“Does this seat go back any farther?” I asked Marsh, trying to stretch out my legs in the passenger seat of his Lincoln.
“It does not,” Marsh said, keeping his eyes on the road and clinging to the steering wheel with his waxen fingers as if for dear life. “It is a bench.”
My skin felt tight on my bones. My limbs wouldn’t stop fidgeting. Was I stupid for having the reverend drive me back into the desert, even though it was the only place I could think to go? Were Marsh and I going to be met by some creatures crawling down the highway on their way to Pennybrooke?
And then I realized that was what the dirt tunnel in the haunted hallway was for. Releasing lab-grown Shivers.
Either way I had to go back. I’d make Liz tell me why they’d brought me to Pennybrooke when they were planning an attack. I’d demand to know what other creatures besides the pod people they were planning to release on innocent people. I’d make them tell me where Ma was on her special mission.
I pressed my feet into the ground to stretch out my hips, making my body arch back over the seat. Marsh squirmed, clicked on the radio, and tuned it to a Bible station. A man shouted about forgiveness and how God would save non-sinners when things were at their darkest. I waited for him to be interrupted by an emergency broadcast about the catastrophe that had just hit a town called Pennybrooke. But the preacher kept on preaching.
I rolled down the window and stuck my legs out.
“Please do not do that,” Marsh said.
The air rushed around my ankles, feeling just like heaven.
“Would you rather I put them in your lap instead?” I asked.
He was silent the rest of the drive.
• • •
When we passed the army base and the Gray Rock reservation, I pulled in my legs and pointed to the opposite side of the road.
“Pull off here,” I said.
Marsh’s eyes widened like I was asking him to drive off a cliff, but he didn’t complain. The Lincoln bumped along a desert path that might have been a road at some point but was now overgrown with jagged desert brush.
“There,” I said, pointing to the rocky outcropping.
Marsh parked the Lincoln, and I walked a circle around the rocks. There was no door. I made another circle, slower this time, running my fingers along the rock, looking for any openings or fake surfaces. Nothing. The door was gone. It was as if the entrance had never existed.
“It was here,” I said to myself. “I swear it was.”
Marsh stepped out of his car and wrung his hands. “I must return to the church. The stained glass must be cleaned for Sunday’s service, and I am all out of Windex.”
I turned in a circle, searching the desert. Did I have the wrong rocks? Had the lab moved somehow? Had I dreamed it all? I glanced into the sky, and my heart had a shock, as if it had been struck by lightning.
“Is there somewhere else I can take you?” Marsh called over the desert wind. “A gas station? A home for women perhaps?”
My jaw hung open as I stared into the sky, trying to understand what I was seeing.
Daddy hadn’t been looking at Pennybrooke.
Daddy was staring straight down . . . at me.
For the first time in my life, my father was looking at me. The corner of his mouth was ticking up into a smirk. He was lowering his remote control.
“I am becoming very dirty out here,” Marsh said.
I stood in shock as the reverend beat at his suit, sending up plumes of dust.
• • •
Daddy’s eyes followed the reverend’s Lincoln along the highway like a lighthouse beaming on a lone ship in the night.
I was the Shiver.
That’s what the Geiger counter had told the psychiatrist.
That’s how I had busted out of the straitjacket.
My tongue ran along the tips of my teeth. Were they getting sharper? My fingertips ran along my arms. Was I sprouting more hair? I even checked the sides of my neck. Were those goose bumps or gills? Everything felt like plain old Phoebe.
But then I noticed the hem of my loose sheath dress, which had inched several inches up my legs since yesterday.
Oh.
“Has your . . . mother abandoned you?” Marsh asked.
“No,” I said, tugging my dress down as far as it would go. “She would never.”
“You are . . . fortunate not to bear the same curses she does.”
He was talking about my looks, of course. And for the first time in my life, I thought maybe I agreed with him.
• • •
When we exited the highway, I pushed up and over the seat, awkwardly sliding over the top and into the back, my dress catching up to my rear while Marsh averted his eyes.
“What are you doing?” he asked, alarmed.
“It’s my time of the month,” I said. “I need some room.”
That stopped his questions.
It felt better in the back with all that space to stretch out, but I also needed to hide. We were pulling back into Pennybrooke, and I couldn’t let Officers Shelley or Graham see me. It wasn’t smart coming back to town, but what else could I do? Have Marsh leave me in the desert and hope a door magically appeared in the rocks? If the coast was clear at the motel, I’d grab the cash out of the suitcase and then hire a cab to another town. I’d figure out how to find Ma from there.
We were halfway down Main Street when Marsh pulled the car over.
“Why are we stopping?” I asked, keeping low in the backseat.
Marsh rolled down the window and said, “Excuse me. Officer. I just wanted to let you know I have a young girl in my backseat. There’s no funny business happening. I’m just giving her a ride back to her motel.”
My skin turned clammy. Why hadn’t I told Marsh not to talk to the police? Because that’s the first thing he would’ve done, that’s why.
“Well, isn’t that funny?” I heard Officer Shelley say. “It just so happens I’m searching for a young girl. Her name wouldn’t happen to be Phoebe, would it?”
As heavy boots approached the car, I made myself into a ball, pressing my face into the vinyl of the seat as if that would camouflage me somehow. Shelley had overcome Hal and killed him. And now he had me. My shoulders tensed in anticipation of the door popping open and a hand seizing my arm.
