The exorcist, p.10
After We Were Stolen, page 10
It was acclimation—survival by degrees. I have no idea how long we stayed there, how many nights we slept on those benches or how many meals we crept into town to steal. It felt like years—an endless stretch of time lined with unknowns. For Cole, the unknowns were not as big and not as many. He took present victories, like being dry and being fed, as success, and tomorrow didn’t matter. But I couldn’t enjoy them because there was too much I didn’t know. If our family was still lingering at camp, putting up walls or lying in ash underneath them. If they knew we got away. If they’d planted a living, growing seed inside me. I didn’t know. And it was eternity to wait and watch and plead for answers that never arrived.
“We need money,” I said to Cole one night. The sky was brilliant, inky black, the moon a silver hook in the darkness. Someone was having a party at the park near the school. Music traveled on the breeze with the fragrant smoke of a barbecue, marrying in a lullaby that was beautiful and desperately sad. “We can’t keep taking things.”
Cole was lying in the grass, chewing on a long piece of red rope candy. I’d just finished cutting his hair with the tiny scissors on my knife, and it waved over his forehead. “Where do you get money?”
“Maybe we can find jobs.”
“We can’t do anything.”
I laughed at that for no reason—it wasn’t funny. I’d been professionally homeless long before we set foot off camp. Cole couldn’t even read. There was so much in front of us, roping the moon seemed easier.
“I think we’re doing okay,” he added, offering me the candy. “Don’t you?”
I dropped down next to him. The music mixed with laughter, and it sounded so pretty, I felt tears stuffing my throat.
“What?”
“You think this is okay?” I asked, flinging my arm toward our little stolen house. “Sleeping on benches in a giant…bathroom, stealing food…”
“We’re trying,” Cole said. He nudged my shoulder when I didn’t respond. “What’s the matter?”
I shook my head against the grass. “Nothing.”
“What?”
A sob escaped, bursting free with the words I didn’t want to say or even think about. “I stopped bleeding.”
He looked at me without understanding. “When were you bleeding?”
My fingers knotted together. “It’s like—animals go in heat, and girls bleed. It’s the same thing. And if you don’t, it means you’re—” I couldn’t say it. “And I haven’t since we left. I stopped.”
Cole sat up. My hands had drifted to my belly, my fingers digging into the skin, clawing at whatever might be inside.
He stared at me, eyes wide. “Avery?”
My hands moved to cover my face, and my shoulders shook, more of a gag than a sob, a full-body spasm.
“What does that mean? Are you going to have a baby?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not bleeding,” I said, keeping my eyes on the endless night. “I know what that means.”
Cole reached over and pushed my shirt up to my ribs. “Mom got fat,” he said, touching my stomach. “You’re not fat.”
“You don’t get fat right away.”
“So we have to wait and see if you do?”
“I can’t wait,” I whispered.
“There’s no other way to tell?”
“Doctors can tell,” I said, racking my jumbled files for bits of information I might have read. “And I think there’s a test you can buy, but you need money. We don’t have any money—”
It took a minute for it to happen, but it did. Cole’s eyes lit, brightening with the idea that he might be able to fix something again. It happened because I said the wrong thing.
“When we go in, find the one you want, pick it up, put it back down, and walk away. I’ll be behind you, but don’t look at me.”
“I know, I know—” I said, nearly tripping over a burly old man shuffling ahead of us. He stopped suddenly, and I darted around him, clipping his heel without stopping to apologize. Cole had snatched me a pair of the same thin rubber shoes the woman in the bathroom wore, and they were hard to walk in. “Don’t linger, don’t leave too fast, don’t look at you, I know.”
“Just use your brain this time ” he said, glancing at the approaching storefront. It wasn’t our usual store. We had gone there first thing in the morning, but it didn’t have what we needed. The blow nearly killed me, and in Cole’s opinion, I’d immediately done something without using my brain. In a burst of bravado, I returned to the store after it officially opened and asked the man at the counter where I could buy a pregnant test. He was short and slight, with bright-white hair and oversize glasses, and his face registered something I couldn’t quite place when I said that. But then he smiled. His voice was kind as he suggested I try the pharmacy a few blocks down. Then he patted my hand and told me that pregnancy tests were in the family-planning aisle. I’d thanked him, and when I got outside, I marched past Cole with tears in my eyes and told him we were never taking another thing from there ever again.
We were within reach of the pharmacy door when Cole put his hand out to stop me. “I’m going in,” he whispered. “Wait about a minute.” The door opened by itself. He stepped through, and it swallowed him whole.
I swallowed too. The old man I had clipped was having a coughing fit a few feet away, and every time he hacked, I jumped. His watery eyes caught mine for a brief second before they squeezed shut, and those short, painful barks came again. Barely thirty seconds had passed when I lunged for the door.
Inside it was cool and quiet, with a hum of low voices and soft music. Cole was standing next to a rack of magazines. His fingers flipped nimbly through the pages of one with cars on the cover. He didn’t look up.
