They had agreed that Jake would come back for her at eleven o’clock, and Gemma wasn’t sure what was making her so nervous—the idea of trying to sneak into Haven, as Jake had done only once before, or the idea of being alone with him in the dark.
Alone with those perfect hands and eyes and lashes and fingernail beds. She’d never even noticed fingernail beds before. But she’d noticed his.
She powered on her phone. There was a sudden frenzied beeping as a dozen texts and voice mails loaded, and she was surprised to see among all the messages from her mom that Pete had already texted her.
You didn’t get eaten by an alligator, did you?
For a quick second, she actually felt guilty, as if she was cheating on Jake. Then, of course, she felt like an idiot. A delusional idiot.
She wrote back: I’d like to see one try.
Then she dialed April’s number.
April picked up on the first ring and was talking before Gemma could even say hello.
“Thank God, finally, I’ve been calling you for, like, five hours. I thought you said your parents caved, but your mom is freaking out, she said you basically ran away, I mean, seriously, I’m talking about National Guard, Armageddon-level freak-out, if screaming were a superpower, she’d seriously be eligible for her own franchise—”
“Did you tell her I was with you?” Gemma asked quickly. The idea of her mother screaming—or even raising her voice—was both difficult to imagine and also terrifying. Her dad was the screamer. Her mom was the apologizer, the mediator, the smoother-over. The nothing-a-glass-of-wine-and-a-Klonopin-can’t-fix kind of person.
April snorted. “Do you think I’m a complete amoeba? Of course I did. Except I started running out of reasons you wouldn’t come to the phone. First I said you were napping, then that you’d gone out for a swim, then that you were in town getting coffee, and then I had to stop picking up the phone. I’m talking serious harassment here, she’s probably called, like, twenty times—”
“I’ll call her, okay? I’ll call her right now,” Gemma said, and April let out a big whoosh of air.
“Please,” she said. “Before your mom calls in a SWAT team. My grandpa will kill me if they trample his geraniums.” And then, in a different voice: “Where are you? Are you okay? How did you even get down here?”
“I’m in Barrel Key, not far away,” Gemma said, avoiding April’s last question, tracing one of the fish patterned on her coverlet with a finger. All the fish were identical, and all of them had the same anatomical error, an extra fin on the back that gave them a vaguely prehistoric look.
“But what are you doing there? I thought you were coming to stay with me.”
“I am. Tomorrow. And then I’ll tell you everything. I promise,” Gemma said, before April could protest. She’d already lied so much in the past twenty-four hours. She couldn’t stand lying to April, too. But what could she say to explain? Oh, no big deal, someone threw a Frankenstein mask through our window and then a random psycho tried to nab me from a gas station and I think it’s because my dad’s old company is kidnapping children and testing chemicals on them and he might have known about it all this time. “Just trust me, okay?”
April sighed. “Swear you’re not holed up in some seedy motel meeting a stranger named Danger66 who claims to be a French exchange student looking for an English tutor.”
Gemma looked around the room, and decided it definitely counted as a seedy motel. “I promise I’m not meeting a stranger named Danger66,” she said. “I promise I’m not meeting any stranger.” Jake Witz blinked momentarily in her mind. But he didn’t count. She’d sought him out, not the other way around. Besides, she couldn’t believe that someone who looked like Jake Witz could be dangerous. She’d been fed a steady diet of Disney growing up. The evil ones were always ugly. By the same logic, she knew that she was destined to be the charming dumpy sidekick for life: only skinny girls got to be leads.
Her next phone call went far less smoothly. April was right. Her mom was in full-on panic mode. Gemma had never heard her mother so upset, except for one time when she was a little kid and decided to smash up her mom’s favorite necklace with a hammer to see whether diamonds were really the hardest substance on earth.
“I don’t believe you. I really don’t believe you. I would never have expected it, never in a million years—after we specifically told you—”
“Mom, calm down.” Gemma was annoyed not by the injustice of her parents’ rules but by the fact that her mom had automatically assumed she would always obey. Just like she’d obeyed as a kid, shivering in those hospital beds, swallowing pills when she was told to swallow them, waking up with new scars, new evidence of damage. “It’s not a big deal, okay?”
