about my mom.”

I’d shut down for the rest of the drive, sulking because I was good at it—always had been. It wasn’t Tyler’s fault, but it was easier to be pissed at him than to admit how terrified I was. I didn’t want my dad to turn on me the way my mom had.

“Looks like they’ve already been here,” Tyler said when we saw the wreckage, which would have been stating the obvious if I hadn’t already seen my dad’s place on a “normal” day.

“I don’t know . . . it’s hard to tell.” I had no way of knowing whether the unlocked door should alarm me or not, but I stepped inside cautiously, kicking scattered newspaper out of my way. There were dirty dishes piled in the sink and over the countertops, and stacked on the kitchen table.

I assumed Tyler picked up on my meaning and wisely chose not to state the obvious, that my dad’s place was gross.

But beyond the grossness of it, something felt off. The skin at the back of my neck stretched tight, and the tiny hairs at the nape stood on end. “Nancy!” I called out, wishing more than anything that the mutty dog would lope in and greet me sloppily with her molten-brown eyes and her big, fat, juicy tongue. I thought about the way she’d placed her head in my lap and stared up at me all dreamily. She wouldn’t spurn me just because some stupid agent told her I was no longer who she thought I should be.

My hopeful plea was met with silence while that something-is-off feeling nagged at me.

I walked warily toward the hallway, kicking more and more of the litter out of my path, until it no longer seemed like just the clutter of a drunken slob. I looked down, paying more attention to the debris in my way, and recognized the papers I was wading through.

These were my father’s files and clippings, his maps and charts and missing-person flyers, all leading the way to his room like a haphazard trail. The door at the end of the hallway stood ajar, but it was the handprint on the door that made me stop dead in my tracks.

“Dad?” I called out, dread snaking its way around my windpipe. I was terrified about what I might find on the other side of that door.

Behind me, Tyler reached for my hand, and every muscle in my body tensed. “You stay out here,” he whispered, but I shook my head vehemently.

“I need to know.” And even though my voice shook, I’d already made up my mind. I needed to see for myself if that was my dad’s bloodied handprint. To know without a doubt if he was in there. Because if he was, it was all my fault.

I reached out and pushed the door open. I went into the tiny bedroom that my dad had been using for five long years to track others like me . . . those who’d been taken.

Once inside, I turned all the way around so I could see into every corner and every crevice of the tiny space.

The small bedroom-turned-office had been destroyed. Pictures had been ripped from the walls and were strewn across the desk and floors, some intact and some ripped to shreds. Same thing with the maps and charts. It was in a state of shambles.

But I didn’t give a crap about any of that. All I cared about was that my dad wasn’t there.

He was gone.

“Where do you think he is?” Tyler asked, and I jolted, nearly forgetting I wasn’t alone.

I knew, too, that I could no longer put Tyler at risk simply because I wanted his help. I’d already put him in too much danger.

I shrugged and shook my head at the same time, hoping more than anything that my dad had managed to get someplace safe.

Tyler held his hand out to me, and I took it, our hands fitting together seamlessly. The idea of leaving him was nearly unbearable, like losing part of myself—something I understood all too well.

As I let him pull me along, something in the wreckage caught my attention, and I hesitated.

“Hold on a sec.” I pulled my hand from his, reaching for the picture that was jumbled in with all the rest. A photograph.

I bent down, brushing aside broken glass to pluck it free. Beneath the first photograph was another. And beneath those, another and another.

I recognized all the images despite never having seen anything like them in real life. Fireflies. Picture after picture of fireflies.

There were faraway images of swarms and incredibly detailed close-ups. Others were artistic—shots taken in the night sky, making the fireflies look like stars against the black canvas of night—and others still that were clinical feeling and stark, in which you could make out each and every detail of the insects, right down to their delicate antennae and bulging round eyes. It was as if my dad had been studying the insects.

At the bottom of the haphazard pile was an image I’d seen before. I’d hadn’t made the connection between it and the nocturnal luminaries, with their delicate, vein-laced and swirl-tipped wings.

My fingers traced the image as I tried to recall the first time I’d seen it: the beetle-like version that depicted what a firefly looked like at rest . . . and burnished in gold.

Just like it had been in the center of Agent Truman’s badge. It hadn’t been a golden beetle at all. It had been a firefly.

My thoughts were interrupted when a single drop of blood fell onto the photo from above me. It landed right in the center of the picture and splattered outward, blooming like a flower. A feeling of icy alarm settled over me as I turned to glance over my shoulder.

I’d half expected to find my father there, with his bloodied hands outstretched to me.

But it wasn’t my father. It was Tyler, standing above me and studying the same images I was.

“Your nose.” I let the picture flutter to the floor. “Tyler, you’re bleeding.”

He frowned at me before using the back of his hand to check for himself. “You’ve got to be—” He shook his head, perplexed. “I haven’t had a bloody nose since I was a kid.”

But I was already on my feet and running toward the bathroom, kicking litter out of my way. When I came back, I handed him a wad of toilet paper. “I think you’re supposed to lean your head back. And pinch your nose. I think you’re supposed to pinch it.”

He did as I said, and without taking the paper away, he dropped his gaze and grinned at me. “So you’re saying I’m
not
gonna miraculously heal the way you did? I thought maybe some of your superpowers might rub off on me.”

I rolled my eyes, wondering how he could possibly make jokes during a situation like this. It would be hard to leave him when the time came. “They’re not superpowers.” I smirked back at him. He sounded ridiculous with all that toilet paper bunched up and plugging his nose. I grinned. “And I’m pretty sure they don’t work that way.” I nudged him with my shoulder as I shoved past him back into my dad’s room. “I just want to grab a few things and then we need to get out of here before anyone catches us. I was hoping my dad would be here. I have so many questions, and I think he might have some of the answers I need.” It felt so strange to admit that out loud, that my dad had been right after all. I looked around at the room. At the ripped papers and broken glass. Even the computer monitor had been smashed. I couldn’t bear to think that he might’ve been harmed because of me. “I just hope he’s okay.”

