Tunnel Vision (12 page)

It’s a kid’s object. I look at her, suddenly afraid of this one.

“Go ahead,” she says, soft.

It’s a little girl. Maybe five or six years old. She has yellow hair and plump, round cheeks like Rachel’s, streaked with dirt and tears. Location: Louisiana. Broussard. A white trailer, parked at the end of St. Cabrini Street. She’s in a dark, confined space, hunched on the floor, her head in her folded arms. She’s crying, quietly, so they won’t come back. The people who took her, pushed her into the car. Locked her in here. All she wants is her mother, for that door to open and her mother to be there, arms wide, all of it over …

I stop. Ana and I exchange a long, tired look. A little girl. I could’ve saved her this afternoon if I hadn’t gotten on the phone with Liesel instead. Hours ago.

“We’ll get her,” she says, low. “We’ll go get her right now.”

She picks up her phone, pushes a button.

And then my head bursts open with pain.

*   *   *

I come to on the floor, the taste of Froot Loops in my mouth. Ana is bent over me, her hand cool on my face.

“You are all right,” she says. “It is over.”

Peaceful. Calm. No worries.

“What’s going on? I heard—” I see my mom’s feet pad around the corner. “Jake!” she gasps. “Oh my God.” She’s on her knees next to me. “Are you all right?”

“He’s fine.” Ana’s quiet, measured. “He slipped and fell. But I don’t feel a bump, and there’s no sign of concussion. I think he just needs to go lie down.”

I smile at Mom. It’s a funky view, her chin looming over me. “Hi.”

She frowns down at me, pushes my hair off my forehead. “You sure you’re okay, baby?”

I have just enough sense to know that I have to push through the high I’m floating on, or Mom will drag me to the doctor. Wonder how T-680 would show up on a blood test. Red flags.

Flags, flapping in the breeze. That’s relaxing, isn’t it? The sound of flapping … my eyes start to roll back.

Get it together, Jake.

“Fine,” I manage. I push myself up, so I’m propped on my arms. They give me room. I barely resist collapsing back. “I should lie down.”
Don’t slur, don’t slur.

Together they help me up and walk me down the hallway to my room, one on each arm. I’m shaky, but I make it, flop onto the bed.

Let the peace wash over me again. Stifle a giggle as Ana ushers Mom out the door.

“I don’t think I should go tomorrow,” Mom says, as the door shuts behind her.

I don’t worry, though. Ana will take care of it.

I don’t have to worry about anything. Flags, flapping. A nice easy breeze over my face, with the sound of the aspens. And there’s music somewhere, a drum.

Damn, that’s a good drug.

*   *   *

I have to stop doing that. Whatever’s triggering the transition problem, we have to figure it out fast. It’s freaking me out. Besides the small issue of excruciating pain, I can’t pass out and then get high for hours at a time. Someone just might notice.

When I get up the next morning Mom’s gone, off to catch her flight to Chicago. Ana pulls me into the kitchen. She had to do some convincing, she says, and Mom checked on me three times in the night. But since I seemed okay, she decided to go. If Ana promised to watch me carefully.

I snort so loud Myka, at the table, looks up from her cereal. “No worries there,” I say.

Ana’s expression doesn’t change. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Normal.” I shrug. “As normal as I get, lately.”

Ana tilts closer, lowers her voice more. “I’m sorry, but orders came in—”

Myka gets up to take her bowl to the kitchen, and I dive into the refrigerator, pull out a carton of milk. Ana goes back to trying to yank out the bottom tray of the toaster, which probably hasn’t been emptied for years.

“Morning, Myk,” I say. But I’m thinking of what Ana said in a loop. Orders? Sorry? Why is she sorry?

Myk gives me a look stolen directly from Mom. “You okay? I heard you fell.”

“Yeah.” I laugh, pour a glass of milk. “Pure grace, that’s me. I’m fine.”

It seems to satisfy her. She makes a circle with her sneaker, on the floor. She wants something.

“Since Mom’s gone, you wanna take me to the movies tonight? There are like four things I want to see.”

I start to reply, but she keeps going.

“I know, I know, it’s a school night. But every once in a while I have to be a kid. Play hooky from homework.”

I glance at Ana. Do “orders” mean I won’t be here tonight?

