Chapter 17
The alarm is ringing. My clock radio must have fallen to the floor, because the ringing is muffled. I open my eyes and stare at a rectangle of sunlight on a cement floor. No alarm. No carpet. Just cement with a patch of sunlight. And I can’t move my legs.
“What the …,” someone whispers. I roll onto my side. My shirt clings to my sweaty back. Bowen wipes sleep from his eyes and blinks. He clicks the remote at me and my legs are loose. “Come on.” He grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet, hurrying upstairs.
Late-day sunlight glints off water pooled on the floor at the base of the broken windows. A repeating gong, like a church bell, echoes in the humid air. Bowen strides up to a west window and sunlight drenches him, casting a long shadow at his feet.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he mutters.
“What is it?” I ask, standing behind him.
“They’ve opened the gate! For the first time in ever, they opened the gate on a Wednesday! And we’re here and not there.” He turns accusing eyes onto me. “I could have taken you to the lab right now and been done with you. Now I have to babysit you until Sunday.” He shakes his head and pushes past me, grumbling under his breath.
“Gee, thanks. But you’re the worst babysitter in the history of the world, Dreyden. Babysitters are supposed to be fun,” I say to his back, and then I stick out my tongue. Very thirteen-year-old.
He turns and strides up to me, eyes full of fire, not stopping until our noses nearly touch. I gulp and force myself not to step back. “Nothing about life is fun anymore, Fo,” he says. And then he leaves, feet thumping down the stairs.
I turn to the row of west windows and find the one with the least amount of broken glass below it and sit. The air is heavy with moisture and heat, clinging to my skin, gluing my hair to my scalp. My calves are worse, hot and itchy and sweaty beneath the cuffs. I sift through the glass shards littering the floor and pick up a long, triangular piece, wrapping it in the hem of my white T-shirt. And then I begin sawing just above my knee. The denim pops and tears against the glass. When I’ve made a sufficient hole, I tear the fabric, using the glass again to cut through the tough seams. And then the bottom half of my jeans separates from the top. I pull the cut denim over my shoe and stare at the glossy black metal encasing my calf.
“Stupid, stupid cuff,” I say, and chuck the cut-off piece of denim out the window.
I start on the other leg, hacking at the fabric with the glass until I can tear it from the rest of the pants. I chuck it, too, and then jab at the metallic cuff encasing my calf. I take a second good, hard jab with the glass, gouging the metal, and gasp. Instinctively, I throw down the glass. The T-shirt protecting my hand has a small circle of red on it. The red spreads through the fabric, saturating the fibers, growing. I pull the fabric from my hand, and blood seeps out of a gash in my palm. The sight makes me want to gag.
I stand on weak legs and hurry down the stairs. Bowen, sitting with his back against the wall, gun propped on his bent knees, facing the door, doesn’t look at me when I stop in front of him. His face is tight with anger, his brow furrowed.
“Bowen?” I say.
“What?” His eyes don’t leave the door.
“Do you have a first-aid kit?” My voice shakes. He looks up, still glowering.
“Why do you need a first-aid kit?” he asks. Blood escapes my cupped hand and drips between his boots. His gun is on the ground and he is on his feet, pulling my hand to his eyes. “How did you manage to get hurt? Wait here.” He lets go of my hand, and it falls limply to my side. Blood trickles down my fingers. “And keep your hand above your heart!”
I lift my hand to shoulder height, and blood trails down my arm and drips from my elbow. Bowen is gone for what feels like forever, a whole minute at least. When he comes back, he’s holding a white box with a red cross painted on it.
“Upstairs. It’s too dark down here,” he says, gripping my elbow.
On the second floor, he pushes me to sitting and opens the box. “This will hurt,” he warns, “but don’t cry out!” He crouches beside me and pulls my fingers flat, making the gash in my palm gape. With his teeth he tears open a small white packet—it looks like a sugar packet from a restaurant—and holds it over my hand. Our eyes meet. And then his face is over my palm, and he pours little round white beads that look like fertilizer into the open gash. They hiss when they touch blood, and then absorb it until they turn red. The beads expand and the bleeding slows. Pressure fills the wound. I gasp and squeeze my eyes shut. Unable to stay upright, I totter and fall to the side.
Fire laces my blood, spreading from my palm to my fingers and wrist. Ice follows, traveling all the way to my elbow. And then the pain is gone. I wiggle my fingers. It feels like a rock is wedged inside the cut, and I can’t make a fist. I take a deep breath and open my eyes. A knee supports my head, and fingers are brushing the hair from my sweaty forehead.
“I’m sorry,” Bowen says.
I look up at him. “No. It’s my fault for being stupid. I shouldn’t have used the glass—”
“Fo,” Bowen snaps, silencing me. “I’m not sorry the coagulant hurt your hand. You totally deserved it. But I’m sorry about what I said. About being stuck with you.”
Sunshine spreads through my body. I sit up and beam at him. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really. Aside from you being my potential—and most likely, terribly painful—death, you’re not that bad.” He smiles and I feel like I could float away. Without asking, he takes my injured hand and wraps it with stretchy tape.
“No showering for twenty-four hours,” he warns.
My eyes grow round and I lean toward him. “Is there a shower here?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “It was a joke.” A hot breeze stirs the air, and Bowen shuts his eyes. “Maybe we should sleep up here tonight. It’s a lot cooler than downstairs. And with the cover of darkness … I’ll grab our stuff.”
He stands. I watch him go, then make my way to the west windows in time to see the sun disappear behind distant mountains. Shadows creep into the world, filling every corner and hollow. And one shadow on the street below moves. I crouch down for a better look.
The shadow crouches, too, and for a moment I wonder if it has seen me. But then it picks something up from the ground. Something pale and limp. The bottom half of my pants.