MOM WENT HOME to get Sophia some dinner, so Dad’s in the room with me when Sergeant Hollis and another woman, Dr. Reed, administer the roadside attraction known as the World’s Biggest Fucking Needle. Before they come in, Dad assures me it’s a routine test, something they do at work sometimes to make sure no one has been exposed to anything unsafe. He’s quieter than usual as he says it, disconnected somehow. And when I hiss in a sharp, frightened breath after Hollis opens his case and shows me the needle, Dad just stands in the corner, arms crossed, head down, fingers pinching his nose. He told me this was his idea, but he doesn’t look happy about it. I’m sure I look even worse.
Hollis seems a little too excited as he pushes the needle under my skin. And Reed’s hand is ice-cold when she lets me squeeze it, turning my face to my shoulder, shutting my eyes. After the needle is out, I can feel the pressure of the “vial,” as Hollis called it, lodged in the crook of my arm. It’s wigging me out.
When the two doctors finally leave, they don’t shut the door behind them.
“Time to go,” Dad says. He sounds empty, and his eyes look the same way.
“Dad.” I grab his arm before he can lead me out into the hall. My voice is scratchy and burnt. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t look at me. His tie is in his hand now, and he keeps wrapping it around his knuckles, like a boxer taping up before a match. “Yes. Let’s just go home, okay?” He tugs his arm out of my hand, walks out the door without a look back.
I have to take a second to regain my composure before I follow him, pushing down tears that threaten to spill. I feel stupid for wanting to cry. Mom says that crying does nothing to solve your problems. I guess she’s right, but sometimes it just can’t be helped. Sometimes the only thing left to do is cry.
But I blink away the tears for now—I’ll save them for later, at home, in the confines of my bedroom, where I can muffle the sounds with a pillow. I step out into the hall and spot Gabe and his parents a few doors down. I can’t help myself. I run as fast as I can and throw my arms around Gabe, and suddenly the tears can’t wait. Some of them escape anyway, which is fine, because these, at least, are happy tears.
Gabe and I are locked tight. He’s hugging me as hard as he can with one arm in a sling. I bury my face in his good shoulder. For a few seconds, I’m holding my friend and it’s just us; the rest of this bullshit nightmare falls away.
“Are you okay?” Gabe says quietly. “I was so worried.”
He tries to pull me closer, and that’s exactly when I pull away. Smiling a little awkwardly up at him, wiping a stray tear off my cheek with a thumb, I step back, realizing the implications that hug might have had. The look on Gabe’s face kills me a little, but I don’t want to give him the wrong idea. The plane crash hasn’t changed my feelings for anyone. If anything, it’s only made my feelings for Kimberly clearer. Because she’s not here, and I need her.
“I’m fine,” I say. “You?”
“Yeah,” he says. He slides his hand into his pocket. “As good as I can be, anyway.”
“Did you get…?” I turn my thumb and index finger into a gun and aim it at the inside of my elbow, where the ball of gauze is taped.
He nods, turning his right arm out to show me his. “Did it hurt?”
“Not really.” I shrug. “Kind of. I wonder if they gave Charlie the same thing.”
“I’m sure they did.” Gabe turns to Chief Albright, waiting with his wife a few feet away. His arms are folded, and the perpetual scowl on his face has deepened to the point of almost being funny. “Dad, we’re going to go see Charlie, okay?” Gabe asks.
I turn to find my own dad all the way at the other end of the hall, not looking at anyone, either. Dad and Chief Albright have never really gotten along, but they’ve at least been amicable. This doesn’t feel even remotely close to that. This feels like something closer to outright hatred.
“Dad?” I say, raising my voice so he can hear.
Finally, he glances at me and says, “Go ahead, Sonya. I’ll wait in the car.” Before I can say anything else, Dad disappears around the corner.
When I turn back to Gabe, he’s watching the spot over my shoulder where Dad was standing. “Is he okay?” he asks.
“Honestly? I have no idea.” I take one last look at the empty hall, willing my father to come back and be himself again. But it doesn’t happen. “Let’s go see Charlie.”
As we step past Gabe’s parents, his mom says, “Wish him well for us, okay?”
“We will,” I say, trying on a smile. It doesn’t feel quite right.
“We’ll wait out in the lobby,” Chief Albright says. We’re walking farther on now, but the chief isn’t done. “And Gabe!” His voice is hard, loud, suddenly explosive. It startles Gabe and me both into turning and looking back at his dad. “When you’re done, I want you in the car. You’re going to be home for a few days.”
