CHAPTER 18
IT WAS A gray, chilly dawn. Rachel and Pathik had snuck out of the house early and hidden in the bushes along the driveway. When Jonathan arrived they watched him enter the house. He left the truck running; he must have planned to dash inside and right back out. Rachel motioned for Pathik to climb in the back. She hopped in herself.
“I really think it’s a bad idea for you to come.” Pathik whispered, although nobody could hear them from inside the house.
Rachel just shrugged. “At least the tarp isn’t folded—he would notice if it was folded when he went in and unfolded when he came back.” She crawled underneath it. “Come on, we don’t have forever here.”
Pathik heaved an exasperated sigh. “Scoot over.” He settled next to her and they both tried to make their bodies as small as possible. “Tuck in your foot.”
“Oh, tuck in your own foot,” said Rachel. “I seriously cannot believe you are making me do this.”
“I just wanted some help sneaking out. I’m not making you come along.”
The front door opened and they heard Jonathan’s voice. After a few minutes they heard the truck door open and the truck moved; it dipped a bit as Jonathan climbed in the driver’s seat. The truck door closed.
“Hold on,” breathed Rachel. She laughed, as softly as she could, at the look on Pathik’s face when they took off. It was hard for her to remember sometimes that he didn’t have the same range of experiences she did; he had never ridden in a vehicle. The fastest he had ever gone was as fast as he could run.
They didn’t talk during the ride. At one point they hit a particularly large pot hole and Rachel was tossed hard; Pathik caught her around the waist and kept her from hitting the truck’s side panel. When she started to settle herself away from him again, he kept his arm around her. The rest of the ride to Bensen was a blur. Pathik’s arm around her waist felt so warm, and Rachel found she couldn’t turn and look at him. Somehow, even without looking, she knew he was grinning.
Soon enough they slowed; Rachel knew that meant they were coming into town. She leaned over and spoke into Pathik’s ear.
“Don’t move or make a noise until Jonathan’s gone. Once it’s totally quiet I’ll peek first. Got it?”
Pathik’s cheeks flushed as she whispered; when Rachel saw that, she grinned.
They waited, frozen. Jonathan got out of the truck; it rose again without his weight. When they heard the truck door shut she could feel Pathik tense; she put her hand on his arm and shook her head.
After she had heard nothing for a full minute, Rachel found the edge of the tarp and peeked out. She couldn’t see anything but the truck bed.
“Wait,” she hissed to Pathik, though he hadn’t moved. Then she stretched up higher until she could see past the walls of the bed. They were parked on a side street; that made sense. Jonathan wouldn’t have parked on the main street, where everyone could see his truck. Most of the places he had to go probably weren’t on the main street anyway; they were selling things illegally.
“Okay.” Rachel uncovered Pathik’s head. “There’s not that much to see, really. We’re on a side street of the town.”
“The buildings are so new. And smooth too.” Pathik looked around as wide-eyed as a child.
“Get down!” Rachel pulled him closer and pulled the tarp over them. A man was coming up the street. They listened to his footsteps on the pavement. When they couldn’t hear anything, Rachel peeked again. “Okay.” She uncovered them again.
“Will we go anywhere else in town?”
“I don’t know,” said Rachel. “I don’t know if Jonathan can walk to where he needs to go from here, or if he needs to come back and move the truck. I’d imagine not, though. Bensen isn’t that big.”
Pathik’s face fell a bit. He was hoping to see more than the backs of some buildings. They waited, watching carefully for anyone who might pass by. Nobody else did.
“Rachel.” Pathik had stopped looking at the buildings at some point and started looking at Rachel. She had felt his gaze, but she had been too shy to return it. Now she looked at him. He wasn’t smiling.
“I know we haven’t had a chance really to talk about it.” Pathik took a deep breath. He looked down at his hands. Rachel couldn’t decipher his expression; he looked almost as though he was in some sort of physical pain. “At least, we haven’t talked about it.”
“Talked about what?” Rachel was concerned now. She’d never seen Pathik this way.
“At first I told myself I wasn’t saying anything to you because you might prefer Fisher.”
“Fisher?” Rachel didn’t understand.
“You know he’s interested in you.” Pathik gauged her expression. “You mean you didn’t know?”
“No!” Rachel couldn’t believe she’d been so oblivious. When she thought back, she could see where it might be true. “I had no idea.”
“Well,” said Pathik. “Now you do.” He stared at his shoes.
