CHAPTER SEVEN
Emma’s legs burned with each push of the bike pedals. Ten hours on the road had left her muscles rigid and her throat parched. Her mind was clouded with exhaustion and troubled by a lingering concern that her name might not really be Emma, but Piper.
The small town of Clarksboro materialized before her like a mirage—weathered storefronts, sparse traffic on the quiet streets. She knew this wasn’t her final destination, not with that impatient voice that kept urging her on.
“Just a little farther,” came the whisper from above her right shoulder.
Emma didn’t need to look. She knew what she’d see—Loyalynne hovering there, her pale porcelain face gleaming in the morning light, her blue glass eyes fixed on the road ahead, her delicate feet never quite touching the ground as she glided alongside Emma’s bicycle.
Loyalynne had first appeared to Emma in the house where she’d lived for a while as Piper Graves, but nobody else had known she was there.
Only Emma was able to see or hear her. Last night the doll had explained that Emma had created a fantasy world and insisted that the people around her were imaginary, and that they would actually be better off without her.
Finally convinced, Emma had taken the old bicycle and left.
“My legs can’t take much more,” Emma muttered now through cracked lips. Her water bottle had emptied hours ago, somewhere in the pre-dawn darkness as she’d pedaled through nameless country crossroads. “We’ve been moving all night.”
“Pain is temporary. Being found is permanent.” Loyalynne’s voice was as dry as autumn leaves.
Emma steered her bike to the side of the road and dismounted, her knees nearly buckling beneath her. She leaned against a lamppost, breathing hard, her chestnut hair falling across her eyes. When she pushed it back, her hand trembled.
“When does it end?” she asked, her voice barely audible. “How long do we run?”
Loyalynne drifted closer, her China face just inches from Emma’s. “We run until you’ve fully outrun the delusion that you’re somebody else, a woman named Piper. Until those phantoms can no longer pull you back into their lies.”
Emma closed her eyes, her head throbbing. “I know I’m Emma. I’ve been Emma for as long as I can remember.”
“And yet you still hear them calling for Piper,” Loyalynne reminded her. “And for a while you believed them—at least until we got away last night. And the phantoms persist.”
A memory surfaced unbidden—the man’s voice that had called to her in the darkness as she’d pedaled through a stretch of empty highway sometime after midnight. It had seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a voice laden with grief and hope.
Piper? Piper, is that you? I’ve been looking for you, sweetheart. Your sister needs you. I need you. Please come home.
It had sounded so real that Emma had actually stopped pedaling, had looked around wildly in the darkness, half-expecting to see someone standing there on the empty road. But there had been nothing—just the wind and the distant howl of a coyote.
“It wasn’t real,” Emma whispered to herself now, as much to convince herself as to respond to Loyalynne. “Just like all the others.”
“They’re getting closer,” Loyalynne said, her voice hardening. “The voice last night was stronger than before. We need to be more careful.”
Emma pushed herself away from the lamppost, her gaze drifting down to her bicycle—an old blue Schwinn. It had served her well.
“The bicycle has to go,” Loyalynne said, reading her thoughts. “It’s too recognizable. They could track you by it.”
“But without it—“
“You’ll move differently. Less predictably. Look there.” Loyalynne pointed down the street. “A pawn shop. You can get money for it.”
Emma hesitated. Something about Loyalynne’s logic kept failing to add up. But she had nothing else to go on. And she was hungry. Her companion had no interest in food.
“Fine,” she said at last, wheeling the bicycle down the sidewalk toward “Ed’s Pawn & Loan,” a narrow storefront wedged between a laundromat and a long-closed-down video rental store.
A bell jingled as she pushed open the door. The interior was dim and cluttered, smelling of dust and old metal. Glass cases filled with jewelry and watches lined one wall. Musical instruments hung from the ceiling. A heavyset man with a graying beard looked up from behind the counter.
“Help you?” he asked, his eyes moving from Emma to the bicycle and back again.
“I’d like to … pawn this,” Emma said, gesturing to the bike. She tried to stand straighter, to not look as desperate as she felt.
