Flux Page 11

  “Bunny?” he called softly, his voice carrying clearly in the stillness of the street.

  Slowly she crawled out from behind the vent and sat looking down at him. “How’d you guess?” she asked finally.

  “Not dumb enough to wait inside, are you?” he shrugged.

  The warehouse roof reverberated slightly as Snakebite came ricocheting through the entrance, bumping into the doorjamb. “She’s not here!” he shouted, rubbing his shoulder. “She took off.”

  “Did you check the can?” asked Deller. “

  Yeah,” grimaced Snakebite.

  “Check again,” said Deller, “you might’ve missed her,” and the other boy darted back inside. A butterfly fluttered around Deller’s head, then landed on his wrist. He cupped it with his hand.

  “I saw your brother,” Nellie said, her heart suddenly pounding. “Last night.” She watched Deller’s head snap up, the sunlight smashing against his face, splintering like glass. Slowly his hand lifted, releasing the butterfly. “Come up and I’ll tell you,” she croaked, hugging herself and rocking. “There’s a truck out back.”

  “I know,” said Deller, and vanished around the side of the building. A moment later the roof quivered slightly and she turned to see him working his way quietly toward her. “Wait,” he said, settling beside her. “Until they’ve gone.”

  As if in response, the rest of the Skulls poured through the entrance. For several minutes they spilled about the street, shouting for Deller and arguing among themselves. Then without once looking up they headed off, still wrangling, in the direction they’d come. Hunched against the vent Nellie stared after them, running after them in her head. Why was she here? She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to say what she was going to have to say. Deller was so close, she could feel the heat humming in his body. Chancing a glance in his direction, she saw the fierce press of his lips as he pulled a nevva fruit from his pocket and skinned it, tossing the peel into the street. If she hadn’t known to look for it, she would have missed the slight shake in his hands as he split the peeled fruit and handed her half.

  The sweet scent came at her like a punch to the gut. Without a word she inhaled the nevva fruit, spitting the seeds over her knees and watching them bounce off the edge of the roof. Silently Deller handed her the other half and she forced herself to slow down, eating it piece by piece. Her eyes kept darting toward Deller’s left knee, angled casually one inch from her own. It had been a year and a half since she’d let anyone come this close.

  “It was another gate,” she said finally.

  Deller’s face shot round and he stared. “He’s in another level?”

  “I think so,” Nellie said slowly. “It was a different kind of gate, not like I’m used to.”

  “How d’you know it wasn’t his double?” Deller asked cautiously.

  “There were no doubles.” She said it with surprise, realizing she hadn’t seen her own double anywhere, in the hallway or any of the cubicles. “I think the gate came out of Lulunar. It wasn’t like any level I’ve seen. Nothing was the way it should’ve been.”

  Quickly she explained, watching tiny flickers come and go in Deller’s face. “I couldn’t get him out,” she said fervently when she finished. “I looked and looked for a switch to open it, but there wasn’t one, I swear.”

  Deller nodded, blew out a gulping sigh, and buried his face in his knees. Silence descended, the late-morning heat hovering on heavy wings. A fly settled on Nellie’s arm and she shook it off. From her position on the warehouse roof, the sun appeared to be resting in the hands that sat atop the downtown spire of the Goddess’s largest and wealthiest church, the Temple of the Blessed Heart. Again the fly landed on her arm, and again she shook it off. Beside her Deller continued to sit motionless, his face buried in his knees. Uneasily she picked up a piece of discarded nevva peel and tore it to shreds.

  “Can you get through the gate again?” Deller asked abruptly, his voice muffled by his knees.

  “I don’t know.” She’d expected this question and had practiced various refusals, but now none of them seemed to fit her mouth. “I’ve never seen a gate like that. I didn’t go looking for it. It just showed up, already open.”

  “Then it was looking for you.” Raising his head, Deller stared across the city. Knee prints reddened his forehead. “It’ll come back,” he said grimly, “looking for you again. And this time, I’ll be there to help you.”

  Fear undulated through Nellie. “Maybe it was just Lulunar,” she said quickly. “You know—the two-moon craziness thing?”