“What would his being interested in me stop you from saying to me?”
“Nothing, really. I just used that for an excuse. I have been afraid. But not of competition from Fisher. I’ve been thinking of Indigo, and my father and your father, and that’s what I’ve always thought of when I think of love. How people lose their love.”
Pathik bit his lip. He looked square at her. “I haven’t thought enough about how people might find love. Like my father did, with Nandy. Or like your father did, with your mother. Or like Indigo has, again, with Ms. Moore. With my grandmother.” He smiled as he said the word grandmother. “It doesn’t always have to be loss.”
Rachel nodded. She knew what he meant about equating love with pain and loss. She thought she must have felt that way forever, or at least as long as she and her mother had been without her father.
“Do you think it really can be . . . something good?”
He answered without words. He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed her palm, and the world turned quiet, as though there was nothing but the back of the truck, and Pathik. He leaned toward her, and she had never felt anything so warm when he kissed her mouth. She closed her eyes and returned the soft pressure of his lips, and wondered why she hadn’t done this sooner. Kissing. It was lovely.
But then her head was yanked backward, with a force so rough it felt like her neck might snap. She screamed in pain; someone had hold of her hair and it felt like they were trying to drag her from the back of the truck. She scratched blindly backward, but she couldn’t loosen the grip on her hair.
“No!” She heard Pathik yell, and saw him leap over her, throwing himself at her attacker. The grip on her hair released. In the seconds it took her to sit up Pathik had landed enough blows to bloody the man. It was a stranger—a rough-looking man, older than Pathik by ten years or so. Rachel had a fleeting thought about all the times her mother had cautioned her to stay close on their trips to Bensen; young girls disappeared every day in the cities, and even in Bensen men like this weren’t unknown.
The man tried to run, but Pathik’s fury seemed endless. He kept hitting the man, the blows landing with a sound that made Rachel wince. Finally, the man was able to stumble out of Pathik’s reach. He ran for the main street.
“Pathik—” Before she could say more, Pathik pushed her down roughly. His eyes looked wild. There was blood on his lip.
“Hide.” He whispered the word at the same time that a shout rang out behind him. It didn’t come from the stranger.
“Halt!” It was an EO.
Anguish crumpled Pathik’s mouth. He focused upon her face for an instant, and then she could see his gaze turn inward. “Hide, Rachel.” He turned and ran away from the truck.
She pulled the tarp up. And listened. At first there was nothing, but then she heard Pathik cry out. Rachel hugged herself, and tried to be still. Tears streamed silently down her cheeks.
“Told you to halt, fool.” The EO sounded winded. Rachel heard footsteps, coming fast, then stopping.
“What’s this?” Another EO.
“Fight,” said the first, and a possible vehicle prowl. “One ran away, but this one seemed ready to try to get into that truck.”
“Scan him yet?”
“About to. I had to stun him. He wouldn’t stop.”
There was no more talking for a minute. Rachel knew the EOs were scanning Pathik for his genid, to see who he was. She knew they wouldn’t find a listing for him. In the U.S., every child’s genetic identity was scanned at birth and entered into the national registry. But Pathik had been born Away. There would be nothing in their system.
“Hmmm.”
“What?”
“He’s not coming up.”
“What do you mean he’s not coming up? They just went through the registry for errors. If he has a genid he’s going to come up.”
“I know.” The first EO sounded irritated. “I’m telling you he’s not coming up.”
“Cuff him.” The second EO sounded afraid. “Quick! Wrists and ankles. I’ll go get the vehicle. We gotta take this guy in.”
“What about the truck? Should I run it?”
“If he was about to break into it, it’s not his truck. Just watch him close until I come back.”
Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop the tears. She hugged herself tighter under the tarp, listening to the sounds of the EOs’ vehicle approaching, of Pathik being roughly lifted and put in the back. The door slammed. Two more door slams and the vehicle left.
She waited several minutes, listening, afraid to move. She knew she had to get out of the truck. Finally she just threw back the tarp and sat up. Just in time to see a man walking toward her. She was crying so hard that his image wavered; she could make out a hat and it looked like he was carrying a bag. He saw her and stopped in place. Rachel started to climb out of the truck, but her foot caught and she fell out instead. She landed on her side. As she tried to scramble up she heard the man running toward her. She scrambled under the truck, waiting for him to get closer. As soon as he tried to reach for her she would get out the other side.
“Child.”
It was Jonathan.