“Not a big deal? Not a big deal?” Kristina seemed to be gasping the words. “How can you even say that? Do you know how worried I’ve been? How worried your father’s been?”
“Yeah. I’m sure he’s been crying into his PowerPoint.” The words were out of Gemma’s mouth as soon as she thought them.
Kristina drew in a sharp breath. Then she said, in a quiet voice, “For your information, your father is on his way back from Shanghai right now. As soon as he lands, we’re getting on a plane and coming straight down to get you—”
“Mom, no.” Gemma was surprised that in an instant, all her anger was gone, and instead she was suddenly on the verge of tears. She took a deep breath. “Please,” she said, because she knew that fighting or yelling wouldn’t help. “I’m not in trouble. I’m safe. I’m with April.” She no longer felt guilty about lying. If Jake was right about what they were doing at Haven, her father must have known about it, and had spent his whole life lying—her mother, too. It was like she’d heard him say: he’d done nothing. “Please let me have this, just this once. Let me be normal.”
Kristina sighed, and Gemma knew she’d said the right thing. She imagined her mother cradling the phone against one shoulder, unscrewing the cap of one of her pill bottles and shaking one into her palm, starting to calm down.
“I’ll talk to your dad,” she said. “But you know how he is. He’s furious. You lied to us, Gemma.”
How many times have you lied to me? Gemma nearly said. But she swallowed the words back. She said instead, “You didn’t give me much choice.”
To her surprise, her mother laughed. But it was the saddest laugh ever, like she really wanted to cry. “We’re just trying to keep you safe, Gem,” she said. “That’s all we ever wanted.”
“I’m safe,” she said. “I’m fine.”
When Kristina spoke again, her voice was softer. Probably just the thought of a pill working its way through her bloodstream had calmed her. “I expect you to call me first thing in the morning.”
“I will,” Gem said. “Just tell Dad not to worry.”
Kristina hesitated. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Gemma hung up. She was briefly euphoric, almost dizzy, but the feeling was short-lived. She’d gotten her mom only temporarily off her back. If her dad insisted on driving straight to April’s house . . . if he discovered she wasn’t there . . .
But if everything went as planned, she could make it to April’s by morning, when her dad was still thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic. If everything went as planned, she might have all the answers she needed tonight.
And then what? What did it matter, really?
She wasn’t sure. But she sensed—no, she knew—that there was in Haven a reason for her dad’s constant, simmering anger; for the pills her mom measured out day by day; for the vast silence that filled her house and the way she caught her parents looking at her sometimes, as if she were a stranger.
She had to know why.
Her phone pinged. She assumed it would be her mom, calling back, but saw she had a new message from Pete: a GIF of a cartoon cowboy wrangling an alligator.
She tried watching TV but couldn’t get anything but a blinking error message. She was nervous about what they were about to attempt
, which was more dangerous than anything she’d ever even considered—she’d once nearly crapped herself cutting gym class to hang out with April like badasses behind the tennis courts. She wished she were the kind of girl who, when nervous, lost her appetite. Instead she made four trips to the vending machine, which contained only a few warm sodas, some Kit Kats, cardboard-tasting chips, and a bag of ancient Sour Patch Kids, shriveled and dry as discarded husks of molted cicadas.
She searched for more news about what had happened at Haven, refreshing the few local news sites that were covering it and toggling back and forth between individual blogs and conspiracy sites. The explosion had renewed public interest in Haven. She found a couple of news sites that referenced the controversy from several years ago, in which Haven was listed as one of the research institutes that had illegally purchased human tissue for research, including embryonic and stem cells. She knew embryonic cells were used for medical research. It fit Jake’s theory. Fine & Ives had even released a statement, a bland PR document about a sudden fire at one of their research institutes. Every article had attracted dozens of comments, many of them nonsensical or filled with curses and hysterical references to escaped biological agents.