“Afternoon, Reverend,” Shelley said at the window.
I heard panting and dared a peek. Officer Shelley held up Pan-Cake, legs dangling, tongue lolling. For the first time, she wasn’t growling at him.
“Found this little lady running free in the fairgrounds,” he said, scratching behind her ears. “Figured Phoebe would be mighty heartbroken if she was lost. Hello, Phoebe.”
I sat upright and studied Officer Shelley. He had the same large frame, the same pale mustache, the same gunmetal eyes, but . . . something was different.
“Here you are.” Shelley set Pan-Cake in Marsh’s lap. Marsh spluttered like she was a king cobra until she leapt over the backseat and frantically licked the sweat off my neck.
Shelley reached into his holster, and my heart skipped a beat. But instead of pulling out a gun, he pulled out a rubber bone and squeaked it. Pan-Cake stopped licking and stood at attention on my lap.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Shelley said. “I stopped by the store and bought her this so I could get her to come to me.” He handed the bone to Pan-Cake, who folded her paws around it and started squeaking gratefully.
Officer Shelley tipped his hat to us and winked. “Reverend Marsh. Phoebe. You two have yourselves a lovely day now.”
He hooked his thumbs in his belt and then ambled down the street whistling.
• • •
We continued to the motel in silence, save the squeak squeak squeak of Pan-Cake’s new toy. Even though I had no idea what was happening to me, my plan hadn’t changed. I wanted to get as far away from this town and all of its oddities as quickly as possible. In the meantime I still felt like me. I wasn’t craving blood or raw fish or anything like that. I just hoped that kept up until I found Ma.
When we pulled into the parking lot, I thanked Marsh and then went straight to the manager’s office.
“Hello, Phoebe dear,” Ethel said.
“Oh.” I came to an abrupt stop. “Hello.”
When I’d seen Ethel a few hours before, she was nearly shaking out of her skin, having just seen a man get shot through the neck and chest. But now she was grinning ear to ear. She was wearing her knee braces . . . but they were on backward. Almost like she didn’t know what they were for. For some reason this sight chilled me deeper than a well-meaning Officer Shelley.
“Would you order a cab for me?” I asked the manager, my voice trembling.
The manager furrowed his bushy eyebrows. “You owe for last night and tonight.”
“I’m not staying tonight,” I said.
“Well, you still owe for the last. You’re a nice young lady, but we’re not running a shelter here.”
Ethel giggled, showing gray teeth.
“Of course not,” I said, hiding a shudder. “Back in a jiffy.”
I ran up the motel steps, Pan-Cake squeaking alongside me. I opened the door and then froze. The room was dank and shadowy and smelled like a dying greenhouse. Three pods lay on the beds, their tops open like half-peeled eggs. My stomach soured when I realized that whatever crawled out of those things were currently wearing officer badges and knee braces.
I might not have dared set foot in that room, but then Pan-Cake leapt up onto the bed, curled up among the pods as if they were old friends, and chewed on her squeaker toy. I took a breath and then swept inside, beelining past the bed. I threw open the closet door, hauled out the suitcase, unzipped the side pocket, and reached inside. My hand slid to the bottom. There was no money.
I flipped the suitcase upside down, dumping the clothes onto the floor. I unzipped every zipper and pulled the pocket lining inside out until the suitcase was disemboweled on the carpet.
Someone had stolen Ma’s money. Hundreds of dollars. Maybe thousands. Who would do such a thing? I bit my thumb. Not only did I not have enough money to pay for the motel, I didn’t have enough money to catch a cab away from Pennybrooke and its pod people. I was stuck.
My eye caught the light of the ham radio, and I snatched up the speaker.
“Hello?” I said into it. “Liz? Liz, please. I need your help.”
There was only crackled silence.
I didn’t want to spend another second near those pods, even if they were empty. I hefted the ham radio, heavy as a slab of concrete, into my suitcase and hauled it downstairs to the parking lot, determined to walk somewhere and hitch a ride before the manager caught me. But then what? I couldn’t pay for a motel room. I couldn’t buy food. And I was transforming into . . . something. I sat on the curb and covered my face and tried not to scream.
“Are you . . . all right?” a voice asked.
I looked up and found Reverend Marsh standing over me. He interlaced his fingers in front of his waist. Almost as quickly, he unlaced them, and then raised his hand and held it there awkwardly.
“Would you . . . like me to pat your shoulder?”
I stared at that hand, as pale as a naked mole rat.
“Sure,” I said.
Marsh set his trembling hand on my shoulder. At that touch, everything I’d been holding deep in my well came gushing up: Ma, the Buried Lab, the straitjacket, Hal, Daddy’s eyes, everything. As the tears fell, I pressed my cheek onto Marsh’s hand. His breath intensified, but he kept it there for three seconds before pulling away.
“Perhaps I should call a psychiatrist.”
I wiped my eyes. “No. Please. I just lost my grip for a moment. I’m . . . I’m fine now.”
“Good,” Marsh said, getting up and patting his pockets. “That’s good. Come along.”
“Where are we going?” I said, grabbing my suitcase.
“It would not be becoming to have a young lady at my house, but I have a cot at the church.”
I sniffed. “Thank you,” I said, and started crying again.
“It is . . . no problem.”
Marsh’s eyes uncomfortably searched the sky, the motel, the car, anything but me.