Chapter Text
“But I only took nine steps,” Neil jabs his finger at the map of workbook paper covering the floor. It stretches from the door to the window. His calculations are now covered by a neat grid, and Neil taps each square, retracing his path. “No fair, I want to pass to my striker.”
He reaches for the pencil, ready to throw it at their makeshift target board to determine whether or not his shot succeeds, but Andrew pulls it away, clicking his tongue infuriatingly.
“Zombie nest,” Andrew says solemnly.
“No!”
“Uh-huh.”
Sure enough, Andrew flips the paper over, revealing a neat black dot under one of the squares Neil’s backliner was trying to cross.
Neil likes Exy a lot better on an actual court. Still, their time holed up in the apartment has been spent well.
He refuses to rip any of the photos of Kevin and Riko in his magazine, but he has no such sentimentality for the other members of their new team. The National High School League team, as the article proudly announced. Mary’s scalpel made a fine tool to cut out the heads of Kevin and Riko’s new teammates. Now they’re pieces in the board game.
A few borrowed rules: Dealers can move and pass diagonally, Backliners only horizontally and vertically, and Strikers in an L shape. The closer any two players are, the less accurate the pencil throw has to be for a pass to succeed. When on the same square as an opposing player, they can steal the ball, in this case, a single bullet perched on the paper court.
They’d adapted to the rules relatively quickly, but then Andrew got bored. Thus, zombie apocalypse. He’d said alien invasion was next, if Neil insisted on another round.
“There’s like eight zombies now,” Neil says.
“Congrats, you can count.”
“They’re going to get Kevin.”
Neil won’t defile Kevin and Riko’s photos, but he also won’t keep them off the court. So, they scribbled a one and a two on the sternest-looking National League players. Riko had been the first one to step on a hidden zombie nest, and now, after arguing that he wanted at least one of the future Perfect Court, Andrew is about to lose his draft pick.
“Sucks to be Kevin,” Andrew says, but he stops trying to score on Neil and moves Kevin back towards his goal. They spend the next few turns fouling the zombies off the court before the infestation can spread. Then, Andrew gets sidetracked. “Say you get stuck in an Exy stadium, and all the stampeding and stuff blocked the exits. But lots of the crowd turned, so there’s tons of zombies everywhere.”
“We should lock down the court first,” Neil says, “Use it as a home base so the zombies can’t mess it up–no, seriously, not just to protect the court. The doors lock, so we can shut ourselves in.”
“Good visibility,” Andrew adds, “You can see them, they can see you. What about supplies?”
“Easy, one of us goes out, and then the other just hits the goal sensor a bunch of times. The flashing red will get them away from the food stands, and while they’re swarming over the glass, the scout gets food and sneaks back in when they wander off,”
“What’d you do if the power went off?”
“We go somewhere else,” Neil says, “We can move the bodies, especially once they start rotting.”
“I’d live in one of the food stands,” Andrew says, “since all the food is right there. I’d pull the metal shutter thing down and stay locked in. And there’d be knives.” Neil wrinkles his nose. He moves his last remaining striker back five steps.
“Steal,” Neil says, and finally takes his shot on goal. The pencil bounces off the inner ring of the target, and he flops back on the floor, grinning. “Win. I win. Again. The AlExy’s win–”
“Doesn’t count without goalkeeping.”
“You add something whenever I win,” Neil complains, but he retakes the shot. This time, lightning fast, Andrew smacks the pencil out of the air. It lands in the sink with a clang.
“Time,” Andrew says, gesturing to the window. It’s gotten dark out.
“Tie,” Neil retorts, conceding the goal. He’s won or tied every round so far. “So we have to agree on the prize. What’d you want?”
“Ice cream,” Neil says, at the same time as Andrew says it. “Jinx.” The glare he gets in return makes him grin.
At least Andrew knows Neil isn’t likely to agree to his other request, what Andrew had wanted to do if he’d won full out: sneak into The Blair Witch Project in theaters to see if it really is that scary. They both think it probably isn’t. However, Neil maintains that running afoul of security, and then eventually whichever of his father’s people was following them the other day, will turn it into a real horror he wants no part of.
