Chapter 41
CHAPTER
CHARLEY
“This is where I woke up on my first day,” I told Thad.
We were standing on one of the tallest peaks, gazing at the sea of red.
It struck me that the rocks were the exact color of Georgia clay back home.
There was my mushroom rock, looking smaller than I remembered.
There were the rocks as big as buses, and there was my blood, camouflaged on the red, but I knew it was there and remembered the pain.
There was my hidey-hole, where I’d cowered in fear, and there was the path I’d taken when I’d chosen to run.
To chase the last shimmer, only to fall short.
I’d never been so happy to fail.
“What’re you thinking so hard about?” Thad asked.
“That I’m lucky I didn’t catch that shimmer my first day here. Because if I’d caught it, I never would have met you.”
“Meant to be.” He smiled, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. “So which way?”
“East.” I pointed.
Thad nodded. Cupping his hands, he shouted, “East!” Then he pointed. Natalie and Jason were just below us, and when they heard Thad’s shout, they gave a thumbs-up. We trekked down the rise and moved out as a team.
“So this is where you found Kev’s clothes,” Natalie commented.
“Yup.” I smiled. “Waking up here was totally freaky.”
“Wasn’t it?” she agreed, nodding.
Something awful occurred to me, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. “So we’ll wake up naked on the other side? Back in the world, who knows where?”
“Probably,” Natalie said. “It’s not like these clothes go with you, right?”
“Fantastic,” I mumbled. “Good times.”
Beside me, Thad laughed.
Jason was quiet. It was too close to zero hour for him to chat. The sun was high, and my gut tingled with an awareness of noon.
I’d had six days to refine this tingle. When we’d left the City, we’d headed southeast, hoping to intercept gates.
We were operating under the assumption that gates flashed on latitudinal lines, then ran north, longitudinally.
Yesterday we’d finally spotted one in the southern black lava field: a single, too far away to catch. It was the first gate we’d seen.
So after noon yesterday we’d changed tactics, and directions. Now we were chasing gates. We’d gone north, hoping to hit the next latitude, and in the end, we’d settled here. The red lava field, an open hot spot, where it would be easy to spot a gate if one decided to show.
I wanted a gate for Natalie so badly it hurt.
“Your sandals tight?” I asked Natalie.
“Strapped and ready.” She grinned.
“Be careful.” I felt like I was talking to Em. My words tumbled out—anything to give her an advantage. “This rock is a pain to run on. It shifts under you, especially the little pieces. Watch for cracks. Look for flat spots, okay?”
She hugged me tight, saying nothing.
I hugged her back. She had to catch a gate today, because today was the last day of this Search. Our supplies were dangerously low. So after noon today, regardless of what happened, we would head back to the City. But being in this field today—where it had ended for Kevin—felt right.
Jason stopped. The field was eerily silent, just like I remembered. No air moved.
“There!” Jason shouted, pointing. “Sixty yards, rolling left! GO!”
Natalie was already running. The wall of writhing air shimmered in the Nil sun, drifting left.
“Go, Natalie!” I urged. But I didn’t yell. Jason was her guide, not me.
Ten yards left.
Natalie sprinted, hurdling cracks as she ran toward the gate. Then she slipped. Her foot slid, she tumbled forward, and then hit the ground hard, landing between a pair of jagged rocks.
“I’m stuck!” she cried, yanking on her foot.
By the time we reached Natalie, she’d worked her foot loose. Scratched and bloody, her foot looked better than her sandal. It lay in pieces, torn in half. Yards away, the outbound collapsed and winked out.
Her gate was gone.
“Well, this sucks,” she said. “My sandal’s trashed.” Tears filled her eyes.
“Take mine.” I rushed to get mine off, then I thrust it in her hand. “It’s big, but it’s better than nothing.”
She looked at me, numb.
Her hair lay flat; there was no wind to push it around.
“Hurry!” I shouted, bending to help. The rush of urgency made me shake. “That gate was too slow to be a single! C’mon!”
As Natalie scrambled to strap on the sandal, Jason yelled, “Gate at nine o’clock, rolling left. Forty yards!”
Natalie jumped to her feet, then broke into the same awkward sprint I’d done naked. The moment was slow and fast; the past mixed with the present. She flew erratically over the rocks, shooting for flat spots as she gained on the shimmer.
And then Natalie was there.
Two feet in front of the shimmer, close enough for the gate to illuminate her face.
She smiled, glittering tears running down her face.
She waved, then stepped back into the gate, and the iridescent wall of air washed over her as quickly as the gate had washed over Sabine.
Natalie flickered and faded. Then the gate collapsed.
Natalie was gone.
All that remained was a pile of clothes and two sandals. One sandal was hers, and one was mine, like two halves of a surreal island BFF charm. She was the best friend I’d had on the island, and I’d miss her. But I still had Thad.
Thad.
His hair rustled against his shoulders; the wind was back.
Not whipping but gentle, barely noticeable unless you were looking for it, which I desperately was.
Because I’d just realized that if another gate flashed right now, it would be Thad’s, and as much as I wanted him to catch a gate, to lose both Thad and Natalie in one day would be both awesome and terrible.
I’d never considered we might have minutes instead of months, and the reality that I might lose him right now was shocking.
The wind stayed steady.
I couldn’t breathe.
Jason’s voice broke the awful moment. “That’s it. It was so slow, I thought it was a triple, but no dice.”
I shook. With relief, with guilt, with happiness, with sadness, with too many emotions at once. I stood there, eyes closed, fists clenched, hating that I wasn’t prepared for this moment. I couldn’t stop shaking.
“You did good, man,” I heard Thad tell Jason.
Then Thad’s arms wrapped around me. “Hey,” he whispered in my ear. “It’s okay. Natalie made it because of you.”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t because of me. It was luck. But”—I bit my lip, furious with myself for not being ready to say good-bye to Thad—“never mind.” Taking a deep breath, I hugged him fiercely, then pulled away.
Thad looked at me, frowning. “You’re wrong,” he said. “Your charts are good. Your theory works.”
I was too shaken to argue.
Thad reached for my hand. “Let’s get Nat’s stuff and go.”
“I’ll get it,” I said. Without waiting, I followed in Natalie’s invisible footprints, leading to her clothes. As I lifted my sandal, an object fell and struck the rock with a brittle crack. It was Natalie’s white shell bracelet, the one she wore 24/7.
I picked up the bracelet, picturing Natalie twisting it as she asked, You didn’t find anything else with the clothes, did you?
Now I understood exactly what she’d hoped I’d found. When I’d snatched up Kevin’s shorts, something white had gone flying. Something as white and fragile as the bracelet in my hand.
“Kevin made that for her,” Thad said. He’d come up beside me.
“And he had one, too,” I said, knowing it was true. “Like you made our necklaces.” I swallowed, knowing one day I would pick Thad’s necklace off the ground, keeping him close until I could meet him on the other side.
And it could have been today.
Willing my hands not to shake, I slipped Natalie’s bracelet into my satchel. Then I gathered her clothes, packed them next to my maps, and turned to Thad, knowing there was something I had to do. One last thing to keep my promise to Talla, because it’s what Natalie would have wanted.
“I’m ready,” I said. “Can I pick the route?”
“Lead on.” Thad gestured for me to go first.
Turning around, I retraced the route I’d first walked thirty-three days ago.
Thirty-three days.
Thirty-three days was nothing, and yet it felt like a lifetime. Thad had sixty-six days, and it seemed like nothing. We’d be lucky to have sixty-six days.
For all I knew, all we had left together was twenty-four hours.