“Don’t Chubs me,” he snapped. “I owe Jack a lot. I want to do this.”
The address for Jack’s father was a Days Inn motel, far away from Annandale’s neighborhoods of sprawling homes. Liam seemed to think that the motel had been converted to a temporary housing complex for the workers rebuilding D.C., but there was no way to prove his theory until a rickety old bus pulled up alongside our car in the parking lot and unloaded a dozen dust-covered men, clutching neon vests and hard hats.
“Room 103,” Liam said, leaning over the steering wheel. He squinted with his good eye. “The guy in the red shirt. Yeah, that’s him—Jack looked a lot like him.”
The man was short and square, with a graying moustache and a wide nose.
Chubs reached between us and plucked the wrinkled letter out of my hand.
“Slow down, Turbo,” Liam said, clicking the car locks on. “We haven’t even checked to make sure he’s not being watched.”
“We’ve been out here for almost an hour—do you see anyone? The only other cars in the parking lot are empty. We lay low, like you wanted, and it worked.” He reached over and pulled the lock up manually. Liam stared at him for a moment, before relenting.
“All right; just be careful, will you?”
We watched him scurry across the parking lot, glancing around. Making sure there really was no one out watching room 103. He tossed a told you so look over his shoulder.
“Nice,” Liam said. “Real nice.”
I reached over and rubbed his shoulder. “You know you’ll miss him.”
“It’s insane, isn’t it?” he said, with a light laugh. “What am I going to do without him telling me how dangerous it is to open canned food the wrong way?”
Liam waited until Chubs had raised his hand and knocked before unbuckling his seat belt to lean over and give me a light kiss.
“What was that for?” I said, laughing.
“To get your mind on the right track,” he said. “After we take him home, we have to figure out how to find Zu and the others before the PSFs do.”
“What if—”
The door to room 103 cracked open, and the face of Mr. Fields appeared, tired and suspicious. Chubs lifted the wrinkled letter and extended it out to him. I wished Chubs had turned at an angle so we could have made out what he was saying. The man’s face flushed crimson, so dark that it matched his work shirt. He yelled something, loud enough that his next-door neighbors opened their curtains to see what was happening.
“This is bad,” Liam said, unlocking his door. “I knew I should have had him practice with me first.”
The door shut in Chubs’s face, only to open again all the way. I saw a flash of silver, saw Chubs raise his hands and take a step back.
The gunshot tore through the sunset, and by the time I screamed, Chubs was already on the ground.
We ran toward the room, screaming for him. All the complex’s residents were standing outside now, mostly men, some women. Their faces were monstrous blurs.
Jack’s father raised his shaking gun toward us, but Liam threw him back into his room and pulled the door shut with a sweep of his hand. My knees slid across the loose asphalt as I dropped down beside Chubs.
His eyes were open, staring at me, blinking. Alive.
He tried to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear over the screaming from inside 103. “Fucking freaks! Get out of here you goddamn freaks!”
Bright red blood bubbled up from just below Chubs’s right shoulder, spreading out over his shirt with hundreds of gliding fingers. I couldn’t do anything at first. It didn’t look real. Liam diving for the man’s gun, pointing it at 104 and 105, not real.
“It’s okay,” someone said behind us. Liam whirled around, his finger on the trigger, his face set in stone. The man raised his hands; he was holding a small phone. “I’m just calling nine-one-one, it’s okay; we’ll get him help.”
“Don’t let them call,” Chubs gasped. “Don’t let them take me.” He choked on the words. “I need to go home.”
Liam looked back over his shoulder. “Grab his legs, Ruby.”
“Don’t move him,” the man from 104 said. “You’re not supposed to move him!”
Jack’s father appeared behind us again, but the man with the cell phone tackled him back into the room and kicked the door shut behind him.
“Grab him,” Liam said, tucking the gun into the waistband of his jeans.
I slipped my arms under Chubs’s, carrying him the same way he had carried me. One of the other men stepped forward—maybe to stop us, maybe to help.
“Don’t touch him!” I screamed. They backed off, but only just.
Chubs pressed his own hands against the wound, his eyes wide and unblinking. Liam took his legs, and together we carried him. The men called after us, telling us the ambulance would be there any minute. The ambulance, along with every PSF. The soldiers wouldn’t save him; they wouldn’t. They’d rather see a freak kid die.
“Don’t let them take me,” Chubs squeezed out. “Keep my legs below my chest, Lee, don’t lift them so high, not for chest wounds, breathing difficult—”
It wasn’t the babbling that sent the spikes of fear straight into my heart, but the unending pulse of blood leaking out from behind his hands. He was shaking, but not crying. “Don’t let them take me.…”
I climbed into the backseat first, pulling Chubs in behind me. His blood soaked through the front of my shirt, burning against my skin.
“Keep…pressure on it,” Chubs told me. “Harder…Ruby, harder. I’m going to try to…hold it in with…”
His abilities, I think. The blood did seem to slow somewhat when his hand covered it again. But how long could that actually last? My hands covered his, shaking so hard they probably did more harm than good.
“God,” I was saying, “oh my God, don’t close your eyes—talk to me, keep talking to me, tell me what to do!”
The car squealed as we turned out of the parking lot. Liam hit the gas as hard as he could, slamming his palms down against the steering wheel. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Take me home,” Chubs begged. “Ruby, make him take me home.”
“You’re going—you’ll be fine,” I told him, leaning over so he could see my eyes.
“My dad…”
“No—Lee, hospital!” I wasn’t speaking in sentences, and Chubs wasn’t either, not anymore. He made a sound like he was choking on his own tongue.
When the glimpses came, they were washed in the same bright red as his blood. A man sitting in a large armchair, reading. A beautiful woman leaning across a kitchen table. A cross-stitch pattern, an emergency room sign. The black at the edge of my vision was curling up. Someone had taken a knife and driven it straight down into my brain.
“Alexandria is a half hour away,” Liam shouted, turning back over his shoulder. “I’m not taking you there!”
“Fairfax Hospital,” Chubs wheezed out. “My dad…tell them to page Dad.…”
“Where is it?” Liam demanded. He looked at me, but I had no idea, either. It occurred to me then that there was a chance we would be driving around so long that Chubs would die. He would bleed out right here, right now, in my lap. After everything.
Liam whipped the car around so hard I had to brace Chubs and me from flying off the seat. I bit my tongue in an effort to keep from screaming again.
“Keep talking to him!” Liam said. “Chubs—Charles!”
I don’t know when and where he had lost his glasses. His eyes were red at the edges, staring up at my face. I tried to hold his gaze for as long as I could, but he was trying to hand me something. Chubs lifted his hand from where it had fallen across his stomach.
Jack’s letter. Its edges soaked in wet, sticky blood, but open. Waiting to be read.
The handwriting was small and cramped. Each letter had a ghostly halo around it from the time it had spent submerged with the two of us in the lake, and some were gone completely.
Dear Dad,
When you sent me to school that morning, I thought you loved me. But now I see you for what you are. You called me a monster and a freak. But you’re the one that raised me.