Andrew goes along with Neil’s prize, which stays the same every time Neil wins: he wants to play again. Ice cream seems a fair enough trade for that, and the convenience store is only a few blocks over. Besides, Neil is curious. Apparently, not all ice cream is as sickeningly sweet as Andrew’s latest favorite, Double Bubble Gum Trouble Chocolate Supreme, and Andrew says he’ll try to find a flavor Neil will like.
They take the window exit, not wanting to mess up the papers by walking over them and unjamming the chair barricade. Andrew grabs his backpack, and Neil selects a small amount of cash from the duffel. He tucks it in the outermost pocket of Andrew’s bag.
When they walk together, they walk close. Especially since the school supplies incident, Neil wants to point out anything suspicious around, and Andrew has gotten into the habit of providing a running commentary on the locations they pass. They lean into each other, arms brushing, to murmur whatever they want without being overheard.
“Vanilla shortcake,” Andrew says.
“I don’t like cake.”
“How.”
“You know those wooden sticks that are in fancy ones to keep them standing up?” Neil asks.
“No,” Andrew says.
“Well, some cakes have them, and if they jab you–” Neil taps a spot just below his collarbone, where, beneath his shirt, there’s a scar. “Not fun.”
“Banana sorbet.”
“That sounds gross.”
“For your hair,” Andrew says, smirking.
“Like you don’t–”
“No. My hair is normal blonde.” Andrew says. It’s starting to grow out of the buzzcut, just a bit. Andrew rifles his hand through the spiky strands with more pride than Neil thinks they deserve. “Yours is weird.”
“You’re weird.” Neil privately decides to touch up his roots that evening.
“Fine.” Andrew heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Plain vanilla.”
“Okay, I’ll try it,” Neil says, reaching for the door at the same time as Andrew. They tussle over it for a second, the entrance chime ringing over and over again, before Neil gives it up and lets Andrew wander over to the ice cream aisle. Andrew spends ages poring over each flavor before selecting what he wants, so Neil has time to pick out more reasonable restock choices.
Andrew’s not a fan of canned food, even though he won’t say it–at this point, Neil notices if he tears through food terrifyingly fast or merely fast, and differentiates based on that–so he’s looking for microwavable options when he hears the voice down the aisle.
“Hey, we got a match for the missing kid.”
Neil’s radar is attuned to the word kid. Also brat, child, delinquent, and runaway. A missing kid is worse than a runaway. A missing kid means someone is looking. He tunes in.
The voices are coming from the aisle next to his. He peeks around the corner and turns back immediately when he spots cops. He pretends that the back of a box of Lucky Charms is the most fascinating thing he’s seen all week and listens.
“What kid?”
“We might owe Mikey an apology.” A pause, then, annoyed, “Baltimore.”
Neil’s blood turns to ice in his veins.
“Mikey has a photo and a five-second sighting, that’s hardly–”
“He worked in Baltimore a few years back, he saw the kid then.” Mikey, Neil thinks. Mike. Mike DiMaccio. The one that would be a dealer, if he played, the one with the shifty eyes. The one Neil tried to convince himself wasn’t following them a few days ago. “He says it’s the same kid, just a different haircut.”
“You got eyes on him?”
They’ll spot him if he tries to go for the door. He can’t move. Andrew has the gun.
“Matches the new description. Blond hair, raggedy clothes–look, Longhorns logo on the shirt, and the bitch was last spotted in Texas.”
Neil takes a shuddering step back. Then again, until his back hits the shelf behind him. Footsteps sound, and he looks left and right, can’t tell which way they’re coming from, so he doesn’t know which way to run. He could push the shelf over and–
“Hey, you. Find any lost cats lately?”
No hands grab for him. Neil hopes his breathing won’t be loud enough to hear over the cheerful jingle playing through the store speakers. He glances down. His shirt is plain blue, the only logo a stain on the collar.
Andrew, he thinks, and every plan flies out of his head, AndrewAndrewAndrewAndrew.
Every instinct is screaming at him to run, but he takes a halting step forward. He shoves aside the cereal boxes and looks through the gap into the adjacent aisle.
One of the ice cream tubs rests on its side, by Andrew’s dirty sneakers. The other pint–plain vanilla–is still gripped in Andrew’s hand. He looks like he’s thinking of swinging it at the cop’s head.
Davis, the officer Neil had assigned as a Striker, has a strong hold on Andrew’s shoulders as he studies Andrew’s face.
