Текст книги "Dead River"

Автор книги: Cyn Balog

Соавторы: Cyn Balog
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

Chapter Eighteen

My mind whirls with all the visions I’ve seen and fragments of the story Justin told. The blade slashing at Trey’s arm. The cold water bubbling over his head. The desperate attempt to break the surface, to breathe. That’s the one. Get him. “No. No,” I say, “There were two. Someone told someone … to get—”

“I don’t know what your visions are, but I assure you, I was there. I was the only one there.”

I pull my knees to my chest and press myself against the tree trunk, as far away from him as I can get without leaving my position. “Trey was killed because he turned in a murderer. He saw a murder. Who else did you—”

He grabs my hand, immediately sending a chill up to my elbow. Only when my hand is in his do I realize how violently it has been shaking. He looks into my eyes and I feel dizzy and breathless from the weight of his stare. “I am not a monster. I do not like to talk about my time among the living. I squandered it. I made mistakes. Mistakes I wish I could undo. But I can’t.”

For some reason, I think of Justin. He’d said kissing Angela was a mistake, too. Back then, I didn’t want to, couldn’t believe that mistakes were possible. But though Jack’s sin is so much more damnable, looking into his eyes, I am surprised at how easily I’d be willing to believe he has changed. “But you’ve changed?” I whisper, hoping that the answer is yes.

He doesn’t have to say a thing. I’m his servant. As this thought flickers in my mind, it brings a moment of clarity. Servant! What am I doing? What is wrong with– But by then he is so near that I can feel the curve of his body pressing against mine, so cold that even though we are separated by clothing, his skin sears my flesh. He holds up my hand and presses his palm flat against mine, and all I can do is marvel at how perfectly and seamlessly they seem to go together. His face is so near to me that his breathing tickles my chin. “Sometimes we get caught in a whirlpool. No matter what we do to escape, we can’t avoid being pulled under. Kiandra, I’m still in the whirlpool.”

“You don’t have to be. There’s always a way out.”

“Perhaps I haven’t found it yet,” he whispers, as though he’s already dismissed the idea. His eyes are on my lips, which are waiting for him, trembling.

The thought of Justin flickers dimly in the back of my mind, a dying light among a thousand brilliant stars. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more than this, now. The anticipation is painful. “Kiss me,” I murmur, and fully surrendering to my role as his own, I manage a “please” with the last of my breath.

He moves forward an almost imperceptible distance; then, in insult to my waiting mouth, his lips spread into a smile. He pulls away and stands. “If you don’t want to help us, why don’t you go back to the living? Why are you wasting our time?”

I open my eyes, momentarily bewildered and shamed. My mouth opens but words will not come out.

“If you want to help us, you need to go across,” he snaps. “Now.”

“I want …,” I begin, but I don’t know what I want. Ten minutes ago, what I would have wanted was to be anywhere but with him. He frightened me. And yet something has changed, and now I want to help him. I want it more than anything. Now, having him here, so near, I realize that what’s right for me and what simply feels right are two different things, and I can’t trust myself to know the difference. Maybe I am in the whirlpool, too. He leans over me until his lips are once again right before mine. And then he does it, he kisses me. It’s not like kissing Justin, not at all, because the taste of Jack is something foul, sour, like mold and rotten things, and still I push against him, my mouth moving against his, wanting more. I wrap my arms around him, pulling myself to him, lacing my fingers in his hair, every inch of me burning until I realize that my fingers are kneading through something wet and spongy, and that pieces of it are coming off in my hands.

I open my eyes and there is nothing there, only the quiet outlines of the trees, still in the bright moonlight. I’m crouched on my hands and knees on the ground, in a puddle of mud. My hands and most of my arms are painted black with muddy leaves.

I’m not sure how I manage to get up and stumble through the woods, toward the cabin. I don’t hear the sound of my feet hitting the ground. My breath billows in a cloud in front of me, and I blow through it. My hands feel sticky and wet and yet most of my body is numb, as if it has fallen into a deep sleep. Everything in the world seems asleep; there are no people, no sounds, not even the rush of the water I’ve come to expect. I stop for a moment and hold my hands in front of me. Yes, blood. So much blood. By now I can see the lights of the cabin. I rush across the highway, not bothering to stop. I must get home. I must get help.

