Enders (17 page)

It was another memory of Helena’s playing out before me, a little differently this time, more visually. When she was using my body, she must have gone to Club Rune to ask about Emma. But the bartender looked at the holo and shook his head. I felt this heavy sadness tear at my heart.

Helena’s sadness, a moment preserved from the past, was frozen now in my memory banks. I was not only reliving the memory, I was also feeling it as if it were my own.

The vision ended and I was back in the car, staring at the window, a tear running down my cheek. Helena would have been there over two months ago; that was how old this memory was. And now it was resurfacing.

I had many sad memories of my own since the Spore Wars, but Helena’s dug into me. She had this intense determination, this desperation, this passion to find Emma. To find her answers. She wasn’t giving up. So how could I?

“I had another memory last night,” I said the next morning.

We’d all woken up around the same time, with fuzzy mouths and wrinkled clothes. I was in the back with Michael, leaning on my elbow. Hyden brought his driver’s seat up to its regular position and smoothed his rumpled hair with his hands.

“A memory hit?” Hyden asked.

“Yes. And it made me think about my father.”

Michael put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s hard, Cal,” he
said. “We just went through so much loss. You know how it turns everything upside down.”

“I know, but …”

“Callie, remember what we saw in that Hall of Records,” Hyden said.

“It’s just a feeling. I can’t shake it.”

“What do you want to do?” Hyden asked.

I looked at each of them. “I want to go home.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Hyden, Michael, and I drove through the neighborhood in the valley north of Los Angeles where Michael and I grew up. Now it was an abandoned suburb. We passed house after boarded-up house with markings on them in red paint. Some said Relocated but Condemned was the most common.

Being here reminded me of how awful it had been as all our parents came down with the disease inflicted by the spores. How the marshals came to take them away to treatment facilities where no treatment waited. They were places people went to wait to die. How the Starters were taken to institutions unless grandparents claimed them. These were the homes of my friends and neighbors, the Surratts and Perrys and Rogers. All empty now, with overgrown lawns of dead grass and Condemned notices stamped on every door. These were the houses where I had trick-or-treated, had barbecues, celebrated birthday parties.

Now it was as if zombies had taken it over.

I touched the back of my head. We passed Michael’s house
and he turned around to look back at it. I couldn’t read the expression on his face; I think that was the point.

“Do you want to stop?” I asked.

He shook his head. Hyden glanced at me.

“His old house,” I said.

Hyden nodded. “You guys were neighbors.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we didn’t really spend time—”

“We didn’t hang out together,” Michael said.

Hyden nodded. “I get it.”

We drove in silence for a few more blocks. I pointed to the right. “That’s it.”

He pulled up in front of my house. Strangling the barren rosebushes was a haphazard wire fence that wrapped around the perimeter.

My mother’s prized roses were dead, the bushes just thorny skeletons reaching out for someone to save them, someone who never came.

I had to swallow what would have been too many tears. Michael reached forward from the backseat and squeezed my shoulder.

“Ready?” he said.

I took a deep breath. “Let’s go.” I put my hand on the car door handle.

“Wait,” Hyden said.

“Why?”

He held up a gas mask for me. He tossed one back to Michael.

The idea of wearing a mask like that in my house made me sick. “I’m not wearing that. It’s my home.” This was the place where I’d had sleepovers with my best friends. Baked brownies. Had pizza night every Friday. Not a place for gas masks.

“It might be dangerous. If not the spore residue, the chemicals that were sprayed after,” he said.

Michael fiddled with his mask strap. “He’s right.”

Hyden tossed him gloves.

“I don’t care.” I opened the door and got out while they were putting the gear on.

Hyden and Michael followed me out of the car. Hyden quickly got to work using a wire cutter to get through the fence. Michael looked up and down the street, always on the watch for unfriendlies. But there was no sign of life, not even a squirrel.

As we walked up the path, I felt my pace slow to a crawl. My home. We’d played in this yard, and it had been full of life and laughter. Now it was deadly quiet. The lush green lawn where my dad would play ball with Tyler was now brittle yellow weeds.

We stood at the front door. Planks of wood had been hammered across the middle of the door.
Condemned
was splashed across the planks in paint as red as blood. A cheerful tune broke the silence, startling the guys. It was my mother’s small framed holo, activated by our presence. She used to change this with the seasons, and this one had a picture of us—Dad, her, Tyler, and me—smiling, holding a big cardboard heart. At the end of the short tune we all said, “Welcome.”

A little of the red paint had splattered on the corner of the solar frame.

My legs felt weak.

Michael looked at me. “Want it?”

