I felt relieved and shocked, at once. “Well what did you do?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know. I don’t know how. I touched her, and I could see her start to breathe again. I think I touched that statue, too.”
“Touched her? What does that—”
“I don’t know!” He was off the bike, pacing with his hands balled into fists. “I don’t know what happened. I just don’t.”
A part of me wanted to go to him, but some other part—a leery, self-preserving part—kept me on the bike.
Nick shook his head, his face grown grave. “Maybe I should go.”
“Go where? That’s not the problem. Things aren’t going to get better with location,” I said bitterly. “You need to tell me what is going on. You are the only one who knows. If you don’t tell me…I can’t help you.”
He shook his head, like I just didn’t get it. Maybe I didn’t.
“Did you take something?” I asked suddenly; I actually hoped he had.
He laughed, the sound like crunching leaves. “I wish.”
But he hadn’t. And that meant I was in way over my head.
I thought about leaving. For just a second, I thought about getting on the bike and taking off. Annabelle had died—I had seen her dead—and I wasn’t sure I would ever stop seeing her.
Nick stood with his jaw locked, looking at his boots, pressing the tip of one into the curbside.
“How did you melt the statue?” I asked him quietly. “How did you bring someone back to life? And why did she—” I still couldn’t say it. “What happened to her?”
He turned to face me. “What do you think?”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t want to think about it.
“Do you remember…getting to her room?”
“I remember her tripping, going up the stairs. I was worried.”
“So you…what? Ransacked her room and decided to melt a statue? How did these things happen? You don’t have any idea?”
He shut his eyes. “Something is wrong with me.”
“I’d say.”
His face flickered with something that looked a lot like hurt, but he quickly snuffed it out. “Thank you for the ride to town. I think it’s clear you didn’t do this with your dart.”
He turned, like he was going to walk away, and anger flared like a match inside my chest. “No. You can’t just leave.” If he did, I’d never get over this—or him.
When he faced me again, his face had changed. No longer hard, he just looked tired. “What should I do then, Milo?”
My throat tightened, and the words were out before I had time to think. “Come with me.”
*
Nick folded his arms and shook his head. His face had hardened; he didn’t look like anyone I knew. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
My heart pounded. “Why?”
“I need to go somewhere…alone. Until I figure out whatever this shit is.”
“And how are you going to do that? Find enlightenment in the forest?” He ignored me, and I sighed. “Maybe you’re an angel.”
He eyed me warily. “I don’t think so.”
I sat up straighter. “There’s got to be something we can do to get it figured out. Something we can read…”
“Yeah, we can Google it.” Nick rolled his eyes, looking totally un-Nick-like. Looking miserable.
“Why don’t you get back on the bike? I’m not leaving you here.”
He looked over his shoulder, at the clump of urban forest behind him—and I knew that look. “Don’t,” I warned, climbing off the bike and walking slowly toward him.
When I got close enough, I grabbed his hand. He let me, but he didn’t touch me back. He just stood there, and when I stroked his fingertips, his eyes slid shut.
A few seconds later, he stepped away. “Look…I’m never going to feel like Gabriel DeWitt. The only thing that makes me feel like a…real person is…you.” He rubbed a hand through his coppery hair and swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “But I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“How would I get hurt?”
“Ask your friend.” He rubbed his forehead, looking less gathered than I’d ever seen him.
I still had my hand out. I wanted to reach for him again, but I could tell he’d move away, so I just stood there, vibrating.
“It’s the same for both of us. We’re in the same boat. We don’t know what’s going on.” I thought about the boy who’d lost his whole family and my throat went tight. “You said you thought you knew me. Maybe we can…” I didn’t know what to say. We were at a dead end, but I knew I couldn’t let him disappear.
He met my eyes with his hard, dark ones. “You don’t have to help me anymore.”
“I know.”
17
As soon as we got safely to my room, I called S.K., who said something that made my head feel like a hollowed watermelon: Not only was Annabelle alive, but apparently she had reappeared to finish her catfight with Halah.
“She’s not just okay,” I told Nick, with a wild giggle. “She was so good, she went back down to fight with Halah!”
Nick just looked at me. He was sitting on my bed, leaning against the pillows, playing idly with a Rubix Cube. His hand around it now was clenched, the knuckles white.
He looked so messed up, I couldn’t stand it. But the truth was, I couldn’t bring myself to really dig into things. What would I even say? I was clueless, and I definitely didn’t want to make him more upset.
“I’m going to change, okay?”
He nodded.
“Why don’t you lie down?”