I somehow get inside, and the heat is so intense my face feels like it’s on fire. Justin is standing under the giant moose antlers, clutching his head in both hands like he’s trying to lift it from his body. Angela is on the couch, chewing on her thumbnail, something she always does when she’s nervous. I expect them to both react when they see me coming, but they don’t. Justin continues to squeeze his head like his hands are a vise, and Angela stares off at the fireplace, even though there isn’t a fire there. I’m about to shout for help when Justin throws down his arms.

“I am such an idiot. I screwed everything up,” he says miserably.

“Oh, stop,” Angela says.

“It’s my fault she ran away. And now who knows what could happen to her? She’s not thinking clear. I really screwed it up,” he mumbles.

I stop for a moment, glad to hear him admit his guilt, then rush forward. “I’m here,” I say, holding out my hands.

I expect them to turn toward me. I expect to see their faces contort in horror. I expect Angela to launch into Florence Nightingale mode, ushering me to the couch, and Justin to whip out his cell and call an ambulance. None of these things happens. Well, not at first. After a long pause, Justin reaches into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulls out his phone. “I need to call,” he says. But he’s not looking at me.

I move forward, into the room. “Justin,” I say to him.

But he won’t look at me. I’m standing where I can reach out and touch Angela, and all she does is continue to study and chew on her fingernails, as if I’m not even there. As if …

I look down at the blood seeping through my jacket, making it look sleek and black, like a seal’s skin. Then I stand between them. “Justin?”

Angela says, “Yeah. I think you need to.”

Need to what? I turn to her, I’m standing right in front of her, and her eyes are on me, but they’re not. They’re focused on what’s behind me. Justin. I move closer to her, wave my hand in her face. She doesn’t even blink. “Angela?”

Nothing.

Oh my God. I can’t breathe. I can’t even see, now, because the tears are falling freely and blurring my vision. I can’t wipe them away because my hands are crusted with dirt and blood. I just stand there, moving from one to the other, hoping that one of them will say, Oh, hey, there you are! But Justin has his phone up to his ear and is staring at the ceiling. I can hear the phone ringing, and then a familiar voice says “Yep?” on the other end. There’s only one person I know who answers the phone like that.

“Mr. Levesque?” Justin says into the receiver.

My breath hitches. Dad.

The tears fall harder. If he were here, everything would be better. My heart twists with the thought of everything I’d done to get away from him. I was so, so stupid. How could I have wanted that? How could I have thought that would be better? I want him here. I want him to wrap his arms around me and tell me he loves me, that I’m his girl. Never in my life have I wanted that so much. I reach for the phone, crying, “Give that to me!” But even though Justin doesn’t move, just stands there with one hand holding the phone and the other hand pinching his other ear closed, I can’t touch him. Something is wrong. I touch, and yet I feel nothing. I reach for where the phone is, but my hands pass through it like it’s made of air. I cannot snatch it from him.

Justin says, “There’s a problem with Ki. She’s missing.”

I’m sobbing now. “No, I’m not. Justin. I’m right here.”

But it’s useless. I drop my head, letting the tears puddle on the floor, with my blood. So, so much blood. Don’t they notice that? Don’t they notice anything about me?

Justin looks at the ceiling and exhales deeply. “It’s my fault,” he says to my father. “I was the one who convinced her to come up here.”

I can hear my father’s voice on the other end, an octave higher with worry. Though I can’t make out the words, I know what he says: “I’ll be right up. I’m coming. I’m leaving right now.”

Oh, Dad, I think, as I stare at the growing puddle of blood at my feet, I’m so sorry. But it’s too late.

Chapter Nineteen

I don’t know how much later, I find myself wandering the woods in the blackness. It’s dark, and yet I can see. I’m not cold or hot, I’m not anything. My feet don’t make a sound, and though there are brambles and roots popping out of the earth, my footing is sure, as if I’m walking a well-known path, and nothing touches me. My wound seeps blood endlessly, but it doesn’t hurt.

I don’t know how this happened. One moment I was talking to Jack, and … Oh, no, I was thinking of kissing him. I wanted to, so badly. Somehow, though I can’t feel anything else, I can still feel my face aflame with embarrassment.

Did Jack do this to me?

I think of his last words. If you want to help us, you need to go across. Now.

But going across would mean … No, it’s not possible.

Dead. Am I dead? And now, obviously, I don’t want to go across. I can’t. And yet I don’t remember telling him that; I was too busy wishing for other things. But he was a vision. Only a vision, my vision. How could something made of air kill a living being? Could he take a knife, the same knife he’d used to slash at Trey, and plunge it into my stomach? Of course, to other people, he may have been air, but to me, he was more than real. I can still taste his vile lips and feel the muscles of his body straining under his shirt. Maybe being real to me was all it took for him to have the power to claim my life.

