The Alpine diner was more crowded than Kay thought it would be. Many people had left town entirely, other families were keeping their kids at home, and with the curfew and all the cops out, she wasn’t sure anyone would be around. But it was the usual crowd; Kay recognized most of the faces. It wasn’t like there were that many places to go in Silver River, and everyone was probably stir-crazy from worrying. From hearing the sirens, from watching for dragons, and from wondering when the rest of Silver River would burn.
She felt strange being around so many people after she’d been at home for so long. While it would have been nice to lose herself in the crowd, to be anonymous and not have anyone scrutinizing her, when she entered the diner, a momentary hush fell. Faces turned toward her, stared, and quickly looked away. A few people gave her tight-lipped, pitying smiles.
Scanning the booths, she found Jon when he raised his hand. Ignoring the lingering stares (That’s her, Sheriff Wyatt’s kid—she could almost hear the whispers), she rushed to join Jon, sliding in to the seat and falling against him for a heartfelt hug. He turned his face, searching for a kiss, and she gave him one, quick and fleeting. Like everyone else, he was walking on eggshells around her. He looked concerned.
“Are you okay?” He kept his hand on her arm, holding her.
No, of course she wasn’t, on so many levels. But she couldn’t explain it all right now. She glanced away and blinked to try to keep her eyes from watering. Jon rubbed her shoulder, awkwardly, as if he wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. She wasn’t sure either. Part of her wanted to stay close to him, crying, letting him hold her. But she couldn’t afford to do that right now.
“It’s just been tough,” she said finally.
She had considered her problem: Somehow, she had to get her gear to Artegal. But a government sedan was parked outside the house all the time, which meant as soon as she lugged out her climbing gear, Branigan’s people would know she was planning something and try to stop her. But if she could get someone else to take the gear to their meeting place, she and Artegal could get the harness on before anyone could stop them. The hard part was that—it had to be someone she could trust, someone who wouldn’t freak out when she explained what this was for.
She trusted Jon. But she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t freak out when she told him. Not that she could blame him. Anyone would freak out.
The waitress came and took their orders. Jon got a hamburger; Kay wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been hungry or what that felt like. She ordered fries and a Coke just to be eating something and tried to think about how to tell Jon what she needed.
“How’s your mom?” he asked, after the silence that followed the waitress’s departure.
Upset, Kay thought. Upset about Dad, about the fact her only daughter had been consorting with dragons, about her life’s work going down the tubes. Like everything else, it was too much to explain. She shrugged instead.
“Oh my God, you guys are here!” Tam raced over to their booth from the front door. Her eyes were wide. “Are you okay?” she demanded.
Kay was going to get sick of that question. Resigned, she nodded. “About as well as can be expected.”
Tam slid into the seat across from her and gazed at Kay as if the world were ending.
“Where’s Carson?” Jon asked. Tam’s seat looked very empty without Carson squished in beside her. At that, Tam’s face scrunched up, and she started crying. Now it was Kay’s turn to hold her hand.
“His family left,” she said, sniffing around the words. “He didn’t want to go, he was going to stay behind, but they wouldn’t let him. They’re going to stay with family in Colorado until this is all over, but who knows when that’s going to be?”
Kay moved into the seat next to her and hugged her while she sobbed.
Tam went on, “I shouldn’t be this upset. It’s not like what you’re going through with your dad. It’s not like I’ll never see him again, but I just can’t stand that he’s gone!”
Kay wouldn’t miss Carson like Tam would. But looking at the empty booth, seeing Tam all by herself and not kissing her boyfriend—it was more evidence of just how far from normal everything had gotten. Kay wondered if things would ever feel normal again.
“My folks are waiting to see what happens,” Jon said. “Until there’s an official evacuation, we’re staying.”
Kay felt a lurch at the thought of Jon leaving. She wondered if he would stay, if she asked him to.
“Even if you did leave, I’m not sure anywhere’s really safe,” Kay said. Not that it would make anyone feel better.
“What does your mom say?” Tam asked, wiping her face and recovering. “Are you guys going to leave?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever leave,” she said. Everything they had was here. Everything they had left. And Artegal—she should tell them. Right now, she should tell them. But she’d been keeping the secret so long, the habit was hard to break.
They fell quiet, and then their food came. Tam only got a soda. Kay shared her fries, but none of them was really enthusiastic about eating.