Around nine she saw references on several sites to a terrorist attack, by an individual who supposedly believed she was acting on God’s commandment and had somehow managed to infiltrate the island. But there was frustratingly little information about the attack, and after only twenty minutes, many of the individual story links had been disabled or taken down. She was halfway through an article about the possibility that the person responsible had managed to stow away on the ferry that collected the waste from Haven twice a week when the whole page just blinked and then went dark, as if someone had pulled a curtain over her screen. She reloaded the page several times but kept getting the same 404 error.
“What the hell?” She jabbed her screen with a finger, trying to figure out how a webpage could just disappear while she was looking at it. There was a knock at the door and she jumped. She’d lost track of time completely. It was eleven o’clock already.
Jake had changed into a black T-shirt, dark jeans, and black Vans. When Gemma opened the door, she thought he looked like the lead singer in some indie band April might have been obsessed with. She wished temporarily she’d done something with her hair—more delusion. As if a great hairstyle would distract him from the thirty extra pounds she was packing.
He came into the room without saying hello and sat down on the bed.
“Did you hear?” he said. When he shoved a hand through his hair, it resettled right away. Soft, then. Of course. “The cops traced the explosion.”
She closed the door and leaned against it. It occurred to her that this was exactly what she’d sworn to April she wouldn’t do—meet a stranger in a seedy motel room. Maybe she’d sit down next to him and he’d try and touch her thigh or force his tongue down her throat. Then again, she wouldn’t mind. If anyone was in danger of getting sexually harassed, it was probably him.
Jake pulled out a laptop from his backpack. “This came into my in-box an hour ago.” He pivoted his computer screen around. “When my dad died, I couldn’t bring myself to shut down the Haven Files admin on his website, so messages get routed to my in-box.” She joined him on the bed, moving stiffly, hoping he wouldn’t notice. She could smell his soap, and when he shifted the laptop onto her lap, his fingers grazed her thigh.
It was the first time a guy had ever touched her. And even though it was accidental, she got a small thrill.
The message had apparently come through the contact form on his website—it was addressed not to Jake but to the administrator. It was written in all caps.
WHEN JESUS DIED, THE CURTAIN IN THE TEMPLE WAS TORN INTO TWO PIECES. THE GRAVES OPENED, AND MANY OF GOD’S PEOPLE WHO HAD DIED WERE RAISED FROM DEATH. MATTHEW 27:51–3
GOD TURNS HIS FACE FROM ABOMINATIONS AND CASTS MONSTERS DOWN TO HELL AND THOSE WHO DISOBEY HIS WORD WILL FEEL THE WRATH OF ETERNITY. AT HAVEN DEAD MEN WALK FROM THEIR GRAVES AND GOD DEMANDS JUSTICE FOR THE CRIMES OF THOSE WHO DON’T LISTEN. I WILL BRING HELLFIRE TO HAVEN LIKE GOD DID TO THE SINNERS AT BABYLON TO PURGE THEM FROM THIS EARTH AND I WILL BE WELCOMED BY ALL THE ANGELS IN HEAVEN WHO WILL SING MY PRAISES.
The message was signed Angel Fire and included a link to a Tumblr, www.wrathofgod.tumblr.com, but when Gemma tried to click on it, she found it disabled.
Jake took the computer back from her. “The site was registered to an Estelle Williams in Sarasota. They already wiped it clean, but I managed to get screenshots, though. Give me a second.”
Gemma thought of all the pages she’d Googled turning up suddenly wiped or just failing to load. “Who’s they?”
He shifted on the bed, and Gemma realized he was nervous. “One of the federal departments, I assume,” Jake said, looking at her sideways, as if expecting she wouldn’t believe him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if by tomorrow everyone’s reporting that Haven never existed at all—it was some holographic experiment and we’re all supposed to forget about it. Look.” He swiveled the screen toward her again. “This is some of Angel Fire’s stuff.”
Gemma keystroked through a few pages, most of them decorated with grinning skulls or licks of flame and peppered with biblical verse and lots of exclamation points. “She thinks they’re raising people from the dead at Haven?” she asked.