Trey warned me to stay away from Jack. What did he say? You love your life? You love your daddy? You want to get back home to him?

Oh God, yes. Yes, I’d give anything.

Trey. I snap back to the moment when he reached down and touched my ankle. The calming effect it had on me, the cozy, comfortable sensation that spread over my body as he massaged out all the pain, all the wrong, with his fingertip. And suddenly I am running. I stop clutching my stomach and dart among the trees, calling to him. “Trey!” My voice sounds different as it echoes among the tall pines, so that for a moment I’m not convinced it’s mine. It’s frantic, yes, but also deeper, more mature. And I don’t know where I’m going, and yet I know the path well. I know this place like a newborn baby knows its mother.

Trey is ahead of me on the path. His eyes are downcast, his hands in his pockets so that the blood from his wound is a crimson racing stripe on the side of his dirty jeans. He sighs as I approach. “I’ve failed, haven’t I?”

I reach down and lift up my shirt, exposing my belly. The few places that are not stained the color of rust are a sick, marbled white. The wound itself is an ugly slit right beside my navel, bubbling thickly with black, like an oil spill. I whisper, desperate, “You can help me. You can heal it, right?”

“Aw, Kiandra.” He looks into my eyes, and I know the answer immediately. But that won’t do. That is not enough. He’s done miracles before and called them child’s play. There has to be something he can do.

“No. Don’t tell me that. You can do something! You have to!”

He reaches for my hand. Before, his body was so cold, and now his fingers are warm when they brush on my wrist. I want him to use them as he did before, to heal, so I take them in my bloody hand and guide them to my stomach. He lets me pull them only so far before he gently takes them away and shakes his head. “Kiandra. It won’t work.”

“But it has to. It has to,” I whimper. “I can’t be …” But I can’t say the word. My lips have forbidden its passage. “I’m only seventeen. I’m going to graduate this month. I’m going to USM. I got in, early acceptance …” I think of my dad, taking me out to Friendly’s for an ice cream sundae when I told him the news. He’d been beaming. The thought wracks my body with a torrent of sobs. “It’s not over for me. Please.”

He doesn’t say a word, but his face is somber, his eyes are glassy. Is he crying, too? And then I move beside him and see a ghastly sight, just off the path. A body, lying supine among the dead pine needles. A familiar powder-blue jacket, now ripped open, white batting spilling out. A spray of blond hair, greenish in the moonlight and marred with bits of dead leaves and dirt. Eyes open, unblinking. My eyes. They’d stared back at me in the mirror every day of my life, and now they’re just glistening marbles, staring forever at the sky, at God. And then I see the blood. So much blood, everywhere.

I bring my hands to my mouth, thinking my breath will warm them, but there is no breath in me. My body is shaking and my knees weaken, like two branches ready to snap. Trey pulls me toward him, and it’s then I notice we’re on a small outcropping, directly over the river. He holds me in his arms, and the moonlight dancing on the ripples is just a sad reminder that things are changing, and will always change, whether I’m ready for them or not.

By morning, my tears have dried, leaving two tight, salty tracks on my cheeks. I sit up, hoping that I’m with Justin, that everything in the past day was just a horrible nightmare. But I’m on the riverbank, and the new sunlight is dappling the water, making its surface so bright that I have this inexplicable urge to jump in, to feel the waves washing over me. Strangely, the river is no longer menacing to me, and I no longer shiver when I look at it. I glance around, blinking. In the morning light, everything has a new, sharper edge to it, with the colors more vivid, the angles more defined. It’s as if in life I had a veil over my eyes, and suddenly I’m seeing everything clearly for the first time.

I rub my eyes and pull my jacket up over my belly. The wound looks fresh. It begins to bleed anew, flooding over the waistband of my jeans. I slide my jacket back into place and the tears begin to fall again.

I’ve almost forgotten about Trey. When I turn around, I’m embarrassed to see that I must have fallen asleep in his arms and used his chest as a pillow, because there’s a spot of drool on his shirt. And here I thought dead people didn’t have to worry about things like that. He doesn’t notice, though. He’s wide awake and staring at me. “Feeling better?” he asks, his voice gentle.

His wound, the knife slash on his forearm, isn’t bleeding. I point to mine. “Will this ever stop?”

He nods. “When you’re not thinking on it. Let it alone.”

