That’s what finally wakes me back up.
“Show me,” I say, and I find my feet and remember how to walk to the door.
Gabriela leads us down to our room and opens the door, and being knocked over by a happy Matty is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Because it’s her. Really her.
“How?” is all I can say.
Bea is sitting in the same chair in the corner, another cowboy romance in her lap. She looks up, her eyes as dead as ever. “I couldn’t find you, so I walked around the mall parking lot to find the car. I heard a dog barking, and some Cranes were drinking beer in the back of a van with her tied to the tailgate.”
“And they let you have her?”
The newly chopped brown bob swivels to me and tilts like a praying mantis. “I didn’t ask. Just shot them all and took her. It seemed easier that way. She’s a very polite dog.”
I take great pains not to show her the horror I feel. This alone tells me I’m not the monster I dread becoming. “Thank you,” I say. “That really means a lot to me.”
Wyatt and Chance are on their knees, roughhousing with Matty, and the phone buzzes in my jumpsuit pocket. When I look down, I see that I’m covered in blood, and I can’t believe we made it into the hotel without anyone saying anything. I pull out the phone and flip it open.
PATRICIA LOUISE KLEIN, WHERE ARE YOU?
I smile. My mom remains unchanged by the apocalypse.
Room 315, I text back.
Soon we’re all here, except Rex, who’s still sleeping off his roofie cola. My mom, Heather, Kevin, Chance, Gabriela, Bea, and Wyatt—we’re all giddy and broken and exhausted. My mom demands that we get out of the jumpsuits, and that leaves the guys running back to their room in tees and boxers to get more clothes.
“What happened?” Kevin asks, all excited like we’re going to tell him about a movie we saw.
I just shake my head. “We got out alive.”
“It was amazing! It was all BOOM BOOM BOOM CRASH.” He makes explosive noises and jazz hands, right up until my mom sees my face and puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Sorry,” he mutters. “But it was.”
“Where’s Jack?” my mom asks, but her face says she already knows. She always did.
“Leon—” I start. But I can’t go on. I just shake my head and let the tears fall.
My mom covers her mouth with her hand, and for just a moment, she looks like a girl only a little older than me and in love with a dashing rich boy who shows up every weekend with gifts. Then her face squeezes shut, a mess of wrinkles that arrived too early, and we’re both crying.
“And what happened to Leon?” Heather asks.
I look up, swallow down the sorrow, and meet her eyes, hard. “I shot him ten times or so. Pretty sure it finally killed him.”
She nods. “Don’t think anyone would blame you for that.”
My mom pulls me back into the hug, and I melt into her. The sobs jerk out of me, and I let it all out into my mom’s shoulder. All the things I repress, suppress, whatever—they’re burbling up. All the faces I’ve watched as they passed over, the eyes suddenly gone far off. Every pull of the trigger, every splatter of blood across a shirt, every mouth so surprised to find that it can’t talk anymore. Some of the people died angry, some died fighting, some died sad or crawling away. A few died laughing, as if at some private joke. Leon died satisfied, I think. I saw it on his face. He knew what he’d done.
And that’s what I don’t want to become.
I’ve been trying, so hard, all this time.
And the fact that it still hurts this bad, that I still cry like this, like my heart is breaking . . . I’m no Leon Crane. I’m a Cannon. And I’ll never see my daddy again.