Tam glanced around, then leaned in to tell Kay, “That’s so rude, how people are looking at you.”
Kay shrugged it off. “I guess I’m kind of famous because of my dad.”
Another moment of silence. Jon took her hand. “It’s still rude.”
Kay had too much on her mind to think about it. Let them stare. If her plan went off, she was going to be even more famous—even though that’s not why she was doing it.
Tam’s phone rang. It was her mother wanting her to come home. Kay couldn’t remember Tam’s mother ever calling her when they were out. Tam’s mother seemed to operate on the benign neglect theory of parenting. But now she was worried.
Tam hugged them both tightly and left.
Kay didn’t have much time left to tell Jon. It was already six. “You want to get out of here?” she asked.
Jon seemed willing to do whatever she wanted. They paid their check and left.
“What are we doing, Kay?”
She looked around, and sure enough, across the street a dark sedan was parked. She could just make out a pair of men in the front seat. They weren’t doing anything.
“You want to go for a hike somewhere? Maybe out by Red Hill?” That was a trailhead on the other side of the town from the border. If the military guys didn’t think she was running off to sneak over the border, maybe they wouldn’t follow her.
“It’s a little late, isn’t it?”
The sun was setting—they had another hour of twilight before the sky turned completely dark. She had a flashlight in her glove box.
“I just want to get out of town for a little while.”
He shrugged. “Your car or mine?”
“Both. Can you follow me?”
She was grateful that he wasn’t asking questions. He looked like he wanted to. As she pulled out of the Alpine parking lot, she kept an eye on the sedan. Jon followed her in his hand-me-down truck. They both turned the corner to head out of town to the highway and the Red Hill trailhead. She lost sight of the sedan, but it hadn’t immediately followed them. She breathed a sigh.
Now, they had to hurry.
Fifteen minutes later, she reached the trailhead and pulled into the farthest corner, which was sheltered by trees and mostly dark. Flashlight in hand, she opened the back of the Jeep before Jon had fully parked.
She double-checked the coils of climbing rope, the nylon straps and carabiners, her harness, and the duffel bag with her extra winter clothes and chemical hand warmers, making sure for the tenth time that everything was there.
“Kay, what’s going on?” Jon said, coming to join her. He saw the gear, and his expression became even more confused. “What are you doing? You don’t actually want to go climbing right now—”
Here it was. Moment of truth. How little could she tell without him guessing the rest? And if he guessed the rest, what would he do?
“I need a really big favor,” she said, wincing, because that didn’t even begin to cover what she was asking him to do.
“Sure. What?”
Suddenly, she didn’t want to bring him into this. She didn’t want to get him in trouble or put him in danger. This was asking too much. “You can say no. If you don’t want to do it, that’s okay. But you can’t tell anyone. Okay? I’ll find another way, but you can’t tell anyone.”
He frowned, worried. “Kay, just tell me what it is. You’ve been acting weird for weeks.”
She supposed she had. She hadn’t realized it showed. Grimly, she moved forward. “Tomorrow morning, as early as you can, I need you to take all this out and hide it in the woods, near the stream where it comes down along the border. I’ve got GPS coordinates marked on a map here.” She dug the topographic map out of the bag, handed it to him. “Mark it with a ribbon in a tree or something.”
“Why? What are you doing that you can’t take it yourself?”
“I don’t want anyone to see me with it. They’ll know what I’m planning, and I want to surprise them. I have to surprise everyone.” She was speaking quickly, with a desperate edge to her voice. She had never sounded like this before, not even after the fire.
“Surprise who? Who’s going to see you?”
“The military’s watching me. It’s a long story. It’s too long to explain. But can you please just do this?”
He hesitated, but he put his hands on the rope when she pushed the coils toward him. He studied the map. “So I hide the ropes out there. Kay, this is right next to the border, there’s no way I can get out there. There’s no way either of us can get out there.”
She shook her head. “If you go early and you’re careful, you’ll be fine.”
“What about you?”
“I just have to do this.”
His eyes grew wide, and her stomach did a flip-flop, because he was too smart for her to fool him. It was one of the things she liked about him.
“You’re going across the border? Kay, why? What’s that going to accomplish? You think you can go talk to them? Yell at them for killing your dad or what?”
“I’ve been crossing the border for months,” she said softly.
