16
WE COULDN’T AGREE ON WHICH problem to solve first, so we started by identifying what each of our problems had in common: Horizons. Stella withdrew the file folders she’d culled from Kells’s office and set them down on the table. This was what she’d taken:
Seven pages of patient records for someone we’d never heard of.
Twenty-three pictures of what seemed to be the insides of our throats and other places, and lab results from samples of our hair, spit, and pee.
One drawing of me, by me, with black scribbles over my eyes.
And a too-many-pages-to-count tax return for the Horizons Group, filed by Ira Ginsberg, CPA. The address was in New York.
With what little we had (Stella kept apologizing), Jamie suggested we follow the money. Stella and I agreed. But all of us would have to visit our parents first.
We didn’t know how pressing the parent problem was, which in and of itself was part of the problem. Where did they think we were? What did they know? All three of our families believed in Dr. Kells and had put us into her care—out of ignorance, not malice, but still. We couldn’t exactly show up on their respective doorsteps and explain the situation in good news–bad news format: Hey, Mom, I’ve been tortured and experimented upon, but don’t worry because my tormenters are dead. Because, P.S., I killed them. I didn’t know about Stella and Jamie, but in my experience, telling the truth only led to not being believed.
But Jamie was pretty sure (“Just pretty sure?”) he could manage to convince our parents of our general welfare enough to avoid statewide AMBER Alerts and enough to possibly find out where they thought we were, and with whom. Maybe they’d been contacted by someone other than Kells. Maybe one of the other Horizons employees was in on it (though Stella didn’t think so). We needed to talk to them to find out.
And there was a fourth house we needed to visit, though Stella and Jamie didn’t know it yet. I needed to know what Noah’s parents believed. I needed to know if there’d been a funeral. Just thinking the word made me ill.
We left No Name Pub with full stomachs but not much else. Charlotte, the owner, tried to help us find a ride, but no one was heading to Miami that day. She offered to put us up for the night, but there was no guarantee that anyone would be heading to Miami the next day either, and none of us wanted to wait. So Charlotte, kind soul that she was, offered to wash our clothes and pointed us to a little tourist shop nearby that she and her husband owned, where we could change into one of half a dozen T-shirt variations on the I LOVE FLORIDA theme while our clothes dried. Jamie and Stella had shoes in their bags, but I, having no bag, had no shoes either, so Charlotte gave me a pair of flip-flops from her own closet. After everything I’d been through, I’d thought I couldn’t be surprised by people anymore. But Charlotte proved that I could.
Stella was already wearing a spare T-shirt of Jamie’s (the yellow one, with the text I AM A CLICHé), so Jamie and I were left to pick our poison, so to speak. He ended up with an I FLORIDA shirt. I picked WELCOME TO THE SUNSHINE STATE. There weren’t a lot of options.
I was changing into my shirt (and matching boxers! Wasn’t I lucky?) in the tourist shop bathroom when a voice said, “You look retarded.”
I looked up at the mirror. My reflection looked ridiculous.
“Yeah. Well. You don’t look so hot yourself,” I said back.
And so it was that the three of us, dressed like tourists, started hoofing it along the highway, getting whiplash every time a car passed us, which was a lot. Between the scorching heat and the insect-thick air, I thought it couldn’t get worse, but then it began to rain.
The sky opened, and we were instantly drenched; the water was warm enough that it felt like the clouds were sweating on us. Our faces mirrored expressions of misery as we ducked off to the side of the highway under a large tree that was still not quite large enough.
“My biscuits are burning,” Jamie said, taking off his shoes. The skin over his toes was cracked and bleeding. “Does anyone know how to start a fire?”
Blank stares.
“So we can’t start a fire,” he said. “We can’t fly. We can’t create a force field. We are the most bullshit superheroes.”
I pushed my limp, sodden hair back from my face. “Faulty premise.” I knew what he meant, but still. “Though, Stella’s not so bad.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “That means a lot, coming from you.”
I pouted. “That hurts my feelings.”
“Jamie’s right, though,” she said. “And the list of stuff we can’t do is even longer—we can’t use credit cards, we can’t call our parents, we can’t rent a car—”
“We might be able to steal a car, though,” Jamie said.
The two of us turned to him at once. “I mean, not like with hot-wiring or anything. I have no idea how to do that shit. I just meant—I might be able to talk someone into giving us their car?”
“Lending it,” I added helpfully.
Jamie nodded with enthusiasm. “Lending it. Exactly. If someone comes along.”
“Do you even have your license, Jamie?” Stella asked.
He feigned surprise. “Was that a short joke, Stella? Have our dire circumstances caused you to develop a sense of humor?”
“It was an age joke, actually. And an appearance joke. You have a baby face.”
Our circumstances were dire, though. We had no car, no money, no food, and no dry clothes. The hours passed, and the rain continued its assault, and we grew wetter and hungrier and colder but had no choice but to keep walking, me in plastic flip-flops that were murdering my feet.
The rain finally stopped as daylight dwindled into dusk. The sun bled into the clouds, coloring them pink and orange and red. We trudged up the road, which was framed on the shoulders by dense trees and creepers. After an eternity we came upon a gas station, if you could call it that. There was one pump, and the tiny clapboard building behind it listed precariously to one side; a small junkyard squatted in shadow beside it. A plastic doll head with only one eye was impaled on the broken wooden fence.
Jamie huddled closer to me. “This is serial killer territory.” He linked arms with me and Stella. “United front,” he whispered. “They can smell our fear.”
I would have liked to pretend that I wasn’t as nervous as he was, but . . .
I dipped my hand into the waistband of the boxers to make sure my scalpel was still resting against my skin. It was. The warm steel under my fingertips made me feel better.
Finally, the three of us walked inside. It was dimly lit, naturally. We glimpsed a bar composed of ridged metal sheeting, and three rather large men sitting at it. One of them wore a black wife-beater with black sunglasses perched on his balding forehead. Another wore an improbably long-sleeved flannel shirt and a cowboy hat, of all things. The third had white hair and a tobacco-stained white beard. He had only one eye.
Someone else appeared out of the shadows, cleaning a glass with a dirty rag.
“You look a little lost,” he said to us.
I expected Jamie to speak first, but Stella surprised me. She offered up our fake sob story to the men, told them about being abandoned on a camping trip, blah blah, and then said we needed a ride. I was incredibly impressed. Jamie looked like he was ready to wet himself.
“Where’re you headed?” asked Cowboy.
“Miami,” Stella offered.
“You’re heading north. I’m heading south.” He crossed his arms in opposite directions, as if we needed him to explain what that meant. The other men were silent.
Jamie nodded just once and cleared his throat. “Well. Thank you anyway, gentlemen. For your time.”
Dejected, we left the gas station or bar or serial killer meet-up, whatever it was, and headed back outside. It was nearly night now. Insects buzzed around us, and on us. The air was loud with their noise as we walked down the road.
And then we heard something else—a truck spitting gravel and groaning as it left the station. It pulled up beside us.
“I felt bad for ya,” Cowboy said. “Come on. Hop in.”