“She thought that,” he said quietly. “If she really is responsible for what happened, if she did turn herself into one gigantic IED, like they’re saying, she’s scattered across the marshes by now.” He shook his head, and Gemma couldn’t help but think: another person dead. Another person dead because of Haven. Nurse M, Jake’s father, and now this woman, Angel Fire. “She must have timed her message to go out to a bunch of people at once. Even the news channels got wind of it, and they’re always the last to know anything.” He closed the laptop and slipped it into his backpack—which was, predictably, black—and stood up. “So? Are you ready?”
“I guess so.” She knew it was stupid to be freaked out by some nutter’s theory about Haven and its weird science. But she couldn’t shake the image of people staggering through the darkness of the marshes, reaching for her with clammy hands.
“You need to be sure sure.” Jake stood up. “We might get arrested.”
Suddenly, though, Gemma felt as if all those Sour Patch Kids were nails trying to claw back out of her throat. She had the sense that being arrested would be the best thing that might happen to them.
Jake had told her that several weeks after his father died, he’d woken up in the middle of the night, certain that someone had just shaken him awake. But he was in the room alone. Still, every few minutes he felt a phantom pressure on his shoulder, as though someone was tapping him.
“I know what you’re probably thinking,” he’d said, a little too forcefully. “But I don’t believe in things like that. Spirits, voices from the grave. I’m not like my dad.”
Still, the impression of a presence wouldn’t leave him. Every few minutes, there was a tap-tap on his shoulder. So he had stood up, walked down the stairs, and walked straight out of the house.
His mom had just returned from Las Vegas, where she’d been living doing God knows what, essentially refusing to recognize the existence of her son except in the occasional birthday message, usually an email sent a few days late. Within a month, she would be gone again, and Jake would move in with his dad’s sister, a widow who’d never had children and never wanted any.
Guided by a certainty he could never afterward explain, he had walked the five miles to the Wahlee basin campsite where he and his father had set off so many times together, and found a rowboat pitted with rust, likely left there by a local fisherman. The whole time, he said, he could feel an occasional tap on his shoulder, like a kind of Morse code, telling him to go on.
He had no compass. No water. No supplies. And yet somehow that night, alone in the marshes, he knew exactly where to go.
Dawn was breaking by the time he saw a bank of spruce and knew he’d reached Spruce Island. The institute was hidden from view. He realized he must have rowed all the way around to the west side of the island, which was still undeveloped. The security was lighter, too. There was a fence, and guard towers, but at dawn they were abandoned.
And still the finger kept tap-tap-tapping on his shoulder.
He pulled his boat up onto shore, less than ten feet away from a downed tree that had taken down a four-foot section of the fence.
He was on the island less than ten minutes before he was caught, thrown to the ground by military-style guards, frog-marched across the island and out to the dock, where police were already waiting for him. He never went near the main buildings, had only the briefest glimpse of the white-walled institute and the people inside it.
But it was enough.
She looked around the room, wishing she didn’t have the melodramatic feeling she was seeing it for the last time. Even though it had been her idea to try and get to Haven tonight—or maybe because it had been—she felt she couldn’t back out now. “I’m sure,” she said, grabbing the only sweatshirt she’d brought. She wished it weren’t bright pink.
Jake was obviously thinking the same thing, because he frowned. “Take this.” He wrestled a black Windbreaker out of his backpack. It was a warm night, but the mosquitoes on the marshes, he told her, were killer.
Jake’s car was so old it seemed predominantly composed of duct tape and string. “Sorry,” he said, with an apologetic smile that made Gemma’s heart purr. “But at least you’re getting door-to-door service.”
The car rattled so hard when he accelerated she was sure she was about to be expelled from her seat, that the car would just roll over and give up, panting, like a tired dog, but she didn’t want to complain, and sat there white-knuckling her seat so hard her fingers ached.
“Just a few more miles,” Jake said. They’d looped around to approach Wahlee from the north, on one of the few roads that gave access to the nature reserve, and the bouncing of the headlights made Gemma feel seasick.