“Wait, what?” Gabe says. “Why?”
Chief Albright gives me a strange look that I can’t decipher, then, to Gabe, says, “We’ll talk about it when we’re home. Go make sure Charlie’s okay.”
“But, Dad—”
“I said go, son. Before I change my mind.”
Beside him, Mrs. Albright looks concerned but doesn’t protest. And she definitely doesn’t look at me, which is weird. “See you in a minute, sweetie,” she says. Then they’re walking away.
“C’mon,” Gabe says to me. He sounds confused and angry, the same way I feel. “Charlie’s over in CCU.”
The Windale Medical Center is a one-story building, stretched out over a few dozen acres. It’s where people come for annual checkups, get treated for common stuff, do bloodwork, get the occasional X-ray, and, in extremely dire circumstances, have a baby. The WMC isn’t really equipped to deal with major trauma, which is why it’s odd that Charlie is still here. I would have thought that he’d be transferred to a bigger hospital, especially if he needed surgery. I say all this out loud to Gabe.
“I don’t know what the story is,” he says. “If they really don’t want anyone going into or out of town, then one of the army doctors must have done the surgery.”
“I bet it was Hollis.”
“Yeah, that guy gives me the willies.” He chuckles, and so do I. “Listen,” Gabe goes on, stopping just outside the door to the critical care unit, which is only two rooms deep. “Don’t worry about…” He paddles his hand between us, gesturing to me, then to himself, then to me again. His face is pinched, like he’s searching for the right words. “… anything. You know? I’m—we’re fine. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
My heart sinks in a whole new way. This is not the conversation I wanted to have right now. “Gabe. Don’t get me wrong. I really—”
I’m saved by Charlie’s voice, echoing out of one of the rooms: “Is that my main man, Gabriel, and my Wonder Twin forever, Sonya G?”
Gabe and I exchange a look.
“Uh…” Gabe cocks his head to the side, confused. “Yes?”
“Get your asses in here! What are you waiting for?” Charlie calls.
“What did his needle have in it?” I mutter.
“Something way better than what they gave us,” Gabe says under his breath.
We poke our heads in the doorway to Charlie’s room. He’s on the bed, alone. There’s a TV on a shelf high up in one corner. It’s tuned to The Golden Girls, but the volume is turned all the way down.
“Guys!” Charlie yells. Gabe and I both jump. “How’s it hanging? Come on in to my luxury suite!” He says the last part in a terrible French accent.
“Hey, buddy,” Gabe says tentatively. “You doing okay?”
Charlie looks strange without his glasses. I can’t imagine why his mom wouldn’t have brought his backup pair. But I’m less worried about his eyesight than I am about the cast that’s swallowed his entire left leg.
He sees me staring, even in his bleary-eyed delirium, and says, “Ah, don’t worry about me, Sone. This? This is nothin’. They patched me up just fine. Gave me some good stuff for the pain, too.”
Charlie winks at us. Gabe and I give each other a knowing look.
“Ah,” I say.
“He did get a different needle,” Gabe says.
“Actually, I got two,” Charlie says, puckering his lips and holding up three fingers.
“Listen, pal, we just wanted to come check on you,” Gabe tells him. He sits down on Charlie’s bed, careful not to bump his leg, and nudges Charlie with his elbow. “Did they tell you about Kimberly?”
I have to swallow a lump in my throat, and Charlie’s face changes, slipping into shadow. “Yeah,” he says. “I … I don’t know … what happened.” He’s struggling for clarity, fighting past the meds. His face is all scrunched together in concentration.
“It’s okay, Charlie,” I say. I step closer to the bed and squeeze his shoulder. “We’re gonna figure this out, all right? If not them…” I tilt my head to the door, looking at Gabe. He nods.
“Then us,” he finishes for me.
Charlie’s face brightens, like a child’s. “Good. That’s good. Kimberly’s probably fine.” He waves a hand, like it’s no big deal.
Gabe, meanwhile, is chewing on his bottom lip, staring down at squares of linoleum. He glances up at me, catches me watching him, and looks away.
“I wonder if the man with the parachute is here,” Charlie blurts out. “It looked like he was having a lot more fun than we were.”
“They don’t know where he is,” I tell him.
Gabe’s head snaps up. “What?”
