“DAMN YOU, ELTON!” I SCREAM THE WORDS EVEN though he is long gone and even though it upsets my precarious balance and sends me spinning underwater once more. As I cough and sputter and gasp for air, the life jacket that Elton strapped me into like a straitjacket, with my arms pinned to my sides, pushes me to the surface and onto my back again. I kick a few times, gently—too much will send me spinning again—and study the ceiling of the pool room.
It pains me to do so, but I have to admit it: Elton is an evil genius. The pool is the worst place he could’ve put me. There is no place in town, including the reformatory, where I would feel so completely out of my element.
Even worse, the longer I’m in here, the harder it becomes to stop myself from thinking about Jonathan dying in this same place . . . at Elton’s hands. The fight between them keeps replaying.
Distantly, I remember hearing Elton say, “Take her to the locker room and get her cleaned up, Foote. But don’t let her leave. I’m gonna fish Jonathan out, and then we’re gonna see if Skylar can make a dead man talk.”
Now I can’t help but wonder if Elton is disposing of Foote in the same callous way that he got rid of Jonathan.
Tears fill my eyes and I quickly blink them away. More liquid is the last thing I need right now.
“Swim lesson’s over.”
I jerk toward the unmistakable sound of Foote’s voice, and it sends me into another underwater spin, but this time something snags the back of my life jacket, pulling me up and then out of the water. I try to tell Foote how happy I am to see him, especially to see him alive and well, but a thick wad of emotion clogs my throat. He bends down to where I lie at his feet, a weepy beached whale. Gently he unzips the jacket, helps me to my feet, and then wraps a towel around me. My arms are stiff after being pinned to my side for so long, but somehow I force them up and around Foote. My heart pounds harder than it should for a boy I barely know, risen from the dead. I can feel the grin stretching across my face.
He does not hug me back. Instead he gently pushes me away.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Elton asked me to deliver you to the reformatory.”
I stare at Foote, unwilling to comprehend. “Deliver?”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and then he scoops me up as if I weigh nothing at all and carries me out of the pool room and into the hallway. Elton is waiting there, looking grim and determined.
“Be careful, Foote,” he warns. “I know you think that you like her, but trust me, the Gardners are made out of nothing but smoke and mirrors.” There is no mistaking the bitterness in his voice.
“If you’re concerned, you’re welcome to come along,” Foote offers.
“You can handle it. Now get her away from me!” Elton snaps. It’s then that I can see how afraid he is. Of me. Not wary like he’s always been, but actually and truly—ready to pee his pants—terrified.
For a moment I’m tempted to apologize. To tell Elton that I didn’t think he would actually jump out of that window. I am still not entirely sure why or how that happened. It doesn’t seem possible that Piper could have gotten to both Ozzy and Elton. And even if she did, that leaves the question of why they’d wait until they were near me to try out their wings. Of course, the simpler answer is that I did it. I made them jump.
But that’s impossible. Piper puts thoughts into people’s heads and I take them out. That’s how it’s always been. Lately, though, lots of things are not the way they’ve always been.
As Foote carries me down the hall, I twist around to glance over his shoulder at Elton. He’s already heading in the other direction at such a quick pace one might think he’s running away from me. Elton thinks he does a good job of hiding his discomfort with the strange powers that rule this town, but his fear has always been obvious. Or it has to me, at least. It’s actually amazing that he ever allowed Piper to get so close to him, maybe it’s even a testament to how much he truly cared for her.
For this reason, I hope that Elton keeps going until he’s on the train headed out of town, because I have a feeling that things are about to get a lot scarier around here and I’m not sure he can survive it.
The front doors bang shut behind Foote and me, hiding Elton from view. Once outside Foote finally sets me down, and together we survey the mostly empty parking lot.
“We’re supposed to wait here for the reformatory van,” Foote tells me.
“So where are we really going?” I ask, because somewhere during that short walk the sense of betrayal seeped away and I relaxed into Foote’s arms. Without even reaching into his head, I finally decided once and for all that he was someone I would trust.
Foote’s deep chuckle reverberates through my body. “Wherever you want to go.”
“Home first,” I answer immediately. “There’s something I need.”
“And then . . . ?”
“And then we’ll see,” I say. Though my plan extends beyond the next five minutes, I’m keeping it under wraps for the moment. I know Foote well enough by now to guess he won’t go along with my idea to turn myself in at the reformatory. But it’s the only smart thing to do. Gardnerville is such a small town there’s no point in running, and even hiding wouldn’t be effective for too long. More importantly, it’s the move I’ve been destined to make. I’ve tried every way I can think of to look for Piper; now only the most obvious one is left: going into the reformatory to find her myself.
