Pucker (21 page)

“Who's fault?” I ask.

“Michael. He did it—I'm sure of it. He told Dash that you gave us the tea. He probably told them about Cook, too.”

“You should have treated him with more respect,” admonishes Rose. “You should have been kinder. He's suffered as much as the rest of us.”

“I know,” I say.

“And you're sorry?” Rose asks, expecting compassion.

I nod. I
am
sorry. Because of Michael my life is over.

FIFTY-FIVE

W
HEN I GET TO THE MINISTRY, it's deserted. No guards. Nobody patrolling the grounds. I walk right through the front door.

“Thomas,” Phaidra says as I step into the Maker's room.

I'm startled to see her—and confused. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

She's sitting in a chair. Her hair is pulled back with a blue velvet ribbon. Tendrils swoop down her long, elegant neck like streamers.

“Waiting for you,” she says.

Her answer makes no sense, but neither does anything else anymore. “Everything's fallen apart,” I tell her. “They know who I am. They've taken Cook.”

Phaidra moans softly, but she doesn't move from her chair.

“Phaidra, come on, let's go. We've got to find Cook.”

She stands, extends her hand to me. “I don't know if I'll be much help,” she says.

“What are you talking about?” I say, grabbing her hand and pulling. She stumbles.

“Wait, not so quickly,” she says. “Please.” Her voice is miniature.

“Phaidra, we have to hurry,” I say, pulling again. She nearly falls, but I catch her and with a small cry she frantically touches my face, my eyes, my nose.

I swat at her, irritated that she's playing games. “Did you hear me?”

“They Changed me back, Thomas,” she says dully.

“What? There's nothing wrong with you. You're perfect.”

I let go of her suddenly and her hands paw wildly at the air. Then I see what's different. The girl whose gaze was creek-cold and clear as a November night—her gaze is now blank.

“I'm blind,” she says. “I've been blind since I was six years old. That's why I came to Isaura.” She laughs softly. “Funny thing, though. It's not so bad to be changed back. You won't believe it. It's almost a relief.”

I stare at her in disbelief.

“I came looking for your mother's Seerskin and I was caught,” Phaidra confesses. “That's why they Changed me back.”

Her pupils are freakishly large. Like saucers.

“No,” I say. “Tell me you didn't do that.”

“I was trying to help,” she says softly.

“I didn't ask for your help,” I whisper.

“I had to. You'd given up. I couldn't let your mother die,” she cries.

If only she could see me. See how my movie star face falls in on itself now, like a cake that is missing its eggs.

“I knew you would change your mind. You would have regretted giving up,” she says desperately.

But she's wrong. Like everybody else, she thinks far too much of me.

I take a step backward. “I have to find Cook,” I whisper.

“Take me with you,” she insists. “I want to go back with you. I don't care about being blind. I don't care about your face. I won't even be able to see you.”

“Well, how fortunate for you,” I say.

“That's not what I mean!” she exclaims. Her eyes dart frantically to the left and right. “God, I can't believe you're acting this way.”

Below the fringe of her lashes, two blue pendulums.

“Thomas, please,” she begs.

Everybody I love has betrayed me: my mother, my father, Cook, and now Phaidra.

“You're going to leave me, aren't you?” she says.

When I don't answer, she laughs. “What a shame. We would have been a perfect match on Earth. Quasimodo and Helen Keller.”

I tiptoe backward. She's an anchor wrapped around my waist. And I have far too many anchors already.

“I can hear you leaving,” she shouts. “I'm not deaf !”

But she doesn't see me leave.

FIFTY-SIX

H
OW QUICKLY WE MAKE THE ones we love into
other.

I leave the Ministry and stumble down to the river. I go to a cave that Phaidra once showed me. A place where she had hidden away to read her forbidden books. I want to hibernate.

Against the back wall I find a mattress fashioned out of grass and next to it a stack of Phaidra's stolen books:
Ulysses, My Antonia, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
. Now I understand why she read so voraciously. She had been blind. She was making up for lost time.

I open
My Antonia
and drape it across my chest like a flag. The smell of the book comforts me. It's the scent of my childhood: a time when I believed stories could save your life. I think of my mother. Is she even conscious anymore? Is she is in terrible pain? I've failed her. I've failed everybody who's had the misfortune to depend on me.

 

“Thomas, get up.” Someone shakes my shoulder. I must have fallen asleep. I jerk upright and haul the book over my head in an attack position.

“Put that book down,” says Rose.

I lower it slowly. She hands me a sandwich. It's tomato and cheese. The bread is all soggy, but I don't care—I gobble it up. Food has never tasted so good.

“Phaidra's missing,” Rose says.

I nod.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“And?” She places her hands on her hips.

“She's not missing.”

Rose raises her eyebrows.

“She's at the Ministry. They Changed her back,” I say.

“My God, why?” Rose asks, her face flushed with shock. She looks at me sprawled on the grass, the books scattered about me. “And why are you lying around like you're on vacation?”

“You don't understand,” I say lifelessly. “There are things I haven't told you. Things that make this complicated.”

“Why don't you make me understand, then,” says Rose, glaring at me.

So I tell her—everything. It's not easy. I feel like a wrestler, pinned to the mat by my own despair, hopeless-ness, and shame, but somehow I manage to get the story out. When I'm done, Rose sinks down on the cave floor next to me.

“So they Changed Phaidra back because she was trying to help you. And you left her there.” Rose looks anxiously at the entrance to the cave. “When are you going back to the Ministry?”

“Who said I was going back?”

Rose's mouth sags open. “You're just going to leave her there?”

Phaidra's face, her dead eyes, flash into my mind and I squeeze my eyes shut against the image. “She's better off without me.”