She nods subtly. It’s okay.

I fake-punch Myk in the arm. “You’re
on
.”

“Yes!” She dances away from me, out of range. “And you didn’t say what movie, so I get to pick … ha ha ha…”

I don’t even mind. I’d sit through two hours of some dancing princesses tonight if it’d make her happy. Though she’ll probably choose a twisty mind-bending thriller and figure it out before the end. I chase her out of the room, down the hall, until I catch her and tickle her mercilessly. Under the armpits, where she can’t stand it.

Then I leave her, wheezing with laughter, hair all tangled up around her, and go back to hear my orders.

I swear, I can’t read Ana at all. I think her face would be the same if she was telling me I have to disappear tonight, or that I have a bunch of objects to read and damn the headache.

“They want you to go see a DARPA doctor on Saturday.” She finishes scraping bits out of the toaster, and turns to me. “There is concern about the headaches, and they want to check on your health, do some more tests.” She sighs. “I am sorry. It will take most of the day.”

I almost hug her from pure relief. Yeah, an all-day doctor visit sounds nasty. Nothing makes me feel more helpless, more like a
thing,
than sitting in a paper gown on a metal table, people poking at me. But I want the headaches to stop. I’m glad they do too. And it’s a lot better than it could’ve been.

There’s one more thing I have to do before school. I’d been putting it off, but I have to call Dedushka, tell him I’m not coming. I know he’ll be disappointed. I feel like a chickenshit for giving in to Liesel, for agreeing not to go. Even worse for being relieved when it’s just a voice mail that picks up, with a generic voice saying I can leave a message. I do. I’m so sorry, but I can’t make it this weekend after all. It will have to be another weekend soon.

I hope it will be, and that nothing else comes up to stop it from happening.

13

“Little Truth” by the Delta Routine

The next day I’m heading into lunch, Eric ahead of me, when someone grabs my arm and yanks me back into the hallway. I have a mini heart attack—in that split second imagining all sorts of people who could be abducting me, none of them good—before I realize it’s Rachel. She pulls me around the corner and up against a wall next to the drinking fountain, her hand still on my arm, her body only a step away from mine.

My heart jackhammers for an entirely different reason.

“Hey,” she says, her eyes darting over my face like she’s searching for something, trying to figure something out.

I frown a little, just because I’m not sure what’s going on. “Hey. Is everything—”

She lunges forward, up, her arms around my neck, and covers my mouth with hers. Her lips are soft, and so warm, and soft, and insistent, and …

I lose all thought except her, the velvety skin of her cheek against my thumb, her vanilla scent, her lips,
her
. Rachel. Kissing me.

Like I wanted. And yet so much better. The best surprise ever.

When she pulls away I’m dizzy and drunk—like I took T-680—and lost. I just want to be there again, back where I was. I take a step forward, my hand still on her face, but she smiles, her eyes shining like I’ve never seen them, and shakes her head.

“I wanted to get that out of the way,” she says, her voice wobbly, “before the party, since you’re coming now. So we wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

“I’m not worried,” I say, low.

If I could stay here, like this, forever, I wouldn’t worry about anything else.

“No. Me either, not anymore.” She laughs, and looks over my shoulder. “But your friend looks a little concerned.”

I spin. Eric’s
right
there, standing at the corner watching us. He has an expression like a dad would give his fourteen-year-old daughter if he caught her kissing a boy. Then he remembers himself and the expression vanishes, like it never existed at all. “Sorry,” he says, almost smirking. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Rachel presses herself against my back and stands up on tiptoe, her mouth near my ear. “We’ll
talk
more at the party,” she whispers. She squeezes my arm and strolls off around Eric, without a word, without a backward look, into the cafeteria.

Damn, girl.

Eric raises his eyebrows.

“What?” I ask mildly, because I’m in too good a mood to even care much what he thinks. “Am I not allowed to have a girlfriend?”

He shrugs, answers like it was a real question. “Be careful. Your situation is … complicated.”

He gives me another look, then heads back into the cafeteria. I stay behind for a minute. To show I can, I guess. But mostly to steal one more minute to think about what just happened. About Rachel, and her soft, warm lips. How very much I like her. And how much I’m dying to get to that party on Saturday. If I could time travel there, right now, I would.