“Okay.” Foote pulls some keys from his pockets, tosses them into the air, and catches them again. “How about we take Elton’s car?”
It sounds like a fine idea to me, and moments later we are cruising down the road.
A block away from my house, we decide to ditch the Prius and walk the rest of the way together. We have only taken a few steps when the ground trembles beneath our feet. It’s a smaller tremor than the earlier one, but I still grab hold of Foote’s arm, and when the shaking is over, that grip slides lower so that we are holding hands.
Once I have hold of his hand, I can’t stop myself from going a little further. My fingers find his chest, broad and amazingly whole, not a single rib bent the wrong way. Next I move to his shoulders. They’re straight and even. It’s not enough. I want more. So the examination continues. Rising onto my tiptoes to reach him, I explore the back of his neck, finding where his backbone begins. I’ve gone this far without being pushed away, and now my curiosity takes me even further. My arms wrap all the way around him, trapping his arms to his sides, while my fingers glide down his spine. I stop when I reach his lower back, where the waist of his pants creates a line I don’t feel bold enough to cross.
“Well?” he asks. His voice rumbles from his chest, and it’s only then that I realize my ear is practically pressed against it.
I take a step back, dragging my reluctant hands along with the rest of me.
“You’re not dead,” I say. “You’re not even hurt.”
“No, not anymore,” he answers softly, his breath fanning my cheek.
“How? Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always been lucky that way.”
“Lucky,” I repeat, remembering. “Like the lucky rabbit’s foot that didn’t work for the rabbit.”
“That’s me.”
“So when you jumped out the window after Elton, you did it to save him. You absorbed the hurt, instead of him.”
“Yeah,” he admits softly. “Sort of like that.”
“And you’ve always been that way, even before you came here?”
Foote nods. “I’d tell you the whole story, but it’s a long one and I don’t think we have the time.”
“Yeah, okay,” I agree, containing my curiosity.
We continue toward my house, this time hand in hand, which leads me to marvel at the comfort that comes from having another person’s fingers intertwined with your own.
It ends too soon. When we reach the front porch, Foote gently extracts his hand. “Go get what you need. I’ll stay out here and keep watch.”
I reluctantly agree and then slip inside the unusually silent house.
“Mom? Wills?” I call. No one answers. Worried, I run up the stairs to Piper’s room, wondering if the impostors are still there, but the room is empty and the bed neatly made, as if they’d never been there at all. For some reason this makes me even more uneasy.
Ignoring the urge to run through the house searching for Mom and Wills, I turn toward Piper’s dresser, to get what I’d come back home for in the first place. But the piles of cassette tapes are gone. Did I move them? It’s possible, but I seem to remember seeing them here. For whatever that’s worth.
I close my eyes, trying to grab hold of some solid recollection, when I hear a screech from outside. I fly down the stairs and, hearing a second shriek, follow it out the door that leads to the backyard. Our yard stretches out into a rolling lawn with a scattering at trees at the very back of the property, and in the shadow of those trees is where I finally catch sight of Mom, Wills, and the four girls who think they’re Piper.
I sprint toward them, a sick feeling in my stomach, despite by now having recognized the screams as sounds of joy rather than distress. As I get closer, I at last see the source of their excitement.
They’re playing a game in which they throw shiny filaments into the air, attempting to snag them on the tree branches. From the number of tinsel-like strands in the treetops, undulating outward like some strange insect infestation, they have been at it for a while.
Wills runs among the girls, yelling along with them, not quite understanding the game but enjoying it just the same. Mom sits on the grass, her head cradled in her hands as if upset about something. It is only when I stop beside her that I realize the origin of the twinkling threads.
I run at the girls to stop them. But it is too late. Much too late.
The cassettes that I was searching for only moments ago have all been ripped apart and unraveled. Not a single one has survived.
It’s funny—all those memories I worked so hard to forget, and now when it’s too late, I’m finally realizing what I lost.
“Why?” I demand, directing most of my fury LuAnn’s way. “Why would you do this?”
She hands me the plastic shell of one of the cassettes. In the transfer, a few broken strands of the tape get caught by the wind. “The past is gone. Let it go.”
Just like that my anger crumbles, replaced by the deep, aching sorrow that’s been my constant companion these past four years. “I can’t. I’ve tried and tried, but it keeps coming back.”
