Chapter 37 Golden Ticket
Golden Ticket
Sascia is still sixteen, but she feels a hundred, achy and weary with hopelessness.
She sits on the hard plastic bench of the hospital’s waiting room.
Above her, Aunt Rania rages a storm of accusations and insults.
Sascia told her everything: How there’s a Darkgarden in the basement.
How she and Danny have been exploring the sewers.
How he had a bad feeling about this one.
How she persuaded him to try. A part of her knows she confessed because her guilt needed to be shaped into words, her shame transfigured into someone else’s anger.
She sits and she listens and she doesn’t argue. It is her fault.
A doctor comes to announce Danny is out of surgery.
The rest of them watch through the window of the revolving hospital doors as the doctor speaks to Danny’s parents.
Aunt Rania isn’t crying—she never did, not once—but Danny’s dad, who’s flown in from Boston, sheds quiet, glistening tears.
Sascia picks at the bandages around her calf where the Darktiger clawed its way into her flesh.
When, hours later, the nurse tells them they can see Danny, she stays behind, with a sleeping Ksenya tucked against her side, trying to smother her sniffles.
Aunt Rania doesn’t speak to Sascia again, not that day, not the next one, not on the third. On the fourth, she announces into the waiting room, “He’s been asking for Sascia.”
In his room, Danny lies on his side, eyes closed. His back is a mess of bandages. Plastic tubes hang from the bed. Sascia gazes out of the windows. The hospital has a view of the local park. In the darkness between the thickets stands a figure clad in a black cloak.
(Not now, Sascia thinks. Especially not now.)
She turns her back to it. She finds Danny smiling.
Sascia wants to ruffle his curls, straighten his blanket, hold his hand, but she doesn’t know if she should. She keeps her eyes on the floor as she opens her mouth. She’s been thinking long about what she’ll say, how she’ll apologize, but Danny cuts her off.
“Cuz.” He doesn’t sound sad or angry. “Please, don’t. It was not your fault.”
“It was—”
“Oh, shut up, will you? Come here.”
Sascia goes, right into the arm he’s opened for her.
She’s ashamed to find tears spilling down her cheeks (if Danny’s not crying, what right does she have to?) and sheds them as soundlessly as she can.
She points to the small TV screen mounted on the wall.
“This thing looks decent enough. Should I bring your Nintendo over?”
“Now that,” Danny says, “is the kind of patient care I like.”
They’re playing Mario Kart when Danny finally asks the question. Sascia has known he would ask eventually; she’s been waiting for it. “What did they do to our garden?”
“It’s been confiscated. They dismantled the whole thing and took it.”
“We were going to do great things with it,” Danny whispers. “Save lives.”
She’s got nothing to say to that. Their parents have made it abundantly clear: no more Darkblooms, no more Darkmoths, no more Dark of any kind for as long as they live.
They continue the game in silence. Danny wins.
The knock comes while they’re debating switching to the latest zombie release.
The figure that slips in is not family or hospital staff.
He’s dressed in an impeccable black suit and sports suave rimless glasses that reflect the fluorescent ceiling lights.
He introduces himself as Professor Stanley Carr.
The professor speaks in a direct, colorless tone.
He tells them about a new initiative he’s leading.
About the other students, an engineering prodigy from South Korea, a savvy geneticist from Chile, and a young computer genius who goes by the code name Crow.
He tells them about what they could achieve under his tutelage; he could have their garden retrieved from Chapter XI, equip it with state-of-the-art technology, and, with hard work and persistence, even secure them a place at an Ivy League of their choice.
A xenobotanist and a xenoentomologist, what a pair they could make.
The contracts are deposited soundlessly at the foot of Danny’s bed before the professor leaves. The title at the top reads: Admission to the Umbra Program. Danny stares at them wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as though they are Willy Wonka’s golden tickets.
Sascia takes one look at her cousin, at the hope budding like a tender bloom on his face, and goes rummaging for a pen.