“Can you remember anything else?” I prompt her gently. “Did you see any signs or anything? Did you see any rides?”
She scrunches up her face and then shakes her head again. “No, but it felt spooky. Really spooky. After that, they came back and gave me another shot.”
“You were so brave,” I say. “You know that, right?”
She hugs her knees to her chest. “I guess. Yeah.”
I give her arm a squeeze. Already, I’m casting about in my mind, trying to think where the men might have stashed my parents. A row of shops means the truck could have been parked along the Main Drag.
“Linus,” I say. “We have to go back.”
“I’m coming, too,” Dubbs says.
The complications start cropping up. We need somewhere safe for Dubbs to stay and someone to look after her. We’ll have to search the park and watch out for Berg.
“Linus!” I say.
“I know,” he says evenly. “We just have to think it all through. It could still be someplace else.”
I glare at him. It is not someplace else. But he slants his eyes quickly toward Dubbs in a sharp signal, and I realize she’s hunched in a tight ball and she’s pulling the neckline of her shirt up over her nose.
“Hey,” I say. “We’re going to get them back. You don’t have to worry, you hear me?”
“Don’t leave me,” she says.
“I’m not going to leave you,” I say firmly. I grab an arm around her neck and rock her against me. “You’re going to be safe. Nobody’s taking you ever again. We’re going to keep being brave, right?”
She takes a shaky breath. Then she snuggles even closer to me and pulls my head so that my ear is near her mouth. She’s actually breathing into it.
“What is it?” I say. “Tell me.”
“When you never came home, I thought you were dead,” she whispers.
I shift to put my mouth by her ear, cupping my hand around my voice. “I’m not dead,” I say softly. “Dead people can’t eat your hair.” I go for a teasing bite, and she squirms away, laughing.
*
Linus has made two boxes of mac ’n’ cheese, so there’s plenty. We have raw baby carrots, too, and whole dill pickles. The noodles are rich and comforting with their little curved elbow shapes, and I savor each mouthful.
“You’re a good cook,” Dubbs tells him.
“Thank you.”
She likes to poke the tines of her fork into the holes of the noodles. “I used to see you sometimes back in the kitchen on The Forge Show,” she says. “They should have given you your own feed.”
“That’s very nice of you,” he says.
I smile.
“Why’d you really get hit in the eye that time?” she asks. “Just before you met Rosie.”
“That isn’t really when I met her,” he says.
“It was,” Dubbs says. “It was the day of the fifty cuts.”
“No, I met her before that, when she was moving in,” he says. “She just didn’t notice me.”
Dubbs looks surprised, then suspicious. “I have to go back and watch that,” she says.
I laugh. “You can believe Linus,” I say. “He was there.” He and I have been over this before.
“Our conversation went like this,” he says. “Me: Hi. Welcome to Forge. Need a hand with your bag? Rosie: Sure, thanks. It’s kind of heavy. Me: No problem. That was it. The whole thing. It’s burned into my memory.”
Dubbs giggles and tucks her feet under her on the couch. “Then why’d you help Rosie stay on the show?” she asks. “She wouldn’t have passed the fifty cuts without you. Did you like her?”
“Dubbs,” I say warningly.
Linus pushes his fork around his mac ’n’ cheese and smiles at her. “Of course I liked her. She was different. She was nice.” His beach chair creaks as he shifts in it. “She still is, sometimes.”
“Hey,” I say.
“Did she tell you about Daddy?” Dubbs asks him.
A flare of alarm lights in my chest. Linus looks at me curiously.
“No,” he says. “What about him?”
I nudge Dubbs with my elbow, and she shoots me an abashed look. She should know better than to talk about Larry. “It’s just that he didn’t believe I’d make it at Forge,” I say. “He was sure I’d get cut.”
Linus looks from me to Dubbs and back. “Well, he was wrong,” he says. “You’d have made it to first place if you’d stayed on the show.”
“That’s what I think,” Dubbs agrees. She crunches on a carrot, and then she leans back, sending her gaze toward the windows. “I want to go down to the beach,” she says, and yawns.
I look out at the gray weather. The rain has stopped, and a heavy mist hangs in the air. I’m starting to wonder where Lavinia is.
“You sure?” I say to Dubbs. “You look like you could use a nap.”
“Beach,” she says decisively.
*
I’ve seen pictures and movies of the beach, but nothing has prepared me for the first time I step off the rugged path and sink barefoot into the dark sand. It’s a savage beach, with the cliff behind us and loud, heavy waves that crash against a steep shoreline. For once, I want to ignore my worries about my parents and appreciate something bigger and wilder than anything I’ve ever seen. Dubbs runs ahead of me toward the water and instantly I’m scared that my voice won’t be loud enough to reach her over the sound of the water.
“Dubbs! Don’t go too far!” I shout, and my voice comes back to me.
But she turns, smiling, to wave both arms. “Isn’t this great?” she calls, and though her voice is muffled, too, her happiness is contagious. “Come on!” she beckons.
I run heavily over the sand to hold hands with her. We grip tight and line up our feet at the edge where the last wave shrank away. We watch the next one approach, tense with anticipation, and when the icy water rushes up around our ankles, we both scream and run backward, splashing.
Linus laughs at us.
I have to do it again. Dubbs tightens her grip on my hand, and we cavort back to the water’s edge. It’s a ridiculous game, but I’m jubilant. The waves are pure color and sound rolling toward me. Grays, blues, and glistening light roll into one massive crash after another. Moisture hangs in the air like a layer of shimmery magic, turning the sunlight into a new, tangible substance, and every breath brings a taste of salt and some weedy decay.
Linus takes Dubbs’s other hand, and we try jumping the waves as they reach us.
We are not swimming. We discussed this on the way down. But the hem of Dubbs’s borrowed shirt is soon dark with water, and my rolled-up pants are wet at the knees. Below his shorts, Linus’s bare legs are wet, too. I look along the beach for other people, but the sand is deserted in both directions, and considering where we are, on the edge of the OEZ, I doubt other people will be coming.
Another wave washes in, bigger than the others, and Dubbs squeals with laughter as she drops my hand and runs to higher ground. Following her footsteps, I’m chilled already, and salty sand clings to my legs. As Dubbs crouches on her haunches to inspect something in the sand, the wind tousles her blond hair. Then she picks up a stick of driftwood and starts strolling down the beach without bothering to look back for me and Linus.