“It’s time to go,” LuAnn replies, looking past me.
I turn, expecting to see Foote, but instead it’s ten guards from the reformatory bearing down on us. I expect LuAnn and the other girls to flee, but, forever unpredictable, they practically skip toward the guards. In moments they are handcuffed and led away.
That’s when the six remaining guards turn their attention to me. I think about taking a swing at them. Or running. I’d planned to turn myself in, but now that the moment is here, I’m not ready.
“Skylar.” Mom’s voice breaks through my mental chaos. She holds Wills in her arms with what looks to be an iron grip. Our gazes lock. I don’t need to seize her secrets to know what she’s thinking. It’s right there on her face. She’s afraid. Not just for Wills, but for me too.
Turning to the guards, I put my hands in the air. “Okay,” I say. “Take me away.” I don’t let them cuff me, though, not in front of Wills. When the first guard pulls a pair of handcuffs from his belt, I growl in a soft undertone, “Put those away.” To my surprise, he does it without hesitation.
The rest of them surround me on all sides, but no one touches me. They all share the same wary expression, like they’re escorting a ticking time bomb. I almost tell them not to worry, that I’ve seen enough people hurt for no good reason. Then I remember they’re taking me to a place designed to slowly kill the best parts of me. Maybe we’re not enemies, but we’re not exactly gonna become good friends either.
As we walk, I search for Foote, hoping for some sign that he got away, but when we reach the van, my hopes are dashed. He’s seated in the very back and looks like a mess. His face has been beaten bloody and they have him trussed up tight with both his wrists and ankles cuffed. Pushing past the guards, I climb in beside him.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I’m sorry,” Foote answers. “They came in so fast. I tried to warn you—”
“Shhh,” I interrupt. “I know. It’s okay. But why are they taking you too?”
If possible, Foote slumps even lower in his seat. “Elton never really trusted me. He was constantly testing me. Today I finally flunked out.”
“If it helps, Elton doesn’t trust anyone.”
Foote shrugs. “He had reason not to trust me. When we met, he told me he’d never met a backstabber who could do it without ever lifting a knife, and he said that if I ever crossed him, he’d make me sorry.”
“Typical Elton macho bullshit.” I shake my head. “What does that even mean?”
“It means that I killed someone,” Foote admits in a low voice.
“What? No way. I don’t believe that.” No response from Foote, who stares down at his knees. I slide my hand into his, the same way it had been during the walk to my house. “You said before that you’d tell me about your past when we had some time. Here we are with nothing to do but sit back and wait.”
“It’s not a nice story.”
“Perfect. Not-nice stories are the only types I know.”
“Okay.” Foote takes a deep breath, as the van begins to reverse down my driveway. “Here I go then, telling you everything.”
“You don’t have to,” I interrupt, understanding more than most people how difficult it can be to remember. Trying to lighten the mood, I add, “We could sing ‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer’ to pass the time instead.”
“Anything but that.” Foote laughs and I join him. Then he starts speaking again, and all the mirth fades from his voice. “I don’t know what happened to my mom. Or my dad either. The man who raised me said he was my uncle, but he was a con man, gambler, and professional liar, so I was never really sure that we shared any blood at all. Anyway, he told me that my mom didn’t want me ’cause I was a freak. He told me he was the only person in the whole world who was able to put up with me, and I’d better pray that nothing ever happened to him, ’cause I’d be a goner without him. Every morning he’d ask me, ‘You got my back?’ and every morning I’d tell him that I did. And then we’d get in his van, leave behind whatever motel or apartment we’d been staying at, and go find some suckers.
“My uncle made his money getting people to bet against him. Sometimes he’d have a partner, usually a girlfriend, who’d set it up for him. She’d gather a crowd out in a field or at the edge of a parking lot or in a deserted building. He liked to have around twenty-five to fifty people to make it worth his while, but when times were tough he’d settle for just five or six guys willing to pay. By the time I was ten, getting people wasn’t a problem. Instead of us going into towns and explaining what he was about, people already knew and were waiting to see him. Sometimes he had to turn people away because we were attracting too much attention. There were just too many people who wanted to see ‘the man who couldn’t be shot’ for themselves.”
“This can’t be good,” I say, unable to hold the words back, because I already have an idea of what is coming next.
