She squirts a steady stream into the bowl, and then, after glancing at me, another. When I taste my first spoonful, my taste buds go wild. It’s heaven, sweet and salty and redly luscious. I eat it all and then reach for the bottle, which is disappointingly light. I give it a little shake, and then upend it above me to squirt more ketchup directly into my mouth.
A swishing click makes me look over. Jenny has taken a picture with her tablet. I freeze.
“Delete it,” I say
“You look awesome,” she says.
“Delete it! I don’t want any pictures!” I say.
“Okay, calm down. I’m deleting it,” Jenny says. “Whatever.”
I’m shaking again, and I have to fight an impulse to hurl the ketchup bottle and bowl across the room. As I bundle up in my blankets again, the damp towel slips from my hair. I slide it off the rest of the way and dump it on the floor. Portia comes over to pick it up just as I hide completely under the blankets, curled up in a ball. I’m shivering again, with every muscle clenched.
“She’s a wreck, poor kid,” Portia says quietly.
“What do you suppose happened to her?” Jenny says.
“I don’t know, but it was bad.”
You have no idea, I think. But I’m not done, and I’m not pathetic or crazy, either. I’m going to get even.
12
ROSIE
JENNY
MY LITTLE SISTER searches for a lost puppy in a downpour of rain, calling plaintively, “Here, doggy!” She pushes her bike through the mud, peering under the boxcars. Her boots sink ankle deep with each step, and I slog along behind her. The rush of water is deafening. When she steps too near the train tracks, a slick river of mud rises from beneath the metal and sucks her under the train. She screams and twists back to grasp at air. Her bike goes down completely, wheels and handlebars slurped into the black muck. Her pale, mud-streaked arms reach out for me to save her, and she gasps for breath. I try to catch her, but I fall in, too, and the muddy water gets us both. I drown with my eyes open, under water, under mud, still reaching blindly for my sister, until suffocation burns my lungs.
I wake panting in a tangled sweat ball. I’m on Portia and Jenny’s couch. Bright light streams in the windows, and my heart is pounding with fear. It’s all right, I tell myself. I’m alive. I’m out of the vault. I glance around for Dubbs, but of course, she was never here.
A country station is playing in the other room, accompanied by a sizzling noise. I smell bacon.
Dragging my blanket around me as a robe, I stop at the bathroom. I still have a tube hanging out of me, but I can pee like normal. Yay for small victories. I head for the kitchen. The wooden table by the windows is set for two with chipped blue plates and mismatched cutlery. Jenny, in black leggings and a gray, zippered sweatshirt, is pouring fresh batter in a hot waffle iron. Her ponytail and glowing complexion imply she’s been exercising.
“You whimper in your sleep. Just so you know,” she says, and passes over a plate of bacon.
“What day is it?” I ask.
“Tuesday, March eighth,” she says. “You’ve been out for two days. We’d have taken you to the hospital, but you freaked out every time we tried to. Plus, blizzard. Again. This is our second snow day in a row, and I’m like yes!”
I don’t remember any of it. I take a chair with a view of the road, which is just passably plowed. Two feet of new snow gives the morning a shimmer that’s nearly blinding, and I follow the curving lines curiously. I’ve never seen this much snow before. In the desert, it never piles up like this.
A birdfeeder has a perfect pile of white on top of its pointy little roof, and I frame it up between my fingers for a memory camera. I give it a click.
“That’s nice,” Jenny says. “Live in the moment, right?”
She passes over a cup of coffee, and I peer gratefully down into the steamy liquid. I lift it an inch off the table and take a sip. It’s so good. So real. I guess we’ll find out how my digestive tract is working after months of sleep. Jenny peeks into the waffle iron.
“You know what’s weird?” she says. “There’s been no new news about you. Nobody’s looking for you or posting a new reward or anything. We’ve checked online.”
That is interesting. “Maybe Berg doesn’t want anyone to know I’m missing,” I said.
“That’s what we’ve been thinking, too.”
I glance around for her sister. “Where’s Portia?”
“At work. She’s a poultry processer for Borrds up the road. She normally works the night shift, but they had some problem with the freezer, so they called her in. She wants to be a manager. Here.”
She opens the waffle iron and forks a perfectly circular, crusty, fragrant waffle onto my plate. She pushes a dish of butter and a jar of maple syrup close, and starts pouring more batter.
“Don’t you want to share?” I ask. “You take half.”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll have the next one,” she says.
I eat. The waffle’s sweet and good. I want to devour ten of them, but after only a few bites, I have to stop. I lower my fork and poke the tines around in the golden syrup.
“Don’t you like waffles?” Jenny says.
“It’s fabulous,” I say. “I think my stomach shrank.”
“What’s with that tube of yours?”
I glance down the neckline of my tee shirt to examine the lump in my chest. When I touch it, it doesn’t hurt or anything, but I want it out. Same with the hose that comes out of me lower down. I just don’t know how to extract them myself. I bundle my blanket around me again so I don’t have to see how skinny I am.
“I’ll look up how to take them out after breakfast,” I say.
“I’m dying to know what’s happened to you.”
“How much do you know already?” I ask.
Jenny gives me an outsider’s version of my disappearance from Forge, and the one thing that’s clear to me is that Berg’s gotten away with everything. He’s still working at the school, like Ian said, and the thought of him going on blithely with his life while he’s kept me stuck in a sleep shell all this time infuriates me.
“I went back and watched a bunch of Forge episodes with Portia,” Jenny adds. “I can’t believe how different you look now. You must have lost twenty pounds. Where’ve you been?”
“In Berg’s custody,” I say, and the truth tastes bitter. It’s hard for me to trust her, but she and Portia saved my life. I owe her, and I need her sympathy. Haltingly, I tell how I’ve been kept asleep for months and mined against my will. My emaciation is pretty good proof of my captivity, and honestly, I don’t care whether she believes me or not about the dream mining. I’m beyond trying to persuade people of the truth.
“That’s horrible,” Jenny says. “We have to call the police and tell them. They should arrest Berg.”
I shake my head. “I’m not calling the police. I don’t trust them. They should have come to find me a long time ago.”
“But what about the reward?” she asks.
“I need you to keep quiet a little longer,” I say. “I need to get back some strength. I just want to hide for a bit while I figure out my next move.”