“Are you kidding?” How am I supposed to forget about this massive, ugly thing in my middle? The blood is running down my thighs. My intestines could slip out at any moment.

When I look up, his wound has opened, and blood begins to bubble on the surface. He shakes his head. “I know. Easier said than done.”

I shiver in the morning air; my teeth are chattering in a steady drumbeat. I’m not cold; my hands are their normal color, not the deathly blue that they sometimes turn in freezing temperatures. Funny that my hands look more alive now. I think of the last sight I witnessed before Trey pulled me to him and I fell asleep in his arms. It was my body, lying off the path. Dead. I don’t want to see it. Don’t want to at all, yet still I find myself craning my neck, searching it out. Maybe if I don’t see it, this will all prove to be a horrible nightmare and I’ll be able to go home.

Trey puts a hand on my shoulder. “I moved it. Down near the river. Didn’t think you’d want to see it again.”

I sigh, grateful and sad all at once. “I should have listened to you. You knew he was going to try to hurt me. I just didn’t think …” I swipe uselessly at the tears. “Why? Because he hates my mother?”

He’s slowly stroking his thumb back and forth over my collarbone. “Don’t worry yourself over the whys. It’s done.”

Then I say, “Jack told me he killed you. Is that true?”

He looks surprised for a moment. “Wow. Guess lying never got him nowhere, so now he’s trying out telling the truth. Yeah. It’s true.”

“He’s a monster. First you, now me.” I shake my head. “He killed you because you turned him in, right? He’d killed someone else? A little girl?”

His face hardens. “Him? Nah. I don’t like talking about it. Happened a long time ago, so it don’t matter anyway. Let’s see.” Staring at my wound, he unbuttons and removes his shirt. His arms and chest are tan and muscled. I find myself blushing and looking away as he comes close to me and gently presses the shirt against my stomach. It doesn’t hurt, not at all. His hair flops in his face and when he leans down I can smell it. It’s like leaves and fresh wind and woods. And then I see that his shirt is sopping with my blood, and remember last night.

That horrible, horrible night. I don’t even hate Justin or Ange anymore; I don’t think I ever did. I just miss them. I miss those dull, sloppy kisses Justin used to give me. I miss shopping with Ange. The only thing I ever wore bikinis for was sunbathing at the back of the house, but the last time we went out, I’d found a cute pink one. My first thought when I look at that wound is I guess bikinis are out. Then my mind travels over everything else that’s out, too. Kissing. Shopping. Sunbathing. Talking to Ange. Everything. I fold up into a ball and start to cry again.

I feel Trey’s arm around me. “Hey, hey, hey. Kiandra. It’s not all bad.”

“What’s good about it?” I sniff.

He straightens. “Well, for one, you get to spend time with me. That’s pretty … well, I’ll just go and say it. Great.” He smiles broadly.

My jaw just hangs open. It’s the first time he’s ever joked. Aren’t the dead supposed to be more … sullen? Hopeless?

“What?” he says, noticing my surprise. “You think dead people can’t have fun?”

It never did cross my mind. It doesn’t seem like they have an awful lot to celebrate. “Well, yeah. You’ve always been so—”

“Before, I was worried about saving your sorry backside. Don’t have to worry about that no more.” He shakes his head at me, and when I start to apologize, he says, “No point in fretting over it now. I’ll catch hell later.” I’m just starting to feel bad again when he says, “And you still got those powers of yours. You want to try them out?”

“Powers?” I study my hands. “Like what?”

He stands up. “Like a lot of things. Here.” He reaches down and molds a few wet black leaves together into a small mound. “Go ’head.”

I stare at him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Light it on fire.”

I let out a short laugh. “I can’t—” But before the words come out, sparks fly from the center of it and a fire consumes it, leaping into the air. I can’t even breathe. “I didn’t do that. Tell me I didn’t do that.”

He shrugs. “You didn’t do that.” Then he grins. “Okay, yeah, you did.”

I shake my head. “You’re not telling me that all I need to do is think of something and it will happen?” I ask, horrified. Because how often have I thought strange things, like wishing that it would be ninety degrees during the long Maine winter, or wanting the Academy Awards to be broadcast from my high school gymnasium?

“It’s a little more than that. You’ve got to want it.” He looks at the fire. “You got some power, girl. I wasn’t able to light fire for a couple of weeks, at least.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And that’s a small thing. Just you wait. I’ll learn you. It’ll be fun.”

“Okay,” I say. Maybe it will be. It won’t be life, but it might be interesting.

He smiles. “So, you ready?”

