Chapter 41

WE DRIVE FOR a long, long time before Zahira finally says, quietly, “Dany.”

I let out an uneven breath. The pain in my side is horrible, even though I took the last of my medicine, but if I don’t move, if I don’t talk, if I just sit here and think about anything other than the hot iron poke melting through my spleen, I can grit my teeth through it.

“Dany.”

“What?” I say a little too sharply.

She keeps her eyes on the dark road. “That woman,” she says slowly. “Lilian Heed. She told me—”

“Don’t believe anything she says.” I wrap my arms tight around myself and goddamn wish she would just leave it at that.

She goes quiet. For about ten seconds, it’s just the scrape of tires on asphalt and the rush of the grey, dead farmlands passing by as we ride down a long country road.

Then she says, “It’s not just what she told me.”

I close my eyes and focus on taking deep breaths. You’re almost there, Dany. Just hang on.

“In the car,” Zahira says. “When the security guard was taking us to the police station. Lilian, she called the guard. She…” She shakes her head, frowning a little. “She said she doesn’t want to press charges against us. She told him to bring us to the hospital instead, and she…she asked to talk to us. And she explained. Everything.”

I huff out a laugh. “And you believed her?”

“That’s not just it,” Zahira says. “When we got to the hospital, she took one look at Aaron and made sure a doctor looked at his eye.”

“So?”

“So—so you said They would have killed us. I was expecting it. I was terrified in the backseat of that car, and I kept trying to figure out how we were going to get out of this.” She sits back with more force than necessary. Her knuckles are white around the steering wheel. “You make Them sound like the devil, but Lilian had every chance to do something to us, and she didn’t. She could have told the guard to take us literally anywhere else. She could have left the charges on us and just let us rot in jail. She could have just shoved us into one of her vans the moment we got to the hospital. But she didn’t. She—”

“That’s just what she does!” I say, close to shouting. “She plays all these tricks on you. Pretending to be nice. You can’t just trust her because she’s nice.”

“She told me Doctor Heed died two days ago. In the high school.”

Everything in me is burning. I don’t know what she wants me to say to that.

“Dany, you knew that, didn’t you?”

I grind my teeth. I guess it’s clear what my answer is because she barks out a mean, unhappy laugh.

“You told me he’s after you. But he’s dead, and you knew, but you…” She laughs again, and this time, her anger is clear. “Why would you lie to me about that? Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Doctor Heed, Lilian, it doesn’t matter,” I snap. “They all want the same thing. I just didn’t want to make it so freaking complicated.”

“No, Dany, this is. This is more complicated. I just—I don’t understand. Why can’t you just give me straight answers? Why is it always these half truths and bloody labyrinths?”

My fists are gathered so tight they hurt. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that your story doesn’t add up!” she shouts. “This whole time, you’re trying to reach someone in Suddence all on your own so they can help you, but Lilian is right there! You—” She bites back anger in her voice, though it’s still boiling in her eyes. In a low, barely steady voice, she says, “Is there even someone waiting for you in Suddence?”

I point my burning eyes out the window.

“Dany, look at me.” The fury is creeping back into her tone. “Is there even somebody there?”

I don’t want to answer her. I don’t want to look at her. I just want her to drive.

She slams on the brakes.

The force of it throws me forward. The seatbelt lurches me to a hard stop, and pain sears up my side.

The car skids to a halt and tosses me back against the seat. I whirl on Zahira and say, “What the hell?”

She kills the engine and rounds on me, one white-knuckled hand still gripping the steering wheel. The headlights are still on, and in the yellowish light, the corners of her mouth are turned way, way down, and I know she’s truly, thoroughly pissed.

“Tell me the truth,” she says.

I meet her furious glare. “Or what?”

“Or I won’t take you to Suddence!”

“Fine!” I fling off my seatbelt and thrash open the door. “Then I’ll fucking walk.”

My ankle screams and wobbles the moment I put weight on it, but I manage not to fall. Walk? I want to run. I want to just get this over with so I don’t have to worry about any of it anymore. So I don’t—

“Dany!” The driver-side door clips open. “Dany!”

I ignore her.

I shouldn’t have asked for her help.

I should have just walked. On my own, like it should be.

“Dany!”

“Just go away!” I shout. “Just turn around and go away! I don’t need you anymore!”

But her heeled boots are still following me, and she’s getting closer. My fingertips are starting to burn. Zahira calls my name again, and I say, “Go away.”

“No!” Her footsteps quicken. I can see her in the corner of my eye. “Dany. I got you this far. I deserve to know the truth!”

“You already know the truth!” I know I shouldn’t be yelling. Not when I can't feel my fists anymore and fire is climbing up past my wrists and my temples are aching. I know. I know, but my chest feels like it’s about to burst. “Go away. I don’t want your help anymore. Just go. Go!”

“No—Dany—” She gnashes. “Dany, you’re hurt! You’re limping! Look at you, please—”

I make myself walk faster, gritting against the blinding pain in my leg and side. My head is starting to buzz, and the world is turning into static. The fire reaches my collarbones, splintering down my spine, and I know something bad is about to happen, and I need Zahira to stop.

