* * * * *
Evansburg is one of those towns that has a small park, a tiny downtown area that looks like something from the Old West, and a school that looks like it serves grades K through 12. There’s not even a stop light at the corner, just a faded stop sign and a clock tower. There’s a couple of neighborhoods, all of them of big, old houses that have to be over a hundred years old. One store even has a barrel sitting out front. I expect there to be a place for you to tie your horse up, but I can’t find one.
“This place reminds me of Robin’s Village,” Tommy says, gaping at the stores that have to all be at least a hundred years old.
“Me, too.” I can’t help but get some warm fuzzies. Robin’s Village is an old tourist town back in Wisconsin where we used to go on field trips in elementary school. It’s pretty much a giant museum where the employees dress up and play parts from the eighteen hundreds. You could get Old West pictures taken of yourself and go to a magic show. There was even a train you could ride on and a one-room schoolhouse where you could sit and do a fake lesson. I must have gone there five or six times.
Tommy slows the car down. “That must be Betsy’s Kitchen,” he says, looking at the place with the barrel. “That’s where we’re supposed to meet those people in a couple of hours.”
I glance at the clock tower. It’s five. We’ve got three hours to wait. “I guess we can hang out at the park until then. I saw one a couple of streets back.”
We go to the park and wander around for a bit. The place is old, so much that there’s wooden walkways all around the place. A mom and a couple of kids are the only other people here. The place is actually pretty cool. “Tommy, didn’t we meet at Robin’s Village?”
He smiles. “I think we did. Kindergarten field trip. We were in a group together. You, me and Jeffrey Snyder. Man, I hated that kid.”
“He kept making fun of your glasses. So I pushed him into the goat pen.”
“He got in so much trouble,” Tommy says. “Mrs. Walton wouldn’t believe a girl would do something like that.”
And we laugh. It’s the first time I’ve felt free in days. I don’t know what I’d do without Tommy here to cheer me up.
We get tired of walking around the park and head into town. We gawk at the bank, which looks ready for guys in cowboy hats and bandannas to come in and hold it up. It even has a wooden floor inside, like somebody can’t bear to part with the past. Then we spend a little bit of time in the library, which is a lot better than I expect. Even though it has old wooden desks and tables and a grandfather clock in the corner, it’s got way more new books than the library back home ever had. If you wanted a new book back in Williams Town, you had to special order it on the computer. This place has the new books already. And an actual card catalog up by the front desk. With real cards.
“You’re not used to this, are you?” the librarian asks as I poke through the section on Astronomy.
I look at her—her name is Margie according to her name tag—and smile. “I hate the computers at my library. People hog them and you have to wait your turn. This is way better.”
“Did all libraries used to be like this?” Tommy asks, leaning forward for a better look at the catalog.
“Once upon a time, there were no computers,” I joke.
We spend another hour in the library. It turns out they have a whole archive of magazines, too. I page through an issue of Discover, reading about the history of sharks while Tommy finds a gaming magazine and digs in. We stay there until they close at seven and head back to the park.
Evansburg is, in a word, cool.
“Well, it’s almost time,” I say when we reach the picnic table. “They should be here in a little while.”
“Outbreakers, huh?” Tommy sits opposite me. “So that’s what you’re supposed to be now?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. I trace my finger along a crack in the table, following its trail to a heart with initials carved in it. I want Tommy to sit beside me. Bethany’s not here to go all jealous girl on me. “They’re kind of like me. When it storms, they leave their bodies and then turn into tornadoes. And they had these weird eyes that I don’t have.” I let my face fall to my free hand. “Wow, what a conversation we’re having.”
“Well, we need to have it. Maybe those people will know where that woman lives.”
“Probably.” I’m putting all my hope on that. I refuse to think of what will happen if my plan doesn’t work.
Refuse to think of what the rest of my life will be like.
I spot the blue car pulling into the lot of Betsy’s Kitchen. The sun’s low in the sky, but sweat beads on the back of my neck.
“That’s them.” I stand. Tommy and I walk around the swing set. I’m glad to move. I’m glad that I’m about to unravel this.
“They won’t be upset that I’m here?” Tommy asks.
“Probably not. You already know about this. I don’t see why they’d care.” I’m not sure, of course. But I’m not leaving Tommy to sit out here by himself.
Besides, I want him with me for this. I can’t imagine going through this without him.
The restaurant’s mostly empty when we step up to the door. I make out old pictures of farms through the window. A few booths that line against the wall. Maybe the Outbreaker family chose this for the emptiness.
I check the sky one more time. Clear.
I take a breath and we step in.
There are only two people here. Dorian, and a woman in pink behind the counter who I’m guessing is Betsy. They’re hunched together in conversation. A clock ticks on the wall and a pop machine buzzes on the other side of the room.
They freeze and stare at us. Dorian straightens up and smoothes out his jeans. I feel the heat going back to my face. I swallow, trying to blink away the thought of us merging. I can tell by the way he shifts leg to leg that he’s trying to do the same. It’s like for a second, we can read each other’s minds.
