“In my backpack. I’ll be fine. Excuse me.”
“That’s right,” Emma said, “quit while you’re winning.”
“Em-ma!” her mother cried.
“That’s okay, Mrs. Deane. She beat me at HORSE.” Abra went up the stairs, one hand pressed to her stomach in a way she hoped didn’t look too fakey. She glanced outside again, saw Mr. Freeman’s truck, but didn’t bother with the thumbs-up this time. Once in the bathroom, she locked the door and sat down on the closed toilet lid. It was such a relief to be done juggling so many different selves. Barry was dead; Emma and her mom were downstairs; now it was just the Abra in this bathroom and the Abra at Cloud Gap. She closed her eyes.
(Dan)
(I’m here)
(you don’t have to pretend to be me anymore)
She felt his relief, and smiled. Uncle Dan had tried hard, but he wasn’t cut out to be a chick.
A light, tentative knock at the door. “Girlfriend?” Emma. “You all right? I’m sorry if I was mean.”
“I’m okay, but I’m going to go home and take a Motrin and lie down.”
“I thought you were going to stay the night.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Isn’t your dad gone?”
“I’ll lock the doors until he gets back.”
“Well . . . want me to walk with you?”
“That’s okay.”
She wanted to be alone so she could cheer when Dan and her father and Dr. John took those things out. They would, too. Now that Barry was dead, the others were blind. Nothing could go wrong.
10
There was no breeze to rattle the brittle leaves, and with the Riv shut down, the picnic area at Cloud Gap was very quiet. There was only the muted conversation of the river below, the squall of a crow, and the sound of an approaching engine. Them. The ones the hat woman had sent. Rose. Dan flipped up one side of the wicker basket, reached in, and gripped the Glock .22 Billy had provided him with—from what source Dan didn’t know or care. What he cared about was that it could fire fifteen rounds without reloading, and if fifteen rounds weren’t enough, he was in a world of hurt. A ghost memory of his father came, Jack Torrance smiling his charming, crooked grin and saying, If that don’t work, I don’t know what to tellya. Dan looked at Abra’s old stuffed toy.
“Ready, Hoppy? I hope so. I hope we both are.”
11
Billy Freeman was slouched behind the wheel of his truck, but sat up in a hurry when Abra came out of the Deane house. Her friend—Emma—stood in the doorway. The two girls said goodbye, slapping palms first in an overhead high five, then down low. Abra started for her own house, across the street and four doors down. That wasn’t in the plan, and when she glanced at him, he raised both hands in a what gives gesture.
She smiled and shot him another quick thumbs-up. She thought everything was okay, he got that loud and clear, but seeing her outside and on her own made Billy uneasy, even if the freaks were twenty miles south of here. She was a powerhouse, and maybe she knew what she was doing, but she was also only thirteen.
As he watched her go up the walk to her house, pack on her back and rummaging in her pocket for her key, Billy leaned over and thumbed the button on his glove compartment. His own Glock .22 was inside. The pistols were rented firepower from a guy who was an emeritus member of the Road Saints, New Hampshire chapter. In his younger years, Billy had sometimes ridden with them but had never joined. On the whole he was glad, but he understood the pull. The camaraderie. He supposed it was the way Dan and John felt about the drinking.
Abra slipped into her house and closed the door. Billy didn’t take either the Glock or his cell phone out of the glove compartment—not yet—but he didn’t close the compartment, either. He didn’t know if it was what Dan called the shining, but he had a bad feeling about this. Abra should have stayed with her friend.
She should have stuck to the plan.
12
They ride in campers and Winnebagos, Abra had said, and it was a Winnebago that pulled into the parking lot where the Cloud Gap access road dead-ended. Dan sat watching with his hand in the picnic basket. Now that the time had come, he felt calm enough. He turned the basket so one end faced the newly arrived RV and flicked off the Glock’s safety with his thumb. The ’Bago’s door opened and Abra’s would-be kidnappers spilled out, one after the other.