“It’s the same with us. We, like light, attempt to move through life in a straight line, unchanged, but we encounter massive objects along the way.”
He drew several lumpy masses in front of the stick figure and labeled them: SICKNESS. DEATH. LOVE. The line growing from the figure’s chest was forced to zigzag around them.
“Each event bends our life into a new trajectory. It bends who we are. So if you look closely, you can perceive distant events in a person’s life by observing the ways in which they’ve bent themselves around them. The ways in which they’ve been deformed. It’s like looking back in time. But it’s also like looking into the future.”
He finished, and the three of us just stood there slack-jawed. What did you say to that? Did you applaud? Was it brilliant or was it insane? Freeman saved us the trouble of deciding. He whipped another library card out of his pocket and held it out to me.
“Letter of transit.”
I took the card. Greer and the girl helped Freeman up, and he strolled away without another word.
Greer watched him go, then turned back to us. “Who the hell are the children of Lethe?”
The girl laughed. “Who the hell is Penthesilea?”
I wondered—Who the hell is Freeman Wayne?
The backpack was right where she said it would be, sitting beside a pink crocodile in the middle of the sculpture garden. The park’s iron gate squeaked as Greer opened it. I expected the girl to run to the bag and start tearing through it, but she hung back near the fence, staring at it, her arms crossed tight over her chest.
“You want me to . . .”
She nodded. Greer knelt by the bag and unzipped it. I watched from the other side of the fence as he tossed out a pair of socks, a pair of jeans, a plain gray T-shirt. Next came an empty bottle of water and a couple energy bar wrappers. He looked discouraged until he saw another pocket on the front of the bag and opened it.
“Well, well, well. Lookee here, boys and girls!”
I let myself into the garden. “What is it?”
“We’ve got ourselves a driver’s license!”
The girl jumped away from the fence. “Seriously?”
Greer pulled an orange wallet out of her backpack, then, with a grand, Freeman-like bow, turned to her and produced a plastic card. “Please allow me to reunite you with you. Marianne.”
The girl snatched the ID out of Greer’s hand. He turned to me, grinning.
“Damn, Card, are we good or what? We’ll have her back to her folks by the end of the day.”
I nodded, but the truth was, I didn’t feel like celebrating. It was stupid. This had been the plan. We figure out who she is and get her off the mountain; then things go back to normal. I should have been relieved—I wanted to be relieved—but when I thought of her being gone, I don’t know, it was like all the air had rushed out of me.
“Hey! You okay? What’s wrong?”
I thought Greer was talking to me, but when I looked up, I saw that the girl was at the fence, head down, with her back to us. The ID was clamped in her hands. When she moved to return it to Greer, I saw that she was crying.
“What?” he said as he scanned the license again. “You don’t like the name? I think Marianne is nice. We could call you Mari if you want.”
No response. Greer looked at me, helpless, and handed the card over. It was a New York driver’s license all right and it was definitely her in the picture, green hair and all, but there was something about it, something I couldn’t put my finger on. And then it hit me all at once.
“It’s fake,” I said.
Greer plucked the card out of my hand. “What? No way. How do you know?”
I started to answer, but the girl interrupted me.
“Marianne Dashwood.”
Her back was pressed up against the fence, and she was clutching at the key around her neck. Her eyes were puffy and red. Greer looked to me, confused.
“She’s a character in a book called Sense and Sensibility,” I said.
“Well, maybe her parents just—”
“The address isn’t real either,” I explained. “Eighteen eleven Austen Street? Jane Austen wrote Sense and Sensibility.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Greer said. “Why would she have been carrying a fake ID? Where would she have even gotten one?”
I knelt down and opened the backpack again. There had to be something else there. I turned the thing inside out, but there were no pictures, no bank cards, no phone, no other ID. I went through the wallet, but all Greer had missed when he found the license was some cash in small bills. As I counted through them, a scrap of paper fell to the ground. It was rumpled and torn, but as soon as I unfolded it, I could see what it was. A Greyhound bus ticket stub.
It was for a route that ran from some town in Indiana to one that was barely an hour from Black River. But why would someone keep a bus ticket in her wallet for over six months? Just as that thought went through my head, I saw it. A few numbers printed at the bottom. The wallet dropped out of my hands.
“What’s up, Card? You got something?”