Still Point

Scott stuck his head out of the van window and yelled for us to get in.

  Justin turned to me and stopped when he noticed Jax. They stood a few feet apart, at eye level, staring each other down. Justin’s eyes darkened.

  “I’ve got her, Jax,” Justin said, his way of warning him to step back. Jax didn’t budge, and I pushed him back before he could start practicing more video game fight moves. Justin grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the van.

  “Don’t move!” Paul shouted, staggering down the steps behind us. Blood was smeared over his face and caked in his hair. I could see the whites of his eyes, wide and focused on me.

  He pointed his gun at us, and I ducked inside the van with Justin. A shot was fired, and I winced as a bullet hit the inside of the van door. It caused a deep indentation in the metal frame.

  “Stop!” Paul yelled, and my dad looked back.

  “Jane, move!” My dad pushed her away from the van as another shot was fired.

  I covered my ears. It was louder than any gun I had ever heard. My mom was caught between two policemen. I watched through the window as she shakily ducked inside a cop car. My dad flew forward into the van and Justin slammed the door closed.

  Joe dived into the passenger seat, and Scott slammed his foot on the accelerator. The tires squealed hot against the pavement. I wedged myself next to Justin on the floor to keep from sliding on the corrugated metal floor. My dad slumped down and leaned against the wall across from us. We pressed our backs against the cold metal side. We were all panting, and I wiped off the sweat running down my forehead with my sleeve.

  Scott hit a train track that lifted the entire car off the ground and sent us sailing back down with a crash. I slid into the dividing grate between the back of the van and the front seats. The metal gate pushed through my skin like a grater. Justin grabbed my hand and pulled me next to him.

  “No seat belts back here, Scott!” he shouted.

  “Just try to hold on,” Scott barked back. I could see his arms stiff and tight as he clutched the wheel, as if he were holding a bomb that could detonate at any minute.

  I looked at Justin. “Maybe we should pull over so you can drive,” I said. He squeezed my leg and told me Scott could handle it. A second later there were sirens behind us.

  “Get off this road,” Justin said. “Rule number one. No main roads.”

  “Is this really the time for back seat driving? Why don’t you take over?” Scott yelled. “You know I’m not trained for this.”

  “With cops on our tail?” Justin said. “See if you can cut them off at the train crossing.”

  “Why didn’t we design cars with rear missile ammunition?” Scott moaned.

  My dad winced as Scott swerved over a curb. “Scott, pull over,” my dad said. “This isn’t worth it.”

  “I’ll slowly burn to death before taking any orders from you, Freeman,” Scott shot back. Justin blew out a long sigh. He and my father regarded each other, seeming to be having a private conversation, and everyone was silent for a few seconds.

  I glanced at Joe, who held one hand against the door frame and the other on the glove compartment in front of him, trying to brace himself. He looked too terrified to blink.

  I noticed my dad’s face growing pale. He winced as he shifted against the van. That’s when I noticed a smear of red blood, shiny against the silver wall.

  “Dad!” I screamed. I slid closer to him, and he shuddered as I looked him over. I moved my hand up his back and felt the warm, sticky trail of blood. It started high, close to his shoulder. I pulled my hand back and it was crimson red, as if I’d been holding it under a faucet of blood. He was losing blood too fast.

  “We need to get to a hospital!” I shouted. Justin yelled something to Scott, but their voices were drowned out. All I could see were my dad’s eyes—my eyes, grayish green, with dark green rings around the irises. All I could hear was his shaky breathing.

  “Paul was using real bullets,” I said, and he nodded. I looked him over but I couldn’t find the exit hole. The bullet was still trapped inside his back.

  His face was turning white, his lips a pale gray.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. His voice was determined.

  I grabbed his hands in mine. “Look at me, Dad,” I ordered him.

  He opened his dry lips. It took effort to talk. “I can’t focus,” he said.

  His eyes started to roll and I grabbed his shoulders.

  “Dad. Daddy?”