“You mean you're better off without her.”

“No!” I cry.

Rose leans forward angrily. “I have to go now. But you should know—you were the most stunning young man the first time I saw you—
before
you got Changed.”

A while later I stick my head out of the cave and try and gauge what time it is by how high the sun is in the sky, but I'm miserable at that sort of thing. Phaidra would know; Phaidra could probably make a sundial out of twigs and a pile of deer droppings.

I'm strangely disoriented. The stitches holding the day in place have loosened and the hours are sliding about, colliding into one another. I crawl back onto the grass mattress. I try to read, but Willa's words won't stay in sentences, so I suck on the solitary images like cough drops:
brown pools, baked earth, copper-red grass
. In this way I give myself solace; I begin to patch myself together.

What a strange life this is, how vast and unfathomable. Some people believe a man can be molded from dust. I drift away once again, the bottomless sleep of the fucked.

 

“Wake up,” whispers Emma. “Wake up.” She's crawled onto the mattress and tucked herself under my arm.

I rise up on one elbow. “How long have you been here?”

“Just a few minutes,” she says, plucking at my sleeve. “Rose told me what happened.”

“Jesus,” I mutter.

Emma looks at me indignantly. “I'm the one who loves you. She had to tell me.”

I stare at Emma. The ends of her long brown curls are wet from where she's sucked on them.

“That's a bad habit,” I say, picking up a lock of hair. “Didn't your mother ever tell you that?”

“Did you hear me?” she asks.

“I heard you.”

“That I love you?”

“Emma,” I say. “I'm not worth your time.”

“You're the stupidest boy I ever met,” she says. “Why don't you stop feeling sorry for yourself? It's boring.” She sits up. “I don't love you that way, you know. The way Phaidra loves you.”

“I know,” I say.

“Good.”

Something cracks in my chest. I can't believe this girl—her grace.

We sit in silence for a while. “Hey, Emma, do you have that picture? The one of your parents sitting in the rowboat?”

She looks at me suspiciously. “Why?”

“I wanted to see it again. I think I made a mistake,” I say.

She rolls her eyes. “You didn't make a mistake. There was no space on the seat in the rowboat. My parents weren't thinking of me when they were out on the lake. They were escaping from me, from my life in the dark.”

“You knew that?”

“Yes. I just needed to not believe it for a while. And guess what? I don't need to believe it anymore. My parents did their best with what they got.”

A lesson. She is teaching me a lesson. This eleven-year-old, sunlight-deprived girl.

“The tea,” I say. “Promise me you'll keep drinking the tea. And give it to the others so they'll stay whole.”

I think of that first day when we all arrived: Jerome and Jesse shuffling along, attached at the chest; Rose and her Pacesaver Scout wheelchair; Emma and her protective clothing; Michael, his pockets stuffed with Twinkies and Ring Dings; and me, of course, Pucker. It seems like a lifetime ago, but I find myself filled with tenderness for the people that we were.

“You want me to give it to everybody?” asks Emma. “Not just our group?”

“Yes, everybody,” I say, thinking of the Connecticuts and Brian.

“It'll be like a giant tea party. Like the Boston Tea Party!”

“They threw the tea overboard in Boston, Emma.”

She grins. “I was making a joke.”

We sit in a contented silence for a few minutes and I know it's the last bit of peace I'll have for a while.

I pray Phaidra will forgive me.

FIFTY-SEVEN

I
'M SO LOST IN MY THOUGHTS, so intent on running as fast as I can to the Ministry, that I don't hear the sound of the wagon. The rig creaks to a halt and Dash glares down at me. “Get in, idiot,” he says.

It doesn't occur to me to disobey him. I climb up and sit beside him, panting. He looks straight ahead, the reins wound tight around his knuckles.

“So—you got a plan?” he asks.

I shake my head, wondering what he's up to.

“You better have a plan,” he says.

“What do you care?” I say. “You turned me in.”

He snorts. “I didn't turn you in. You always think everyone's after you. Life isn't that black and white.”

“Right,” I say, running a hand through my hair, which is wet with sweat.

“That's not to say you're not in deep trouble,” he adds.

“Thanks for the news flash.”

He looks disgusted. “Could you for one minute stop being such a smartass? Are you capable of that?”

“Sorry,” I say.

Dash lets his breath out loudly.

I run my hands down my thighs, pressing my fingers into the bones, hard. Everything aches. Anxiety has ironed my body flat.

“They Changed her back,” I say. I can't bring myself to say Phaidra's name out loud.

Dash scowls. “Why do you think I'm here? I told you not to drag her into this. But you did anyway, you little shit.”

He's right. I am a shit. We ride in silence for a few minutes.

“I didn't turn you in,” Dash says finally. “I played dumb. But they put it together without me. They found your Barker's—it wasn't too hard.”

“Why didn't you tell on me?” I can't stop myself from pushing, goading. “They probably would have given you an extra case of whiskey. Another carton of cigarettes.”

Dash looks off into the distance, his jaw tight. “Because I saw you before you were Changed.”

“So you helped me because you pitied me.”

“No,” Dash says, weariness in his voice. “I did it because I saw who you really were.”

Gratitude wells up inside me, a hot sweetness that makes my throat throb. Everything comes too late, I think. What's important rings the bell just as you're putting on your coat and getting ready to walk out the door.

We drive around a bend and the city comes into sight. Dash stops the wagon.

“End of the line,” he says.

I stare at him stupidly, not wanting to move.

He punches me lightly on the shoulder. “Out.”

I climb down and stand there like a child, looking up at him.

“I don't have a plan,” I say, suddenly bereft at the thought of him going.

“Both oars, T,” says Dash steadily, looking me in the eyes. “Put both oars in the water and row.”