I clamber back to my feet. “Nothing. I don’t know.” I suddenly have the urge to vomit. I double over and then stagger to the side. Reaching out for the tree that assaulted me, I collapse against the trunk. My skull feels like it got hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
The Colonel advances on me. “If something happens to her, I’ll kill you myself.” His face contorts into a snarl.
Now there are two of him, dancing before me like a pair of prizefighters. Blinking spots float lazily through my field of vision. Yellow-black-yellow-black. “Not me,” I say. It takes everything just to point in the direction that Parvati went. “Someone else. She went after someone. Go find her.”
The Colonel turns away from me and crashes through the brush like a wild animal. He’s probably carrying at least two loaded guns. I don’t know what Parvati saw in the trees, but if whoever killed Preston lured her into the woods, right now her father is my best chance to get her back.
I want to go after him. I want to help too, but it’s not just the spots that are blinking before my eyes now. The trees are blinking in and out, and so is the sky. From somewhere far away, I hear Parvati’s mom say, “Oh, Max. Why does trouble seem to follow you everywhere you go?”
I try to answer her, but my tongue is thick and the words come out slow and garbled. I feel the rough tree bark pressing through my T-shirt. It scrapes its way up my back as I slide down the front of the trunk. My legs fold under me as I slump to the hard grass.
Rough hands shake me awake. My mouth is still dry and my whole skull is throbbing. When I reach up and touch the back of my head, my fingers come away red. Parvati’s dad is looking down at me. His expression is bleak. Broken. Something pale flutters in the breeze. A torn triangle of white fabric embroidered with a repeating pattern hangs from the Colonel’s right hand. It’s a piece of Parvati’s sari. She’s gone.
I want to go look for her, but when the Colonel hauls me to my feet, my wobbly legs can barely support my weight. The ground spins slowly and yellow circles float in front of me like amoebas on a microscope slide. I think that bastard gave me a concussion. Well, him and the tree. Talk about a lethal tag team. I scan the shrubbery for any sign of movement, once again fighting the urge to throw up.
Nothing.
“Did you see which way she went at least?” There is a raw, animal-like quality to my voice that I have never heard before.
The Colonel shakes his head. “I didn’t see her at all.” He holds up the scrap of white fabric. “I found this hanging from a bush. It looks like she was moving fast and it just got caught.”
The fluttering cloth reminds me of all things bad—surrender flags, ghosts, burial shrouds. “Call up your goons,” I say. “Combat guys. Navy SEALs. Whoever. They need to tear these woods apart today, now, before it’s too late.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Max,” he says. “First we need to call the police.”
What the hell happened to the guy who grabbed me? Where is the animal-like desperation in the Colonel’s voice? He is all coolness and collectedness now, like he activated some sort of mission switch in his brain. I am shaking, sweating, on the edge of losing it completely. “The police are idiots,” I protest. “So are the feds.”
Parvati’s mom has appeared from somewhere behind me. “He needs to go to the hospital,” she tells her husband. “He might have a concussion.” Mrs. Amos’s lilting accent reminds me of the day Parvati called herself in sick.
“Idiots or not, they’re going to want a statement,” the Colonel says. “Do you want to wait here or should I tell them to find you at the hospital?”
I imagine hanging out here with Parvati’s dad, the two of us standing next to each other, awkwardly making small talk about sports and the weather. The cops would arrive and start doing their insanely slow cop things. Marking off the area with yellow tape, dusting tree trunks for fingerprints, collecting invisible fibers in plastic bags. No thanks. I’ll go insane.
“I’ll go to the hospital,” I say, even though I have no intention of doing so. Five hours in the ER? Worse than waiting for the police to finish their slow-ass procedures. Even if I do have a concussion, it won’t magically fix itself because I see a doctor. Preston got plenty of concussions on the football field. You just have to wait it out, he always said. Don’t go to sleep.
I can wait out a head injury, just not Parvati’s disappearance. I’ve got to do something about that right this second. I don’t know what, but something. I’ll figure it out on the way home. “Tell the cops not to screw around.” I turn toward the parking area. My legs buckle slightly.
“If you’re going to the hospital I’ll drive you, of course.” Parvati’s mom steers me in the direction of her car.
“Okay.” The hospital is on the way back to my house, at least. I let her tuck me into the passenger seat and sit hunched over and mute as she pulls out of the cemetery parking lot. How can she be so calm? Why is she not flipping out?
Mrs. Amos glances over at me. “Her father and I, we taught her to take care of herself, Max,” she says. “The universe will bring her back. You just have to have faith.”
I nod, but don’t answer. Faith seems to be something people develop when their lives are going good. It’s always been in short supply for me.
When Mrs. Amos pulls into the ER parking lot, an ambulance is there unloading a gurney. Even though we both know it can’t be Parvati, we don’t say anything until the wheels hit the pavement and we see the pasty, wrinkled body of an old man, his face partially obscured by an oxygen mask.
“Would you like for me to wait with you?” Mrs. Amos asks. “Or call your parents while you check in?”
“I’ll call them,” I say. Man, the lies are really rolling off my tongue today. “You should go back to the cemetery.”
She looks dubiously at the back of the open ambulance, at the big glass doors that slide open to admit the paramedics and the man on the gurney. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“Absolutely,” I say. One more lie.
THIRTY-FIVE
I PASS THROUGH THE SLIDING glass doors and pretend like I’m heading up to the front desk of the ER. Instead, I turn toward the waiting area, hoping my head wound isn’t totally obvious. I grab a magazine from a low metal table and flip through it.