The man—Ed, she presumed—came around the counter and examined the bicycle. “Brakes are shot. Gear shift’s sticking.” He peered at her. “How long you been riding this thing?”
“A while,” Emma answered vaguely.
“Hmm.” He stood up. “Forty bucks.”
“It’s worth at least a hundred,” Emma protested, though she had no idea if that was true.
Ed shrugged. “Maybe when it was newer. I’m offering forty.”
Loyalynne drifted closer to Emma’s ear. “Take it. We need to move quickly.”
Emma bit her lip. “Fine. Forty.”
Ed went behind the counter to fill out paperwork. “Need to see some ID.”
Emma tensed. Loyalynne had warned her about leaving paper trails. And she didn’t have any ID with her.
“Is that necessary? It’s just a bike.”
Ed looked up, his eyes narrowing slightly. “State law. No ID, no sale.” Emma swallowed hard.
“I don’t have any,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “But I’ll take twenty if you don’t ask questions.”
Ed grunted, considering. “You do look like you need it,” he said at last, putting two ten-dollar bills on the counter. Emma took them, relieved but uneasy, as if she’d just announced her location to whoever might be searching for her.
“Where you staying in Clarksboro?” Ed asked.
“Just passing through,” Emma replied.
“Hmm.” Ed handed her the money. “Not much passing through to be done in Clarksboro. Dead end kind of place.”
Emma pocketed the money. “Thanks for the warning,” she said as she hurried out the door.
She stood on the sidewalk, suddenly aware of how vulnerable she felt without the bicycle.
It was her means of escaping those she could still feel searching for her.
The phantoms, as Loyalynne called them. She couldn’t outrun anything now.
“We have to keep moving,” Loyalynne said.
Emma shook her head. “Not until I get some food.”
She walked to a gas station across the street from the pawn shop, warm air thick with exhaust and stale coffee. She counted her money at the door, eyes darting to the parking lot. Nobody seemed to be looking for her here.
She grabbed an apple, a bottle of water, and a package of cheese crackers.
The cashier—a woman who couldn’t have been much older than Emma—rang the items up without speaking and dropped them into a thin plastic bag.
Emma handed her one of the ten-dollar bills, and when she got her change, she looked at the coins in her hand like they were bits of extra, unwanted weight.
She ate the apple in a few bites and drank half the water before she even made it back to the sidewalk. Her head felt clearer, but her legs were leaden. Loyalynne hovered beside her, impatient and unyielding. “It’s not safe here,” she said. “We’re too exposed.”
Emma ignored her, opening the crackers. “I’m not going without money again.”
“We don’t need it if we keep moving.”
“You don’t need it,” Emma snapped, chewing as she walked.
Loyalynne’s expression—fixed and hollow—didn’t change.
Emma stuffed the rest of the crackers into her pocket, took one more swig of water, and crumpled the plastic bag in her fist. “I’m not going hungry,” she said.
“And I’m not leaving until I have enough to get far away from here. ”
Loyalynne floated closer, irritation in her glassy eyes. “And how do you intend to do that?”
Emma didn’t answer. She looked down the block, at the rows of modest homes that lined the street, and started walking.
“If you really have to get more money,” Loyalynne said, beginning to sound a little panicky. “Stand at the corner. Look pitiful. People will give.”
Emma stiffened, her hands clenching into fists. “No.”
Loyalynne’s glass eyes seemed to flash. “What did you say?”
“I said no. I’m not begging.” Emma’s voice was firm. “I’ll find work.”
“Don’t be foolish. You need to be ready to move at any moment. A job ties you down.”
“I’m not talking about a regular job.” Emma started walking down the sidewalk, away from the pawn shop. “Just a day’s work. Yard work, housecleaning. Something that pays cash.”
Emma knew that she had done this sort of thing sometimes before, worked various jobs to survive wherever she wandered. She could do it again.
She could feel Loyalynne’s displeasure as the doll hovered just at the edge of her vision, silent but watchful.