I nodded. He took a penknife from his pocket and pried off the frame. “Here.”

I slipped it into my purse.

Hyden rolled down his sleeves to cover his arms all the way to his gloves.

“You should do the same,” he said. “What’s the best way in?”

I led them around to the back door. The backyard looked like a graveyard with brown grass and Tyler’s toys lying on their sides—a small bike, a broken metal robot. We went to the back door and I waved my hand over the pad.

It didn’t open.

“It won’t work without electricity,” Hyden said.

Michael used his knife to trip the lock. Hyden pried open the door with the help of the wire cutter. Together they got it open.

Inside, it was dark. It was as it was when we’d left it, the day Tyler and I had to run from the marshals. The sun fought to pierce the drawn curtains, casting a dark yellow light on our belongings. We needed handlites, but we didn’t wear them anymore.

Michael pulled back one of the curtains in the kitchen. “Where do you want to start?”

“In my father’s office,” I said.

I pushed aside my temptation to grab every sentimental object in the house: the last sweater my mother was knitting, the last book my father was reading, a mold of Tyler’s old baby shoes, and my last good report card stuck on the refrigerator. But we had to focus. We pored through my dad’s papers, his file system. Hyden picked up my dad’s airscreen.

“It’s dead. I’ll have to charge it,” Hyden said.

I waved my hand. “Just take it.”

We spent longer in his office than Hyden wanted us to, going through boxes and drawers. We didn’t find anything
that would give us any clues to where he might be—if he was still alive.

We were almost ready to leave. I had filled a box with a few mementos and was trying to decide whether I should also bring one of my dad’s physical file folders. Hyden watched over my shoulder as I flipped through the small pieces of paper and business cards it held.

“Wait. Stop,” he said.

He plucked a business card from the file.

The holo-mation set off, a thumping beat sounded, and Starters danced on top of the card.

“What is it?” Michael asked.

“That’s Club Rune,” Hyden said.

He was right; the words on the card said it all.

Where I first met Madison and Blake.

We all stared at it. “Club Rune?” I said. “My father?”

I couldn’t imagine why my father would have a card from Club Rune. It was a hangout for renters and regular teens. What would a Middle—especially my father—be doing there?

Hyden picked up the box. “We should go.”

“Just give me a minute,” I asked. “Please.”

“It’s not safe for the three of us to be out here,” Hyden said.

“Hey, give her minute, will you?” Michael shifted a box he was holding on his hip.

“You don’t get it,” Hyden said, putting down his box. “I do, because I know how the chipspace works.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t get it.” Michael practically threw his box down. “How about thinking about her? You, you can’t even touch her unless you’re in someone else’s body.”

I breathed in and stared wide-eyed at the two guys. “Michael!”

Hyden froze. I held my breath. They were like two animals, wound as tight as possible, ready to strike.

“No,” Hyden said sadly. “He’s right.”

“Hyden …,” I said, wanting so much to reach out.

He picked up his box. “Go ahead, Callie. We’ll wait for you outside.”

He left. Michael looked at me. “Take your time,” he said before he followed him.

I sighed as I stood in the middle of my father’s office. What to do with my last precious minutes? I wanted something of his, but what?

One of his watches lay on a stack of papers on his desk. It was old-fashioned, like from his old movies that he loved. He had a couple of these; they were rare. Collector’s items.

I put it on my wrist. It was too big. Heavy. I slipped it off and put it back. My eyes desperately scanned the room and stopped on his bookcase. At the top, hanging on the edge, was his old fedora. I used a fishing pole to get it down. I put it to my nose and breathed in. It still smelled like him, a tweedy, woodsy scent. I held it there, pretending he was with me.

Could I remember that scent? Memorize it so I could call it up when I ached for his arm around my shoulders?

I pulled my face away from the hat and stroked the felt. It still had his shape. But it wasn’t him.

I left it by the watch so they could be together.

Downtown L.A. at night varied from street to street in terms of the crowds. Mostly it was quiet, but we made a point of avoiding the camping protestors around City Hall.

When we arrived at our destination, Hyden squeezed his vehicle past the line of empty parked cars and cruised to the valet pickup zone.

“That’s it?” Michael asked.

I nodded and looked up at the club where so much had happened to me. I never imagined I’d see it again.

“Welcome to Club Rune,” the cheerful Ender valet said.

“We don’t need to valet it,” I said to the Ender as I got out. “He’s just letting us off.”

I gestured toward Hyden as Michael and I got out.

“Have fun,” Hyden said out the window and drove away.

I wondered what he was thinking. He—and Michael—had made zero reference to their argument at my house.