The Leaving (16 page)

Eliminate childhood
. . .

Memory-wiping
. . .

Countdown
. . .

“Where did he get this?” She felt her whole body wake up in a new way, all those lights going back on at once. “What does it mean?”

I’m going on a trip
.

To the leaving
.

Had she seen this book—
read
this book?

When she was five?

“I don’t know,” Lucas said. “I don’t know how he even heard about it or where he found it. There’s hardly anything about it on the web. And of course everything about
us
comes up first. But the author lives in Florida.”

   /
/
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“We can’t possibly have been in pods this whole time,” Scarlett said.

Pods on Earth was arguably a worse theory than alien pods.

“Not
literally
, no,” Lucas said. “I don’t think so. It’s really only the concept that’s the same. They start with six kids as test subjects before the whole thing goes wide.”

“And they don’t remember anything when they come back?” Scarlett asked.

“No, they remember. But they remember an awesome childhood. An entirely fake childhood. And there are sort of hints that these new types of kids—ones who’ve been to The Leaving—when they come back, they just can’t cope with reality, even though they seem like they have it all together. So the book is about how if you sanitize childhood, society will implode. Oh and the kids all know they’re going; they know before that it’s happening.”

/
   /

“Like I did.”

    /
/

She wanted to call for Tammy, but wasn’t allowed to call her Tammy. She had completely mastered avoidance of the direct address.

“Come with me.”

She went out to the backyard where Tammy was sitting on a folding chair with her feet in an inflatable kiddie pool shaped like a fish. “Have you ever seen this?” Scarlett held the book out.

“No,” Tammy said. “Why?” She spied Lucas and sat upright.

Took her sunglasses off.

“It’s really you,” she said.

“It’s really me,” he said.

Tammy stood and went to hug him. “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “That you’re back. That Will’s gone.”

Lucas seemed receptive to the hug, and Scarlett hated to ruin the moment but . . .

“Have you ever seen this?” She held the book out again, more firmly.

Really wanting an explanation.

Needing something to shift and make sense.

She said, “It’s a book about a society where kids are sent away for their childhoods.”

“There were a bunch of books written about it.” Tammy finally let go of Lucas.

Scarlett felt her breathing change and deepen. Had she been jealous? Of the hug? Of contact? She said, “This was written
before
it happened.”

“My father had it,” Lucas said.

“In that old RV?” Tammy returned to her chair and pulled her sunglasses back down. “Did he talk to the police about it?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas said.

Scarlett looked at Lucas pointedly. “Let’s go in and do that.”

Back in the house, she stood at the kitchen aisle. “Where in Florida does he live? Were you able to find
his address
?”

“No, but I found the town. Tarpon Springs. We could go there, maybe. Ask around? My dad was e-mailing with his son a few years ago, but the e-mail I sent bounced.”

“So we stop people in the street?” She had no idea what their next steps should be but for some reason felt that it shouldn’t be calling the police. “What would we even ask him?”

“I don’t know. Where he got the idea? If he has any theories about us?” A look of fear and excitement on his face all at once. “For all we know, it’s
him
.”

“Do you
want
to talk to Chambers?” she asked, making it clear in her tone that she didn’t.

“What are you two plotting?” Tammy was there; she’d brought the scent of her sunscreen—coconut and chemicals—with her.

“Nothing,” Scarlett said.

Tammy went to the fridge and refilled her lemonade. “Liar.”

Scarlett said, “We were thinking of trying to talk to the author.”

“You don’t think Will did that already? Or Chambers?”

Scarlett started piecing things together. “Chambers would have shown it to you if he knew about it. He would have asked you about it, since I was the one who said I was going to the leaving. He would have asked
us
about it yesterday.”

Tammy twisted her mouth to one side. “Suppose you’re right.”

Scarlett felt something inside her turn sour when she said, “It looks like in the book this is an advanced society that is aware of and in communication with intelligent life-forms on other planets.”

Tammy’s eyes turned beady.

Rightfully so.

Scarlett said, “I’ll go with you tonight, if you let me do this.”

Tammy picked up her lemonade and turned toward the hall. “You want to find someone like that. A writer. You go and you ask around in the bars.” From down the hall she called out, “The dive-ier the better.”

Scarlett turned to Lucas and almost laughed.

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “It’s actually a really good idea. What’s tonight?”

“Long story,” she said. “Should we invite Kristen?”

Lucas seemed to stiffen when he said, “If you feel like you have to.”

Scarlett was shaking her head. “Not really.”

Had to trust this.

Trust him.

With everything.

Had to start now.

She said, “She told me she thinks she remembers not liking me.”

“I’ve been feeling like I’m not sure I like her,” he said. “So just us?”

She nodded. “Just us.”

The words felt familiar.

Just us
.

Just them.

Against . . . the world?

What?

She said, “I have something inside me, Lucas. Something I swallowed but of course I don’t remember doing it. It’s metal and oval. Turned up on the MRI.”

He touched her arm softly. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“Are you in pain?” he asked.

“No.”

Had he even
thought
about kissing her?

“So you’re just . . . waiting?”

She nodded again.

“I have a tattoo,” he said. “It’s like a camera shutter.”

Click.

Say cheese.

Tried to picture what that would even look like, in ink.

    /
        /
    /
           /
         /
/

“Where?”

He pointed.

Where he pointed.

Intimate.

All of this too intimate.

Showed her a picture on his phone.

Made her

stomach

flip.

“We’re going to figure this out,” he said. “So we’ll go in the morning?”

“Yes.”