“Dany!”

Stop.

“Please—”

Stop.

“Dany!”

“STOP!”

The world explodes.

Bright white sparks. In a flash, they’re there, bursting against the empty fields around us, filling up the dark skies, flooding heat into the night. A thousand lightning bolts, striking all at once.

There, and then gone.

And then quiet. A quiet so sudden it makes me dizzy. Makes my ears ring. Makes the world collapse in on itself, swallowed into a black hole.

The same quiet that came after the flurry of wood and splinters, the pain across my cheek, the gash in my side. The same quiet when I opened my eyes and I was on the ground and the school was on fire and Marisa was—she was—

I whirl around. Zahira is huddling against the front of the van, shaking and frightened, but she’s fine.

She’s fine.

And the relief makes my legs dissolve, and I crumple to my hands and knees.

My heavy breaths make it through the muffle first. Then a sound like rain, pebbles and dirt falling back to the ground. Zahira’s trembling gasps. The far, full rumble of the empty space around us. Miles and miles and miles.

Dizziness swarms me, and darkness bleeds into my vision, and my chest is lurching, trying to catch breath, but I say, “You want to know the truth?” I don’t know if Zahira is listening. I don’t know if she wants to hear it anymore. “It was me. At the high school. I…”

Crawling across the linoleum. Heat growing closer and closer. Marisa’s blood on the ground, the char around her wound, the look in her eyes, the fear—

The scrape in my throat when I screamed. The tears falling down my cheeks, burning me more than the heat of the fire. I wanted to save her. I was trying to save her. What did I do? What did I do?

“I killed her.” I don’t know if I'm saying it out loud. I can’t feel my mouth moving. “I killed her. I killed her.” I can hear myself saying it now, and I look up to make sure Zahira hears it, too. She has to hear it. “I killed her, and I…”

Marisa tried to say something. She tried to say my name. She was shuddering, gasping for air, and I’ve never seen her so scared. I tried to hold her wound, and her fingers wrapped around mine so hard it hurt, but I held on. I held on and she tried to say my name again, through the blood on her lips, through her jagged, trembling breaths.

And then her hand was gone from my hand, and the light was gone from her eyes, and then she was gone. Just gone. And I still can’t understand it. How a whole person could be gone. How she could be right in front of me but gone. How she could be right beside me all my life and just gone.

“I can’t leave,” I say, my voice small and shaking because my lungs are crushing in on themselves. And I’m crying, and I shouldn’t be, because it was me. It was me who killed her. “I can’t leave her. I can’t leave her.” I clutch the front of my shirt, where Marisa’s key is looped around my neck. It’s heavy again, burning. “I can’t just leave her. I need to bury her. I need to…” I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow the sob tearing up my throat. “I just need to take her to Suddence. I just need to take her back.”

And then I just cry,

I hear the scratch of Zahira getting off the ground. She’s leaving. She’ll drive away, and I’ll be alone. Somehow, the word comforts me. Alone. My tears drain away, and the weight is gone from my shoulders.

It’s just me now.

On my own, as it should be.

But when I open my eyes, she’s still here. Standing in front of the van, dark eyes running with tears. Looking at me.

She says, “Come on.”

I stare at her with blurry eyes. “What?”

She tips her head towards the car. “Come on. Let’s go.”

I wipe my eyes. My lungs are still gasping with sobs. “Go where?”

“I’m taking you to Suddence.”

It takes a few seconds for the words to really sink in. I sniff and wipe my eyes again. “You’re supposed to be mad at me.”

“I am,” she says. Sharp, like the snap of a branch. “I’m goddamn furious, and you lied to me, and…” Tears slip down her cheeks, and she angrily scrubs them away with the flat of her hand. “You’re just a kid. God, Dany, you’re just a kid. You’re supposed to be going to school and hating math and playing four squares with your friends. But you’re—”

Her voice catches, and she covers her eyes, swaying on her feet. When she lowers her hands, her eyes are still wet with tears, but there’s a blaze of determination, too.

“So,” she says. “I’m taking you to Suddence. But you have to promise me one thing.” She marches over, still brushing at her tears. “When you finish whatever it is you’re doing there, I’m taking you back to the hospital. You’re going back to Lilian, and you’re going to let her help you. You’re going to find somewhere safe to live, and you’re going to have a normal life. Got it?”

I stare at her, lightheaded and faint.

Normal life.

She offers me her hand, and I take it, letting her pull me to my feet. The world sloshes around me, but Zahira holds me steady. I remember Marisa’s hand tight around mine, and now mine are tight around Zahira’s. A lifeline. A last hope.

Zahira helps me limp back to the car. I slump in the seat, dizzy and out of breath. My side burns, through the fuzziness of it all, and when I press my hand against it, I feel something warm and wet.

“Zahira,” I say. She stops in the middle of the closing the door. I should tell her we need to turn around. I need to go to the hospital. I’m hurt.

But I say, “Thank you.”

She smiles, just a little, and somehow that feels better than if she had said anything at all.

She gets into her side of the car and starts the engine, and with a rising haze of purple where the sky meets the ground, we drive towards Suddence.