Chapter 25 Raya
Raya
Paper. How could paper lose three times in a row? The gods were not on her side, Raya thought grumpily.
She was standing outside the middle of three corrugated metal outbuildings playing Rock, Paper, Scissors against Alex. They had found some rusted bolt cutters and hacked the chains off the metal doors already.
The loser got to go first. Great.
There was no avoiding it. Raya kicked herself for volunteering to search the outbuildings.
It had sounded easier than spying on Team Ellis, less mental effort involved.
But now that it came to it, anything had to be better than sweating your shorts off in an oven-like building, searching for a potential psychopath lurking behind some discarded paintpots.
Next time, she’d take the Jason Bourne shift. If there was a next time…
Sighing dramatically, Raya gave the buildings a quick once-over.
The outbuildings were built close together, almost touching.
The style was identical, arched corrugated roofs like an old-school aircraft hangar—dirt floors, piles of rusted junk and old bits of machinery strewn around them.
There was nothing distinctive about any of them.
At least, nothing that indicated the presence of a hidden dungeon or a creepy clown’s sewer lair.
Raya shot Alex her finest stink eye and walked up to the metal door, creaking it slowly open. Recoiling from the fetid air inside, she forced herself forward, stepping into darkness. Her eyes took an unnervingly long time to adjust.
Rows of heavy-duty utility shelves lined both sides of the arched walls. They were stocked with dusty boxes and large tubs. As Raya got closer, she could see faded labels peeling off the boxes: Froot Loops, Lay’s, Pepsi. All sorts of heaven. She’d found the motel food store.
Score.
Raya quickly walked along a long row, scouting out the supplies and checking the corners for lurking axe murderers. All clear.
“Doofus, look!” she called out to Alex, who was standing in the doorway.
For the first time in several hours, Raya felt something close to happy. She reached for a solitary box of Ritz Crackers, lovingly stroking the cardboard. How had she not realized how hangry she was?
“Whoa,” Alex said, his jaw dropping as he took in the rows of goodies.
Raya ripped open the box of crackers and started munching loudly as she squatted down on the concrete floor, keeping the box protectively stashed behind her. Some things just weren’t for sharing. Alex was still hovering in the doorway.
“You just gonna stand there and watch?” she said sharply. “It’s food, Alex. Actual, real food. Come and eat.”
Alex wandered over, eyes growing bigger as he read the tantalizing labels. He wasn’t a dick or anything and Raya didn’t hate him exactly. It was just that she couldn’t see what Ana liked about him.
Yeah, he was kind, a nice guy, and he had that whole music thing going for him. But Ana was quite possibly the coolest person Raya knew—whip-smart and super-hot in a girl-next-door way. Alex was…just Alex.
“Sit,” Raya ordered, pulling up a crate between them. She reached up and collected a small feast of raspberry jelly, peanut butter, and squeezable cheese.
It didn’t take long before she started feeling a warm glow inside as the food went down, accompanied by some fuzzy feelings. She even caught herself smiling at Alex.
He must have been feeling the same.
“Raya, can I ask you something?”
“Alex, let’s just eat, okay? Whatever you’re going to say is probably going to spoil my appetite, and right now, I’m enjoying my food too much,” Raya said, looking mournfully at her cheese-and-peanut-butter cracker. Time was so short, the last thing she wanted to do was waste it talking to Alex.
“The thing is…I need to ask you something while Ana’s not around.”
Raya’s interest was mildly piqued. She nodded shortly and stuffed the whole cracker in her mouth, sitting back, arms folded defensively across her chest.
“I’ve been thinking. I know you still love Ana, even though you broke up. She’s your best friend and all.” He glanced up at her as though hoping for a sign of acknowledgment.
Raya didn’t move. He could think what he liked.
“Well, the thing is…so do I.” Alex glanced nervously at Raya. “I really do. For a long time now. You know, Danny was my best friend, but Ana was always more. To me.”
Raya looked at him and archly raised an eyebrow. This wasn’t news. Before the fire, Ana had always had a little shadow. Alex: irritatingly ever-present, sending loving glances, ready to jump up and help at a moment’s notice.
The only mystery was how Ana hadn’t noticed that her twin brother’s ever-present bestie was crushing on her—hard.