A woman peers into the aisle and politely turns her shopping cart away again with a disapproving tut when the other officer smiles at her and assures, “Shoplifter.”
“Come on kid, answer the question.” Davis leans closer to Andrew and asks, “Where’s Mommy?”
Only Davis’s back is visible, but Neil can hear the smile in his voice. Andrew glances through the shelves and sees Neil peering at him. He tilts his head the slightest bit toward the door, and, when Neil doesn’t respond to that, mouths go. He doesn’t mouth idiot, but Neil can tell he’s thinking it.
“What was that?” Davis asks.
Andrew’s jaw works. His answer is the lob he spits into Davis’ face.
Outrage, after that, a lot of shaking and cursing from Davis. Don’t let them see you, don’t let them see you–his Mom’s voice in his head is as fast and urgent as his heartbeat. Of course, Andrew wants him to run. He probably doesn’t understand why they’ve landed on him in the first place, thinks it’s the bad luck of a grubby child in a store with no parents around. Neil knows better.
Another thought, this one as the other officer approaches–Benny East, because they would never be so lucky as to run into just one of his father’s people–and grabs Andrew’s chin, tilts his face to and fro. Even if they realize he’s not me, Andrew has a gun.
Despite Mary acquiring and disposing of weapons like they’re no more restricted than a pack of cigarettes, Neil is pretty sure cops frown upon kids carrying unregistered firearms. Then again, no one seemed to care in Texas. Neil has to do something, and fast–what would Andrew do? Andrew snaps at East’s hand, making him snatch it back. East takes a step back, acting like it was his idea, and recognition flickers in his eyes.
“Nah,” East says. He lowers his voice and speaks quickly and quietly to Davis. “It’s not him. I know this kid, he was cooling his heels at the station a few weeks ago. He is a shoplifter.”
“Bullshit it’s not him, the brat spit in my–”
“No, I’m telling you, I know him. Hey.” East snaps his fingers in Andrew’s face. “You’re Samuel’s boy,” Andrew has stayed relatively calm. Probably, Neil thinks, he hopes Neil will catch on to the hopelessness of his situation and leave the store before he gets nabbed as an accomplice. But at these words, Andrew starts to struggle in earnest.
He twists about like a wild animal, trying to bite again, drawing a startled “Shit!” from Davis. And it’s this reaction, this pure desperation that Neil has never seen in Andrew, that snaps him into action.
Neil lunges into the shelf in front of him, like he’s checking a striker. It tips–deliriously, he thinks, it’s an Exy play, it’s just an Exy play, they’re strikers going for the goal, so you have to hold down the backline–then he slams into the shelf again, his shoulder flaring with pain.
There’s a muffled curse, yells of surprise as the wooden shelf collides with one of the cops, and products rain down. One of the cops must stumble back into the other side of the aisle, because there’s a second crash. This one is much louder than the first—the canned products are in aisle three.
“He bit me! The little fucker bit me!” Neil yanks his collar up to cover the bottom half of his face and heads around the corner, ready to fight to extricate Andrew if need be–now that he’s moving, he can’t seem to stop–only for Andrew to nearly bowl him over, shoving his way to the door.
Andrew doesn’t bother to actually open the door; he runs through it. Glass flies everywhere. The little welcome bell gives a sad jingle as Neil bolts after him, oblivious to the shards slashing at his arms and the yells of shoppers and passersby.
“Hey, stop right there, you two!”
Andrew is fast, but not as fast as Neil. Neil catches up in a few paces, spots the blank look on Andrew’s face, and tugs him into an alley. Running isn’t helpful, not if Andrew’s running just to run. It’ll only draw attention to them.
“That was you,” Andrew says, catching his breath, “The shelves.”
“Who else?”
“They’re gonna catch up to us. You humiliated them. Shoplifting, I could’ve–”
“It wasn’t shoplifting,” Neil says. It’s funny, in a cruel way, that one of the only times Andrew shopped without lifting is the time he almost gets arrested for it. “They were after me, my mom warned me about them, you just got in the way.”
“They’re the names you gave me,” Andrew says. “What happens when they catch up?”
Neil chews on his lip. He wishes he were wearing his vest.