“That’s her,” he says to the woman.
“I’m here. Obviously.” My mouth’s dry. “Where are your parents?” I’m not sure if them being here would be less awkward. It’s just something to say to avoid talking about the merger thing.
Dorian stands taller, his baggy jeans falling around his boots. “I told them I’d do this on my own.” He glances at Tommy. “He’s human. Well, I think. I thought you were, too. Can he wait outside?”
Tommy balks next to me.
“He’s my friend,” I say, steeling my stance. “And he already knows what happens to me. He saw the whole thing. It’s okay if he sits with us. He’s cool.”
Betsy narrows her eyes at Tommy. I look closer. They’re also the brown with the black spots. I wonder if we’re in whole a town of these Outbreakers. And why Evansburg is still standing if that’s the case.
Dorian’s eyes grow big. “He saw the whole thing?”
And took pictures, I think. I keep that thought to myself. “Yes. There’s no sense in hiding anything. Believe me.”
“Okay.” He waves us to a booth. “Sorry I wasn’t in much of a talking mood on the side of the road. This is my aunt, by the way.” He thumbs towards Betsy.
“Hi,” I say, giving a small wave.
“I’ll close up,” she says. “Most of the town’s gone to the State Fair until Friday, anyway. There’s no sense in keeping the doors open this late.” She flips the sign to Closed.
“Totally understandable,” I say, very aware of how silent Tommy’s gone next to me.
We scoot and squeak into the booth, settling under a picture of a farm that might be the one we destroyed for all I know. Dorian looks away from the picture. I follow his lead, not that I need any convincing.
Betsy mills behind the counter and something sizzles. I glance around. It doesn’t seem like an Outbreaker hangout. Cheap paintings of farm animals hang between every boo
th, mostly of dairy cows. One piece of art even has a cow flying through the sky with storm clouds in the background. There’s also pictures of a small town all over the walls. It’s not Evansburg, but a town a lot like it. One building in a picture is of a fire station. A rusty siren towers over it.
Okay, so maybe this is the official Outbreaker place after all.
“You okay?” Dorian asks across from me. He follows my gaze to the flying cow and the siren pictures. “Oh…like our little inside jokes? The humans who eat here have no idea. It gives us a laugh, though.”
“I’d find it funnier if we didn’t have that incident earlier.” I study Dorian’s face. His smile’s forced. Strained. “So is almost everyone in Evansburg an Outbreaker?” I ask.
Dorian shifts.
“Come on,” I say. “Do you really think me of all people is going to go around spilling your secret? I’m not much different than you are.”
“She has a point,” Tommy says. He’s squeezed into the corner of the booth like he’s hoping it’ll protect him.
Dorian caves. “Not everyone. Just about fifty of us. Almost all of us live out in the country. The other hundred people here in town are human. They do wonder why we all showed up a few years ago. We tell them there was a chemical spill at our old town and we had to leave in a hurry, even though that’s not really the truth.” He takes a drink. “It’s a long story. We usually keep quiet about it all.” His gaze goes back to the fire department picture. “There’s a lot of us living here in the middle of the country. Lots of open space. We’re less likely to hurt people out here when we have our Outbreaks.” He stresses less likely.
I wonder if these Outbreakers destroyed their old town by mistake. It’s a thought that makes me think of back home. The close call.
“You could always move to the desert or something where it never rains,” Tommy suggests. “You won’t have to worry about it as much there.”
“Actually, no,” Dorian tells him. “We get health problems if we go without Outbreaks for too long. Nobody knows why, but most of us think the power in us wants out every so often. If it doesn’t get a chance in a while, it starts taking a toll on our bodies. Living out here really is the best thing we can do. It sucks.”
My heart sinks. “I hope that doesn’t apply to me, too.”
Darkness descends over Dorian’s face. He fiddles with the straw in his drink, twirling it over and over so fast that the ice spins inside. The water forms a funnel and he stops, stabbing the ice to kill it.
Asking about his old town’s not a good idea right now. “At least you can hide what you are. Since you leave your bodies when you transform and all.”
Dorian rolls his eyes up to face me. “Yeah. I guess that’s a plus. A small plus.” He sits up and leans back into his booth. “So,” he says. “Tell me your story.”
I do.
All of it.
I hold nothing back. There’s no reason for anyone here to call me insane.
I tell Dorian about my vacation. Getting ripped from the van. The tornado in the barn slamming into me. The open house. I stare at the table as I do it, twirling a piece of paper around with my thumb. It’s easier than looking him in the eye. For more than one reason.
I finish with Tommy dropping me off in the field and driving away. “And you know what happened after that,” I tell Dorian.
“I can back it up,” Tommy says. He digs into his pocket.
“No need,” I tell him, holding up my hand. “Please. That’s not a picture I want to see again.”
“Picture?” Dorian asks.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
“Ok. Wow. Now I’m even more confused,” Dorian says, shoving his glass of water away. “Outbreakers always leave their bodies when they change. None of that sounds like anything I know about. And I’ve heard some pretty weird stuff.” Dorian looks into space again, watching Betsy clean a coffeepot behind the counter.