They lingered there a moment, and then he said, “Can you take me somewhere now, actually? I don’t have a car and—”

“Of course.” Thinking anywhere. “Where?”

He said, “I want to buy a camera.”

Lucas

He left her reading in the car and went into a large electronics store. They hadn’t been able to find a proper camera shop close enough, so this would have to do.

He’d wanted her to come in with him.

He could tell her all about the book, already had.

But no, she wanted to read it herself, couldn’t wait. Because what if only she could make the connection?

The news was on a wall of televisions inside, and they were talking about The Leaving. Apparently nothing else was happening in the world, or at least in Florida.

“. . .
explain the distrust?
” the anchor was saying.

A man in a suit was saying,

“
The whole community down here was a part of this thing, you know? You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who wasn’t deeply impacted by this when it happened
.”

Lucas stopped for a moment, watched.

“
People came from miles away to help with the search; there were vigils and there was a whole ribbon campaign if you recall, with people tying ribbons on trees and mailboxes
.”

All too strange.

“
Even years later, the turnout at those anniversary vigils at Opus 6 was huge. This was not a personal tragedy. So there are a lot of people who feel very emotional about this, and to have them come back . . . but not all of them. It leaves a sour taste
.”

Lucas turned away from TVs to find cameras.

“
People want the happy ending, they want answers, they want, mostly, someone to blame. And if we can’t blame the person responsible, there’s a tendency, yes, to blame the victim
.”

There was a good-size selection—a long row of cameras loosely wired to the display shelf—but Lucas couldn’t spend a fortune, so he narrowed the choices quickly. Ryan had given him some cash to keep him going while they waited for their father’s estate to be settled, at which point Ryan guessed they’d have enough to live on for a year or so if they were lucky.

Lucas began handling the cameras in his price range to see how they felt. He liked the styling of some and not others and didn’t like snap and shoots, felt drawn to more elaborate machines with manual lenses. He held up a SONY he liked the feel of and peered through the view-finder, one eye closed.

“I see we have a shutterbug.” A saleswoman leaned on the display with a bony elbow.

“Excuse me?” He lowered the camera.

“Most people these days just hold it up and look at the screen.”

“Oh,” he said, scrolling through some controls to see how intuitive or not the setup seemed. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“Do I know you?” She tilted her head; her name tag said her name was Meg, and she looked maybe forty, forty-five? “You’re real familiar-like.”

Her voice had shifted in a way he didn’t like; the wall of TVs still blared that there were no new developments in the case of his life. He said, “I think I’m going to take this one.”

She unlocked a cabinet beneath the display and slid out a SONY box.

He followed her to the register and she rang up the camera while studying him curiously. All at once the TVs switched to a baseball game. He handed over a wad of bills.

“I just figured it out.” She held out his change. “I
do
know you.”

“No offense”—he took his change, folding the bills around the coins and shoving them in his front pocket—“but you don’t
know
me.”

Her lips curled with offense.

“Maybe you
recognize
me,” he said. “But don’t for a second think you
know
me.”

He grabbed the camera bag and turned to go.

“No one believes your story,” she called out after him.

The automatic door slid open and he stepped out, heart hammering at his ribs.

Camera crews had the car surrounded.

He had to fight his way through them to get to the passenger-side door.

Inside, Scarlett was in tears.

“What do you think it is?” a reporter shouted. “Why do you think you would swallow something?”

Then another, louder: “Why aren’t you doing more to help find Max?”

“Start the car,” Lucas said.

She nodded but didn’t move.

“Start the car,” he repeated.

This time, she turned the ignition with a shaky hand and put the car in reverse and inched back; the reporters pulled away and scattered and banged on the car some, but she just kept going, slow and steady, and in a moment they were free.

“I like your haircut,” he said at a stop sign, and her hand went to her neck.

She said, “Thanks.”

AVERY

It was a ridiculous thing to be jealous of. Scarlett, with some mysterious object inside her, at the center of the drama. Avery was on the outskirts and didn’t like it out here. She needed to be closer to the action, closer to information. Because her mother was going downhill fast. She spent her days pacing and her nights fighting panic attacks. She’d wake up thinking she heard a knock on the door, then cry uncontrollably when it ended up not being anyone at all. Avery actually found herself wishing for a Mannequin Mom. She’d pose her by the pool with an umbrella drink and leave her there until all this was over.

“What do you think it is?” Emma asked.

They were on the beach; Emma had insisted. The hotel they were parked near was having a Hula-Hoop contest.

“I honestly have no idea.” Avery was watching one contestant in particular; thinking maybe if
Scarlett
did some Hula-Hooping the object would get unhinged and come out faster. She’d thought about calling Lucas maybe three hundred times today already.

“I can’t imagine what she feels like,” Emma said. “The whole world waiting for her . . .”

“. . . to take a dump,” Avery said.

“Exactly.”

Avery shook her head. “I can’t really imagine what any of them feels like.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean the whole thing is messed up. Imagine if you didn’t remember the last eleven years.”

Emma sat quietly, tilted her head. “Nope. Can’t imagine.”

Avery laughed. Emma was maybe not the deepest person in the world.

“What?” Emma asked.

“Nothing.” Couldn’t even explain.

“No, what?”

“You’re a good friend, is all.” Avery nodded. “Talking about this with me endlessly.”

“You’re a good friend, too.”

“Not lately.”

“No?”

Emma was the kind of friend who would give her a kidney if she need ed it. Avery wasn’t sure she’d give anybody a kidney—let alone Emma.