“It’s not,” Foote confirms. “He had this rickety delivery van with an ancient claw-foot bathtub in the back of it. When we got to the site, I’d take off my shirt and pants so they didn’t get messed up and then lie down in the tub. It was always cold, even on a hot Alabama August afternoon. He’d blast heavy metal from the car stereo, cranking the volume as high as it could go so that no one would be able to hear me scream. It was all I could hear too; there was no hint or sound I could detect from the outside to give me warning. To brace myself. I just had to lie there and wait. That was the worst part—the waiting. I knew, though, from one of his chattier girlfriends, how it all went on the outside.
“Uncle Gage had a little platform he’d build. He’d stack bales of hay behind it with bull’s-eyes pinned on them. Then he’d start his spiel, egging the crowd on, asking who dared to try and hit him. Telling them to step up and try their luck. Usually, the first one took the longest to convince. In the early days, he’d sometimes put a ringer in the crowd, to take the first shot and get things moving. It was anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred dollars for a chance at bat, depending how bad the crowd wanted it. Then the shooter would stand on this box set up about ten feet away. Gage’s girl would give the guy a bow and arrow and he’d get five tries. If they all went wide, Uncle Gage’d let the shooter move the box up for half of what he paid the first time. They usually hit him then. Sometimes a few times. They’d see the arrow heading straight toward him and then it would just . . . disappear.
“After that first arrow, everyone wanted to watch it again. Everyone wanted to hold the bow and see what the trick was. If it was a bigger crowd, I’d usually pass out before it was over and not wake up until Uncle Gage started pulling the arrows out of me. That’s when I started smoking. He’d light me one after another and tell me to practice blowing smoke rings while he worked.”
“Foote,” I whisper, not knowing what else to say.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I mean, it isn’t, but it was a long time ago and I survived. Right?”
“How long ago?” I ask.
“I was twelve the last time. Uncle Gage felt like we’d overworked the Southeast, so we went west. And it was amazing. In places we’d never been before, these huge crowds were turning out. Word was spreading online—there was even a shaky video that someone had made. I think it went to Uncle Gage’s head. In New Mexico, when five hundred people showed up, instead of turning most of them away, he told them to stay and try their luck. When they ran out of arrows, he asked who had a gun. Turns out, a lot of them did. It took me three weeks before I could walk again, and I was coughing up bullets for even longer than that.”
Lost for words, I squeezed Foote’s hand.
“Uncle Gage made almost ten grand in that one day, and he decided to do it again once we got to California, but this time he wanted to double that number. He probably would’ve too. I’d never seen a crowd so big. That was Uncle Gage’s mistake. Well, that and parking on a hill. It made it real easy to put the car into neutral and let it roll away. Once I got some distance, I hot-wired it—a little something I’d looked up online a few days earlier.”
Foote pauses.
“Uncle Gage was still lucky in a way, I guess. Whoever shot that first arrow had a hell of an aim. It went straight into his eye socket. He died almost instantly.”
“He deserved worse.”
“Yeah, probably. I mean, it wasn’t like I’d never thought about running before I finally did. For years, I wanted to get away. I even snuck out one night when I was ten, but after an hour in the dark by myself with nowhere to go, I got scared and went back. I guess that would’ve been the better way to do it, instead of leaving him thinking he was safe and then ending up with an arrow hanging out of his face.”
“He deserved worse,” I say again, this time with a snarl.
I feel Foote’s head, which has been resting against mine, nod.
“It was the right choice,” I tell him, knowing he doesn’t quite believe it and wanting to say it again and again until he does. Foote shudders, and I lean my body into his, trying to give him some small comfort. Wishing things were different. Then my gaze drifts out the window, and I realize we are at the base of the hill that leads up to the reformatory. Not much time before we’re there. A terrible panicky feeling pushes against my chest. To keep us both distracted, I ask Foote another question.
“So what happened next?”
“At first things were pretty good. Some social workers got me into school and found me a family with a bunch of other foster kids to live with. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than anything I’d ever known.”
“At first,” I say.
“What?”
“You said that at first it was okay, which means that later it wasn’t.”
“Yeah,” Foote agrees. “Later it wasn’t.”
“But you were happy for a while.”
“Yeah,” he says again, this time in a lower voice.
“So was it worth it? What I mean is . . .” I take a deep breath as I struggle to put my thoughts into words. “Is it worth having something good when it’s just gonna be taken away? When it’s only temporary and later you’re left wondering if you imagined it anyway?”
