The Neighbors girls passed her, went on ahead. Emily Waterman skipped along behind them, and Harper heard her saying, “They have ice cream on Fridays! Homemade ice cream! Three flavors, strawberry, vanilla, and I think coffee. Coffee is my favorite.”
“Ice cream every day!” promised one of the Neighbors girls.
“Ice cream for breakfast!” said the other, and then they were gone into the night.
Allie took Harper’s elbow, helped her to stand straight.
“Think Nick went to the cafeteria?” Allie asked in a low, dispirited voice. He hadn’t returned to the dorm, hadn’t been seen since running out.
“I don’t know,” Harper said. “Probably.”
“Think Renée will ever talk to me again?”
“I think you’ll feel better as soon as you apologize.”
“Don Lewiston knows where it is.”
“Where what is?”
“The island. Martha Quinn’s island. At least he thinks he knows. He showed me on a map once. He says based on all the information, it’s probably Free Wolf Island, off Machias.”
“So he’s heard the broadcast?”
“No.”
“Have you?”
“No.”
“Has anyone heard Martha Quinn?”
“No,” said Carol Storey, before Allie could reply.
They had reached an intersection, beyond Monument Park, where the path from the chapel met a series of planks extending from the woods. Carol emerged from the snow, which was whipping almost sideways, her father behind her. She led him as if he were a child, holding his mittened hand.
“You ask everyone in camp,” Carol Storey said. “It’s always someone else who has heard it. And if it makes them feel better to have a perfect safe haven to daydream about, what’s wrong with that? I’ve caught myself going through the AM band sometimes, too. But I’ll tell you what. Even if she’s out there, Martha Quinn doesn’t have anything we need. We’ve already got everything we need right here.”
Harper stamped into the cafeteria, snow falling off her boots in wet white clumps. Father Storey flapped his coat and a small blizzard fell around his legs. She cast her gaze around for Nick and didn’t see him.
They collected trays and moved along the line to be served.
Father Storey said, “I always had a bit of a crush on Martha Quinn, in her bright vests and skinny ties. There’s something about a woman in a tie. You just want to grab it and pull her over for a squeeze.” He winked. Norma Heald dished him a scoop of ravioli. The sauce had the consistency of mud. “Norma, this looks delightful. Is it your own recipe?”
“It’s Chef Boyardee,” Norma said.
“Wonderful!” he cried, and shuffled along to get himself some Ritz crackers.
Norma rolled her eyes to watch him go, then looked back to Harper. She collected another scoop of ravioli, but instead of dumping it into Harper’s bowl, she waved the big serving spoon at her. “I remember when she was on TV. Martha Quinn. Teaching little girls to dress like tiny whores. Her and Madonna and the one with the hair like cotton candy, Cyndi Lauper. People like Martha Quinn are the reason this world is being scourged by fire. You ask yourself if God would let such a woman live, and make her His voice, calling His people to safety? Look in your heart. You know He wouldn’t. She is gone and Madonna is gone and every moneylender in Jew York City who got rich turning little girls into prostitutes is gone. You know it and I know it.” The ravioli fell from the spoon into Harper’s bowl with a thick wet schlopp.
“I doubt very much that God harbors anti-Semitic views toward New York City or anywhere else, Norma,” Harper told her. “Seeing as he called the Jews his own chosen people, that seems highly unlikely. Have you seen Nick? Did he come in for dinner?”
Norma Heald gave her a glazed, dull, unfriendly look. “Haven’t seen him. Why don’t you go outside and yell for him?”
“He’s deaf,” Harper said.
“Don’t let that stop you,” Norma said.
4
Michael brought Nick back a few minutes before dawn. Nick was soaked through and shivering from his night out, his dark hair matted into tangles, his eyes sunk in deep hollows. Harper thought he looked feral, as if he had been raised by wolves.
The boy walked swiftly past Allie’s bed, without so much as a glance at his sleeping sister, and went straight to Harper’s cot. He wrote on a sticky pad: I don’t want to sleep with her anymore. can I sleep here?
Harper took his pad and wrote: teach me how to say “time for bed” in sign language and it’s a deal.
That was how Nick Storey came to sleep with Harper instead of Allie, and how Harper renewed her education in American Sign Language; they settled on one new word or phrase a night as the price of admission to her bed. She was a good student, she liked practicing with him, and she was glad to have the distraction.
Although maybe she was too distracted: when the thief got around to stealing the Portable Mother, Harper didn’t even know it was gone until Renée Gilmonton asked what had happened to it.
5
Harper had never seen the Fireman in chapel before—no one had—and she was as surprised as the rest of them when he turned up the night after the Portable Mother was stolen. He did not come all the way into the building, but remained in the narthex, just beyond the inner set of doors. His presence contributed to a low but steady sense of anticipation that had been building all night. Word had passed that Father Storey was going to make an announcement about the thefts in the girls’ dorm. He was going to do something.
“I think we should send the bitch away,” Allie said over breakfast. “Find out who she is and pack her shit. No excuses, no apologies.”
Harper said, “What if the thief gets picked up by a Cremation Crew? Not only would they kill her, they’d force her to tell them about camp.”
“She isn’t going to tell them anything. Not if we yank her fucking tongue out before she goes. And break her fingers so she can’t write.”
“Oh, Allie. I don’t think you mean that.”
Allie only stared back with an expression of glassy, indifferent serenity. Like all the Lookouts, she had been skipping lunches for over a month now. Her cheekbones protruded in a way that made a person quite aware of the skull under her skin.
For herself, Harper didn’t want Father Storey, or anyone else, to worry about what she had lost. Everyone had lost something: homes, families, hope. Put alongside these things, the Portable Mother seemed no very great loss.
Which was not to say it meant nothing. She had found no end of things to squeeze into the carpetbag for the baby. There was a wooden sword with a rope handle for when he needed to practice his sword fighting. There was a mini audio player on which Harper had recorded lullabies, bedtime stories, and a few poems. There was an umbrella for rainy days, slippers for lazy ones. Most of all, there was the notebook that had started it all and which she had filled up with facts (your grandfather—my father—worked at NASA for thirty years . . . he made honest-to-God spaceships!!), advice (you can put anything in a salad—slices of apple, hot peppers, nuts, raisins, chicken, anything—and it will all taste good together), affection (I haven’t said I love you anywhere on this page, so here’s a reminder: I love you) and lots of capital letters and exclamation points (I LOVE YOU!!!).