*   *   *

Nothing else happens for a day and a half.

That’s not totally true. I go to classes, flirt hard with Rachel, and hang out and joke around with the usual gang, who are all getting ramped up for
Oklahoma
opening night next week. I go to the movies with Myka. Eric’s around all day—I beat him at tennis twice—and Ana’s there at night. They give me a couple objects to do, yeah. But other than that I can almost pretend everything is back to the way it used to be, but better. Normal. Handle-able.

Until Saturday.

I wake up dreading the doctor visit: probing, blood taking, whatever else they can think of. But it’s necessary, to stop the headaches. I tell Myk I’m going out with friends, grab my coat and keys, and head outside. The place is some private clinic in Reston I’ve never heard of, but I’m pretty sure I can find it okay. I can always stop and ask my tail for directions.

I only get as far as the driveway when a car screeches to a halt in front of me. A black Jeep Cherokee, an old one. The passenger door flies open. Dedushka leans across the front seat.

“Get in!”

I hesitate.

“Yakob!” he yells. “Get in the car
now
!”

I glance over my shoulder at the house—wondering if Ana’s watching—then jump in, slam the door behind me. He takes off, jetting down the street like a bat out of hell.

“Dedushka, what are you—”

“Turn off the phone. Put it and your watch in here.” He points to a thick metal container between the seats, about the size of a cigar box, propped with the lid open. “Quickly. I will explain.” He flies around the corner, well above the speed limit, eyes on the rearview mirror.

Okay then.

I unbuckle the watch, tug my phone out of my pocket, and drop them both into the box. He slams it shut with one hand, turns a knob, then jerks a thumb toward the backseat. “A bag is back there. Put box into bag, seal it. Now.”

I’ve never seen a bag like this. It’s like Tyvek, but threaded with some kind of metal fibers, silver glinting through the white. I shove the box in, tear off a strip, and seal the flap.

He breathes out a sigh of relief that ruffles his beard. The beard is longer than when I saw him last, almost to his chest, and whiter. Like Santa Claus. “Good. I must only outrun them now, and then we talk.”

I swing around to look through the back window. Sure enough, there’s my tail, frantically weaving in and out of traffic, trying to keep up with Dedushka’s maneuvers. I imagine Ana probably isn’t far behind. Though she’ll have to get around my car, which is blocking hers.

What the
hell
is going on? He’s kidnapping me? How does he know about
them
?

“Patience, Yakob.” He sets a wrinkled, spotted hand on my knee before shifting down to flip a sudden U-turn and head back the other way. We’re deep in Herndon already, near the 606. “I will explain.” He throws me a searching look under snarled white eyebrows. “And you will explain. But wait until we are safe.”

He zooms onto the 606, passing cars left and right, until it merges onto the 7, and heads northwest toward Leesburg. I watch the trees fly by, my brain spinning in the same circles without getting anywhere. When we’re almost to Leesburg, he looks back again, and slows down. “We are clear. Now we shall see how well my protection works.”

He gets off the freeway, turns sharply into a Walmart parking lot, and parks out in the far corner, where there are plenty of other cars but not much foot traffic. Only then does he turn and look at me full on.

“Yakob,” he says gruffly. “What have you gotten into?”

My mouth falls open. “I don’t … I don’t know…”

“Laduo.”
He sighs. “I go first.” He combs his beard with one hand, over and over, staring out the window. Then he turns back to me.

“I will start here: I do not know very much. I know you can do…” He flaps a hand in the air like a bird. “Something valuable, dangerous. Your father told me this. He would not tell me what it is, for my own safety, for yours.” He sinks back in the seat. “He asked me to protect you, if something goes wrong. He gave me a way to know it has gone wrong.”

His eyes find mine. They’re gray-blue like mine, like Dad’s. “That watch of his had a tracker in it, Yakob. It was my job, these two years, to watch the tracker, to make sure it was normal for you. And then a week ago it was not. You are in Arlington on Saturday morning—which is not normal. And then the signal vanishes … poof.” He makes the shape of an explosion with his fingers. “And I call you. Your mother says you are skiing, which you are not. When I reach you the next day, you lie to me … yes, Dedushka, I was skiing. And you still have your watch, but nothing. Someone took the tracker out, and you did not know it. So what did you do, in Arlington?”