“They didn’t even know he jumped,” I say. “Somebody in town had to have seen him, but they must not have gotten that far yet, because Higgins looked surprised when I told her. Like, really surprised.”
“Holy shit,” Gabe says. His mouth is working again, muscles in his jaw clenching.
“Gabe?” I have a question on the tip of my tongue, but, as if summoned by the very mention of her name, Colonel Higgins strides in before I can ask it. There’s another soldier with her, carrying an armload of what looks like our clothes from yesterday. The ones we’re wearing now were brought to us by our parents. Except for Charlie, who’s still in his hospital gown.
“Before you kids go,” Higgins says without any preamble, “I wanted to return some items to you. We had to comb through them, just to make sure there weren’t any clues that could lead to Ms. Dowd.”
Defiance leaps up in me like an uncaged lion. I can’t tamp it down anymore. “Why? It’s not like we did anything to her,” I say.
“Nobody thought so,” Higgins continues calmly. “But since none of you were very forthcoming with information during our conversations, we wanted to double-check to make sure you weren’t carrying any clues that you might not have known were clues.”
She picks something off the top of the pile that the private is holding for her—tiny slips of paper, it looks like. She holds them out to us between her fingers, like a magician doing a card trick. “We found these in each of your pockets. They’re no good to you now, but I figured since you paid for them, you might want them back.”
Gabe takes the slips of paper from Higgins, then hands me one of them. It’s smudged, darkened and curling around the edges, but the words printed on it are still legible: GHOSTBUSTERS II—6/16/89—7:15PM. My movie ticket from the night before.
Charlie reaches out and plucks the last ticket out of Gabe’s hand, reads it, and grins. “Gah! This was such a good movie.”
Gabe pats Charlie’s hand. “Sure it was, buddy.”
Higgins glances at the private and tilts her head toward us. The soldier puts the stack of clothes in my arms, topped off by Charlie’s Marty McFly puffer vest, the slippery red fabric burned black in spots, with tufts of down poking out.
“We would have passed this stuff along to your parents, but it seems they already left.” Higgins shrugs, turning to go. But then she stops. She looks at Gabe with something like curiosity, like he’s a puzzle she’s trying to figure out. “There’s one more thing. We found this near the spot where we found you, Mr. Albright. I would have returned it to Ms. Dowd’s parents, but…” She stops, the very corners of her lips turning up in a pointed, secretive smile. “… maybe you want to take it back to them yourself.”
She holds the item out; it’s small enough to fit in the palm of Higgins’s hand. The last of my tears finally let go when I realize what it is. The thing is blue and smudged with soot, coated in bits of grass and pine needles. Kimberly’s scrunchie.
Gabe doesn’t take it right away. He only stares at it, mouth wobbling, eyes wet. Not even Charlie is immune to it. Like some kind of talisman, the scrunchie washes away his dazedness. All that’s left behind is grief, stark and pained on his face. “Shit,” he whispers just before his face crumples and he breaks down into sobs.
“It’s okay,” Higgins says to Gabe. “Take it. It might make you feel better.” She says it slowly, breaking down the words into sharp, distinct syllables.
With a shaking hand, Gabe takes the scrunchie. It releases some of the grass and needles as it moves from her hand to his. I watch them twirl to the ground.
“Have a good evening, kids.” Higgins specifically emphasizes the word kids. “We’ll be in touch.”
She and the private march from the room. It feels like a long time before the thumping of their boots goes quiet.
The three of us are left in silence. Gabe stares down at the scrunchie in his hand. I can’t bear to look at it. Or him, for that matter. He knows something. I can feel it. Something he doesn’t want anyone else to know. But why? If it could help us find Kimberly, why wouldn’t he want to tell whoever he could?
For the same reason you didn’t tell Dad about eavesdropping on his phone call, maybe? Or the same reason you haven’t told anyone that you knew Higgins was already here in Windale yesterday, presumably arriving on the very plane that caused this mess in the first place?
“Are you guys hungry?” Charlie says out of nowhere. “I’m hungry. Like, starving. Like, I’m so hungry that I could eat both of you guys right now and not even feel bad about it. Well, that’s not true. I’d feel kinda bad. No, really bad. But I wouldn’t be hungry anymore, so—”
I put a hand over his mouth. “Charlie. Dude. We get it. You’re hungry. Let me go see if I can find someone to bring you dinner. Where’s your mom? Or Chet?”
“Mom’s not here,” he says, getting sad again. “They locked her out.”