  I hadn’t called him Daddy since I was a little girl, but that’s where I wished we could be, so we could go back and fix everything. Delete delete delete. Rewind, rewind. Redo. Redo. Control alt delete. Start over. The real world doesn’t work that way.

  Tears gushed out of my eyes. There are two sides of love, one that makes you fly and one that makes you crash. One that heals and one that hurts. One that cuts and one that sews. I felt myself falling on the sharp edge of love, and I could feel it slicing through me.

  My dad slid down the wall of the van, and I caught him and lifted his head into my lap as gently as I could. The van swerved as we narrowly missed sideswiping a train.

  There was blood all over the wall of the van, and its iron scent was filling the air. I wanted to cup the blood in my hands and somehow pour it back inside the hole in my father’s skin. I wanted a miracle. My dad was blinking in and out of consciousness.

  “He’s going to make it, Maddie,” Justin said, and I just closed my eyes because for the first time in my life, Justin was lying to me. I knew he didn’t believe in miracles.

  I leaned my head down and rested my forehead against my father’s damp, cold skin. “I love you,” I whispered.

  We swerved off the road as Scott overcorrected the van with a sharp jerk of the wheel. The tires thudded over the grass. Scott jerked the wheel again like he was trying to control the reins of a wild horse. We turned back onto the road, and I closed my eyes and held tight to my dad’s shoulders, preparing myself.

  Something smashed into the back corner of the van, tilting us sideways. Before I could brace myself, the van flipped. It felt like someone was kicking me from every direction, and all I could do was curl up and cover my head with my arms as my body rolled. The van finally skidded and stopped on its side.

  As quickly as it happened, it was over. I could feel my heart pumping, but I didn’t want to open my eyes. My head felt like someone had smashed a bat against the side of it. I couldn’t move. I started to flutter out of consciousness.

  Glass cracked under feet. Metal creaked. A loud voice barked orders, but it sounded distant, spoken through a tunnel. Something heavy next to me was being dragged away. Someone groaned. I opened my eyes just to a squint, only to be blinded by intense light. I covered my eyes with my arm and moaned.

  I looked around in time to see Joe, limp and bloody, being dragged away from the ruined van. Sirens screeched through the air, and steam and smoke swirled inside my nightmare. I opened my mouth to shout, but a police uniform loomed over me. Something sharp pierced my arm, and then I slipped underneath a soft, black curtain.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I woke up lying on the padded floor of an empty room. The walls were all mirrors. I looked around and saw clones of myself. The room was shaped like an octagon, so the mirrors projected more mirrors, which reflected more. The deeper I looked, the more images of myself I could see. I was my own stampede. I was the last person I wanted to see.

  I blinked up at fluorescent lights burning through holes in the ceiling. I moaned as I moved my neck and tried to sit up. My entire body throbbed.

  I was still in my clothes, bloody from the crash. A low buzz vibrated the floor and one of the walls slid open. A man walked inside, wearing light blue scrubs and carrying a black medical bag. His black shoes tapped against the floor.

  “I’m one of the practitioners called in,” he explained.

  I sat up straighter. “Is everyone all right?” I asked him, and my throat was nearly raw. He handed me a wate
r bottle and I accepted it. I took a sip and could feel the cool water crawl down my throat, all the way to my stomach. I started muttering names, as if he knew my friends.

  “There was a stampede at the courthouse,” he said. “Hundreds of people were crushed. They called in every doctor and nurse in the area. That’s all I know.”

  “What about the others?” I asked. “Kevin Freeman? Justin Solvi?”

  “You’re the first patient I’ve seen” is all he offered me. He knelt down next to me, examining my arm and my head. My arm was caked in so much blood, it was hard to see the cuts. He opened a metal kit and pulled on rubber gloves. He used a wet gauze pad to clean my arm, which made the swollen purple cuts stand out.

