“C!”
“Where?” She craned her neck trying to spot it, reading the sign as we passed it. “I don’t see a C anywhere on there, but there’s a J! Quick, find all the other letters up to J while we can still see it!”
“On the license plate,” I said, still pointing away from the C sign. “There’s a C, and then on the side of that truck there’s a D, E.… I’m not seeing an F anywhere.”
“Too late,” she said. “The J’s gone.” She smiled at me, peaceful and contented. “We’ll see another one.”
“Yeah.” The C sign was gone as well.
“Tell me where we’re going again?” she asked.
“Nowhere special,” I said, not meeting her eyes. “Just a place to relax for a bit.”
“Rain was south of us,” said Brooke. “We’ve been going north for two days.”
“Agent Mills is still looking for us,” I said. “And so is the FBI. We need to lay low.”
“He still has Boy Dog,” said Brooke.
“I’ll get him back.”
“F,” said Brooke, pointing at a passing license plate. She laughed. “That’s funny.”
The town ahead was close enough to see now, a low mound of trees and buildings, and high above it all, the smokestacks of a wood plant. I looked at Brooke, just looking and looking. I didn’t want to make this choice, and I did. Both at the same time.
“You’re staring at me,” she said.
“You’re nice to stare at.”
Brooke raised her eyebrow. “John Wayne Cleaver, you rogue.”
“Brooke, I…” I took a deep breath, and blew it out slowly. “You’re my best friend.”
“You’re mine.”
“You’re the most important person in my life. You’re the two most important people in my life, all at once, and I want you to … to be safe. To be happy. I want you to grow up and get married and have kids and have a life. I want you to live a thousand years.”
“I’ve already lived ten thousand,” she said, and cocked her head to the side. “Why are you getting so serious all of a sudden?”
“Because I want to do what’s best for you.”
“You always do,” she said. “And I want to do what’s best for you.”
“Those don’t always line up,” I said.
“I love you,” said Brooke.
I sighed. “I think you probably do. And I think I…” I stopped, and closed my eyes, and said the hardest thing I’d ever said—not because it was false, but because it was completely, relentlessly true. “I love you too.”
She moved across the truck to sit next to me, lifting my arm and snuggling in under it. The truck bounced us gently as we rode. The city ahead grew closer.
“Have we been here before?” asked Brooke. “It looks familiar.”
“It’s been a while,” I said. “But yeah.”
The C sign again: WELCOME TO CLAYTON.
Brooke smiled. “I remember this place. I grew up here.” She sat up straighter, looking around, drinking in the familiarity. “Several of me did.”
“This is where we’re from,” I said. “Brooke and John. This is home.” We passed the gas station, the tire place, the old kitschy shoe museum. “You deserve a home.”
“It seems smaller than I remember it,” said Brooke. “Which is weird, because I’m not bigger than I was, I’m just older. But it all seems like it’s … shrunk, maybe. Or maybe I’m just seeing it with new eyes. Like it all used to blend together, and now I’m seeing the gaps between the buildings, and the lines in the paint.” She shook her head. “It’s only been three years? Two years? It feels like it hasn’t changed a bit. Or like it’s aged a whole century.”
The driver leaned out of his window. “The hospital, right?”
I nodded. Brooke didn’t know it, but this was a chartered trip. Fifty-four dollars and ninety-six cents, every last scrap of money we had left plus everything I’d gotten for pawning the rifle, had been slipped through the window with a whispered plea when the truck picked us up.
“Why are we going to the hospital?” asked Brooke. She looked at her hands, and the bandaged burn on her leg. “They’ll ask for ID.”
“Your burns are fine,” I said.
“Then why are we going to the hospital?”
I wished that idiot driver had just kept his mouth shut. This was hard enough without him spilling the whole plan early.
“G,” I said, pointing at the sign for the Friendly Burger.
Brooke looked at me, thinking, her mind racing through the implications of my words, of our destination, of everything that was happening.
“No,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to leave me here,” she said, pulling away. I grabbed her hand, holding her back, scared that she would jump straight out of the truck bed, trying to kill herself or simply trying to escape. “If we come back they’ll recognize us, people will know us—we won’t be able to hide anymore or finish our work with the Withered. And I know you’re not going to abandon your war, so that means you’re abandoning me instead! You’re leaving me here!”