“Out of the building?”
“Out of town.”
“Oh. Shit. So your mom’s not in Windale at all?”
He shakes his head, and my heart twists into a knot.
“What about Chet?” I ask, afraid of the answer. Chet has a colorful history in our little group, and by colorful, I mean crimson. We’ve had to get Gabe’s dad out to Charlie’s house on more than one occasion. He even threw Chet in lockup overnight once. It wasn’t a good night. Usually, the only thing standing between Chet and Charlie is Charlie’s mom. If she’s not around to keep the peace …
“He was here,” Charlie says, staring up at Betty White on the TV screen. “But then he left. I don’t know if he’s coming back.” His eyes start to droop. The painkillers are putting him under.
“Charlie, we’re gonna go,” I whisper. “But I’ll be back tomorrow to check on you, okay?”
He just nods sleepily, smacking his lips and sinking deeper into his pillow.
I nudge Gabe’s arm, breaking him out of whatever trance he was in, and nod toward the door. He looks at Charlie, gives his hand one last squeeze, then we sneak out as quietly as we can, taking our ruined clothes with us.
We’re down the hall, away from the CCU, before either of us says anything. I’m walking with my arms wrapped around my outfit from yesterday like it’s a stack of books at school, thankful that somebody had the decency to tuck my underwear inside my shorts.
It’s Gabe who says something, mumbling under his breath.
“Huh?”
He stops, looking up and down the hall, maybe to make sure nobody is around. “What happened to the camera?”
“What camera?” I ask. But then it hits me. Of course. Charlie’s Polaroid. Gabe was snapping pictures of the storm with it just before the crash. My eyes go wide. “Did you get a picture of…” I look around myself now, making sure there aren’t any soldiers lurking around the corners. Instead of speaking, I put my clothes over my head and sway from side to side, trying to mimic somebody falling through the sky with a parachute.
Gabe understands, nodding. “I think I did.”
“Maybe they found the photos? Kept them for evidence?” I’m whispering and I have no idea why.
“Higgins said you and Charlie told her about…” He puts his own clothes over his head with his good arm and impersonates the parachuting man.
“If they’d found the photos, they would have known already that he jumped.”
He nods.
“Why are we whispering about this?”
“Because I don’t know about you,” Gabe replies, “but I don’t think Higgins is here to help anyone but herself.”
I think of Dad’s phone call yesterday. Him telling Claudia not to let Higgins inside the lab at TerraCorp. Telling her to make sure that Higgins never made it past the runway. Not even Dad wanted the colonel here, and that was before her plane crashed on top of his kid.
“So then … what? They’re trying to cover up the plane crash?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “But why hasn’t the pilot—or whoever he is, the guy who jumped out of the plane—why hasn’t he turned up yet? If he’s dead, somebody would have noticed.”
“And if he’s alive, he would have linked back up with the army, and Higgins wouldn’t have been so caught off guard. So … what? He just disappeared?”
Gabe nods slowly. “Maybe on purpose. Maybe he’s hiding from something.”
“But why?”
Gabe’s face goes white, and in the corner of my eye I see him squeeze Kimberly’s scrunchie. “I don’t know,” he repeats, too quickly this time.
“Gabe, listen to me, if you saw something—” I point a shaking finger at his face, more out of fear than anger.
“Gabe!” We’re interrupted a second time by Chief Albright, who comes barreling around a corner at the end of the hall, face the color of a freshly picked apple. “What’s the holdup?” The chief lifts his arms in a what the hell gesture. He gives me another one of those looks that I can’t figure out.
“I’m coming, Dad,” Gabe says, rolling his eyes.
“Now.” Chief Albright puts his hands on his hips and waits, and suddenly we’re thirteen again, playing video games at the old arcade a few minutes outside of town, before it moved to the strip mall, Gabe’s dad is chaperoning, and he’s had plenty for one day, but Gabe just won’t quit. One more quarter.
“Take this,” Gabe says. He puts Kim’s scrunchie in my hand. “I think she’d want you to have it.”
“I’ll take it, but I’m not keeping it,” I say. “She’ll take it back when we find her.” He’s walking away. Running away, it feels like. He reaches his dad where he’s waiting, and they both turn to go.
“You hear me, Gabe?” I shout. The halls are empty, and my voice echoes. “She’ll take it back when we find her!”
But there’s no one there to listen. Gabe and his dad are already gone.