  “D’you really think that?” Deller stared at her, a tear sliding down one cheek. He blinked and another followed. Nellie swallowed, feeling her own sadness pour through her like a river.

  “I guess not,” she said helplessly, and stared determinedly at the brass hands rising from the Temple of the Blessed Heart. If she didn’t look at Deller, he would stop crying. He would get it together and go back to being the tough leader of the Skulls. Then the hole that was threatening to tear open the inside of her head would fade away and leave her alone. She wasn’t going to think about her mother, she wasn’t going to think about what they must have done to her before she died, she wasn’t ...

  “Is it far?” asked Deller. “We’ll get my bike and I’ll double-ride you there. Then we’ll wait for the gate.”

  “It might not come.” If she brought Deller to the shack, she would be well and truly homeless. Once the Skulls knew about her secret place, her sanctuary, she would never be able to live there again. But after the mysterious gate and the stolen remembering dress, she couldn’t live there anyway. The fine lines holding Nellie’s mind together finally broke, and her head sank to her chest. “It’s not like it’s got a name and comes when you call it,” she mumbled.

  “I’m not asking you to call it,” said Deller, and she lifted her head to find him looking at her, really looking—as if he saw her, more than just a ghost of hunger and need. “You already put yourself out for me,” he said softly. “It’s not your brother. If the gate shows up again, I’ll go through it by myself. You can wait for me in this level. If I don’t come back ... “ He shrugged. “Close it, I guess.”

  Nellie nodded, ducking the warm search of his eyes. She’d forgotten eyes could do this, open the places she kept shut tight inside and make them ooze together in a sad-happy mix. “Let’s go then,” she said gruffly, scrambling to her feet. “Before it gets hotter than it already is.”

  THE BIKE WAS STORED in a shed behind Deller’s house, a gloomy three-story clapboard with peeling gray paint that leaned slightly, as if following the wind. Wheeling the bike along a weedy walkway, Deller propped it against the sagging front porch, then ducked inside and emerged a minute later with a hastily slapped-together cheese sandwich.

  “Here,” he said sheepishly, handing it to Nellie; then he grabbed the bike and wheeled it to the curb. She stood riveted, staring at the sandwich in her hand, an oddness resonating through her head. Since her mother had disappeared, she’d rarely been offered food and had had to steal almost every bite she’d swallowed. A shaky breath lifted through her and she glanced carefully at the boy sitting on his bike and staring fixedly down the street.

  Don’t think this is going to make me love you, she thought at him fiercely. Just don’t think anyone’s going to make me love them ever again.

  Biting savagely into the sandwich, Nellie swung onto the bike behind him and gripped the back of the seat with one hand while she ate from the other. As Deller pulled out awkwardly from the curb, she settled her right foot onto the chain guard and concentrated on keeping her balance. She would not, she told herself furiously, she definitely would not hold onto Deller. She’d seen the magazines he read, she knew what kind of thoughts filled his head. Munching the dry cheese sandwich, she rode out the bike’s wobbly movements and watched the city go by. Occasionally she jabbed a finger over Deller’s shoulder, delivering a terse set of directions, but otherwise they stuck to a mut
ual silence, traveling a tangled route of back alleys to the edge of the city, then taking the main road to the quarry. Except for the odd honk of a car horn no one bothered them, and gradually Nellie began to enjoy the warm breeze, the quiet whir of the bike, and the blur of passing shrubbery. This sure beat walking. Maybe she could figure out how to filch a bike. Nothing brand new—just a dumpy-looking one like Deller’s, so no one would think of filching it off her. Across the road, a barking dog lunged the full length of its chain and she stuck her tongue out at it. In a minute they would arrive at her regular turn-off point.

  “Here,” she shouted at the back of Deller’s head.“Turn right.”

  He veered into the tall blond grass and Nellie dismounted, grunting at the ache in her butt. “You can leave your bike there,” she said, pointing to a bush. “No one comes out here much, except me.”