I didn’t wait to hear his answer, just grabbed some clothes from my closet and shut myself inside the bathroom, where I sat down on the tub’s ledge and wondered what the H was going on.
There was something wrong with him. Something really wrong. That much was obvious. Some part of me knew that I should kick him out—send him packing. Whatever was going on was strong enough to melt pure gold, and I didn’t know if I could handle it.
But a larger part of me—the part of me coming out of a two-year crash—wanted to see what happened next. And really wanted to join him on the bed.
I took a deep breath. Focus. Legit weirdness was going down. Whatever had happened at the party, it had hurt him. Made him sick. It was something he didn’t understand, something he hadn’t asked for. Therefore it wasn’t his fault. Right?
I returned to my room ready to talk things out. Ready to offer my support. Ready to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. Instead, I found Nick slouched against the pile of pillows, the Rubix Cube resting on his knee, solved, his head lolled back, beauty in the lamplight.
I pulled his shoes off, covered him with a fleece blanket, and double-checked my door. Satisfied that it was locked, I settled in the rocking chair and opened my laptop. I went to Facebook, then searched for Gabe DeWitt. I looked at Nick’s face, Gabe DeWitt’s smiling profile pic. And that was all I could see. The profile, like Nick himself, was locked.
*
The next morning, I awoke in bed. Nick was on the floor, propped against the wall, looking like a punk-rock model in what remained of his tattered tux.
Before I could thank him for putting me in bed— before I could get over the fact that Nick had picked me up from the chair and put me in my bed— he looked hard into my eyes and said, “I think that I should go.”
Call me crazy, but this struck me as a terrible idea.
“Go where?” I asked him dumbly.
“Where do you think?”
“To New Castle?”
He nodded. “Janice DeWitt’s house.”
“Your— I mean Gabe’s grandmother. ”
“Yes.”
I held my breath for a long second, trying to stop myself from saying no! Nick couldn’t leave. I didn’t want him to. And that was 100 percent selfish.
“Did you remember…something about…Gabe DeWitt?”
Nick just stared at me, his ja
w set tight.
“I’m sorry,” I said gently. “Nick, I’m really sorry.”
I slid out of bed, headed to him, but Nick was faster. He was at the deck door before I could get anywhere near him.
“Nick— Gabe, hang on. Wait.”
I’d have to go downstairs, tell my mom bye, and get the keys to the car. I wouldn’t take him to New Castle on the bike. We needed to talk. Even if he had remembered he was Gabe, it didn’t explain the whistle, the melted statue, the thing with Annabelle. It didn’t explain how he was alive. I knew I had to let him go, but not without some kind of resolution.
“Will you wait here for me? Please? I want to talk before you go, but I’ve gotta tell my mom I’m leaving. After that I’ll take you. I’ll meet you around back, by the car.”
Nick-Gabe nodded, his face a gorgeous mask.
I went downstairs and found Mom scrambling eggs. She seemed cheery. “Thank God for high-dollar mechanics!” She grinned, and I realized the turbines were back up—all our power was restored. It should have occurred to me, since I had been able to search the Web.
I looked over at the TV, a creepy-crawly feeling shuddering through me. “Mom, I have a question… Did you put the TV on the solar panel circuit?”
“No, honey. Why?”
I swallowed hard. “No reason.” I made my face neutral, my tone casual. “Hey, may I take the car to town? I left my purse at Annabelle’s.”
It wasn’t a lie. In the chaos of the night before, when Nick and I had—oh, God—fled what I had thought was some kind of crime scene, I’d forgotten my purse. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Sure you can,” Mom said. “Does that mean you don’t have a phone?”
“I do,” I told her, turning so she couldn’t see the strain on my face. “Call me later.”
Mom nodded, saying something I didn’t hear as I slipped out the door. I walked around the house, my eyes searching for Nick. I found him in the car, passenger’s side. He was playing with the seam at the bottom of his dress shirt. He didn’t look up as I got settled, and he didn’t speak as I sped down the driveway, taking a sharp turn onto Mitchell Road.
As I drove, away from my ridge of the Front Range, toward the shallower valleys of New Castle, I could feel the tension wafting off my passenger like summer heat off pavement.
By the time I made the turn onto Highway 6, toward I-70 and New Castle, I was wracking my brain for a conversation-starter.
“So, I’m some kind of freak,” Nick said abruptly. After so much silence, his voice shocked me: like always, so deep and smooth and lovely.
“The kind that can do really awesome things.”
“I destroyed her room,” he said. “I melted that thing, the angel.”
My heart beat faster. “Do you have any idea—how?”
He shook his head. “I could have killed her.”
“But you saved her.”