For a long moment, he stared. She felt awful, because she’d been lying to him all this time. But she couldn’t have told him the truth before now. The whole truth still caught in her throat—she couldn’t tell him about Artegal. That secret wasn’t only hers to tell.
“All those times you said you were off hiking by yourself, that’s where you were,” he said finally.
“Yeah.”
He chuckled, a harsh sound. “I guess I’m relieved. I thought maybe you were hiding another boyfriend somewhere.”
She huffed. “Who would that possibly be? There’s nobody else. I’m still the only virgin at Silver River High.”
“No, you’re not,” he said.
She felt a warm flush. Glancing at him, she put her hand over his, where it rested on the ropes.
“So,” he said, looking at their hands together, but not moving. “Have you ever seen a dragon? Up close, I mean.”
She didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
“And why do you want to go back now? When the military is watching and jets could be bombing you any minute—”
“I have to do something. The military found out what I’ve been doing, and they want me to spy, but I can’t because if there’s even a chance I can stop this, I have to try.”
“Kay, there’s a reason we’re bombing them. Those things killed your dad!”
Her eyes stung. She hadn’t cried enough over this. But there was too much to do, she couldn’t stop to cry. When she spoke again, her voice cracked. “And how is sitting around being angry about it while the whole world goes up in smoke going to change that?”
She wanted to think that her father would understand. That he’d want her to try to stop this. That he’d be proud of her.
“What does this have to do with going over to Dragon?” he said, indicating the ropes and harness.
If he knew, he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t help her. He’d be like her mother, horrified that she had put herself in so much danger, supposedly just for a thrill. Apparently, rock climbing was one thing. Dragon riding was completely different.
“I just need to,” she said, and left it at that.
He frowned, but he loaded the gear into his truck. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
So did she.
When they finished, she said, “I wasn’t kidding. I’d still like to go for a walk, if you want. We can stay along the road, where we can see.” The sky was a deep, dark blue, the light of day almost gone.
Jon glanced at his watch. “It’s an hour ’til curfew. It’ll have to be short.”
“That’s okay.”
Side by side, they set off. Jon fumbled until he found her hand, then clasped it tight. They went a hundred yards in silence. Kay realized her hand was stiff in his, because she was nervous. More than nervous—scared. Terrified. She didn’t have to do this; she could walk away. But she remembered what the pilot, Captain Conner, said about her and Artegal being the only ones who could talk to each other. If people and dragons were going to talk, it had to start with them.
She had to try, or she would have to watch this war get worse and wonder if she could have stopped it.
“If Tam knew we were out here, she’d start spreading all kinds of rumors about what we were up to,” Jon said. “Your reputation would be ruined.”
“Maybe that would be a good thing. She’d stop nagging me.”
“She nags you?”
“She thinks everyone ought to sleep with somebody.”
“What do you think?” He looked at her, his gaze searching.
“I don’t know,” she said after a moment. She was suddenly warm, and if she closed her eyes, she could feel Jon studying her. “I think I don’t want to do it just because everyone else is.”
After another long hesitation, Jon asked, “Do you ever think about it? Do you ever want to?”
She remembered something Tam had said about dying a virgin, thought about what she was going to be doing tomorrow, and wondered if she and Jon should run off into the woods and have sex right now. That wasn’t how she imagined them sleeping together for the first time—not that she was sure how she’d ever imagined it. Like it was in the movies or in the romance novels her friends used to pass around with the corners turned down on the pages with sex scenes. Something full of passion, on a bed with big fluffy pillows and candles burning. Not out in the cold, scared, worried, distracted.
“Yeah,” she admitted finally. “Sometimes. Then sometimes I just can’t picture myself, you know, having sex.”
Jon spoke softly, “I think about it a lot.”
She watched her feet, scuffing the dirt, unable to look back at the intensity in his eyes. “Tam says it’s the best thing in the world. Half the time I don’t think she knows what she’s talking about. She doesn’t think it’s normal for two people to go out and not sleep together.”
“What about you?”
Her whole body felt flushed, being so close to Jon, having this conversation. Something in her, some loud voice—it didn’t even sound like Tam—whispered, Come on, just turn your face. Just look at him. Just kiss him. Just turn and kiss him. Think of how wonderful kissing him would be.
She gripped his hand more firmly. “I keep waiting for something to tell me it’s the right time. I keep thinking I’ll get some sign telling me when I’m ready.”