  As he slid the bike into the foliage, she turned toward a small hill that sat a short ways off, hiding the shack and the copse that surrounded it. Usually she waited until she’d passed the hill to turn in toward the copse, but after last night’s events she wanted to get a fix on the shack before she got too close. Somewhere high up, looking down on it would be best. Dashing up the hill, Nellie tore through the whiplash of dengleberry bushes, the sensation of riding the bike still with her. “C’mon,” she called, but Deller had already caught up to her and was pulling slightly ahead.

  “You live out here?” he asked, throwing her a confused look, his thoughts written all over his face: What are your parents, moonshine derelicts? You some trash barrel kid they dumped at the side of the road? Lightning shame forked through Nellie. Putting on a burst of speed, she crested the hill ahead of him.

  She saw, gave a hoarse cry, and fell to her knees.

  “What is it, Bunny? What—?” Pulling up beside her, Deller went abruptly quiet. Earthquakes of silence filled the air, deep soundless apocalypses. No birds sang, the wind had gone utterly still. From the highway came the hum of a single car passing. Huddled against the ground, Nellie pulled up handful after handful of long blond grass, ripping the quiet to shreds.

  “Was that your house, Bunny?” asked Deller in a bewildered voice. “Is that where you lived?”

  She opened the absolute soundlessness that was her mouth, and nodded. For a long moment Deller’s face seemed about to slide into separate pieces, and then he turned to stare again at the wreck of the place that had housed her shack. Where the copse had stood that morning there was now only a large gash, torn deep in the ground. Trees lay every which way, some flung as far as fifty feet. A thick scent of burning hung in the air, and the trees and surrounding grass had been badly singed, but there was no sign of the shack, not even a charred board or shingle. The site looked as if a fist of fire had erupted from the ground, uprooting everything in its path.

  “That was your house?” Deller asked again, as if he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. “That’s where the gate showed itself to you?”

  “Yeah,” Nellie finally managed, the effort exhausting her.

  Deller stood shuddering in the silence, being eaten by small gusts of wind. “What about your mom and dad?” he asked finally.

  “It was just me,” she mumbled, and they remained as they were a while longer, staring at the ravaged pocket of earth.

  “Well,” said Deller heavily, “I guess we should get going then.”

  “Yeah,” said Nellie. “Okay.” Staggering to her feet, she followed him down the side of the hill.

  Part 2

  Chapter 10

  LATER, NELLIE REMEMBERED the ride back to Dorniver as taking place within a long invisible tunnel. Beyond this tunnel the world went on as it normally did—the wind riding the doogden trees, passing trucks rippling the road beneath the bike, dogs barking and running the full length of their chains—but all of it without sound, as if each object suddenly lacked the specific noise that gave it meaning. Clinging to the bike seat, she stared past Deller’s back and rode out the soundless transparent corridor that remained with her even after their arrival in Dorniver. Cars passed, people talked and laughed on street corners, and she heard none of it. No thought came to her about where they might be headed, although she felt no surprise when they turned down a familiar street and pulled up before a dilapidated clapboard house. Levering himself awkwardly off the bike, Deller gestured for her to do the same, but the tunnel of meaninglessness was still with her. Blank and uncomprehending, all she could do was stare at his face and wonder why he kept moving his mouth if he didn’t have anything to say.

  Hands gripped the numb post of her left leg and heaved it over the bike’s crossbar, then led her across a mangy lawn toward a sagging porch. There she sat, watching a noiseless wind play with the scraggly leaves of a nevva bush until Deller’s face appeared before her again. His lips moved emphatically and when she didn’t respond he reached for her, pulling her insistently to her feet. Briefly the world spun round, and then she was stumbling through an open doorway into a cool shadowy place. Across the room stood a worn couch with several throw cushions. Hands guided her to it, something warm slid over her, darkness rushed her brain and she slept.

