“What’s the happiest thing you can remember?”
The question took him by surprise, but then he thought about it for a second and said it was one day last month when he and DeShaun—the camp’s other seven-year-old and Benny’s best friend—were walking through the woods and found a bird’s nest. It was small, he said, the size of two hands cupped together, made out of twigs and leaves and bits of plastic. Each of the four eggs inside it, snow white and speckled with blue, was hardly larger than his thumb. Benny said that he and DeShaun stood there for the longest time, not saying anything, just staring at those tiny eggs until it was like they were the biggest things in the whole world.
“Okay,” I said. “Now, close your eyes.”
He did.
“I want you to see those eggs again,” I said. “Not like you’re looking at a picture, but like they’re really there in front of you. Do you see them?”
Benny nodded slowly.
“Now I want you to feel how warm the sun is on your skin and how the pollen tickles your nose. Now smell the honeysuckle and the dogwoods and that musty smell that comes from all those old decaying leaves on the ground. I bet there are birds up in the trees too, right?”
Benny nodded again.
“You can hear them singing and DeShaun’s breathing beside you and your own heartbeat.”
Benny’s shoulders relaxed and his mouth fell open, his bottom lip fluttering in and out as he breathed. It was almost as if he were on the edge of sleep.
“Open your eyes.”
When he did, they were steady and bright. Calm.
“No matter what happens, no matter what you see, that moment is locked up inside you. So if you ever get scared, that’s where you go. Deal?”
He nodded solemnly, never taking his eyes off mine. “But nothing bad’s going to happen, right?”
I raised my hand. “I swear. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
It was as if the chains holding him back snapped. He went shooting off after the others, kicking up a cloud of dust as he went. I knelt there in the quiet of the camp, staring at the trail and thinking about walking the streets of Black River for the first time in eight months. It had to have been eighty degrees that day, but I felt as if I’d swallowed a bucket full of ice.
Once Benny was out of sight, I went back to my own campsite. I dropped to my knees and hunted around inside my tent until I found what I was looking for: a T-shirt–wrapped bundle hidden under my sleeping bag.
From time to time we traded with the other groups that were scattered throughout the woods and hills surrounding Lucy’s Promise. Not long after I moved up to the mountain, I sought out one of them, and swapped almost everything I had for the one thing I wanted.
I unfolded the T-shirt. Inside was a six-inch hunting knife with a leather-wrapped handle. All along the top of the blade there were these rat’s teeth serrations, the kind you’d use to saw through thick branches. The cutting edge itself was so sharp it seemed to hum.
I tested the edge with a finger. It whispered through the skin, sending a pinprick of blood curling into my palm. The world became a little brighter and a little more clear. I smeared the blood off on my jeans, then sheathed the knife and threaded it onto my belt. I left camp and started down the trail toward Black River.
3
I?SAW THE RIVER first. I’d come around the second-to-last switchback and the trees had started to thin. The Black River cut the Quarantine Zone roughly in half, with the mountains on one side and the town on the other. From up on Lucy’s Promise it looked like a dark ribbon. The only bright spot along its course was where the water ran fast over the falls, turning to white foam as it slipped beneath the stone bridge.
The town appeared next. From where I stood it was just trees mixed with black and russet-colored roofs and a few lines for roads. It grew larger with every step, until I could pick out the red brick of Black River High at the south end of Main Street and the crown of mansions way up at the north end. As soon as we came off the mountain, the kids sprinted down Route 9. Greer chased after them, but my legs wouldn’t move. I stood there, one foot on the asphalt, one on the grass, looking down the road at what had become of Black River.