Saturday morning. White light pours through the window blinds, illuminating the weave of his thermal blanket. Smell of coffee. Sweet dough and cooking oil. Downstairs his parents have a tablet cued to the Dawn of Pop music feed, those old-timey songs Wes can’t help but tap his foot along to, and he lies there for a few moments just savoring it all: the sunbeam, the mutter of rhythm guitar, the promise of a good breakfast, the promise of an unstructured day. Had he been a good son? Probably not. He hadn’t appreciated his prickly parents, had been too caught up in his own thoughts, his theories, his Land of Shadows campaigns, to consider their feelings. He hadn’t cared for hugging, so he hadn’t hugged them. He hadn’t cared about hearing “I love you,” so he didn’t bother to say it. They didn’t nag like other parents, or lay guilt trips, and so Wes assumed they didn’t need these gestures from him, valued them as little as he did, but now he wondered. They were alive and well in Atlantic Zone, divorced, living separately on generous infusions of Pocketz revenue, and Wes got together with each of them maybe once a month, for dinner, usually, or a few rounds of golf with his father. He didn’t fight with them. They didn’t fight with each other. Everything was perfectly mild, and amiable, though this mildness itself seemed a sign of something: a critical lack. But if he ever saw them again, Wes thought—from wherever he was now, this limbo, this whitewashed world that was turning out to not be Saturday morning in his childhood room—he’d thank them for the music and the pancakes, for loving him enough to leave him alone, and he’d hug them, even if it made them uncomfortable. You were good to me, he’d say. I realize that now.
He opened his eyes all the way. Edie was sitting beside him in a cushy chair he didn’t remember from the previous night—something that had been brought in from downstairs, he guessed. Her feet were propped up against the bed frame, and she had a book spread open across her thighs: the Jane Austen she’d spent so much time reading back in Ruby City. He lowered his eyelids and watched her through his lashes for a little while, hoping she wouldn’t notice he was awake. The stresses of the last week had etched her brow with new lines, and her eyes were puffy—from lack of sleep, maybe, or crying. These little imperfections were a relief; they made her easier to look at, taking the edge off her astonishing prettiness. He had left his list about Edie back at Ruby City. Perhaps someone had found it already, was having a good laugh on his account. That was OK. Her eyes darted left and right, left and right, and she turned a page, and as she did so she looked up and caught his eye, and she sat up straight and folded the book closed over her finger.
“You’re awake!” she said.
“Yep. I guess I am.”
“How do you feel?”
His arm throbbed from shoulder socket to fingertips, but otherwise, he felt like himself. Rested, even. He said so.
“You’ve been out cold for ten hours,” Edie said. “It’s nearly been twenty-four hours since the bite. It’s a good sign that you haven’t had any symptoms yet. Not a guarantee, but Andy said it’s promising.”
Wes stretched his legs and his left arm, wiggled his fingers and toes. He held his free hand in front of his face, noting the clarity of the whorls on his finger pads, the pores on the back of his hand, and the curly tawny hairs that sprouted from them. His vision was as good as it ever was. He felt, minus the arm, as good as he ever had.
He felt like he was going to be all right. But he was far too superstitious to voice this thought out loud.
“I guess I owe Andy big-time,” he said instead.
Edie made a sarcastic blowing sound, spraying spittle. “Save your gratitude for Marta. Andy’s already figured out how you can repay him.”
“And how’s that?”
“By footing the fee to get him smuggled back in-zone. Probably Violet’s fee, too. At least, I hope you’ll cover Violet’s. Berto and Ken have been pretty vague in their offers of help. And I don’t think Marta has it to give. Not in her own name.”
“What about you? Do you have it?”
She shifted her gaze to the cover of her book and traced the raised lettering with her thumbnail. “No,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” Wes said.
“No, it doesn’t matter. Because I’m not planning to go back.”
“What?” Wes pulled awkwardly to sitting position. “What do you mean, you’re not going back? I have the money. It’s not even an issue, Edie.”
“That’s not it.” She lay the book on the floor and leaned toward him, making such intense eye contact that Wes felt light-headed. More light-headed. “I knew as soon as I realized it was an option that it was the right thing. I felt a weight coming off me. I didn’t want to be in Ruby City. But I didn’t want to go back in-zone, either. That’s not home to me. It’s not where I belong.”
“So you belong out here? Have you seen my arm?”
“No. And you can spare me the reveal.”
Wes shook his head, exasperated. But there was something to the exasperation—something he wished he could sort out in a list, make sense of. Like, why would she be so stupid? But also: Why would she choose here? Knowing I’ll be there? But also: Why is it such a given that I’d be there?
And then, a tangent: What’s waiting for me there?
Well, that one was obvious. His parents. His company. His apartment and beach house.
“Explain to me the appeal,” Wes said. “What’s out here?”
“My dad worked out here. And he died out here. I thought he did it because he had no other choice. I’ve lived my whole life making a saint of him, but I think now that the truth was more complicated than that. I think he lived so much of his life out here because he loved it, despite the risks. Or maybe he loved the risks, too.” She shrugged. “There’s a way to live out here, Wes. A cure. It exists! June didn’t always do the right thing, I know that, but you can’t deny that she built something good. She built something good, and that could be done again. It must be done again.” Suddenly downcast, she traced a circle on her knee with her middle finger. “I think the zone’s a bad place in some ways. Lots of ways. I don’t like the price we have to pay to have its protections. And if that man—Marta’s husband—if he really can climb to power . . . Well, that terrifies me. Worse than ticks.”
“You heard Perrone. You heard the cost of the cure. June didn’t deny it.”
“I heard,” Edie said. “Infertility. I can live with that.”
“He said cancer, too,” Wes said. “So maybe you can’t.”
“My mother died of cancer. Cancer is everywhere. Cancer’s in-zone. It might already be inside me somewhere, waiting to come out.”
“And it has to be you out here, saving the world? Why?”