*
Lily is standing against the back wall of the cell, shivering, with her arms wrapped around her body, holding herself tight. The umbilical stub of the IV line dangles from her forearm where she tore it free. She has also torn the package of gauze off her throat, and her wound is raw and pink and glistening like grotesque alien jewelry.
“Who are you?” she says fiercely, and I say, “My name is Henry. I’m a policeman,” and she howls, “What did you do to me? What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing.”
She stares at me, fearful and defiant, like she’s a sick animal and I’m here to put her down. She points with a trembling finger at the IV bag hung from the ceiling behind me. “What is that?”
“Saline solution, that’s all. Ninety percent sodium chloride,” I say, and then when I clock the disbelieving horror in her eyes I say, “Water, Lily, it’s salt water, to rehydrate you. You needed fluids.”
“Lily?”
“Oh, right, I …” Why am I calling her that? Where did we get that name? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. She’s gaping at me. Baffled, distraught. My fingers are white where I’m gripping the bars.
“I peed,” she says suddenly.
“Hey, that’s great,” I say. “Good for you.” Like I’m talking to a baby, just saying words. “That means you’re getting better.” Trying to keep calm; keep her calm. “I put you in here, okay? You were asleep. But you’re safe. You’re fine. You’re going to be just fine.”
It’s not true—she knows it’s not true—everything is not going to be just fine—it’s not so. Of course not. She’s deathly pale, shivering violently, her face a piteous mixture of fear and wonder.
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I’m trying to find out.”
“Where am I?” She licks her dry lips and looks around. I don’t know where to start. You’re in the police station. You’re in the Muskingum River Watershed. You’re on Earth. I don’t know how much she knows. I wonder what I look like. I wish I had shaved. I wish I were smaller. I smell like dirt and fire.
“You’re upstairs,” I say finally.
“Where are the others?”
The back of my neck tingles. The others. Tick and Astronaut and the black girl and the kid with the bright blue sneakers.
“I don’t know where they are.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Henry Palace.”
“Henry,” she whispers, and then, “Palace,” and she looks at me, her eyes widening as they travel over my face.
“Henry, Henry,” she says, and then she stares right at me, right into my eyes. “Do you have a sister?”
*
It’s the same as the last time: I chased the dog and Cortez me, the three of us chasing toward the girl’s body in the clearing, but now it’s just me chasing Lily, which is not her name, cracking branches and brush beneath me, my flat feet thumping on the soil, brambles tearing at my pant legs like vengeful spirits trying to catch me and make me fall. Same as last time—same route—down a westward slope away from the police station, along the line of the small creek—but then Lily breaks left and I follow her, she crosses a small swinging rope bridge, and I follow and follow.
Hide-and-seek. Cutting through the woods. It’s raining. My heart is galloping in my chest, leaping out ahead of me.
This is fine, I think crazily, this long moment of just running. The part before we get there, wherever we’re going. My pulse is an ocean roar in my ears. The sun is a pale yellow circle through a thickness of rain clouds. Let’s just run forever. Because I can feel it, oh man I can feel it—I know what’s coming.
Lily stops abruptly at a low line of bushes, and her back stiffens, her head turns slightly to the left and then down, her whole body flinching as she sees whatever it is that she is seeing. I know what it is, though, I already know. Tightness in my chest like someone has tied it off with a belt. A burning in my lungs from running. I already know.
I move in slow motion. Past Lily’s stationary form, through a low layer of brush into a little meadow, an opening in the trees.
There’s a body in the center of the clearing. I stumble forward over tree roots, tripping over my stupid feet. I pitch forward, right myself, and then crouch, panting, beside the body.