Chapter 24

Just like the weather lady said, it’s even colder tonight. Luckily, we find a blanket in the trunk, and the car is big enough that when we put down the back seats, we get a space where we can lie down together and huddle.

I don’t like sleeping in cars, but we’re lucky to have it. Marisa says it’s too risky to go to motels now, or even homeless shelters. The cops know we’re in the area. Those are the places they’ll look first. We’ve slept on the streets a couple times before, but that was when we still had all our stuff, and it was summer. If we tried that now, we would both be frozen tomorrow.

We parked under an overpass and called it an early night and went to sleep at 9pm, but I’m not asleep yet. I’m trying not to shiver. Maybe that would convince my body that I’m not cold. But I can’t help it. And every time a car passes above us, the whoooosh jars me back awake. I don’t know how I can fall asleep like this.

Marisa is shivering even harder. I don’t think it’s just the cold. Her skin is looking weird, all pale and blotchy. And despite all the shivering, she’s hot and sweaty. It’s because she ran out of medicine. I know it is. But she’s pretending like everything’s fine, even though she’s clearly running some kind of fever.

I can tell she’s not asleep yet, either, so I say, “You promised you wouldn’t lie to me again, right?”

She mumbles, “Mm-hm.”

“What’s that medicine you take?”

She’s quiet for a while, like she’s trying to comprehend it. She sighs and says, “You weren’t supposed to know about it.”

That’s not an answer, so I say, “Well, YOU know everything about ME.” That’s not true. But right now I don’t really care.

She still doesn’t give me an answer, and I can’t help but hate her a little.

I say, “When you make a promise, you’re supposed to keep it.”

She says, “I know.” Quietly. So quietly I almost can’t hear her. I huff and wrap my arms tighter. It’s annoying because technically she ISN’T breaking the promise. She promised she wouldn’t lie again, and she can’t lie if she’s not saying anything at all. Such a stupid loophole.

I say, “Fine. You don’t have to answer that.” But I do want at least SOMETHING answered tonight. I dig through my brain and think of Lilian. I want to know if they knew each other before the clinic. I want to know why she keeps calling Lilian, or why Lilian keeps calling her. They’re supposed to be enemies. I know she would just say I wouldn’t get it. It’s a grownup thing. But still, I ask, “Did you know Lilian? Before the clinic?”

She sighs. I feel the heave and sag through our pressed-together backs. At first I think she might just brush it off again. But she says, “I knew her for a long time. We were friends.”

“Is that it?” I wonder what it’s like to have friends. I don’t know if Marisa counts as a friend. I tell people she’s my mom, but she isn’t really. Do Lory and them count? I don’t think so. They probably haven’t even thought about me since I left.

Marisa says, “When I was about the same age as you, maybe two or three years older, I met her. We were at the grand opening for the little town my parents moved us to. The mayor was giving a speech. I saw her yawning and I said ‘I think this is boring too’ and she said ‘I had to see this speech a thousand times.’ The mayor was her mum. I was surprised because she didn’t act like it. She was so nice and funny. But she only stayed there for the first year. Her mum wanted her to go to private school, so she went.”

I ask, “What’s private school?” It sounds like homeschooling, like what I did with Marisa, but it must be something different.

She says, “You dress all fancy. You pay more to get in.”

I say, “That doesn’t sound fun.”

“She seemed to like it.” I can almost hear a smile. “But we found ways to keep in touch. We would write letters, or we would call, and when I finally got a cellphone, we talked to each other all the time. My mum, she didn’t like it. She said we were racking up the phone bill.”

I can’t imagine Marisa with a mom, or with a best friend. For my whole life it’s always been just me and her. It’s wrong, but I feel a little bitter. She had other people. I never did.

I turn the next question around in my head. I want to see if I’m right, if her being friends with Lilian is the reason she found Doctor Heed so quickly after my incident in school. But she sounds so calm right now, so happy, and this is the first time she’s talking about her childhood. I want to hear more.

I say, “Could you have gone with her?”

Her hair scrubs against the carpeted ground as she shakes her head, just a little. “My parents wanted me to stay. They wanted to save the money. The school I went to was paid for by the town. And I didn’t want to go, anyway. I liked living there. I still have the key. The little pink one, you know?”