“We don’t let them catch up. We stay in the apartment–”
“Forever.” Andrew interrupts him, except not really, because Neil doesn’t know where he was actually taking that sentence.
“The number, then, okay, we’ll have to call. I don’t know.”
It’s a testament to how grave the situation is that Andrew doesn’t push it.
Neil starts walking, purposely slowing his pace to a casual stroll as they return to the public sidewalks. He doesn’t know the shortcuts as well as Andrew, but he brings them back to the apartment as quickly as he can.
Mary’s car is idling in front of the building. She’s heading up the stairs. Andrew’s hand closes tight around his wrist.
“Mom,” Neil says, more shocked than he has any right to be. He’d insisted she was coming back, over and over, until Andrew grew tired of hearing it. But like trying to scream in a nightmare, his voice comes out too quiet to be heard. Mary disappears into the building. The front door closes behind her with a click Neil swears he can hear, even though he’s a few paces away.
Now Andrew is trying to yank him away. Neil shakes him off, takes a halting step toward the alley. If he goes now, he could go through the window before Mary makes it up the flights of stairs to the apartment. But he owes Andrew an explanation. Mary will be furious at him for forcing her to wait for the door, but it’ll be worth it.
“It’s okay now,” Neil says, “My mom will help.” He tries to push off the dismay in his gut at the thought of being separated, even temporarily. Because it is temporary. Now that she’s back, Mary can get him enrolled in school. He can still see Andrew. “I’ll tell her what happened, but I’ll leave you out of it–stop tugging on me–it’s okay, she’ll take care of it.”
“Alex.”
Neil turns to promise they don’t have to worry; it’s the cops who should worry about surviving a run-in with Mary. Andrew’s face silences him.
“Cop car,” Andrew says. He’s right. One’s parked by the alley. Neil missed it, in his shock at seeing his Mom.
How’d they get here so fast? Neil thinks. He’d checked for pursuers. They’d gotten a head start, taken a winding route. And they couldn’t have trailed his Mom, she’d have caught them. The car’s empty.
He wants to run, but Mary is so close; she’s just gone inside, and he knows he should follow her. It’s this hesitation that dooms them.
The cop saunters out of the alley, gives one last cursory look around–and his eyes land on them. Neil has seen photos of who to watch out for and spent time memorizing their names and faces. This face doesn’t match any of the cops his Mom has warned him about.
But Neil feels how Andrew grows tense at his side, how he takes a step back, then another, tugging Neil with him, and knows who this is, knows he’s found them not through searching for Neil, but for Andrew.
A step back, another step, Andrew shoves him towards his building. Neil doesn’t go–he won’t leave Andrew alone, not like this–then his back hits the tree. Neil cries out, startled, and spins to see the trunk. He’s climbing before he can fully process that it’s a bad idea.
It’s a compromise between his body screaming run and his brain insisting he stay with Andrew. Andrew follows his lead, putting height between them and the cop when distance is impossible.
Neil looks at Andrew, hoping for a game plan, or, absent that, a silent conversation to decide what they should do.
Andrew’s dead, again, like that first day on the roof. Eyes flattened, cold, face slack. It’s like he’s forgotten Neil’s there.
Neil knows how Mary would describe what happens next; it’s an echo of every time she decides to engage with the enemy. From her perspective, in fact, to any outside observer, it looks like Andrew is the one to call it. After all, it’s Andrew who swings the backpack off his shoulders, unzips it, and plunges his hand past his pencil case, past his treasured pins. It’s Andrew who unwraps the gun.
Privately, though, Neil knows he was the first of the pair to decide Samuel Ellis would die. He accepts it without second-guessing or guilt, just a fact, as simple as one plus one, the moment he sees Andrew’s face.
Samuel stands under the tree, hands on his hips. It’s condescending, the vast acceptance his posture implies. It’s like it doesn’t even matter that they’ve tried to run. Like they’re babies. Neil feels strangely like the cat, the other day, hissing and not knowing what’s good for it.
“Now, if you want to sleep on a roof instead of under one, that’s not my problem, it’s just stupid. But we knew you were fucking stupid.” Samuel says. Neil blinks. It’s not the cursing that bothers him–he’s heard plenty of swears from his Mom and her pursuers–but the complete lack of venom behind it. Samuel’s tone stays completely friendly. He might have been giving directions to a particularly slow tourist. Samuel’s smile drops a bit, shifting to a more concerned expression as he continues,
“My problem is I got a call that you were causing trouble. Shoplifting, again. We talked about this, Andrew. If you need something, you ask me.”
