Frida leaned into him. “It’s okay,” she whispered. Then to August, she said, “Why didn’t you want us to think they’d been killed? That would have really scared us.”
“That’s what I said. But Micah was really freaked out, like I’ve never seen him. He didn’t want you to be afraid, and he definitely didn’t want you running away where he couldn’t find you or heading here, looking for answers. He was panicked. I had to tell him to wait with Sue while I dragged Bo’s body inside.”
“You did it for him?” Frida asked bitterly.
Even though Cal understood why she was angry, he didn’t want her to say anything more. She didn’t get it; she couldn’t. Micah might have committed the murders, but it had been August and Cal who had to go in afterward and face those deaths. Whatever had motivated August—loyalty or self-interest, desperation or fear, or even the same metallic coldness that ran through Micah—Cal couldn’t blame him for following Micah, for tidying up the situation, for trying to resolve it in whatever way he could. Maybe what August had done was wrong, but it was human, too. Maybe it was compassion that had led August back into that house. He’d wanted to return Bo to his family.
No one said anything. Cal thought August looked tired, as if telling that story had been too much for him.
After a moment, August said, “Let’s eat. It’ll take us a while to get to Pines.”
23
They’d left when it was still dark. Through the night and into the next day, they’d ridden over a road so rough that even Cal had thrown up twice into an old wastebasket August kept for such purposes. They kept stopping to move fallen trees out of the way. Once August had braked for a deer running across the road; at first he thought it was an Illegal. That’s what they called them in Pines, he said. “Poor people, trying to get inside.”
Frida wanted to ask, Isn’t that what we are? but she didn’t. It was another thing she’d keep to herself.
Frida had intentionally chosen to sit at the back of the bus; she knew it would make her sick, but she wanted to be as far as possible from Cal and August’s conversation. They had spoken intently for the first half of their journey. Before starting the bus, August had told Cal he could still be of assistance to the Land. “Inside Pines,” he said, “you’ll have your eyes and ears on the ground.” Frida could sense Cal deliberately not looking at her as August spoke. And could she blame him? Her brother had killed their friends, and August had stood by and let it happen, and Cal was still willing to work with them. But she understood. They were going to be parents. Cal just wanted to keep their family safe.
August had nodded at Cal and said, “There’s a role for you inside. Micah’s been thinking about it since you guys arrived.”
Frida didn’t know what they were talking about, but it was probably about Micah’s plan. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t about building more Forms.
Frida was relieved she couldn’t hear them talking over the engine. She didn’t want to know. She could only think about the baby and how they were being spirited away from Micah and the Land and the Millers and Anika’s wounded head. They were headed for a safe place. It would be safe, right?
Cal was so invested in his conversation with August, he barely glanced out the window. Frida couldn’t take her eyes off the world; it looked even worse than it had on their way out of L.A., as if, in their time away, it had slipped further from care.
The sky was gray above them, and the bus jostled over dirt and rocks and chunks of asphalt. Sometimes there were woods on either side of them, and sometimes the trees thinned out, turning black and shriveled, leading to soulless, empty spaces that reminded Frida of desolate parking lots. They once passed a gas station, dead. Someone had ripped out the hoses, and a fallen streetlight cut the convenience store in two. Occasionally, they passed houses, but they were falling over, deflated, covered in ivy, their doors knocked off, their roofs collapsed. A dog with xylophone ribs stalked an uneven porch. Frida hadn’t seen a pet in years, but this wasn’t anyone’s pet. No one would return here. Not ever.
Frida kept thinking of Anika. How badly had Cal hurt her? And when Frida wasn’t thinking about Anika, she was thinking about Jane and Garrett.