“For what?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t already know the third good thing about being here?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “I’ll take you across now.”

I gasp. “What? Now? You mean …”

“Sure. You want to see your momma, don’t you?” He studies me, then asks, “What’s got you in a tizzy?”

“I’m fine,” I say, but even as I do my teeth clack together. He tilts his head to one side and his expression says, Level with me. “It’s—it’s just that I’m cold.”

I know he’s the type to remove his shirt and give it to me to keep me warm, but he’s already given me his shirt, for the wound. I expect that he’ll wrap an arm around me, but he doesn’t. He lowers his head and says, “Quit playing. The dead don’t feel warm or cold.”

“Oh,” I mutter. But they can obviously feel other things. Fear. Indecision. Regret. Hate. “I just … My mom left me when I was seven. She just left. For ten years, I’ve been without her. And I’ve … I’ve come to …” The words “hate her” are on my lips, but they won’t come out. “I just don’t understand why.”

He stands there, nodding as if I make perfect sense, which makes me feel a little better.

“Her powers are dying? Is she … sick?” I ask.

He crosses his arms in front of him. “Who told you that? Let me guess. No, she’s just as strong as she has ever been. Once again, you go and do something I tell you not to. I told you not to listen to him.” He looks down the path, toward the river. “Look, I been kind of lax in my duties. I got to be going.”

He starts walking down the narrow path toward the Outfitters. I tremble as he leaves. I don’t want to see Jack again. But at the same time, I do. Definitely, I can still feel indecision and fear. “Where are you going?”

He turns and smiles, and like he’s reading my mind, says, “There ain’t nothing more Jack wants to do to you now.”

“Oh.” But that isn’t enough. I’m ashamed of how I acted around him. My behavior with Jack is inexplicable. The force pulling me to him was so strong, and I’m so afraid that even after the horrible things he’s done to me, I’ll still somehow be drawn to him. But I can’t tell Trey that. It doesn’t make any sense, even to me.

“You can still come with me,” he says.

I stand, brush the pine needles from my backside, and follow him. As I walk, I marvel at how I can almost see every individual grain of dirt on the ground, at how I can almost hear every insect marching along its path. Now that the sun has risen, everything takes on a warm orange hue, and the entire sky is a shade of lavender I’ve seen only in small streaks during the most colorful of sunsets. The river, once black, now looks clear and inviting, like the Caribbean Sea. “Everything looks so … alive,” I whisper. I guess compared to me, anything is.

He turns back. “You’re different. So you see things different.”

“I feel strange. I used to be so afraid of the river. Now I want to … I don’t know. Dive in.”

He grabs a stick and starts swishing it through the brush as we walk. “Told you. You’re different. In death, you become what you most wanted to be in life.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Like what?”

He shrugs. “You figure it out. Don’t you know what you wanted to be?”

I think. Shake my head. Before I know it, we’re at the pier near the Outfitters. There’s a different boat there, one I’ve never seen. It’s just a primitive raft, kind of like something out of Tom Sawyer. A line of people, waiting patiently, stretches up the hill. It’s a motley crew, some young, some old. They’re not dressed in wet suits. One man is wearing a Speedo. A little girl is standing there, naked, sucking her thumb and crying quietly. The strangest thing is how eerily silent everything is, though there are so many people there. Most of them look a little dazed. Trey runs his hands through his hair and whistles. “Sheesh,” he mutters. “I’m gonna catch hell, that’s for sure.”

“What—” I begin, but I know. I know who these people are.

Trey walks to the front of the line and cups his hands around his mouth. “Proceed in an orderly fashion,” he calls.

The line moves. Most people put their heads down and walk, ever so slowly, onto the raft. I swallow as I look at the little girl. I don’t care if these people cannot feel cold. I pull off my jacket and hurry to wrap it around her. I notice that it’s no longer sopping with blood, which is good, but the second I notice that, I can feel the wound open up in my stomach with a sickening pop, like a hungry mouth. The little girl is so tiny and thin. When I stand next to her, she eagerly takes my hand and presses herself against my leg.

The raft fills with people. We all press together. The girl looks up to me gratefully, her dark blue eyes rimmed with tears. I didn’t mean to go across yet, but I can’t leave her. I hear Trey’s voice telling people, “Step to the back of the raft. Room enough for everyone. That’s right. No pushing.” People crowd against us and we’re forced to the very end of the raft, and by the time I turn around, I can no longer see him.

