“Perfect until she got there,” I said.
“No,” said Regina. “That’s not what I mean. There were problems in every life before she came into them, and there would have been problems after. What I mean is that life is work and pain and trial, and that’s what makes it worth living. The only thing broken about Nobody was that she didn’t want to admit it.”
“I don’t think anybody wants to admit that,” I said.
“Everybody has to eventually,” said Regina. “It’s how we grow up.”
I looked up at the sky again, looking for a light, but all I saw were the lights on the tops of the refinery chimneys, blinking on and off like tiny white eyes. One by one more lights came on, up and down the chimneys, glinting on the pipes, shining from every corner of every frame and lattice and walkway. They shone in the darkness like a city made of stars.
“It’s a fairy castle,” Regina whispered. The thousand tiny lights reflected in Brooke’s eyes, and I looked away.
“Ten minutes ago it was the ugliest thing you’d ever seen,” I said.
“I feel sorry for you,” said Regina, “that you live in a world this beautiful and all you see are the bad parts.”
“It’s an oil refinery.”
“And it’s beautiful,” she insisted. “Things can be more than one thing.”
I turned back to the towers of light, sparkling like jewels—white and yellow, and here and there a red one, spires and balconies and sweeping arches against a background so dark it looked like the metal itself had faded away, and the lights were hovering in the air by magic.
“I wish Marci could be here to see this,” I breathed.
“Who’s Marci?”
“She’s…” I paused, trying to think of how to answer. “One of my loaves.”
“Go ahead and say it,” she said softly. “It’s okay.”
My voice was a whisper. “She was someone I loved.”
13
Regina was gone the next morning, and Brooke woke up, bleary-eyed, asking where we were. I filled her in while Boy Dog sniffed and huffed and walked around our makeshift campsite, chewing on things and peeing on things and making himself at home. We wouldn’t stay long enough for any of it to matter.
“Where to next?” asked Brooke.
“Gartner,” I said. “Rain’s the only one left that we know how to find. Or at least where to start looking.” I checked our money as I packed my things, wincing at the dwindling amount. “I wish we could go back for that stash of supplies.”
“Iowa’s probably watching it,” said Brooke. When I’d told her about the SUV she’d decided it must have been from the FBI, but I wasn’t so sure—we didn’t know what the Withered could do, so it was entirely possible that one of them was tracking us somehow. Besides, if I picked one option I’d be ignoring the other, so I’d rather be afraid of both and ready for everything.
“Tell me about Rain,” I said.
“Run from Rain,” said Brooke, automatically, as if it was an instinctual reaction. It was the same thing she’d said before, and she said it the same way.
“Is Rain that frightening?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Brooke. “I don’t know why, I just know that I’m scared. Like it’s a part of me, deep inside.”
The same way Regina knew she loved me, I thought. The personalities shared emotions and core knowledge better than they shared specific thoughts or discrete information. Maybe I could use that.
“What kind of fear is it?” I asked. “When you think about Rain, do you feel trapped? Do you feel rushed, like someone’s chasing you? Do you feel alone or helpless or … I don’t know, disgusted?”
Brooke thought about it for a moment, tapping her finger on her half-packed backpack. After a while she said, “I feel small.”
“So Rain is big?”
“Or I’m just small.”
“Fair enough.” I looked down at my own pack, refolding the blanket I’d used as a bedroll. We were on the northwest edge of Dallas, if I’d read the map correctly, which meant that hitching a ride down to Gartner would be tricky without going back through the middle of the city again. If they knew where we were coming from, did they know where we were going? Would they be watching the highways to see where we went? We were too conspicuous now—dirty enough to stand out in any crowd, with a recognizable dog and that distinct “all our worldly possessions are in this backpack” kind of look that made truly homeless people so easy to spot. The FBI was looking for us, and the Withered, and probably the local cops as well after I’d caused that car accident the day before. We needed to change our look and our methods.
With fifty-two dollars and fifty-one cents.
“Do you remember that truck stop we passed right before the refinery?” asked Brooke.
I frowned at her. “Do you? You weren’t even you when we passed it.”
“Not really,” she said. “But I know we passed one.” She smiled. “You said something cute about it—what was it?”