I walked without any real direction toward the heart of the store, away from any eyes that might be up front. There was an aisle of diapers that I hurried out of and another of soap and shampoo. Then I turned, and the universe smiled on me. Right in front of me was a white placard that read FAMILY PLANNING. The aisle had all kinds of boxes and bottles, too many for my eyes to take. I forced myself to walk slowly, looking only for the words I needed.
I found them on the bottom shelf. The words pregnancy test paired with other letters, other words. e.p.t. Clearblue. First Response. I had no sense of Cole being anywhere near me, but I was afraid to touch anything in case I made a mistake.
Someone in the back of the store coughed, loud and rattling. My hands shook. There were tests that gave the news with smiley faces, pluses and minuses, and thin blue lines. There was one that said the words in plain English: pregnant or not pregnant. That’s the one I picked up.
I examined the box, trying to figure out how it even worked. Then I replaced it on the shelf and straightened up. A man in a white coat passed by and smiled at me. I smiled back.
Then I turned and walked back the way I came.
When I got to the front of the store, Cole was gone. The magazine he’d been reading was slightly crooked in the rack. The woman behind the counter was helping someone else, and I made a quick dip toward the racks of candy and gum, running my eyes over the bright colors before heading for the door.
It slid open. I had one foot on the sidewalk and one on the black rubber mat. One outside, one in. Halfway home. But halfway wasn’t good enough, and I had left my other half behind. When I heard his voice, high and protesting, I knew it was over.
They came from the back—Cole and the man from the sidewalk, the old man with the cough. He had Cole’s elbow in one hand, and he swung his blue bag in an easy arc in the other. It hung heavy at the end of the strap.
“We’re just going up front to look in the bag, son, don’t get excited,” the man said. “Pretty sure I can handle you myself, but we might have to call someone if—”
“Cole!”
My voice shattered the air. Everyone’s eyes swung toward the door where I stood, half outside, half in. Cole squeezed his eyes shut, but the coughing man smiled.
“Ah,” he said. “There’s your friend.”
Thirteen
After Cole and I were arrested, I threw up twice. Once in the car, and once on the slick, polished floor of the police station. We were handcuffed by then, and Cole stood woodenly beside me as I splashed his shoes with vomit for the second time. The woman behind the desk pursed her lips and called for a janitor. I didn’t apologize, because I couldn’t speak.
“Send someone with sawdust out to my car too,” the old man with the cough said, his voice weary but not feeble. His name was Officer Rodolfo, and in the back office of the pharmacy, he had patiently explained that he might not arrest us if we cooperated with him. We didn’t. He kept asking us questions we didn’t understand, and it felt safer to say nothing at all.
“Drunk tank?” the woman asked, her eyes bouncing from me to Cole.
“No.”
She looked at us again, squinting. “Juvie?”
“That remains to be seen. They haven’t been very cooperative, and neither of them has any ID. What they do have is snipped tongues, so first we’re going to see if they want to change their minds and tell us who they are, and if they don’t, we’ll have to do something else to figure it out. Right, my boy?” he asked, nudging Cole.
Cole didn’t respond.
“Right,” said Officer Rodolfo. He sounded exhausted. “Right as rain. Put ’em in a room. I’ll be right there.”
A meaty hand grabbed my elbow. Another policeman, younger but huge, steered me and Cole down the hall.
He deposited us in a pantry-sized room with a table and two metal chairs, the same kind we had at the compound. I felt my stomach clench painfully for the third time. Cole sat next to me, his face the color of bleached muslin. The policeman brought in a third chair from another room. I expected him to stay with us, but he didn’t, closing the door with a hard click.
Cole looked at me, and his eyes were huge. “Avery—they know about us. I know they do. They know about the fire. What if they ask us what happened, what if—”
“Shh—no, they don’t. Don’t say anything,” I said. “If we have to talk, I’ll do it. Don’t say a word.” My head was churning with fear mixed with the sickly sweet smell of vomit rising from our shoes. I was thinking about the fire, too, but in my head, the scenarios were far worse. If my parents or any of the kids were alive somewhere, the police might know about us. They could already be looking for us. Cole would know I’d been lying.
He’d want to go back.
Everything about that was terrifying, but another part of me was desperate to know how safe we were, if everyone did burn or if there were still roots that could grab us—it was a question that had been weighing on me worse than whatever might be growing inside me, the other unknown. It gave me nightmares. In them Cole and I were small. We were in the living room with that man and woman, still smiling, their feet all splayed out on the floor. And my father—
“Okay!” a voice boomed. I jumped. Officer Rodolfo plopped heavily in the chair across from us. He still wasn’t dressed like a policeman, and that made him scarier somehow.
“Guess what? I’m not even on duty, but I don’t think you’re going to talk to anyone else, so we’re going to try this again,” he said. “Cooperate and you’ll be home in no time. Keep your mouths shut and we’ll have to do it the hard way. Makes no difference to me, but I guarantee it’ll make a huge difference to you.”
He leaned back in his chair and pointed his pen at Cole. “What’s your name?”
Cole said nothing.
“Well?”
“Nicholas,” I said quietly.
Officer Rodolfo twirled the pen between his fingers. “Is that your name or his?”