“And what if you don’t? I mean, does it really work like that?”
She tried to figure out if he was trying to tell her that he wanted to sleep with her and that he wanted to do it now but couldn’t find the words.
“Are you trying to tell me something, Jon?” she said, because she was too tired and confused to work it out on her own.
They walked a few more steps, arms brushing, closer than ever, even though it was awkward with them both wearing heavy coats and bundled against the cold. He said, “Just thinking out loud.”
If she were waiting for a sign, she wondered if she’d notice it before it passed. And if she missed one chance, would she get another? This was too much to think about right now, when it should have been such a little thing next to dragons, war, and death.
She stopped, turned toward him, tipped her face up, started to stand on her toes—but she didn’t have to move far, because he was right there, kissing her. As if he’d been waiting, holding back until she made the first move. After that, she could barely keep up with him. Their lips touched, moved together. A pleasant dizziness washed through her—far from cold now, she almost wanted to take her coat off, to be closer to him. His hand moved to her waist, found the edge of her jacket, and slipped under it. He’d taken his gloves off, and she shivered as his skin touched hers.
They could do it. They really could. No one was out here, no other cars around for miles—
Then a jet roared overhead. Far to the north, an orange glow burned on the horizon, the remnant fires of bombing raids. The air smelled of soot.
They broke apart. Jon glanced at his watch. “It’s almost eight.”
“Yeah. Okay.” She had to catch her breath.
They almost jogged back to their cars, their breath smoking in the cool air. He was right—if she really was being followed by military agents, she should have paid more attention to the time. They’d love to catch her out after curfew.
Before leaving, they hugged one more time. “You’ll take that stuff for me?” she reminded him.
He pressed his lips in a grim smile. “Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
Kay had the worst time trying to act normal around her mother that night and the following morning, although she wasn’t sure Mom noticed. They’d been away from normal for a week now. She wasn’t expected to act normal.
Mom wasn’t acting normal. When Kay announced she was going to bed, her mother got up from the couch where she’d been watching TV and came over to give her a long, earnest hug. She didn’t say anything, just held her as if she were afraid Kay would vanish in the night.
Kay almost gave up on her plan right there.
Over breakfast the next morning, Mom eyed her carefully. Kay’s hand kept shaking when she tried to eat her cereal.
“You’re going to try to talk to it again today?” her mother asked.
“Yeah,” Kay said, not meeting her gaze. “I have to be all patriotic, I guess.”
“Kay, if you don’t want to do it, I’ll stand by you. General Branigan has no right to ask you to do this. Whatever he threatens you with, we’ll deal with it. We’ll take it to the press to generate support if we have to.”
That was exactly what Kay was planning on doing. She shook her head and still couldn’t look at her mother. “I want to help. I want to do it.”
Pale, tight-lipped, Mom nodded.
Once again, Mom insisted on driving, and once again Kay didn’t argue. Even though she waited, there was nothing her mother could do once the plan started. She couldn’t interfere. But she hoped Jon got the gear out to where she could find it.
As they drove, Kay looked around and found one of the sedans behind them on the highway. Her mother’s glance in the rearview mirror showed she saw it, too.
“They followed me last night,” Kay said. “Just like they’ve been watching the house.”
“Bastards,” Mom muttered. “But that’s okay. They can follow us all they want. We’re only doing what they want us to. We’re not doing anything wrong.”
Kay’s stomach had turned into butterflies.
They stopped in the same place and repeated the ritual, Kay’s mother urging her to call. Kay wondered if she’d even get reception a thousand feet up. Or if it was anything like flying on an airline. Please turn off all cell phones and pagers…
She almost laughed.
Kay hugged her mother extra hard, then went off into the woods. She had to concentrate not to look back.
She’d given Jon a pretty detailed map, marking off an easy-to-find spot where the stream turned, but that still left a fairly wide area where he could have left the gear. Marking a spot or trail by tying something to a branch at eye level was a common practice. So, when she reached the general area, she started searching for something that stood out, for anything colorful and fluttering that would mark the spot.
She didn’t have too much time for this. She’d have to meet Artegal, and then they’d have to move quickly.
“Kay! Over here!”
She spun, panicked, looking for the source of the call. Who had followed her? Her first instinct was to run.
Then she saw Jon, duffel bag over his shoulder, waving his hand.