Emma knew she was pushing some kind of boundaries.
But the voice she’d heard on the highway had shaken her—not because it frightened her, but because in spite of her denial, for a brief moment it had felt like home.
And it hadn’t called her Emma. For a moment she wondered why not. Why had that warm voice called her Piper?
Shaking off her questions, Emma walked through residential streets, studying the houses.
She was looking for signs of neglect that might indicate a need for help—overgrown lawns, cluttered porches, peeling paint.
Several blocks in, she spotted a modest ranch-style house with a yard full of fallen leaves.
“Here,” she said, turning up the walkway. “Someone needs to clear these leaves.”
“This is a waste of time,” Loyalynne muttered.
Emma ignored her and rang the doorbell. After a moment, the door opened to reveal a woman in her sixties, her silver hair pulled back. She wore gardening gloves and looked as if she’d been interrupted in the middle of a project.
“Yes?” the woman asked, not unkindly but with obvious caution.
“Good morning,” Emma said, trying to sound confident despite her disheveled appearance. “I noticed your yard needs clearing. I’m looking for day work, if you need help with those leaves.”
The woman studied her. “You’re not from around here.”
“No, ma’am. Just passing through, looking to earn some money.”
“Got a name?”
“Emma. Emma Kirby.”
The woman seemed to be weighing her options, looking from Emma to the leaf-strewn yard and back again. “I was just about to tackle those myself. Back’s not what it used to be, though.”
“I’m strong,” Emma offered. “And I work hard.”
After another moment’s consideration, the woman said, “Alright, Emma Kirby. I’m Helen Bowerman. I’ve got a leaf blower and some yard bags in the garage. Ten dollars an hour sound fair?”
Relief washed through Emma. “Yes, ma’am. That’s more than fair.” Added to what she still had from the bike, she wouldn’t have to go hungry again, at least not soon.
“Follow me, then.” Helen led the way around the side of the house to a detached garage.
She unlocked it and pulled out a gas-powered leaf blower.
“I want them blown into piles, then bagged. Bags go by the curb for pickup.” Helen gestured to a stack of large paper yard waste bags leaning against the garage wall.
“There’s water and a sandwich for you in the kitchen when you need it.
I’ll be inside working on my quilting. Just knock if you need anything. ”
“Thank you,” Emma said, genuinely grateful.
Once Helen had gone back inside, Emma examined the leaf blower, figuring out how to use it. It looked simple enough to operate.
“This is a mistake,” Loyalynne said, suddenly appearing on top of a nearby shrub. “You’re making yourself visible. Traceable.”
Emma started the leaf blower, its roar drowning out whatever else Loyalynne might have said.
For the next half hour, she worked methodically, blowing leaves into neat piles across the front yard.
The physical labor felt good after the long night on the bicycle—a different kind of exertion that worked new muscles and gave her mind something concrete to focus on.
When she shut off the blower to reposition, Loyalynne was waiting.
“You can’t stay in Clarksboro,” the doll said. “Your phantoms are too close. I can feel them searching.”
Emma wiped sweat from her brow. “I just need enough money for food and maybe a night in a motel. One real night’s sleep.”
“Sleep is a luxury we can’t afford.” Loyalynne drifted closer. “But fortunately, I know how to get you away from here. Far enough away that they can’t find you.”
Something in Loyalynne’s tone made Emma pause. “What do you mean? How?”
Loyalynne’s porcelain lips curved into the faintest of smiles. “Don’t worry about that now. Finish your work. Earn your money.” The doll floated up toward the branches of a nearby oak tree. “But be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. The phantoms won’t wait, and neither can we.”
Emma stared after Loyalynne for a long moment, feeling uneasy. Then she yanked the leaf blower’s cord, drowning her thoughts in its mechanical roar. As she herded leaves into mountains, she realized she was smiling. She’d drawn a line, and the doll hadn’t crossed it.
But as Loyalynne glared down at her, Emma wondered what might happen if she refused the doll’s orders when no one else was around.