“Go inside,” Andrew says, so quietly that Neil almost doesn’t catch it. But he does catch it, even catches what Andrew doesn’t say. After. Go inside, after.
Samuel tracks the change in Andrew’s attention, and his gaze shifts until he’s staring at Neil. Neil doesn’t like it. He gets the sense he’s being cataloged, that he could change his hair again, his eyes, and Samuel would still lazily pick him out of a lineup.
“Who’s this?” Samuel asks.
“Leave him alone.” Andrew’s tone tries to be all venom, and almost succeeds. “He doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“What’s your name?” Samuel ignores Andrew completely, smiling up at Neil. Neil knows better than to trust it. His father could smile, bright and helpful, and often did as he considered what part to chop off first.
“You don’t need to know it,” Neil says. He doesn’t have trouble keeping his voice steady. Samuel’s scary, yes, but unless he pulls out a cleaver, Neil can keep his fear in check. “Just leave.”
“I told you,” Andrew starts, “I told you—
“So you’re Andrew’s friend,” Samuel decides, speaking slowly and calmly. Neil regrets saying anything, can tell it’s upsetting Andrew more to have the attention on him. “This must be so confusing for you. I know Andrew can be very convincing—
“Stop it,” Andrew says.
“Don’t interrupt me.” Samuel says pleasantly, “I’m sure you’ve had a great time playing together, but it’s time for Andrew to come home now, isn’t that right?”
He’s still looking at Neil.
“I said stop it,” Andrew says, distressed enough that Neil wishes his Mom would come outside. Her fury would be welcome, compared to this. Neil keeps his eyes on the gun holstered on Samuel’s hip, still within reach. “I told you what I would do if you came near me again.”
“And here I thought you agreed to stop running your mouth.” Samuel reaches up, easy as anything, and closes his hand around Andrew’s ankle. He tugs. Just hard enough to make the point that there’s nothing Andrew could do to stop him.
That’s his dominant hand, Neil thinks, seething with hate, and says,
“Now!”
Andrew is already moving. The gun is out of the bag, his finger off the trigger guard. Andrew remembers to keep his arms bent when he fires, but he’s shaking. If Neil had time to be afraid, he’d fear for Andrew’s aim.
The noise feels impossibly loud in the twilight of the city.
If it had just been the recoil, Andrew might have been fine. But he’s already unbalanced from Samuel grabbing at him. He tumbles back and doesn’t reach for the ground to break his fall. Andrew reaches up instead, a look of pure surprise on his face, like he expects the branches to cradle him in the air.
Neil doesn’t see him hit the ground. He’s there, knowing Andrew is falling, somehow, even though he never falls, and then he’s somewhere else, deep inside himself. Mary’s training kicks in. Get out of the tree. Get to the target. Get to the gun. The target is yelling officer down. Shut him up. Target sits down hard, both hands on his bleeding stomach. Kick him in the face. Again, harder. Kick him in the stomach. Mom can do it so they pass out. Try to imitate her. Fail. Wrestle the gun from the holster. Get to Mom.
Don’t turn around. Get to Mom. Something in Neil flickers at this–he knows he has to, but it’s the last thing he wants to do. It’s stupid. Andrew is fine. Don’t turn around, because he’s fine. Until Neil turns around, Andrew is a freeze frame surrounded by fluttering leaves.
“Alex?” Andrew says. Neil turns to look at him. “Is it bad?” When Neil doesn’t answer him, Andrew tries to sit up. He can’t manage it. Neil adds a potential wrist fracture to his mental list of injuries. “How bad is it?”
“Hospital,” Neil says. “Even my mom couldn’t fix this, not on her own.” It’s the kind of injury Mary has warned him about a hundred times, one that would impede their ability to run. His need to get to her thrums in time with his heartbeat. “You’re gonna need crutches.”
Surgery, too, probably.
Samuel makes a noise then, a kind of gurgle. Neil kicks him again.
“I don’t–I can’t,” Andrew says, “He’s alive.”
