Part of her had to stay with her physical body, answering the occasional question in class (a veteran hand-raiser since first grade, today she found it annoying to be called on when she was just sitting with them neatly folded on her desk), talking with her friends at lunch, and asking Coach Rennie if she could be excused from gym and go to the library instead. “I’ve got a stomachache,” she said, which was middle-school femcode for I’ve got my period.
She was equally quiet at Emma’s house after school, but that wasn’t a big problem. Emma came from a bookish family, and she was currently reading her way through the Hunger Games for the third time. Mr. Deane tried to chat Abra up when he came home from work, but quit and dove into the latest issue of The Economist when Abra answered in monosyllables and Mrs. Deane gave him a warning look.
Abra was vaguely aware of Emma putting her book aside and asking if she wanted to go out in the backyard for awhile, but most of her was with Dan: seeing through his eyes, feeling his hands and feet on the controls of The Helen Rivington’s little engine, tasting the ham sandwich he ate and the lemonade he chased it down with. When Dan spoke to her father, it was actually Abra speaking. As for Dr. John? He was riding at the very back of the train, and consequently there was no Dr. John. Just the two of them in the cab, a little father-and-daughter bonding in the wake of the bad news about Momo, cozy as could be.
Occasionally her thoughts turned to the woman in the hat, the one who had hurt the baseball boy until he died and then licked up his blood with her deformed and craving mouth. Abra couldn’t help it, but wasn’t sure it mattered. If she were being touched by Barry’s mind, her fear of Rose wouldn’t surprise him, would it?
She had an idea she couldn’t have fooled the True Knot’s locator if he had been healthy, but Barry was extremely sick. He didn’t know she knew Rose’s name. It hadn’t even occurred to him to wonder why a girl who wouldn’t be eligible for a driver’s license until 2015 was piloting the Teenytown train through the woods west of Frazier. If it had, he probably would have assumed the train didn’t really need a driver.
Because he thinks it’s a toy.
“—Scrabble?”
“Hmmm?” She looked around at Emma, at first not even sure where they were. Then she saw she was holding a basketball. Okay, the backyard. They were playing HORSE.
“I asked if you wanted to play Scrabble with me and my mom, because this is totally boring.”
“You’re winning, right?”
“Duh! All three games. Are you here at all?”
“Sorry, I’m just worried about my momo. Scrabble sounds good.” It sounded great, in fact. Emma and her mom were the slowest Scrabble players in the known universe, and would have shit large bricks if anyone had suggested playing with a timer. This would give Abra plenty of opportunity to continue minimizing her presence here. Barry was sick but he wasn’t dead, and if he got wise to the fact that Abra was performing a kind of telepathic ventriloquism, the results could be very bad. He might figure out where she really was.
Not much longer. Pretty soon they’ll all come together. God, please let it go okay.
While Emma cleared the crap off the table in the downstairs rec room and Mrs. Deane set up the board, Abra excused herself to use the toilet. She did need to go, but first she made a quick detour into the living room and peeked out the bow window. Billy’s truck was parked across the street. He saw the curtains twitch and flashed her a thumbs-up. Abra returned the gesture. Then the small part of her that was here went to the bathroom while the rest of her sat in the cab of The Helen Rivington.
We’ll eat our picnic, pick up our trash, watch the sunset, and then we’ll go back.
(eat our picnic, pick up our trash, watch the sunset, and then)
Something unpleasant and unexpected broke into her thoughts, and hard enough to snap her head back. A man and two women. The man had an eagle on his back, and both women had tramp stamps. Abra could see the tattoos because they were having na**d sex beside a pool while stupid old disco music played. The women were letting out a lot of fake moans. What in hell had she stumbled across?
The shock of what those people were doing destroyed her delicate balancing act, and for a moment Abra was all in one place, all here. Cautiously, she looked again, and saw the people by the pool were all blurry. Not real. Almost ghostie people. And why? Because Barry was almost a ghostie person himself and had no interest in watching people have sex by the—
Those people aren’t by a pool, they’re on TV.
Did Barry the Chink know she was watching him watch some p**n o TV show? Him and the others? Abra wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think so. They had taken the possibility into account, though. Oh, yes. If she was there, they were trying to shock her into going away, or into revealing herself, or both.
“Abra?” Emma called. “We’re ready to play!”
We’re playing already, and it’s a much bigger game than Scrabble.