“But did I kill her first?”
Chills sprung up on my arms at the question, and the flat tone with which he delivered it. It took me a second to get my breath. “Did you?”
“I don’t think, but then, I don’t remember, do I?”
He was silent for a second—a second in which I thought I’d go insane. When he spoke, his voice was tight. “Milo, I need to ask you something. Don’t tell anyone about this. Okay?”
“Of course I won’t. But are you going to?”
He bit his lip. “I don’t think so. Not now.” He exhaled roughly. Rubbed his face. “I don’t know. What would I say? That I melted a statue?”
“Good point.” People would have him committed.
The road in front of us rolled on, expanding into Interstate as it took us over craggy hills, through wind-swept valleys, toward the one place that I didn’t want to go. I thought about the miles between us—more than 100 of them—and wanted to turn the car around. Then I felt stupid for wanting that. What I should want was for this mess to be over.
I glanced at Nick again. “Should I be calling you Gabe now?”
To my surprise, he shook his head. His face was hard. “I don’t remember anything. And I still don’t think I’m Gabe.”
I hit the breaks—almost causing a truck to rear-end us. “Then why am I taking you to New Castle?! Why not stay with—”
“Because,” he interrupted. “It’s the only thing that I can do. I need to figure this stuff out. This is the only lead I have.”
“But if you’re not Gabe DeWitt, how is he a lead?”
Nick pulled a torn newspaper page out of his pants pocket and held it out. I saw a photo of Gabe Dewitt in a swimsuit. Embarrassingly, the black and white image made me warm.
Nick pointed to something I couldn’t see, then he lifted his dress shirt. I saw a birthmark on his ribcage, dark pink-red and shaped like a cloud. I realized it was pictured in the paper, too.
“Oh,” I breathed.
“Yeah… Oh.”
Nick crumpled the paper, tossed it at his feet, and shifted his torso to stare out the window. His back, to me, looked clenched and tense.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked, hesitant.
He turned his head, the motion quick and hard. “Do I have another option, Milo? Do you think that I can stay with you forever?”
“No,” I said, half whimper.
“Well that’s good. Because I can’t.”
I nodded numbly, watching the curving road as the lanes blurred, one wide path that led to nowhere.
18
I was an idiot. Whatever and whoever else I was, I was an idiot, too. As I watched Milo tighten her grip on the wheel, straighten her back and pull her elbows in, as I watched her train her gaze on the road and press her lips together, I wished one of my pseudo-powers was rewinding time.
If I could, I would go back. How far? Maybe I’d go back to the beginning—the beginning I remembered, anyway. When I opened my eyes and I saw Milo’s face against the crisscrossing of branches above us. I’d start right then. Maybe I would freeze time.
I stared down at my lap, replaying the part where Milo had protested taking me to New Castle. She felt responsible probably, but I thought there was more to it than that.
I hadn’t lied to her; despite the birthmark, I knew I wasn’t Gabriel DeWitt. Even though I was in a body exactly like his, if I didn’t remember being Gabe, was I really him?
I hadn’t been completely honest with her, either. I remembered more of what happened then I let on. And I knew when it had all started, even if I didn’t know why.
After I’d moved Milo to her bed, I’d done a little work on her computer. Long story short, I’d found out I was as good with her Apple Laptop as I’d been with the car and the bike—and the alarm system. Not to mention the cameras at Annabelle’s place.
The technology, I got. I was working on a theory, one that started around the time that Gabe’s family got into their wreck. The one non-variable—the thing I knew for sure—was that something weird had happened to Gabe. Something that enabled him—his body—to survive. Something that had, by coincidence or systematic necessity, enabled Gabe to know and do strange things. Something that had also taken his memory.
Was this thing a “miracle?”
I didn’t think so.
Is it in my pocket?
The burning whistle had brought me out of my statue-melting experience just moments before Milo arrived. Searing a hole through my pants, burning my leg.
Something weird had happened to Gabe, something that had made him me—made him Nick…
Why could I melt gold? Why did I know everything about everything but me? Why did I feel so stifled, so trapped?
Why did I feel there was no way to untangle myself? (From what?)
Who were the others I had felt in my strange, abstract vision of Milo? The “we” of the web?
Who was I?
The question kept haunting me, because I had an answer in my head—the same one I’d had since I’d first realized the question. When I thought a
bout it, I felt it so strongly it almost had a voice:
You’re no one.
I looked out the window. Nothing but a bunch of hills and valleys, craggy and covered by fir trees. We passed signs for White River, and later, Edwards. I knew I should say something—should say sorry—but I couldn’t seem to snap myself to action.