“I stepped on something,” she sobs, clearly in great pain. “It’s stuck in my foot. Get it out!”
“Still have those matches?” I ask Pauly.
“Yeah.” There’s a scratching sound, then a small burst of yellow flame. I slip the flip-flop off Sarah’s dirty foot. Her sole is a dark, reddish mud of dirt and blood.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” She wails in agony.
“Hold still,” I tell her. “It’s hard to see.”
“Crap!” Pauly lets go of the match, which must have burned down to his fingertips.
“I need light,” I tell him.
He lights another match, but in its dim flicker it’s hard to find where the bleeding is coming from, and before I can locate the problem, that match burns out too.
“It hurts!” Sarah cries. “Please get it out!”
“We’re gonna run out of matches,” Pauly says.
“Make a small fire with leaves,” I tell him.
“They’ll see it.”
“Come on, she’s hurt.”
Pauly bunches some leaves together and strikes a match. They ignite, and the air fills with the smell of smoke. I spit into my hands and wipe the dirt and blood from Sarah’s trembling foot. A pointed piece of wood the width of a thin pencil is stuck in her heel. It went right through her flip-flop before it broke off.
“Oh, God!” Sarah cries when I pull it out. “Oh, Lord!” A second later she moans with relief and massages her foot. In the flickering light of the fire her face is streaked with tears and smudged with blood and dirt. Bits of crumpled leaves stick to her cheek. I brush them away. Sarah looks at me with reddened, watery eyes.
“How’s it feel?” I ask.
“Better, thanks.”
“Garrett!” Pauly grabs my arm.
The fire has begun to spread beyond the little pile of leaves Pauly made. It crackles and flares as it creeps outward in a circle. Pauly starts to stamp out the flames with his flip-flops. I join him, and the air fills with smoke and the chemical smell of singed rubber. We manage to put out the flames, but smoke still rises up through the air, and here and there a red ember continues to glow in the dark.
“We better get out of here,” Pauly says.
I reach for Sarah. “Can you walk?”
She squeezes my hand as I pull her up. “It’ll be easier along the road than in the woods.”
“She’s right,” I tell Pauly. “And we’ll be able to move faster, too.”
We head out of the woods and toward the road. The black, moonless sky is awash with bright, shimmering stars. I slide my arm around Sarah’s waist and she leans on me, hardly able to put any weight on her left foot. Our plastic-bag-covered bodies rub against each other. I can tell by the way she winces and limps that this is painful for her.
“Didn’t know you were such a trouper,” I tell her.
“Neither did I,” she answers.
Headlights appear in the distance. We scamper into the ditch beside the road and hunker down. It seems like a long time before the car blows past. The road must be long and straight here; you can see headlights from miles away. Between Sarah’s injured foot and the time we spend hiding from approaching cars, it’s obvious we’re not going to get very far tonight.
TWENTY-TWO
“Demerits will increase your stay at Lake Harmony.”
When Sarah complains that it hurts too much to continue, we settle down in a cornfield.
“Know what’s frickin’ twisted?” Pauly asks as we lie on rough mats of broken cornstalks waiting for sleep. “My father would be proud of me now. It takes a real man to set fires and escape from boot camp.”
“Maybe that’s why he sent you,” I speculate. “To see if you were man enough to escape.”
Pauly chuckles bitterly. “How bent is that? Uh … ah-choo!” He sneezes. “Crap. And on top of everything else, I’m getting sick.”
Sarah is lying close to me, her shoulder touching mine. I can feel her shivering. Without the plastic bags we’d probably be unbearably cold. With them, we’re merely freezing. She’s been quiet ever since we stopped.
“How’s the foot?” I ask.
“Hurts.”
“Bad?”
“Not too bad. More like a throbbing pain than a sharp one.”
“Guess we’ll stay here till the morning.” Pauly starts to yawn, but it turns into a raspy cough. “Might as well try to get some sleep.” He starts to nestle down between the stalks. The ground here is different from last night among the trees. The cornstalks are hard, and the air in the field is chillier than in the woods. I wonder how much sleep we’ll really get before sunrise. But it’s not long before Pauly’s breathing is deep and rhythmic.
“I’m so cold,” Sarah whispers.
I roll toward her, and she presses her back against my chest. Her hair is in my face.
“If I talk, will it keep you up?” she whispers.
“I’m not falling asleep anytime soon.”
She nestles closer. “I’m scared, Garrett. What if we get caught?”
“They can’t do anything worse to us than they’ve already done.”
“What about the fire? That’s arson, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah. Guess they could do worse if they wanted to.”
“You’re not scared?”
“I don’t know. Not sure I care anymore. Besides, in a weird way I like this. For the first time in months I actually feel alive. Being outside, going where I want, when I want, with no one telling me what to do. I don’t know what’s gonna happen next, but even if I get sent back, this may just have been worth it.”
“You could be right,” Sarah whispers. “After two and a half years in that place the thing I value more than anything is freedom.”
She’s quiet for a while. Just when I’m not sure she’s still awake, she stirs. “Garrett?”
“Hmm?”
“Would you put your arm around me?”
“Sure.”
I slide my arm over her shoulder and pull her closer, trying to share my body heat with her.
“Thanks,” she whispers.