  “A couple of these are pretty deep,” he said. “I don’t think skin glue will hold them. I’m going to give you some stitches.” I was too despondent to respond. He gave me a shot of anesthetic to numb the area while he worked, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t feel anything anyway. I watched with fascination as my skin was sewn up under his delicate fingers. It was as simple as threading a shoelace. I watched my skin stretch and pull back together. It’s amazing how easy we are to fix on the surface.

  “This will scar,” he told me. I traced my finger over the cuts. It looked like my arm had been slashed by a bear claw.

  He wiped disinfectant over the stitches and wrapped my arm tightly in gauze. He went through the rest of my exam and told me I had a minor concussion. He offered me pills to help ease the pain, but I shook my head.

  He packed up his medical bag. I felt like he had sewn my lips together, too. I didn’t have any words, as if a wire between my brain and my mouth had been severed in the accident.

  He looked over at me before he left. “Thank you,” he said.

  I glanced up at him with surprise.

  “For what you did at the protest. I just withdrew my kids from digital school. I have to admit, I’m a little scared,” he said. “My kids only leave the house about once a month. My daughter’s attention span is so small, she gets anxiety if she has to sit still for more than a minute or two.” He laughed to himself. “My kids have been in DS all their lives, but they don’t know how to think.”

  I nodded and looked down at my arm.

  “I hope unplugging will help,” he said. When he got to the door it buzzed open, and he left me alone.

  I didn’t know what they’d done with Justin or my dad. I didn’t even know if they were alive. All I remembered was seeing Joe’s mangled, broken body.

  I was exhausted. Beaten. Trapped. I wrapped my arms around my legs and pressed my knees to my chest. I wasn’t immortal and neither was Justin. No one is fireproof.

  We could be executed for this. Our backgrounds would be researched. They’d find out about Justin’s parents. They would investigate my dad. No one could save us. But one question kept running through my head.

  What have I done wrong?

  Was I insane for feeling innocent? Is this the way all criminals felt? Can every action be justified in a person’s head? But at what point do you cross the line? When you hurt someone? When you hurt yourself?

  I must be crazy, I thought, because even after all of this, I didn’t feel guilty.

  I glared at my reflection. I got up and stood inches away from my watery, red eyes. I wondered how many people had slammed their faces into these mirrors. I pressed my hand against the reflection, and my fingers softly sank into the walls. The mirrors were reflection paint. The entire room was padded. I watched as my reflection twisted and deformed when I pushed on the wall. My face expanded and then shrank. It scowled and then it arched. I backed away from the walls and sat on the floor and blinked up at the ceiling. Every cylinder of light above me was like a harsh spotlight. I closed my eyelids and could still see red, with yellow flashes slashing across them, like lightning. No matter how tight I closed my eyes, I couldn’t escape this place.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Madeline Freeman.” The door buzzed open and a guard announced my name like he was doing a roll call, as if there were a dozen other people in the room. I had fallen asleep, curled up on the floor with my arm wrapped over my face to try to block out the spotlights. I lifted my head and blinked up at him.

  “Your lawyer is here,” he said. My neck was stiff from sleeping on the floor, and a sharp pain jabbed through my back as I attempted to sit up. I picked myself up and followed the guard into a long hallway, dimly lit compared with my cell. I dragged my feet after him while my eyes adjusted.

  He scanned his finger over a security lock, and a door opened into a windowless room with a long white table running through the center. Justin was sitting at the table and all I wanted to do was collapse into his arms, but the guard caught my shoulder. He held me back, slid a chair across from Justin, and told me to sit.

  I was so relieved to see Justin that my eyes filled with tears. His eye was bruised and swollen, and a narrow line of stitches ran below his bottom lip. One of his hands was wrapped tightly in gauze. But otherwise he looked fine; the fire was still there, in his eyes. He gave me a small smile.

  “You okay?” he asked, and held out a hand across the table. I grabbed his fingers and squeezed.

  Okay wasn’t the right word, but I nodded. I didn’t want to lose hope if there was still a chance.

  “Where’s my dad?” I asked the guard standing next to the door, and I was answered with silence.

  I looked at Justin. “What’s going to happen to us?” I whispered. “Are we guilty?”