“Me too.” Tyler’s voice came out muffled by the toilet paper.

I began collecting what I could find, anything that looked even remotely useful, although most of it looked like junk. I gathered the firefly images and a map with a bunch of colorful dots and lines my dad had drawn, along with the one missing-person flyer I couldn’t ignore: the one of me.

While I was searching, I found the ball from the first baseball team I’d ever been on, back when I was in the first grade—when the boys and girls still played together. Our parents had signed Austin and me up for the same team, and my dad had volunteered to be our coach.

This was the very same ball Austin had hurled through my bedroom window after I’d accused him of throwing like a girl. His parents had grounded him for a whole week for breaking my window—one day for every year he’d been alive on this earth.

And for an entire week I’d regretted taunting him, because for seven painfully long days I’d had to come home from school and play all by myself. I’d lost my best friend because I’d made fun of the way he threw.

My dad, though, had saved that ball. He said it was one of his favorite mementos. I used to think he meant because it was from our first game—his as our coach and mine as a player. But now that I thought of it, I wonder if it was more than that. I wonder if it was because of the lesson I’d learned, about how to treat those I cared about.

My dad had always been big on the power of words and respect.

“The tongue pierces deeper than the spear,” he’d told me when I’d complained about Austin’s punishment. And even though I knew he was trying to teach me some sort of lesson, all I could remember thinking was that it was too bad if what my dad had said was really true, because how cool would it be if our tongues really were spears? First graders thought of things like that, I guess.

“We better get moving,” I told Tyler, putting the ball back. He had his own collection of things, and I appraised his findings with a dubious eye. His nose had stopped bleeding, and his toilet paper compress was gone.

“What do you think?” he asked, holding up a fanny pack by its strap. “You think your dad would mind if I kept this?”

I made a face at him. How long had my dad been holding on to that relic? “Are you kidding? You’re not seriously planning to wear that thing, are you?”

“You never know when you’ll need both hands free.” He strapped it around his waist and started filling it with the things he’d gathered: some newspaper and magazine clippings, a USB thumb drive that had been lying beneath the papers on the floor, and a CD with a handwritten
2009–2014
scrawled across it.

“This isn’t a looting mission.”

He looked meaningfully at all the junk in my hands. “Are you sure about that? Here, I bet you can fit all your stuff in this thing.” He held the pouch open for me.

“I’m not letting
my stuff
touch
that thing
. My hands work just fine. You know your nerd status just shot up like a million points, don’t you?” I didn’t tell him the real reason I wasn’t sharing space in his fanny pack, that I wasn’t planning to go with him.

He shrugged like it was no big deal, but I loved that he didn’t care that he was making a fool of himself with that ridiculous pouch.

His eyes shot skyward as his body went entirely rigid.
“Shh!”
The crooked grin melted from his face. “Did you hear that?” His head cocked slightly, and he strained—we both strained—to find whatever it was he thought he’d heard.

“No,” I whispered, slightly thrown by the sudden shift in his demeanor. “I don’t . . .” But I’d spoken too soon. It was there, and now, just barely and so faraway, I could hear it too. My throat ached, and I nodded this time. “We’re too late.”

The
whomp-whomp-whomp
sound of the approaching helicopter pounded within my chest and beat through my veins. I felt more human in that instant than I had in my entire life. More mortal. More defenseless and exposed, even within the suddenly-too-cramped walls of my father’s trailer.

“I have to go,” I said. I bundled the missing-person flyer and the map and the prints of the fireflies into a roll and stuffed them into my back pocket, right next to the envelope Simon had given me.

I made my way to the front of the trailer, where it was gloomier now that the sun had set. I didn’t turn on any lights along the way. Tyler was right on my heels, following me closely, and he’d noticed my slip. “You said ‘I.’ You said ‘
I
have to go,’ Kyra, and I don’t care what you think, but you’re not leaving me behind.”

Reaching the front door, I pulled back the musty-smelling curtain that drooped limply over the glass and realized how useless the windows in my dad’s crappy trailer were. They were textured. The surface of the glass was bumpy, meant for privacy rather than for visibility. He might as well have covered them with newspaper or tinfoil. All I could make out was the darkness beyond.

“I don’t have time to argue,” I shot back. “But you can’t go with me. Stay here and tell them this was all some sort of mix-up. That you didn’t know anything about me and what I am.” I dropped the curtain, ignoring the dust that puffed up when I did.

Tyler grabbed my arm and forced me to face him. “Kyra, stop being so stubborn.” When I opened my mouth to argue, he cut me off. “No. I mean it. You’re being stupid again, and this time not the good kind. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m not going with you.”

Bright lights filtered in through the impractical privacy windows and filled the darkened trailer, casting blurred beams along the wood-paneled walls. Others came from above, accompanied by the louder, and much closer,
whomp-whomp
noises of the helicopter, which was right on top of us now. They came from the window over the sink and the opaque skylight that was obscured by layers of fir needles and caked-on dirt.

I reached for Tyler’s hand, deciding that now wasn’t the time to argue over whether I would let him stay with me or not, because I didn’t think either of us was getting out of this mess anyway.

Red and blue lights washed over Tyler’s skin as his lips tightened. “Come on.” He hauled me back toward my dad’s trashed office. He ripped the curtain rod off the wall, where it had hung above the window, and pressed his face to the rough-surfaced glass. “I don’t see any lights out there. If we hurry, we might be able to slip out back before they catch us.”