“I’m afraid that information was kept confidential even from me. It resides somewhere in a computer system at the donor bank.”
My head felt heavy, filled with smog. I thought about what Alex had told me in the cabin about her father and my mom: They were gonna get married, have kids, the whole thing. Then Dad broke up with her after graduation. I don’t know what it was. Cold feet, fear, whatever. But he never forgave himself for it. Or her.
He’d broken it off with my mom because he’d found out she couldn’t have kids. Or at least she’d thought she couldn’t.
When I came back from my train of thought, Dr. Chatterjee was staring at me, looking dismayed.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice. “Thanks for telling us.”
“I’m sorry to drop this bombshell on you in the middle of everything else,” he said.
“That’s what the world is now,” I said. “One bombshell after another. We might as well get used to it.”
Patrick turned to me. “If I could trade places with you and give you my immunity, I would.”
“I know,” I said. “But I wouldn’t take it.”
He put an arm around my neck and tweaked me into him, hard. It hurt and felt good at the same time.
Dr. Chatterjee rose, and we started to head out.
“What are you gonna do about Ben?” I asked.
Chatterjee halted, his leg braces clanking. “We don’t know that he loosened those valves, Chance.”
“Yes,” I said. “We do.”
“You’re making accusations without evidence. We can’t act on that. We can’t live like that. Think what this community would deteriorate into without rules in place.”
“Ben said it himself,” Patrick said. “There have to be new rules. The old ones won’t work anymore.”
His face long with sorrow, Chatterjee put a hand on the ledge of my brother’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Patrick,” he said.
He trudged out ahead of us.
*
Over the next few days, Alex rested up, but something was working on her thoughts like an infection. I watched her chewing her lip at night, staring up at the ceiling, at nothing. During the days she worked on her injured leg with a vengeance, stretching it out on the bleachers and doing deep knee bends. Every morning and every afternoon, she’d turn on the TV and give the dial a twirl all the way around.
I don’t know what she was hoping for, but every channel still showed static.
When I dreamed, I saw the faces of those kids in their cages at the cannery. The Queen’s stinger, poised to descend. Children floating on metal slabs, their bellies distended. I didn’t sleep for long, waking up in starts, drenched in sweat.
One night I jerked awake to find JoJo tugging at Alex’s sleeve two cots over. Alex shifted up on her pillow, and Patrick stirred as well.
“What is it, sweetheart?” Alex said.
Over the thudding of my heart, still on overdrive from the nightmare, I barely made out JoJo’s fragile whisper. “Alex?” she said. “Tell me it’s gonna be okay.”
Alex’s eyes ticked over toward my brother, and they shared a look through the darkness. I wasn’t sure what it meant.
Alex’s expression shifted into something hard and unrecognizable. She looked back at JoJo. “I can’t,” she said, and rolled over again.
She sounded angry, but I could hear the heartbreak beneath the words.
JoJo’s shoulders pinched up, and she shuffled away a step, stunned. I rose quickly and came to her side. “C’mon, Junebug. Let’s get you back to sleep.”
She lifted her arms to me the way she did when she was upset. Picking her up, I carried her over to her cot and tucked her in.
“Are they gonna get me, Chance?” she asked.
I thought about what I’d be willing to do to protect her. “Not so long as I’m around,” I said.
Her smile glinted in the darkness. “Then I’ll always be safe,” she said. “’Cuz nothing would ever happen to you.”
Content for the moment, she snuggled into Bunny and closed her eyes.
The weight of the promise pulled at me. From her perspective I must have seemed big and invincible.
Just like Patrick always seemed to me.
I couldn’t go back to sleep that night.
I used the following days to catch up on rest and bring my journal up to speed. The sixth night we were back, Alex finished stretching and then started running up and down the bleachers—a drill that Coach Hanson used to make us do in PE when we weren’t paying attention.
It was clear that Alex was training for something.
Chatterjee stood and watched her, his forehead grooved with furrows. He seemed worried.
In between lookout shifts, Patrick paced around the school grounds. There was a building sense of anticipation, of unease. I sensed that something was coming, a storm brewing inside him and Alex, inside even me, but I couldn’t grasp what it was.
That night a hand shook me gently from sleep. “Okay, Junebug,” I murmured, rolling over. “Let’s get you back to—”