Beside me, Foote is silent. Then he takes a deep breath of his own. “One of the other foster kids was a little girl named Amy. A month after I moved in, they had her first birthday party. Over the years I was there, I got to see her grow up. She was a little behind for a kid her age. F’s were especially tricky for her, so she called me Doot. She loved being held, and every time I sat down to eat or watch TV or do homework, she’d crawl onto my lap and plant herself there.”
When I asked him about the good being taken away, I was thinking of Piper. But now it is the thought of Wills that makes my throat tighten.
“Okay,” I say, meaning “that’s enough.” But Foote isn’t done.
“I had just turned seventeen when the fire happened. It was the middle of the night. I woke to hear this huge boom and I felt the whole house shuddering. Then I heard Amy scream. I jumped out of bed to help her, but couldn’t get any farther. I was . . . burning. I didn’t even realize it at the time—couldn’t make sense of it—but my whole body was on fire. I was in a coma for two weeks, and when I woke up, the first thing I asked was if Amy was okay. They said she was, but that everybody else was in the hospital, too, and in pretty bad shape. It was some sort of gas explosion. This fireball just ripped through the house. They’d had to dig through the rubble for hours to find all of us. Amy was the last to be found. No one expected her to be alive, but when they found her, she was sleeping peacefully, not a hair out of place, not a single bruise.”
“So it was okay,” I say, surprised at how relieved I feel.
“That’s what I thought—just my usual mix of bad luck/good luck. But then this guy showed up at the hospital and told me that he’d been looking all over for me. At first I thought he’d wandered in from the psych ward, ’cause he told me how he was the owner of a magical train. ‘People from all over the world want a seat on this train,’ he said. ‘Some would even kill to ride.’ I asked why, and he told me about Gardnerville. I called him a liar. ‘Look it up,’ he said. Once he’d had to sell people on the place, but now the internet did all the selling for him. He said I could start out by helping a friend of his on the other side. If things there went well, expansion was almost certain, and I’d be in a good place to move up within their organization.
“I thought he was crazy, but I looked it up anyway. The things I read were insane, but kind of awesome too. And in some weird way, Gardnerville almost felt familiar. Like I’d been there before. Ten days later I boarded the train.”
“And Elton was the friend on the other side?” I guess.
“Yeah,” Foote confirms. “I gave him my protection.”
“Your protection,” I say, and then I remember not being able to breathe after taking too many forget-me-nots and the bicycle crash. “And you gave it to me too, didn’t you?” I ask, but I don’t wait for an answer. I press my warm lips against Foote’s. After a moment of hesitation, he kisses me back.
My eyes drift closed as the kiss becomes more than just a mix of gratitude and sympathy. In a way the kiss becomes about nothing at all. Except Foote. And me. Right now, that’s enough to make my head spin and my heart pound. It’s enough to make me simply forget about everything else. Even Foote’s deep pool of secrets has gone quiet—except for one small whisper that gently sighs yes.
Or maybe that one is coming from me.
Either way, like all good—no, great—things, it ends too quickly.
The van door rumbles open, and a pair of guards smirk at us. “Welcome to your new home, lovebirds,” one of them says.
“Sorry you can’t carry her over the threshold, Romeo,” the second one adds.
They laugh loudly at their own wit, but the amusement never quite reaches their eyes.
Ignoring them, I help Foote climb out of the van. Then there is nothing to do but stand in front of the gates as they slowly creak open and the dread mounts higher and higher.
“This way,” Guard One finally says, and we step forward, passing through the gates, officially on the grounds of the reformatory.
I look over at Foote. Our eyes meet and we share wry smiles.
“Thanks,” I tell him. “For everything.”
His smile turns into a frown. “That sounds like a good-bye. I’m pretty sure they’re taking us to the same place, and this may be kind of cheesy, but there’s nobody I’d rather be locked up with.”
My throat tightens and I have to look away to blink tears from my eyes.
“Let’s move,” my goon says.
Still not wanting him to touch me, I immediately follow orders.
“Sky—” Foote calls from behind me, sounding hurt and . . . betrayed.
Without stopping, I look back over my shoulder at him. “It’s the reformatory,” I attempt to explain. “You don’t understand, you won’t . . .” I swallow hard, trying to keep my own fear at bay. “The reformatory is where luck runs out. Even yours.”
“Heh,” Guard One says, in a way that sounds more wistful than cruel.
Foote keeps looking at me, as if expecting me to say something more.
“I’m sorry,” I add, even though I know it’s not what he’s looking for. I am though. I am so very sorry for each and every one of us.