A confused man, maybe in his twenties, is standing next to me. He’s wearing swim trunks. He smells like alcohol and keeps wiping blood away from his eye because there’s a wound so big, it looks like half of his head has caved in. I wonder if he knows it. I shield the little girl’s eyes from the sight of him when he says, “Where am I? Where are we going?” But nobody answers. Everyone else, like me, seems to know already. Drops of blood slip from his chin, turning pink when they hit the clear water. Even that is beautiful.

We set off. I expect the river to carry us downstream, as it did when Hugo tried to take me across in the kayak. But it’s like we’re crossing a calm, glassy lake. The boat does not pitch and toss. We simply glide, as if we’re skating across a frozen pond. There is a slight breeze, and from the middle of the river, I see that the sun is bright over the tall pines. This is not what I expected at all. When I look back to the east bank, I notice that the line that looked a hundred people long is now gone. Somehow, we all fit on this small raft. At first I think that’s impossible, but in a world where nothing is as I expected, maybe it is possible. Maybe many things that are impossible in life are possible here.

The raft comes to a slow, easy stop at the west bank, and people begin to disembark. I wait patiently with the little girl, who is now smiling at me shyly. “Are you an angel?” she asks.

“No,” I say, smiling at her.

She says, “Mommy told me the angels would meet me when she put me under the water.”

I put my hand to my mouth to hide my shock. Instantly the tears start to come. I miss my dad and my friends so much. I miss my bedroom. I will never see it again. I will never see any of them again.

“I want to go home,” the girl whispers, and I hug her close, because I do, too. This new world is at once beautiful and terrifying.

When the rest of the people have left the raft, I see them climbing up a path through the forest in a single, orderly line. Trey is standing at the pier. At first he’s happy to see me. “Hey, thought you were staying behind,” he says, but then he sees that I’ve been crying. My face is probably all red, like it usually gets when I cry. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe being dead makes that different, too. He doesn’t bother to ask me what’s wrong. I guess it’s pretty obvious.

I squint to see across the river. I can just make out a few people, dressed in black wet suits, setting up over there for the new day’s rafting trip. Jealousy tightens my chest. I never thought I’d be jealous of people going rafting, but right now, I’d give anything to be one of them. I’d give anything to be at the beginning of this weekend. Or even better, at the beginning of this week. I’d tell Justin I had a change of heart and now I really wanted to go to prom, and he’d take me, because that’s the kind of guy he is. And Angela would understand, because that’s the kind of girl she is. They love me. When I think about how wonderful they are, how alike they are, more tears fall, so many I know it would be useless to wipe them away with the back of my hand.

Trey leans down and starts to play got-your-nose with the little girl. She giggles. I think of my mom. “My mom used to play that with me,” I say.

He nods. “Learned it from her. Good way to get the young ones to calm down.”

And calm the little girl is. She’s clinging to him now. He must like my mother. Respect her. Why else would he talk about her, learn things from her? I’m not sure if that makes me like him more, or less.

The little girl climbs up on his back, wrapping her pudgy fingers around his neck. I whisper, “Her mom murdered her.”

His face is somber, but he nods like it’s nothing unexpected. I guess he’s heard a lot of horror stories in his job. He looks at his palms quickly, then wipes them on his jeans, but not before I see that the scabs there have opened. He leaves ruddy marks on his thighs, but his jeans are dirty anyway, so it’s hardly noticeable. He catches me watching and says, “All in a day’s work.”

“I thought you said my mother was supposed to lead people across.”

“Normally she would, but she’s conserving her powers. She needs them all. ’Cause of what I told you.”

“And you don’t have … powers that can do it for you?”

“Nah. The Mistress of the Waters might, but not me. I’m just a son of an oilman from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ain’t royalty or nothing, like you.”

I snort. “I’m not royalty. My dad clips coupons.” He doesn’t say anything, so I say, “Tulsa? Is that where you’re from?”

“Moved out there when I was six. Born in New York. My daddy was a big-time executive at the Buick Motor Company. You ever hear of them?” I nod. “Well, when I was six he moved us out to Tulsa to start his oil business, and it did pretty well. Guess he was a millionaire. Can you imagine that? Me, a millionaire? We had two cars, believe it or not. We was wealthy. I was on my way to Harvard that fall.”

I stare at him. “Harvard?”

He nods. “It’s a university in Boston. You know it? It’s still there?”

“Um, yeah. I just didn’t … I mean …” I blush because there’s no tactful way to say what I’m thinking, that he was uneducated and poor. “So, what happened?”