“No,” she said. “We didn’t do that.”
My heart ached. “I shared my cookie dough with you, right here on this couch,” I said. “We did it the night you told me I should apply to the Forge School. It was all your idea. We watched the show on a tablet you borrowed from the school library, remember?” I could see it so clearly. I was still holding an ice pack against my face from when Larry had hit me.
Dubbs looked at my belly. “I didn’t do that with you,” she said.
“I mean, not with me as I am. With Rosie,” I said quickly. “You shared the cookie dough with Rosie. I just have Rosie’s memories, too. We had the same bunk bed, right over there. I gave you your glitter glue pens, remember?”
Dubbs backed up a step and reached for Larry’s hand. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Something’s wrong with you.”
I caught my breath as the reality slammed me. Of course. From her perspective I was a pregnant stranger. With my big belly, darker skin, and higher voice, I looked nothing like the sister she’d loved, no matter what I said. “Rosie just wants you to know that she loves you,” I said.
“I know that,” Dubbs said. “She didn’t have to send some freaky pregnant girl to tell me that.”
A small, sharp twig snapped apart inside me. Back in the vault, I had staked my life on my love for Dubbs. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would lose her love in the process. I glanced at Larry, whose frown was deep and hard.
“I thought for sure you’d understand,” I said.
“You’d better go,” Larry said. “Whatever they did to you, I get that it messed you up, but you have to go.”
I rose unsteadily to my full height and looked around the boxcar again, scanning the books and the computer, the coffee table and the antlers. It all looked the same, but it wasn’t. None of it was the same. It wasn’t my home anymore. This wasn’t my family. It would never be again. Loss poured through me, as wild and lonely as the moonlight on the wind.
The sound of footsteps came lightly up the back steps, and the screen door opened. Ma came in with a six-pack of beer and paused on the threshold, smiling.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
“Dubbs let her in. She thinks she’s Rosie,” Larry said. “She was just going.”
Ma looked startled. She batted away a moth that had come in with her. “That’s a new one,” she said. She looked me over carefully, and then nodded toward my belly. “When are you due?”
“Next month,” I said, my throat suddenly dry. Hug me, I thought.
“That last month’s the worst. Feels like it’ll go on forever,” Ma said. She walked to the table to set down the beer and wiped a hand on the back of her skirt. “We’re kind of busy,” she said. “Bath time for Dubbs. I’m sorry we can’t be of help. They sell souvenir pictures of Rosie down at McLellens’ if you’re interested.”
“Ma, it’s me!” I said. “They put Rosie’s memories in me. I’m your daughter! Won’t you at least listen?”
She smiled sadly, took my arm, and steered me toward the door. “Come on, sweetheart,” she said. “On your way. Do you have somebody to take you home?”
“She came with a guy. He’s outside,” Larry said.
“Wait, please!” I said. “Ma! Just let me explain! I grew up here. I remember Dad before he went MIA. We used to have tea parties under the table. You used to paint my toenails with watercolors, remember? Use your imagination now, please. Just try to believe me for one second.”
Ma went pale. She released me. “Larry,” she said calmly.
Larry crossed instantly to me and backed me toward the door. “Don’t make it any worse.”
I looked at my stricken mother, and my heart broke. I turned to Dubbs and tried to smile once more. I failed completely. “Just remember Rosie’s message, okay? It’s real, no matter what.”
Dubbs hid her face against Ma, who hugged her tight.
Larry lugged the heavy door open for me.
“Watch your step now,” he said, and guided me out.
24
ROSIE
A COZY BATHROOM
BEFORE I LEAVE BURNHAM, he buys me half a dozen recyclable phones. He also uses the Tor network to set up a private website where we can connect. This seems like overkill to me, but he says if our phones get tapped or our emails get hacked, it’s good to have a backup. We agree on code word Waffles67. Then Burnham loans me a blue Honda Fit and stocks it with snacks and spare outfits from his sister, including a visor hat and sunglasses so I’m not so easily recognizable.
“Remember. You promised to pay me back,” he says.
I don’t know what to say. Leaving him is hard. We have an awkward hug, and I promise to call him once I’m in Forgetown. He’s working on a way to get me past the cameras so I can get to Berg’s computer in the dean’s tower.
It’s a long drive from Atlanta to Forgetown, seventeen hours by holomap and twice as long with bad luck. I’m not the best driver, and I can’t risk getting pulled over, so I keep under the speed limit. I hit traffic around Nashville, and torrential rain in the Tennessee Valley. I spend my first night in the car getting wind-swiped at an abandoned drive-in. Nightmares haunt me, and I don’t sleep soundly until day comes. I wake groggy around noon, and by the next evening, when I arrive outside St. Louis, I’m beat. The temptation to call Linus and maybe get an offer of a decent place to sleep is strong, but then again, I’m not even sure he lives there. He might be living back with Otis and Parker when he’s not traveling for his job.
It’s raining again when I pull off the highway and stop in a park, and the raindrops make a gentle drumming on the roof of the car. In the distance, I can see the Gateway Arch dark against the clouds, and I can’t get over how big it is. Linus must see it every day that he’s here. He and I haven’t spoken since I was at Jenny and Portia’s—a conversation that still troubles me—and I’m nervous about calling him now. The truth is, I’m not over Linus, but what that means exactly, I don’t know.
I turn off my car. Then I take out one of my spare phones and dial Linus’s number. When he picks up, I release my seat backward so I can stretch my legs, but I’m more tense than ever.
“Hey. It’s me, Rosie,” I say.
A shuffling comes from his end.
“Finally,” Linus says. “You are one difficult person to track down.”
“Not for Berg. You said your line wasn’t bugged last time, but he called me right after I talked to you.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This line’s encrypted, so he couldn’t have heard what we said, but if he’s tracing all my calls, he could have found your number that way. I’m really sorry.”
I think back and wonder if checking my Forge email alerted Berg that I might call Linus. Hard to know. I decide to assume Berg can eavesdrop in, despite what Linus says.
“Are you in St. Louis?” I ask.
“I’m working in Stillwater, Minnesota,” he says. “I can be in St. Louis tomorrow.”
I gaze out again at the arch. “I’ll be gone by then,” I say.