“No, he’s gone.” Neil lies, though it doesn’t feel like one. He’s not lying, not really. “I’m gonna move you. My Mom can’t know you’re here,” He calls on the reservoir of strength he’s built climbing with Andrew this summer and the dredges of his little league conditioning. Get Andrew out of Mom’s sightline. He drags Andrew around the side of the building, into the alley. “I’ll try to come back.”
Neil runs around the building, up to the entrance, up again, the flights of stairs flying past.
Mary is slamming her shoulder into the front door, over and over, but Neil’s barricade is standing firm. She turns, sees him. She’s bleeding from a long cut on her cheek, and the size of the bloodstain on her shirt suggests she needs stitches.
“Alex,” she says, the relief clear in her voice. “What–”
“I shot someone,” Neil lies, “Just now.”
“Dead?”
“Unconscious, I think. Outside,” Neil says, and Mary takes him by the arm and yanks him back down to the first floor.
“Any witnesses?”
Neil hesitates.
“Not yet,” He says, and before Mary can question him, he starts lying again, as quickly as he can, “You were gone so long, and I just went out to get food, and he followed me from the supermarket, I think he was staking out the building, and I couldn’t get inside in time, and–”
Mary pats him on the back hard enough to send him stumbling forward a step. She smooths over the sting with a rub of her palm.
They arrive on the scene.
“Definitely alive,” Mary mutters, “We need to work on your aim. Did he say anything to you?”
“No, I just–”
“For fucks sake,” Mary kicks the body, knocking him out again when he stirs. “I wanted a night’s sleep before we left.”
Neil doesn’t bother with an apology. She won’t want to hear it. The word left echoes in his head. Past tense. Like she’s already decided.
“Get back into the apartment however you got out of it. Bring the duffel. The sheets, too.”
Neil doesn’t need to be told twice. He bolts, only skidding to a stop when he’s in front of Andrew again. Andrew is slumped against the wall, his head tilted back, like he’s stargazing.
It takes him a minute to respond to Neil’s presence.
“You’re not going to see him again,” Neil says, “Samuel, I mean, my mom is dealing with him.” He hurries on before Andrew can argue with him, and can tell by the look on his face that he doesn’t believe Neil. Not entirely, maybe not at all. “But you’re not going to see me either. I have to move again.”
Andrew looks at him then. His face is tight with pain, eyes wide. He scans Neil’s face and finally speaks.
“Where are you going?”
His voice is hoarse. Neil wonders belatedly if he’s been crying. His leg is starting to swell. Neil can’t look too long at it, because when he looks too long, his eyes catch on the sliver of white, jutting out where it shouldn’t be, and he feels sick. He knew better than to throw up when his father was working, but he feels sick now anyway.
“I don’t know,” Neil whispers. “I’ll try to find you.” There’s nothing to say after that, or rather, no time to say it. He has to start the climb. Neil’s hands find their starting placements on the brick, the holds Andrew had guided him to during those first expeditions. “I’m sorry.”
He starts to climb.
“Alex,” Andrew says, very quietly.
“My name is Abram,” Neil says. He knows better than to look down.
When he heads out front with the duffle, this time through the front entrance, Mary has already transferred the body to the back seat. She’s knocked him out again, and she instructs Neil to cut up the sheets with the surgical scissors, gag the body, and bind his ankles.
They do not bother with a blindfold. It doesn’t matter whether he sees their faces. Neil usually notes this with neutrality; he doesn’t need to care either way about Mary’s decisions. This time, though, he thinks of the look on Andrew’s face and is flooded with satisfaction. He’s glad, he realizes, glad Andrew has followed Mary’s warning about inexperienced shooters. He’d aimed for the chest, and slightly overshot, and now his Mom is going to do what she does best.
Mary talks as they drive, what passes for pleasantries between them. She’s too tense right now to be angry with him, though Neil knows it’s coming later. She’s gotten them passports and new names and faces. This is new – before, Mary got by with a fake ID, and Neil with a fake birth certificate. They’re going international, this time.
Mary explains she’s the past few weeks tracking down and killing anyone involved with the purchase or creation of their passports. The problems this will pose throughout San Francisco’s criminal underworld aren’t her concern, because they won’t be coming back. They’ll drive up to Washington, then fly out. Neil’s hair is going to be brown.
