“What’s wrong with you?” asked Paul.
“Let’s go,” said Corey, and the other two followed like obedient dogs. I’d assumed that Paul was the leader and Derek was the loudmouth buddy, but now I could see that Corey had been in charge all along, quietly manipulating everything the other two had done. It concerned me that I hadn’t seen it. We watched them go, first backing away, then turning and muttering among themselves as they walked the rest of the way to the fence. Derek turned around and shouted a final insult, cussing us out as the others went through the fence, then he followed them out.
“Come over here,” I whispered to Marci, and we walked away from the building, away from the closed wooden gate we’d been standing near. Sure enough, one last beer can came sailing over the fence, then another, then a whole barrage of cans and rocks and gravel, all targeting the spot we’d been standing. After a moment the volley stopped, and I heard them snicker as they ran away.
“Put the knife away,” said Marci. I realized I was still holding it, my knuckles white around the grip.
I looked at it, not knowing what to say. “I wanted to kill them.”
“I know.”
“They were going to hurt you, and then I was going to kill them,” I said, though I knew it wasn’t true. Protecting her had been the impetus, but then the sheer love of death had taken over and Brooke or Marci or whoever it was had stopped being a reason and become an excuse. I wanted to kill them because I wanted to kill. I wanted to stab and slice and destroy.
“We can’t stay here,” said Marci.
“We have to find Attina.”
“I mean here,” she said, gesturing around us, “in this theater. They might come back when we’re asleep, or they might even go to the police.”
“Drunk teenagers don’t go to the police,” I said, still feeling some kind of weird buzz from the experience. An adrenaline high I was only slowly coming down from, and which a part of me didn’t want to let go.
I had them right here.…
I needed to light a fire.
“But the police might find them,” said Marci. “If they get picked up for drunk and disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace or whatever thing they don’t want to get in trouble for, the first thing they’ll do is use us as a distraction, and it will work, because two out-of-town squatters with a big scary knife are exactly the kind of thing that a cop is going to pursue immediately.”
“If he believes them,” I said, though I knew she was right.
“We’re not the kind of story three drunk teens would make up,” said Marci, and I nodded.
“I know.” I put the knife away and started walking toward the hole in the fence. “Let’s see what else we can find to sleep under. Another tree.”
“Another?”
“We slept under a tree last night.”
Marci nodded Brooke’s head. “I remember,” she said, but I couldn’t tell if she did or not. Brooke tried to cover her gaps in memory; maybe Marci did the same. I crawled through the hole, and in the few brief seconds before she followed me, I put my face against the wood of the fence, closing my eyes, trying to know what to do. As if knowing were an act of will. I couldn’t understand her, I couldn’t help her, and now I couldn’t even protect her—and if I ever did, that protection might cause more problems than whatever danger I was trying to save her from.
She deserved more than I could give her.
“John?”
I turned around, and she was standing there, ready to go. I started walking, and she hurried to catch up, reaching for my hand as we walked. I pulled it away, and we walked in silence. After a few blocks we saw a low chain-link fence around a big backyard and what looked like a vegetable garden. I climbed over it as quietly as I could, keeping Marci and Boy Dog in sight, and crept through the furrows looking for food. I stole a pair of tomatoes and three fat summer squash, and we ate them as we walked farther, looking for a safe hiding place to spend the night. We ended up in the narrow space between a sagging fence and an old wooden shed—not a dead end, because I hated being trapped, but the ground was full of undisturbed weeds so I was pretty sure no one would come blundering through in the morning. There didn’t seem to be any animal tracks or droppings, so I figured the owners didn’t have a pet, either. I set up my backpack as an armrest and sat with my back against the shed. I wasn’t sleepy but I was exhausted—my body bone weary, my mind too frantic to relax. Would we be safe here? Would we be safe in the town at all? Where was Attina, and how would we find him, and how would we get to know him well enough to kill him? How long would Marci stay, and which would hurt me more: Marci leaving, or Brooke never coming back? I had to take care of—