“Where are we going with this, Alex?” Raya worked to keep her tone neutral, even though he had her full attention.
Alex’s expression darkened. He put a box of Cheerios down and brushed crumbs off his jeans thoughtfully.
“I want Ana to live.”
“Duh. So do I,” Raya said, watching him closely, trying to figure out what he would say next.
“I mean…whatever it takes.” Alex’s voice was quiet.
Raya was taken aback. It wasn’t what she’d been expecting. His words were plain, but his message was loaded with subtext.
She looked at Alex, but his hair was in front of his face, hiding his eyes. His arms were tan and toned, resting lightly on his jeans, his hands knotted together as he struggled to find his words.
“It’s just, none of this makes sense—Danny’s death, the fire, this place.
None of it means anything if there’s nothing to hope for.
If Ana makes it, then there’s a kind of justice in the world.
An order. I want her to live and live well.
To get out of here, to find love, have a family…
grow old. I want her to get over Danny and whatever happens here today to prove that this whole mess isn’t all there is left. ”
Alex glanced up. For the first time, Raya felt the force of something behind the soft brown eyes. There was more there, a depth she hadn’t seen before; love and strength of character intermingled in equal measure.
So, this was Ana’s Alex, the person hiding behind the floppy hair. It felt like they were meeting for the first time. This was the person who had stolen Ana’s heart away from her.
It was starting to make sense.
“Just say it, Alex.”
“If…when it comes to it, I’m okay going. You know? I’ll do it. I’ll cross the line if it means that she has a chance. I just want…I need to believe she can make it. I need something to hold on to. Something to hope for. I thought you might feel the same way too?”
Raya was surprised to feel a dampness on her cheek. She reached up and quickly brushed it away.
“Yeah, all right. No need to be dramatic,” she said brusquely. “So, what are we talking about here? Making a secret pact or some shit? When it comes down to it, we make dang sure Ana is the last one standing?”
Alex looked up. Her bluntness had cut through his thoughts.
“I’m sorry.” He looked genuinely mortified. Spelled out like that, the reality of what he’d just asked hung heavily in the dusty air. “I barely know you… I should never have said that. It’s not right… I don’t even know what I was thinking.”
“Nah, it’s okay. We’re good. If you can’t be honest when you’re about to die, when can you?”
Alex nodded, his expression sober. They faced each other, no pretense, nothing hidden. Raya didn’t warm to people easily, but once you’d got into her heart, she was loyal for life. In this case, that might only be an hour or two. But for that short time, Alex made the cut.
“Okay, then,” Raya said, holding out her hand. It wasn’t a hard decision.
“Are you… Do you mean it?” Alex said, his eyes round with surprise.
“Duh.” Raya grinned.
They almost laughed. The situation was ludicrous. Here they were, sitting on the dirt floor of a shed among a pile of half-eaten Ritz Crackers, agreeing to sacrifice their lives if it came down to it. Agreeing to die.
Alex took her hand and shook it once, firmly.
Deal done. Enough said.
Raya reached into the box of Ritz and pulled out a handful, then stood up. She very reluctantly forced herself to check her phone:
25:27
Jesus, where had the time gone? They needed to do their freaking job, already. She looked around; there was a whole section at the back of the outbuilding that they hadn’t searched yet. She’d start there.
“Here, hold these for me. Don’t eat any!” Without warning, she chucked the Ritz box in Alex’s direction.
“Huh?” Surprised, Alex flubbed the catch and managed to swat the box away. It slid across the floor under a shelf.
Raya sighed, downgrading her opinion of him a notch.
She scrambled to her knees and crawled under the shelf in the direction of her beloved crackers, swearing loudly as she went.
If she was going to survive for the next few hours, she was going to need every available crumb of comfort food.
Alex hadn’t batted the box too hard, it had to be here somewhere.
“Raya, there’s something I always wondered.” Alex’s voice sounded a little hesitant. “Why did you and Ana break up? You seemed so good together, so happy. When you ended it, she cried for a month straight. I never got it. I mean, it just seemed like you were still into each other.”
Was he seriously asking? Raya felt a flash of irritation.
“That’s none of your business,” Raya muttered grumpily, sweeping her hands over the dirty floor hoping to locate the box.
“Sorry.” Alex sounded lost.
