“Maybe she ran out of things to steal,” Don said. “Or maybe she just finally got what she wanted.”
Harper watched Don lean and pull, lean and pull, and thought the power of the Bright couldn’t compete with being close to someone you loved with all your heart. One took away; the other gave you access to your best, happiest self. I liked who I was when I was by his side, Don Lewiston said, and Harper wondered if there had ever been anyone in her life who made her feel that way about herself, and at that moment the boat ground onto the sand with a wet crunch, and Don said, “Let’s go see the Fireman, huh?”
8
Before she climbed out, Harper reached into the bin under the thwart and found her hidden grocery sack, which still contained a bottle of cheap banana-flavored rum and the carton of Gauloises. Don waited for her halfway up the shale, under the bow of the long white sloop. He had a hand on the hull when she caught up to him.
“Can you sail it?” she asked.
He lifted an eyebrow, gave her an amused, sidelong glance. “All the way around the Horn and on to exotic Shanghai if I had to.”
“I was thinking just a ways up the coast.”
“Yuh,” he said. “Well. That would be easier.”
They went on arm in arm, through the dunes, up the narrow, weedy trail, over the hill, and on to the Fireman’s shed. Don lifted the latch and eased the door open onto laughter and warmth and shifting golden light.
Renée stood at the furnace, wearing oven mitts and hanging the kettle on its hook over the coals. Gilbert Cline had settled near her, sitting in a straight-backed chair against the wall. He had his gaze on the door when it opened—ready to move if he didn’t care for the company, Harper thought.
The Mazz sat at one end of John Rookwood’s cot and John at the other, both of them quivering with laughter. The Mazz’s wide, ugly face was suffused a deep shade of red and he was blinking at tears. All of them—all except for Gil—had their eyes on Allie, who stood over a pail, pretending she was a man taking a piss. She wore John’s fireman helmet and held a plastic lighter at her crotch.
“And this is only the second coolest thing I know how to do with my dick!” Allie announced in her intentionally atrocious English accent. She flicked the lighter, so her pretend cock spurted flame. “I’ll have your campfire going in no time, but if you’re really in a hurry to bake your hot dogs, I’ll just bend over, and you can . . .”
Allie saw Harper in the doorway and her voice trailed off. Her grin faltered. She let the lighter go out.
John, however, continued to tremble with amusement. He gestured to the Mazz and said: “What she just demonstrated, that did happen to me once. But this was years before Dragonscale, and a little penicillin cleared it right up.”
The Mazz bellowed with laughter, was so raucous it was impossible not to be entertained. The ghost of a smile even briefly reappeared on Allie’s lips—but only for a moment.
“Wow,” Allie said. “Ms. Willowes, you got huge.”
“I’m glad to hear your voice, Allie. It’s been a while. I’ve missed it.”
“I don’t know why you would. Mostly when I do open my mouth, it seems like people just get hurt.”
Her gaze dropped. Her face wrinkled with emotion. It was difficult to watch her trying not to cry, all the muscles in her face struggling at once with the strain to hold it in. Harper reached out and took Allie’s hands, and when she did, Allie lost the fight and began to weep.
“I feel so bad,” Allie said. “I think we were supposed to be really good friends and I fucked it all up and I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, Allie,” Harper said, and tried to squeeze her. Her stomach made squeezing people tricky, and instead of a hug, she wound up giving Allie a rubbery bump with her belly. Allie made a strangled sound that was part sob, part laugh. “We are really good friends. And to be honest, I had wanted to try a shorter haircut for years.”
This time Harper was certain the sound Allie made was a laugh, although it was choked and half muffled; Allie had her face buried against Harper’s chest.
At last, Allie stepped back, wiping her hands down her wet cheeks. “I know everything in camp is going bad. I know everyone is batshit crazy, my aunt especially. It’s scary. She’s scary. Threatening to take your baby away if Granddad dies, when you’ve already done everything anyone could do—that’s so fucked up and sick.”
John sat forward, his smile fading. “What’s this?”
“You were unwell,” Harper said, not looking directly at him, but speaking over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to bring it up. You look better now, by the way.”
“Yes,” John said. “Antibiotics and Dragonscale have a lot in common. One is a mold that cooks bacteria, and the other is a mold that cooks us. I wish there was a pill we could take to cure us of Carol Storey. She’s out of her good goddamn mind. She can’t have meant it. Take your baby? What is this rubbish?”
Harper said, “Carol told me . . . she told me if Tom died, she’d hold me personally responsible, and send me away. She’d keep the baby, so that if I’m captured by a Quarantine Patrol or a Cremation Crew, I won’t be tempted to give away any information about Camp Wyndham.”
“It’s not just that. She really would want the baby to be safe. She wants to protect us. All of us,” Allie said. She cast her gaze around the room, looking at each of them, and her voice was almost pleading. “I know she’s awful. I know she does terrible things now. Thing is, my aunt Carol would die for the people in this camp. Without a second thought. She really does love everyone . . . at least everyone she isn’t suspicious about. And I remember before Granddad got his head bashed in. She was good then. When she knew she could help people by singing and playing music and showing them how to join the Bright, she was the best person in the world to have as your friend. I could always go cry to her if I had a fight with my mom. She made me tea and peanut butter sandwiches. So I know you guys all hate her, and I know we have to do something. But you also have to know I still love her. She’s a fuck-up, but so am I. I guess it runs in the family.”
John relaxed, leaned back against the wall. “Decency runs in your family, Allie. And a really unsettling streak of personal daring. And charisma. All the rest of us flutter around you Storeys like moths around candles.”
Harper thought automatically of how the romance between a moth and a candle usually ended: with the moth spinning to its death, wings smoking. It didn’t seem like a thought worth sharing at that particular moment.
Gilbert Cline spoke up from over by the furnace. When Harper glanced at him, she noticed Gil had one hand around Renée’s waist. “It sure is a relief to be out of that meat locker for a while. Next time I step out for a breath of fresh air, I’d just as soon not have to go back. Right now, though, we’ve got half an hour. If we’ve got things to figure, we better figure ’em now.”
The Mazz lifted his chin, was looking down the length of his bulbous nose at Harper’s grocery bag. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I always do my best figuring over a drink. Looks like the nurse brought just what the doctor ordered.”
Harper lifted out the bottle of banana rum. “Don, would you find us cups?”
She dashed a little rum into a collection of chipped coffee cups, tin mugs, and ugly tumblers and Don passed them around. The last cup Harper offered to Allie.
“Really?” Allie asked.
“It tastes better than a rock.”
Allie tossed back the quarter inch Harper had given her in a single swallow, then made a face. “Oh, God. No it doesn’t. This is piss. Like drinking gasoline after someone stirred it with a Butterfinger. Or like a banana smoothie that went rotten. Horrible.”
“You want another slosh, then?” Harper asked.
“Yes, please,” Allie said.