Mary’s injured, got slashed up pretty bad. Bandaged for now, and she’ll handle the stitches herself, after she takes care of Neil’s mess.
Neil doesn’t need to reply to any of this, so he doesn’t. He just nods when there’s a pause. He’s trying to figure out what happened, how everything went so wrong so fast. It’s like a video on fast forward, little figures darting this way and that, except this movie always pauses on the moment Andrew fell, gets stuck there until Neil rewinds again, no closer to understanding any of it than he was when he started.
They take the highway, then the winding sideroads, weaving their way further and further from civilization. It must be past midnight by now. Mary pulls onto the shoulder. She gets out of the car and gestures for Neil to follow. She drags the body by the ankles into the forest. She doesn’t take care to avoid his head bumping rocks or roots, and it’s this jostling that wakes Samuel.
“Where am I?” He asks, when Mary yanks out the gag.
“The secondary location,” Mary says, what passes for a joke with her. “You have some answers for me. I’m starting,” She adds, for Neil’s sake.
This time, Neil doesn’t look away.
Samuel is a slow learner. It’s not helped by the fact that he doesn’t have the answers Mary is looking for.
He tries bravado first, a mistake–implying the presence of a spine makes Mary less likely to believe the first story, once he finally starts talking.
“Tree climbing?” Mary asks, glancing back at Neil. Neil can’t look away from the body. He feels Mary’s eyes on him anyway, feels her surprise that he’s watching. She might be disappointed or proud of him; he doesn’t know. Probably she doesn’t care at all.
Samuel wheezes.
“I dunno what he’s on about,” Neil lies.
“Thought so,” Mary says. She sheaths her knife somewhere in Samuel’s gut and lazily tries to extract the bullet. “Tell me who tipped you off.”
Mary gets through a whole hand’s worth of fingernails. When she puts the blade to the first joint of his thumb and starts pressing down, Samuel starts talking, sobbing, admitting he was working for the mafia. This gets him a reprieve until he starts describing a secret lair under a vineyard in Italy. Fuming, Mary takes off his pointer and middle finger in one smooth strike.
“Did he get the chance to call for backup?” Mary asks. Neil feels sick. He’s still angry. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop being angry. He looks at Samuel, not his Mom, and lies,
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
It doesn’t matter what Samuel says after that.
Shortly after that, Mary twists Samuel’s head until his neck snaps.
“Uncommonly good liar.” Mary says, “You’d almost think–Where’s your gun?”
“Um,” Neil says stupidly. It’s not the right answer.
“Alex,” Mary says slowly. She turns to face him. The knife is still clenched in her fist. It’s still bloody. Neil can’t look away from it. She tracks his gaze and drops it to the forest floor. It bounces, leaving a red-brown smear on the leaves. She’s never loved her knives like she does her guns, too close to his dad, Neil guesses. “You shot him. What did you do with the gun? You know better than to leave weapons behind.”
“Dropped it out front,” Neil lies, “I didn’t want to carry anything inside that placed me at the scene, I didn’t know you were back, I wasn’t sure I could clear the scene alone.”
“Where did you leave the gun?”
“Under the tree,” Neil whispers.
“Okay,” Mary doesn’t attempt to hide Samuel’s body, she just marches back toward the car. Neil follows. Above them, a bird calls, high and shrill. In the darkness, the trees are looming shadows, giants on every side of them. Neil wonders if Andrew is still sitting alone, if he’s called for help, if he’s in a hospital waiting room, if they’ve offered him any pain meds yet.
“Some of your clothes are missing from the duffel,” Mary says.
“Oh,” Neil says, fumbling for an excuse, “Right. I just–” ripped them pretty bad when I was crawling spider quick out the window and got rid of them in the garbage and well actually Mom I made a nest in the bathtub because we needed a door with a lock and I want it back now can we go back we forgot someone important.
“You are lying to me,” Mary says quietly, wonderingly. Neil can hardly believe it himself. Not that lying is so unusual for him, but lying to his Mom. It’s an impossible thing, yet he’s somehow doing it. “Stop it.”
Slowly, she drags it out of him. It doesn’t matter anymore, not now that Samuel is dead. Nothing does. They sit in the backseat as Mary stitches herself up. She asks short, pointed questions. She doesn’t drink to numb the pain of the needle–the stitches are second nature by now, her attention all on Neil.