“I’m sure.” This isn’t helping me figure anything out. “Now it’s my turn. How long have you been an Outbreaker?”
“My whole life.” Dorian shrugs. “My whole family’s Outbreakers. You have to be born one. Well, most of the time. Outbreakers can turn someone into one of them. It’s nothing like that tornado hitting you in the barn, though. We have to give a person our breath. Mouth-to-mouth.” He grimaces. “I’d never do that, for the record. Too creepy.”
I remember him paling at the sight of the destroyed barn and I believe him. “So doing CPR is out for you guys.”
Dorian grins. “Yeah. Thankfully, kissing’s safe.”
I force a laugh. If my face wasn’t hot before, it is now.
Betsy brings us out three hamburgers, which still sizzle on our plates. “This is on the house,” she says, smiling. “There’s no rush. I still have a lot of dishes to do, so you have plenty of time.”
“Thanks,” Dorian says, taking a huge bite.
The burgers are amazing. Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m super hungry, or maybe Betsy just has some kind of cooking super power. Tommy devours his in two minutes and Dorian’s not far behind. I already feel better with some food in my stomach.
“So you’ve never heard of people who drag victims to an altar to make them like this?” I point at myself when I finish eating.
Dorian shakes his head. “No. Something weird is going on if you’re right. If you’re an Outbreaker, you’re a new kind.”
So now I’m a freak among freaks. Great. “I kind of figured.”
Dorian runs his hand through his hair. “That’s the best I can come up with. I’ve never met anyone like you before. There must not be too many of you yet.”
“Well, there’s at least two of us new ones and I’m pretty sure that woman’s planning to drag more people in.” I take a drink, soothing my dry throat. “I think she goes after storm chasers, mostly. So do you know where this farm might be?” I ask, leaning across the table. “Any ideas? You’ve got to if you live around here.”
Dorian shakes his head. “Have you seen Nebraska? All we look at is corn. And some occasional soybeans. There’s a lot of farms around here. Some of them are miles across. But I don’t think it would take too long to find the right one.”
Hope. It flickers back to life, urging me to keep going. It’s not much, but if I can find that woman again, she might know the cure.
If she’s even willing to give it to me.
“It’s supposed to be four miles north of here,” Tommy says. “We found a clue online. We’re going to go look in the morning.”
Dorian nods at the deepening night outside. “Good idea. I wouldn’t go to a place like that in the dark. Heck, I don’t even want to go there in the daytime.”
“Have you seen an area with a really old barn?” I press. “You know? One of those ones that looks ready to collapse?”
“Don’t know. You’d have to go down some crappy dirt roads to get to a lot of the farms. I bet that’s one of them.”
“I’m sure she’ll know it if we find it again.” Tommy’s regained some bravery. He sits up like he’s forgotten all about the pictures on his phone.
I glance between the two of them. “You know, if that barn’s ready to fall over anyway, we could always, you know, give those freaks a taste of their own misery.”
“Won’t work,” Dorian says. “Outbreakers can’t hurt each other. Or destroy each other’s property. That’s why I tried to force you into my parents’ car back at the field when I thought you were a regular human. You would have been safe there.”
“How come your parents didn’t have Outbreaks?” I ask. “They were out there in the storm, too.”
“They’re older. They have better control,” Dorian says. “They can hold back their transformations until it’s a good time. I can’t do that yet. That’s why they drove me away from our house when the storm was coming
. We have neighbors that live close to us that we can’t risk hurting.”
“I know the feeling,” I say, thinking of my parents back home. I poke at the phone in my pocket, which I’ve kept off to conserve the battery. “Okay. So for the old barn and those freaks, we rush in with torches and pitchforks. Sounds good.”
Dorian leans towards us. “Want help?”
I search his face for any sign of a laugh. There’s none. He’s serious. “Of course we would. Hey, if that woman knows some kind of cure, maybe you can have it, too. If, you know, you’d be interested.” I’m not sure why I’ve blurted that out. “Sorry.”
“For what?” Dorian asks. He checks to make sure Betsy’s still back in the kitchen. “You think I like being an Outbreaker?” His face has changed. He’s younger. Vulnerable. Scared. Like me. “You guys think I like the fact that I’m stuck out in the boondocks all the time so I probably don’t kill anybody?” He slaps his hands down on the table, splaying his fingers. “It’s going to be years before I learn to control my Outbreaks like my parents can. That’s the only time I’ll be able to get out of here. I do want to start college before I’m thirty.” Dorian is fear. Anger. Pain. He looks to me with those brown and black eyes. They’re pleading. Desperate.
I’m hope. A way out. And I might not be able to deliver.
“Look,” I say, holding my hands up. “I don’t know if there’s a cure. It’s a long shot. But I have to try.”
Dorian stands. “Tomorrow,” he says. “Meet me at the park. Then we’re going to look for that altar.”
Chapter Eleven