  “That depends on who’s judging,” he said.

  Justin raised his head when a suit walked in. That’s what stood out, his dark black blazer contrasted against a crisp white dress shirt, his black leather computer case, his thick gold watchband and black shoes. I almost expected to see glitter highlights in his hair. He sat down and set his case on top of the table. His gold watch caught snippets of light when he moved.

  “Wayne Creighton. Your lawyer for this case,” he said.

  “Where’s my dad?” I asked him.

  His eyes softened with sympathy, confirming what I already knew. “I’m sorry, Madeline. Your dad passed away last night.”

  My face fell into my hands. In my heart I had known all along, but the reality of his words tore through me.

  “He was taken to the hospital after the accident, but he lost too much blood.”

  “What about Scott and Joe?” Justin asked, his voice scratchy.

  “Joe’s in the hospital. He’s in critical condition. Scott’s in surgery. They’re trying to save his leg.”

  I tightened my hands together and lifted my face. Surprisingly the tears didn’t come. I felt too empty to cry, too numb to feel anything other than shock. All I could think about was my mom and how much I’d let her down. She’d lost all of us. She was being punished more than any of us.

  “Where’s my mom?” I asked. “Can I talk to her?”

  “She’s at the hospital with your brother,” Wayne said. He looked surprised that I was more concerned about her than my looming prison sentence.

  “What’s going to happen?” Justin asked.

  Wayne sighed and looked at his hands. “On paper it doesn’t look good. Treason. Resisting arrest. Shooting cops.”

  “They were shooting at us—we can’t defend ourselves?” Justin argued.

  “Storming government property,” Wayne continued. “Vandalizing government property. We’ve got a dozen cops with injuries, some critical. The prosecution is pushing for execution. For both of you.” He looked between us. “They’re going to dig deep into your records. Madeline, I’m aware of your arrests, probation, and serving time in the LADC. Justin, I don’t know where to begin with you. You’re notorious.”

  “Didn’t you say you’re trying to defend us?” I asked. I wondered whose side he was on.

  “What are our chances?” Justin asked.

  “I can negotiate it down to a life sentence, but at this point we don’t have many options.” br />
  I grimaced. That wasn’t any better than execution. “That isn’t good enough,” I said. “I need to talk to my mom,” I pleaded.

  Wayne shook his head. “We can’t allow any outside visitors before a trial,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  I swallowed. “How long will that take?”

  “If it goes to trial, probably six months,” he said.

  “What if we’re executed?” I asked, my tongue pushing out the word like bitter food. “Can I see my mom?” I asked.

  “I could relay a message to her,” he offered.

  My eyes brimmed with tears, and I was afraid to open my mouth and let out a sob.

  “The cops were attacking us,” Justin said, fighting harder. “They were using real guns. They shot Maddie’s dad; that’s what killed him. It wasn’t the car accident.”

  Wayne nodded. “Paul Thompson will be prosecuted, but that’s a separate case,” he said, his voice soft.

  “I want to talk to the prosecutor,” Justin said.

  Wayne hesitated. “That doesn’t normally happen,” he said, but Justin’s eyes were hard. “All right,” he agreed. “I can set that up. I need to go over your files and surveillance footage from the riot. I’ll contact your family and friends and do background checks. It will be another week, at least, before we know anything. I’ll do everything I can.”

  From the sympathy in his eyes, I knew it was a weak promise. I’d used up all my positive energy at the protest. I didn’t have any fight left. We’d already lost the case.

  They kept me in the room of mirrors for days and gave me a diet of stale crackers and cheese. In the morning it was toast and peanut butter. It all left my room untouched.

  They allowed me to shower once. Two daily trips to the bathroom with no exceptions. They offered me a pair of dark yellow sweats, the color of dried mustard.

  Everywhere I looked was my image, my withering image, like a top-heavy plant. I couldn’t escape myself. The lights never went off. I practiced squeezing my eyes closed so hard that it hurt, so hard that I thought I could make myself blind.