First, he admits there was a witness. A boy, around his age. Neil hadn’t told her, because he knew she’d consider eliminating him as well. Then, she gets Neil to say he knew the boy. This truth is more difficult. Neil doesn’t want to outright say it, but Mary remembers the hours he’d spent by the window, before she left, though she thought it was his jitteriness at being housebound.
By the time he reaches the end of the story, Mary has finished the stitches. She makes Neil get out of the car and paces her way through Neil’s admission of letting Andrew into the apartment.
“We were just trying to last until you came back, I always knew you’d come back for me,” Neil finishes, knowing it’s not nearly enough to make up for what he’s told her–and he’s given only the broadest strokes of the story.
Mary takes a long, slow breath.
“We?” She says, “So both of you thought–Fine. Okay. What about now?”
Neil looks at her, confused. Mary isn’t yelling or hitting, yet. From where she leans against the side of the car, she’s clothed in shadow. Only the planes of her cheeks and her forehead are visible in the moonlight. She looks old and impossibly tired.
“Go on,” Mary says. “What’s the plan?”
“Do we have to leave tonight?” Neil asks, in a very small voice, “Because they might not expect three of us. And I trained him.”
“You trained him.” Mary echoes.
Haltingly, Neil explains the target practice, the sparring, and how Andrew can climb. He doesn’t get the last part quite right.
He can’t capture it, how Andrew is there and then gone, like how a sparrow flutters from place to place. When Neil watches him climb, it’s like the architecture drawing in his math workbook, with the note reading “Look carefully! This impossible figure may look 3D, but can you spot why no one could build it in the real world?”
And when he tries to follow the lines of the shape, his brain trips over itself; that’s how he feels watching Andrew, like gravity itself has shifted to whatever he’s climbing, and Neil is the one standing sideways on a wall. Except Andrew fell, and the impossibility of that hurts too much to think about.
When he’s done, Mary has gone very still. Her expression is thoughtful, and Neil lets himself hope.
“This isn’t a game,” Mary says, gently, and this is so unfair that Neil wants to scream. He knows that. Anyone would know that after a year of cowering, stealing sleep only to jolt awake and flail about the bed until he finds his Mom and knows she’s okay, that he’s okay, “We aren’t–Alex. If we get caught, we’re dead. It’s a miracle we haven’t been found already, especially with you running around the city doing goddamn parkour. You need to grow up.”
“I am,” Neil says. “I’m trying,”
“You’re not,” Mary says. The steel is back in her tone. “If you were, you wouldn’t be asking me to pick up some street rat–
“He’s not a–Mom, he can shoot, he remembers everything, I swear–
“Your father will kill him.” Mary pushes herself off the car and heads for Neil. He knows not to try to run from her.
She jabs her pointer finger into his stomach, drags it up until it reaches his chin, tilting Neil’s head back to look up at her. “Nathan will slice him open from here to here. Then, if you’re lucky, he will reach in and pull out his intestines. If you’re unlucky, he will have you do it–no, look at me–is that what you want?” When Neil doesn’t answer, she punches him in the stomach, hard enough that he doubles over to gasp for breath, “He will kill you. He will kill me.”
Another hit.
“He is not going to care that you want a friend.” Mary snarls, all traces of sympathy gone. “He will put his cleaver over your eye and push it down to see what noise you’ll make.” She gives Neil a vicious shake with every word. “I. Will. Not. Let. That. Happen. Do you understand me? Answer me!”
When she lets go, Neil falls to his hands and knees, scrabbles uselessly at the dirt. He isn’t crying, not really; he knows better, but his eyes are watering, and he can’t seem to stop it.
Just let it be over, Neil prays, I know, okay, don’t make me say it. Part of him always knew. Every day he spent with Andrew was stolen time, selfish, and in the end, it had come back not on him, but on Andrew.
“Tell me you understand,” Mary insists.
“You were gone,” Neil says finally, his voice choked and higher than it should be.
Mary pulls him to his feet. She maneuvers Neil so his back is to her chest and walks them to the car, opens the door, and gets the duffel. She looks over his shoulder to sort through it, her arms reaching past where his arms curl over his aching stomach. It’s almost a hug.
“I’m back,” Mary says. “I’m not going anywhere.”