  NELLIE WOKE TO THE smell of cooking, the hiss of a frying pan, and the blurred murmur of voices. Muttering dozily, she nuzzled deeper into the musty throw cushion beneath her head, but the bellow of her empty stomach pulled her firmly awake. Eyes slitted, she scanned her surroundings. Nothing was familiar, not the slightly rank smell of the couch she was lying on, the green and orange afghan that covered her, or the framed photograph of a man with slightly slanted eyes on the mantel across the room. So this wasn’t a dream of one of the apartments she’d shared with her mother, though she could smell food—yummy food, the kind a mother cooked on a stove, then dished onto a plate all hot and steamy while you squirmed onto a kitchen chair that stood waiting just for you. But, Nellie thought, bewildered, staring around herself, there no longer was a chair waiting just for her, nor was there a mother cooking her supper, and how in the world had she gotten onto this ramshackle couch under the world’s ugliest afghan, while painfully delicious smells invaded her nose? What was this, one of Lulunar’s nastier tricks?

  “Hey!” grinned Deller, coming through a nearby doorway. “You finally woke up. I thought maybe you were going to sleep until next week.”

  Shock fisted Nellie’s throat and she started to her feet, staring around herself in renewed fear. Where was she, how had she gotten here, were the Skulls—? Glancing at her clothes, she assessed them quickly but they seemed undisturbed, all the buttons and zippers properly done up. So, no magazine stuff had happened while she slept. Tightening the kerchief around her head, she crossed her arms over the blobs on her chest. Snatches of memory were coming back to her—something about the shack, a huge gash in the ground, and burnt popsicle-stick trees. But how had she gotten from there to here? And why was Deller looking at her as if they shared some kind of meaning, something no one else knew? Again Nellie glanced at her clothes, but nothing was askew. She tightened her arms across her chest.

  “Um, I’m sorry if I’ve been bothering you,” she said gruffly, ransacking her memory for something nice to say. Being in a house was different than goofing off in the street—you had to mind your manners and speak properly. “Well, I guess I’ll be leaving now,” she added politely, avoiding his gaze. “I do so thank you for your warm hospitality.”

  Deller’s face twisted in disbelief. “You’re leaving? But what about supper? Mom made extra hamburgers for you.”

  Hunger undulated savagely in Nellie’s gut. “Hamburgers?” she said faintly. “I guess maybe I could take one with me.”

  “Take one with—?” Quickly Deller turned and hollered, “Mom, c’mere, would you? She’s awake, but she says she’s leaving.”

  Footsteps rushed the kitchen door and Nellie looked up to see a broad plump figure coming toward her, dressed in an aproned sweatsuit and carrying the heady scent of hand soap and tobacco. A soundless cry passed th
rough Nellie, her eyes dropped and she stared fixedly down. Once upon a time there had been a different woman, shorter and slighter but also dressed in a rumpled sweatshirt, who’d come flying toward her on invisible wings of hand soap and perfume.

  A finger slid under Nellie’s chin, tilting up her face. “There now,” said a husky voice, roughened by years of smoking cigarettes. “You look like you could be kind of hungry. C’mon into the kitchen and get yourself something to eat.”

  With a wide, almost pleading grin, Deller gestured emphatically toward the open doorway. Nellie slitted her eyes at him suspiciously. All this being nice made him look like an idiot, but then it didn’t exactly come natural to him. Turning from his overdone grin, she followed his mother into a kitchen that was dense with the smell of food. A chair was pulled out for her and she sat down tentatively, certain it was about to dissolve beneath her. Still beaming like an idiot, Deller dropped into the chair opposite and tilted it back against the wall. Cautiously Nellie hunched in her seat and slid a fingertip carefully over the susurra-patterned tablecloth. It was yellow, her favorite color. So were the chairs and the walls. She wobbled her chair slightly to make sure it was still there. Sixteen months had passed since she’d sat on a chair in front of a table and the scene felt unreal, as if she’d entered a movie of someone else’s life.

  A steaming hamburger was set before her. “You want mustard or relish?” asked Deller, pushing several condiment containers toward her, but the roar that erupted in Nellie’s head shut everything else out. Slapping the hamburger together, she rammed it into her mouth, chewing and swallowing, rushing it toward the rage of her stomach. Hey kid, you’re supposed to eat that, not breathe it, she remembered, but when a second hamburger appeared on her plate she attacked it with equal ferocity.