Raya paused and sighed deeply, her hand buried in a pile of cobwebs.
Now she felt like she’d kicked a sweet, innocent puppy.
She considered answering him, but what would be the point?
Hadn’t they just shaken hands on their own deaths?
Wasn’t the plan to let Ana live—to give her a chance to forget them and move on? What good would it do to tell him now?
But even as she thought it, she knew the answer.
There were things in the universe greater than death and red trucks and lines in the sand; things that transcended everything else.
Love was one of them. Maybe telling him wouldn’t change the future or stop them from dying on the line.
Maybe it wouldn’t help Ana let go of them after they were gone.
But maybe it would help Alex. The stupid, floppy-haired kid could sacrifice himself knowing that in his short time on earth, he had been loved.
“Okay, you want to know why I dumped Ana? I’ll tell you.
” Raya stayed buried in the shadow under the shelf, where Alex couldn’t read her expression.
“I dumped her because she was hopelessly, head over heels, crazy-stupid in love with someone else. It didn’t matter how great we were together, and we were freaking awesome—she could never feel the same way about me, and I wasn’t stupid or insecure enough to stay in a relationship where there was no hope. ”
Had she said enough? Had Alex connected the dots, or did he need it spelled out in big neon letters? Raya waited, listening to the wind rattling on the metal roof.
Nothing. If Alex understood what Raya was trying to tell him, he was taking it very quietly.
Raya sighed again, her thoughts wandering back to the sweet-saltiness of the lost crackers.
She slightly hated herself for craving them so badly.
But, hey, if you’re about to die, alone and unloved, no need to worry if you’re a junk-food junkie.
She would cross that freaking line with a mouth full of Ritz, dang it. She would die her way.
“Ana barely spoke to me all last year,” Alex said at last. “I thought she blamed me for what happened. It was like she didn’t want to know me.”
Raya knew exactly what he was talking about. After the fire, Ana had changed. They all had. But for Ana it was different. When Danny died, a wall went up between her and the world. She faked being okay, but no one was giving that girl an Oscar any time soon.
It had hurt Raya deeply, being on the outside, but grief and depression are like that.
They consume you from the inside and push away the light.
Raya had been through enough struggles to know.
She also knew that since the circle had been spray-painted around them, the old Ana was back.
There was a light there that Raya thought had gone for good.
“Look, I just know what I know, okay?” Raya was done handholding. “Talk to Ana and do it soon. If we don’t find this creep hiding under a crate of peanut butter, we are going to be out of time.”
“Thanks, Raya.” Alex said it so quietly it took Raya’s brain a moment to process.
So, he got it. Raya smiled to herself. He understood, finally. The girl he was prepared to die for loved him too. Had always loved him. Too little too late. But, hey, it worked for Romeo and Juliet.
Raya pulled out her phone and switched on the flashlight. Her work here was done. She just needed to rescue those crackers and find a psychopath before they ran out of time. How hard could that be?
Something caught her eye in the far back corner. She reached out, hoping to feel the cardboard box. But instead, her hand wrapped around something hard. A cold metallic tube reflecting the light. She shuffled closer.
The box had slipped under what looked like a small vent. The shaft made a clean right angle and disappeared directly into the dirt floor below the outbuilding. As Raya’s fingers scrabbled around, she could feel the sensation of cool air whistling through the vent louvres.
She gasped, instinctively putting a hand over her mouth. Slowly, quietly, she edged backwards, out from under the shelf, bumping into Alex, who was still sitting staring at the floor, lost in thought.
Alex looked up at Raya, smiling.
“Got what you wanted?”
“Yes…” Raya said, shaking her head slowly and shooting him a clear, warning look. She held her multi-ringed finger to her mouth and pointed in the direction of the vent, then nodded to the door.
In the seconds it took them to scramble outside, Raya’s mind had processed her discovery. The impact hit hard, and she found herself struggling to catch her breath, to find the words.
It took a few attempts before she managed to speak.
“Alex…I found something! I think someone’s in there.
I found an air vent at the back, underneath the shelves.
It’s working. There’s cold air coming from it!
” She grabbed Alex by his T-shirt, her excitement uncontainable.
“Alex, we found him! The psychopath who’s doing this to us—I think we’ve found where he’s been hiding out. I think we’ve found Bates!”