Back when Greer was his old self, he almost never had to use his fists. Remember? He would fix his eyes on any of us, either at the bus stop or in the schoolyard, and we would wither. There was something in the way he looked at you that said he saw right through whatever sad little defense you were trying to mount, whatever bluff. It also said that what was inside of him was no bluff at all. Greer looked at me like that as we sat by the reservoir.
“You really think you know what’s going to happen because you know what did happen?” he said. “You think you know who people are because you know who they were? Trust me here, man. You don’t know a damn thing.”
I turned away. I could feel his eyes on my back as I watched ripples of water strike the shore. He got up and headed back down the hill.
“You know what?” he said. “Forget it. I’m going to go find a nice green-haired girl and try to convince her that, no matter what stupid thing you said to her, we all want her here and she shouldn’t take her things and go live in some Guard rooming house full of rapists and pedophiles. And then, if I can manage that, I’m going to take her and all the kids down to the park to eat some barbecue. Because if I don’t, if I spend all my time on this stupid mountain worrying that it’s all going to come crashing down around me any minute, I honestly think I’ll just go ahead and blow my brains out. Okay? If that means I think all this is a game—which, by the way, is an incredibly freaking insulting thing to say to your best friend—then so be it. Now, you wanna come or you wanna sit here moping and pretending to fish?”
“I’m not—”
He held up one finger to silence me. “No. Come or mope. Those are your choices.”
I got up and grabbed the fishing rod. The line hissed as I reeled it in and then recast it.
“We are friends,” Greer said from behind me. “Right, Card?”
I watched as the floater bobbed on the water. Greer turned away and headed back to camp. I dropped the fishing rod. Soon the ripples faded and the reservoir spread out in front of me, as flat and bright as a razor.
15
THAT AFTERNOON, I did what I should have done the minute Greer and the others showed up on Lucy’s Promise. I packed my things and moved as far away as possible.
I found a spot on the opposite side of the reservoir. It was in the deep forest, far from any trail, a tangle of brush and vines and deadfall. It took me a full day to hack a path through it and then another to carve out a spot big enough for my tent. It was worth the effort. The woods around me were so thick that I couldn’t hear a sound except for my own breathing and the occasional rustle of a bird’s wings up in the branches. Even at noon on a cloudless day, it might as well have been dusk.
I spent my days fishing and foraging for mushrooms, crabapples, and blackberries. I even started gathering firewood in preparation for my first winter alone on the mountain. It was tough with just my knife, but there were enough dead trees and branches around that I got a decent pile going. The best part was that, for the first time in almost a year, I didn’t have to wear my mask or my gloves. The air tasted like earth and wood instead of hot plastic. It was so strange to touch things without gloves that I compulsively ran my fingers over tree bark and flower petals and my own skin, just for the thrill of it.
Time had a strange way of expanding and contracting. A morning would seem to last a year, and then all of a sudden it would be past midnight. Sometimes I pretended I was living millions of years in the future and was the only human left alive. I imagined walking a thousand miles in any direction—up into Canada or down into Virginia and the Carolinas—and seeing nothing but empty houses and crumbling highways. It was strange how comforting the idea was.
In the beginning I thought about Hannah and Greer and the kids all the time, but as the days went by, they emptied out of my mind one by one. Pretty soon I figured there’d be nothing left in my head but find food, find water, build a fire. I couldn’t wait for that moment to come, but it didn’t turn out that way. Once they were gone, someone else appeared and took their place. Dad.
It wasn’t even like I was thinking about him at first. Not exactly. It was more like he was this presence that hovered around me all the time. There, but not there. I’d walk into a stand of trees, certain that I was going to find him on the other side, waiting for me. Or I’d think I’d heard his voice, but it would turn out to be a flock of birds or a tumble of dead branches blown by the wind. During the few hours a night I managed to sleep, he moved in and out of my dreams.