I zipped up my new coat and started the walk to the bus station. I only had a little bit of cash that I’d gotten under the counter doing odd jobs my first few days in Vancouver, but it was enough to get me onto a bus and out of there. My feet crunched on the salted pavement, and soon I was downtown, where there were enough people for me to blend in with that I felt safe taking the hood off my head. I tried to remember how long I’d been doing this, moving from city to city, scamming my way into juvenile care homes by pretending to be younger than I was. I’d left home for good at sixteen. Sometime after that there’d been the petty robbery that went really, really wrong, and I’d gone from being a runaway to being someone on the run. The danger of being caught had long passed, but once you start running, it’s hard to stop, so I hadn’t stayed in any one place for long. Since I couldn’t say exactly how long I’d been doing this; I’d lived so many lives that it was hard to keep track.
I arrived at the bus station, which was lit up even in the middle of the night with fluorescents that gave the place a queasy, yellow glow, and walked up to the ticket window.
“What . . .” I cleared the frog from my throat. I hadn’t spoken for days. “What’s the cheapest bus ticket you’ve got?”
The cashier raised a perfectly drawn on eyebrow at me. “You don’t care where you’re going?”
“Nope.”
She gave me a couple of options, and I picked the $82 bus to Calgary that left in less than an hour. After she handed me back my change, I had enough money for a coffee and muffin now and a sandwich on the road later.
I was standing in line at the station McDonald’s when I spotted him. Martin. He was hard to miss since he was a head taller than almost everyone else around.
I didn’t feel much anymore, but I did still feel fear. Every animal feels fear. It was a nice change from the usual nothingness, actually. I dropped my head, slipped out of the line, and began to walk slowly in the opposite direction from Martin. There weren’t enough people here in the middle of the night to disappear into the crowd, so I would have to be careful not to do anything to attract his attention. I headed toward the men’s restroom I’d clocked earlier. He would check it, but if I hid in a stall, maybe he wouldn’t find me.
How did he know I was gone? Maybe Jason or Tucker had woken up and reported me missing.
As I was headed to the men’s room, a cop on a radio started to head toward it too. He went inside, and I changed directions, flipping my hood over my head. I strolled toward a side exit instead. I’d wait around the corner until a few minutes before my bus was scheduled to leave and then slip back inside.
“Collin!” a voice called.
I ran.
“Hey, Collin!”
The footsteps behind me were moving fast. I dashed toward the exit just as a woman with a huge rolling suitcase came through the door I was aiming for. She slowed me down for only a few seconds, but it was enough. Martin caught up to me, a helpful cop on his heels. I immediately dropped to the ground and wrapped my arms over my head, burying my face against my knees. When in doubt, play the traumatized child.
“Hey, it’s okay, man,” Martin said, kneeling beside me and putting a careful hand on my back. “I know you’re scared, but everything’s going to be okay. Come on, let’s go home.”
? ? ?
I went with Martin back to Short Term 8, and Alicia hugged me hard as soon as I came inside. They took me back to my room. Jason and Tucker were both awake, and I wondered which one of them had ratted me out. My money—not that I had much left—was on Jason. Tucker was a dick, but he also wouldn’t care if I ended up dead in a ditch somewhere. He rolled his eyes at me and turned over in bed when I came in, while Jason handed me a mini Snickers from the candy stash he kept hidden in his dresser. I was pissed at him, but I was also hungry, so I took it.
I bit into the candy bar as I walked to the bathroom down the hall. I could hear faint voices coming from the kitchen and crept closer toward them. They were probably talking about me, and I wanted to know what they were saying.
The kitchen had double swinging doors, and I pressed my eye up to the gap between them. Alicia was making tea.
“The cops must have scared the hell out of him,” she was saying as she poured milk into two mugs and handed one to Martin. “Threatening to section him like that. If he understood what they meant, it’s no wonder he ran.”
“Yeah, but they’ll take him away for sure now,” Martin said.
Alicia sighed. “Poor kid.”
? ? ?
I wasn’t going to any fucking mental ward.
Locked up. Walls and darkness closing in on me, suffocating me, the close air stale from my breath . . .
Never again.
I would do whatever it took to prevent that, whatever they wanted.
? ? ?
“I have to tell you something,” I said the next morning.
Forks hit plates and silence descended on the dining table, like something out of the movies.
Alicia recovered first. “Sure, Collin. Why don’t you come to the office, and we’ll—”
“My name’s Daniel,” I said. “Daniel Tate.”
? ? ?
The name meant nothing to Alicia. She hadn’t grown up in Southern California, where my name had made headlines.
Daniel Tate, son of the food packaging heiress. Daniel Tate, American prince. Daniel Tate, the boy who disappeared.
? ? ?
Did you believe me when I said I was some no-name runaway from the Canadian backwoods? You shouldn’t have. I told you I was a liar. That boy was just one of my many fictions. I invented him because he was tough enough to survive when I wasn’t, and because even his terrible life was better than the truth.
? ? ?
It was sunny the day it happened. I was walking beside my bike, because the chain had come off and I didn’t know how to fix it. I was taking it home to my father, because he would know. Dad knew everything.
A white van turned the corner and pulled up beside me. I was too naive to be scared. The door slid open, and hands emerged from the shadows. Some grabbed me, dragging me into the darkness and muffling my shouts. Others pulled my bike in behind me, erasing any trace I’d ever been there. That was it. Ten seconds and I was gone, with no one having seen a thing. A kidnapping can happen that quickly and that invisibly, even on a sunny street in a safe neighborhood.
They tried to make me forget who I was, and for a long time, they succeeded. I conjured dozens of different lives for myself as they moved me from dark room to dark room, passing me off from stranger to stranger. When it hurt, I would close my eyes and become someone else. I was a superhero captured by his evil nemesis. A king in hiding. An outlaw from a small, snowy town who was running from the cops. Anyone but Daniel Tate.
? ? ?
“I got away,” I told Alicia. “One day they accidentally left my door unlocked, and I ran for it. I didn’t know where I was, or even what year it was.”
Alicia’s eyes swam with tears, but she didn’t let them fall. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“There’s so much I don’t remember,” I said. “For a long time I didn’t even know who I was. And . . .”
“And what?” she pressed gently.
“They’re powerful.” My hands clenched into fists in my lap. “More powerful than the police. If they find me, they’ll take me back.”
She put a hand over mine. “That’s not going to happen,” she said with the blithe confidence of someone who had no idea what she was dealing with.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “You don’t know who these people are, who they know. If I’m in some government hospital or mental institution, they’ll find me. They’ll get me out and I’ll disappear again and I’ll never get away a second time.”
“No one’s taking you anywhere,” she said fiercely. “We’ll go to the police—”
“No!” I said. “You can’t tell them who I am!”
“We have to,” she said, “but then you’ll be safe. Daniel, you’ll get to go home.”