I know what she’s talking about. I’ve seen it on her keyring, bright and bubbly and totally not like Marisa at all, but I never asked what it’s for. I knew she wouldn’t tell me.

I try to imagine this town, but all I can think of is sunshine and rows of townhouses that look like the one we used to live in. I say, “Where’s the town?”

“It’s a very small town. You haven’t heard of it.”

“I want to know.”

She’s quiet for a while. I listen to her take a deep, deep breath, and I think she might not want to answer, but I can hear a smile when she says, “Suddence. A little town in the middle of nowhere, deep inside Ornament County.”

She’s right. I have never heard of it. I say, “Do you miss it?”

She laughs. It’s a soft breath, smooth and feathery. “I do.”

“Maybe we could go there. And live there.” I try to remember what it was like living in a normal house. Having normal dinner and normal school and normal conversations. It seems like a different life. Not mine, like I’m seeing it in a show on TV. It’s strange. We’ve only been on the run for two years, but somehow it feels like this has been my whole life. “You said it’s a small town. Maybe they won’t know who we are.”

She goes all still. I can’t see her face, but I can picture her smile disappearing. I can feel her happiness drain away like water turned cold.

She says very quietly, “We can’t go back.”

“Why?”

But instead of answering, she says, “You’re from there too, you know.”

I crane my neck and frown at her over the corner of my eye. “Really?”

“Really.”

“How come you never told me?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess I didn’t think it mattered.”

Of COURSE it matters. I never really thought about where I came from, but that was because this whole time I thought Marisa just picked me randomly from the orphanage.

I say, “Is that why you adopted me? Because we were from the same town?”

“Mm-hm.”

I lie back and try to wrap my head around all of it. “Did you know my parents?”

“No.”

“You’re telling the truth this time, right?”

I hear her shifting around to look at me. “Dany, why would I lie to you?”

Before I lose my courage, I say, “Did you find Doctor Heed so quickly because of Lilian? Because she works for him?”

She lingers for a long time, and I can tell she’s trying to think of a way to answer that proves she didn’t lie to me, but in the end, she settles back down and says, “Yes.” Quiet again, this time with shame. “Doctor Heed is her father. She introduced me to him.”

So I was right. A tear prickles the corner of my eye, and I scrub it away. There’s no use feeling betrayed, Dany. It’s not like the truth changes anything. It doesn’t change the fact we’re here, or the fact Doctor Heed is after us, or the fact we will probably never, ever stop running away.

I just don’t understand why she kept so much from me. If it made no difference in the end, why didn’t she just tell me?

“Dany.” Marisa is moving, turning around to face me, and I turn around too, blinking back my tears. Her face is all stern, but I see tears in her eyes, too. “Dany, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you. I was so scared. I didn’t know how to explain it all. But I promised, right? I promised I wouldn’t lie to you anymore.”

I nod, a tear slipping down the side of my face.

“None of it changes this. They are still after us, and we can’t let Them catch us, and I don’t want you to think you can’t trust me, alright? Anything you want to know, I will tell you.”

I nod again and take a breath. It’s supposed to be steadying, but it’s shaky. “Why did you meet with her?” I hold her eyes. She’s serious, and I need her to know I’m serious, too. “You say They’re after us, and They’re dangerous, but you keep calling her, and then you went to meet with her. Why?”

It’s a heavy question. I can see the weight it has on Marisa. The serious light in her eyes dissolves into something faraway. Sadness.

“She said she had a way to get us out.”

I frown a little. “And you believed her?”

“This isn’t the first time she said it. She’s been telling me her plan for a few months. She says she changed her mind, and she doesn’t agree with her father anymore, and she wants to help. And this time, this time she said the plan needs to happen soon, and she needs to know if I was in. I was out of medicine. I was desperate. I took a chance.” She closes her eyes and turns away, sinking onto her back. “And some part of me thought we might still be friends.”

After a while, I say, “Do you really think she’s lying?”

“Of course she was.”

She doesn’t sound so sure.

I watch the tears under her lashes, and the wax-like shine of her pale skin. Out of medicine.

“We could get more,” I say. “More medicine. And then you’ll be okay, right?”

“No more talking,” she says, her eyes still closed. “Try to sleep. Tomorrow, we have a long way to go.”