I looked at my hands, bound in silver. “His.”
“Can he talk?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then how ’bout we let him say it?” Officer Rodolfo said, turning back to Cole. “Come on, son, with feeling… What’s your name?”
“Nicholas,” Cole whispered.
“Nicholas what?”
Cole blinked and looked at me. Officer Rodolfo didn’t budge. “Nicholas what?” Officer Rodolfo repeated.
Long pause. “He doesn’t know what you mean,” I said finally.
“He doesn’t know what I mean?” he repeated, swinging his head toward me.
“No.”
“How fascinating. Well then, how ’bout you tell me, since you seem to know everything. What’s your name?”
I cleared my throat. “Avery.”
“Your whole name.”
“That’s it.”
“No, that’s not it. You got at least two names, and I want both of them. Is this your boyfriend?”
“He’s my brother.”
“Wonderful! That means we’re only one name away from finishing one question. Nicholas and Avery what?”
Cole was chalk white. I stretched my fingers and gripped his hand under the table. “We don’t have another name.”
The officer put the tip of his pen in his mouth. “How old are you?”
How old?
Nineteen.
“Nineteen.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, scribbling in his pad. The pen had made a blue dot on his lip that bobbed as he spoke. “You?” he asked Cole.
Cole threw me another panicked glance. I counted backward: me, Seth, Hannah… “Sev—sixteen,” I said.
The officer’s hand slapped the table so hard, it rocked back and forth. “Answer for him again and you’re each going to be questioned alone and I’m going to stop being nice. Where do you live?” he asked Cole.
Cole looked at the table.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Nowhere,” he whispered.
“Oh, this is getting better and better. No last name, no home, just wandering through town to steal a bagful of junk food and a pregnancy test. I guess that was for you?” he asked me.
I pressed my lips together.
“Where are your parents?”
I said, “Dead.”
“Where do you live?”
“Nowhere.”
“Where did you come from?”
I fell silent again. I could feel Cole tightening next to me, a winding, twisting rope pulled taut and thin.
“Where did you come from?” Officer Rodolfo boomed. “Because I’ll tell you something right now, what you did was at least a misdemeanor, and if we find out you’ve done it before, it becomes a felony, which is big shakes, in case that’s something else you never heard of. I’m not playing games with you kids, I—”
“Eight days out, due east,” Cole suddenly snapped.
“Shut up!” I hissed.
“No, no, no, don’t shut up now,” Officer Rodolfo said. “Due east?”
“Yes, sir,” Cole said, his chin jutting forward. “That means—”
“I know what it means. What town?”
“I don’t know.”
“Eight days’ walk or drive?”
“Cole, don’t—”
“Walk,” he said, his voice loud and getting louder with every word. “We walked west for eight days, we kept the sun on our left, and we’ve been careful. We only took the test because she can’t wait anymore!”
Officer Rodolfo straightened up and put his pen on the table. He didn’t speak for a long time. “Are you two fucking with me?” he asked finally.
I looked at Cole; his eyes were bright and shiny. “I’m sorry,” I said miserably. “I don’t know what that means.”
“I’ll give you a general definition. Most people,” he said, tapping his fingers on the table, “give distance in miles, not days. I don’t know many who’d even be able to point ‘due east.’ They generally know what town they came from.”
Neither of us spoke.
“So that leads me to believe that you’re fucking with me. Or maybe,” he said, returning the pen to his mouth, “you’ve been fucking with each other. Pregnancy test…you won’t talk…”
It was like he’d delivered a punch to my stomach. The memory of my father selling me and my womb to a stranger returned swiftly, very vivid and very alive. But I barely had time to notice, because all of a sudden, Cole exploded with a molten fury that forced angry tears from his eyes. “Shut up! Don’t you dare say that to her, don’t! I’ll k—”
The officer was up in a flash. He grabbed Cole by the front of his shirt and yanked him six inches out of his seat. “No, you don’t get to tell me what to do, son. You two have thrown yourselves into much deeper shit than you needed to, and if you mouth off to me again, I’m going to toss both your asses in—”
“Leave him alone!” I screamed.
Cole was beet red, hovering in Officer Rodolfo’s grip. He released him suddenly, and Cole dropped with a metallic clang back to his seat. The room was dead silent.
“Okay,” the officer said in a much quieter tone. He wasn’t agreeing with me; it looked more like he was trying not to hit us. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to take you up front, one at a time, and we’re going to take your prints, just like they did back in kindy-garden. Then you’re going into separate cells as Nicholas and Avery Doe, and there you’ll sit until Monday morning, when and if the judge is ready to see you. And you better be good and ready to give him the truth, or you won’t have to worry about your housing problem for a while. Do you understand?”
We didn’t, but we didn’t get a chance to answer. Officer Rodolfo threw open the door and hollered down the hall for someone to get us the hell out of his goddamn sight.
The younger policeman rolled my fingers over a thick black pad and inked the impressions onto a card, like a row of oversize bugs. He told me to sign it—I printed my name carefully on the line.
“Do you want to call anyone?” he asked, staring down at the five letters I’d written.