In the gray predawn I wake to Pauly coughing. A heavy wet fog has settled over the cornfield, and a film of water droplets covers our plastic-bag vests. Everything is damp and cold, and I’m shivering. Pauly’s coughing fit ends, and he lies on the ground wheezing.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I’m sick,” he croaks.
“It’s freezing. My foot is killing me,” Sarah whispers through chattering teeth.
No one budges. We lie curled up in the misty field, too cold and miserable to move.
“What are we gonna do?” Pauly asks after a while. He’s not asking how we’ll get warm or find food. He’s asking whether we should keep going or give up.
I don’t dare to look at him. “What do you want to do?”
“Don’t know,” Pauly answers miserably.
And then through the haze comes a deep, resonating sound. I can almost feel the vibration through my skin.
“What’s that?” Sarah asks.
“A foghorn,” I answer. “From a boat. A really big boat like a tanker or something.”
“The Saint Lawrence River!” Pauly exclaims, and props himself up on his elbow. “The border between the U.S. and Canada.”
“We’re that close?” Sarah asks.
“We must be,” Pauly says with renewed energy.
Hope flows through us with the same warming effect as a cup of hot chocolate.
“There’s got to be a bridge,” Pauly says. “All those trucks must have gone over it. We just have to get across it and—” Before he can finish, he erupts into a spasm of coughing. Sarah gives me a concerned look.
“We gotta go,” Pauly gasps once he’s stopped coughing. “We didn’t come this far not to.”
Under the cover of fog we make our way through the tall brown stalks. The rows are planted north to south, which makes it easier for us. I’ve got my arm around Sarah, but she grimaces
as she limps, and when Pauly stops to cough, he doubles over and his whole body trembles. Despite our Dumpster “feast” last night, my stomach is once again a knot of hunger.
• • •
The cornfield seems endless. As we trudge along, the fog around us turns lighter, and I realize the sun will rise soon. Every now and then the bellow of the foghorn rolls toward us. Meanwhile the mist keeps thinning and lifting, and the sun finally appears to our right like a ghostly circle, just a shade brighter than the haze around it. Pauly stops and points between the stalks. In the distance, through the thinning, drifting fog, we can see the rounded dark-green arc of a bridge.
The cornfield ends at a road, and from there we can see the span—long, narrow, and arched like a bow. But there’s an unexpected obstacle. On the United States side is a brick building with a white sign that says in black letters U.S. CUSTOMS. Spanning the roadway leading to the bridge is a row of booths where cars must stop before they cross into Canada. They are customs inspection stations, and even at this early hour rows of vehicles are lined up waiting to go through each one.
“We can’t go that way.” Sarah is the first to voice what we’ve all just realized: With no identification or money they’ll never let us across.
“What are we gonna do?” Pauly asks.
“Find another way,” I reply. What other answer is there?
Across the road is a tall chain-link fence, like the one that surrounds Lake Harmony. Inside are several huge, windowless buildings covering an area as big as a couple of city blocks. From the long rows of docking bays and the trucks parked at some of them, I gather that it’s some kind of truck depot or distribution center. Can we find a truck to hide in and ride through customs? Or maybe some unsuspecting employee I can chat up to see if there’s another place to get across the river?
It’s got to be worth a shot. The trucking operation appears to run around the clock. Even now at dawn a tractor-trailer trundles down the road, and the gates start to open automatically, no doubt triggered by some sort of sensor.
“Wait here,” I tell Pauly and Sarah, and start to strip off my garbage-bag vest.
“Where are you going?” Sarah’s voice rises nervously.
“I want to check that place out.”
“Can’t we come?” she asks anxiously.
I shake my head. “You can hardly walk, and everyone’ll hear Pauly cough.”
Sarah’s forehead wrinkles with consternation. She doesn’t want me to leave. But there’s no other choice if we’re going to find a way to Canada.
Across the road, the gates have swung open. I wait until the eighteen-wheeler goes through and then dash out of the cornfield and follow it in. With a soft whirring sound the gates close behind me. The truck heads toward the far end of one of the buildings. In the meantime I walk past the bays, each one sealed shut with a rolling metal garage-type door.
I walk the length of the building. By now the sun is firmly centered in the morning sky, and its rays warm my head and shoulders. At the end of the building I cross more asphalt, then walk through some low brown weeds and undergrowth toward the chain-link fence at the back of the property. The air feels cooler here.
Stopping at the fence, I curl my fingers through the cold metal links. On the other side, not more than two hundred yards away, is the broadest river I have ever seen. The water is dark gray-green, and in the near distance is a vast channel. Beyond that are small, tree-covered islands. Some have houses on them. Past those islands is a distant shore with more houses. And that, I assume, is Canada.
If we can just find a way across …
Turning from the fence, I start to walk along the shady side of the huge building. I’m not sure what I’m looking for. A miracle? A friendly face who’ll tell me exactly how my friends and I can cross the border?
I pass endless truck bays, not a soul in sight. No, wait. Down at the far end of the building, where the sunlight cuts a wide swath, two people are standing, talking. One of them looks familiar.
Just at that moment Rebecca turns her head in my direction.
TWENTY-THREE
“You will report any infraction of the rules immediately.”
“Hey!” She starts to run toward me.
I take off for the back of the next building. It’s a race, only there’s no finish line in sight. I’m running purely on the hope that somewhere I’ll find a way through the fence. The good news is that thanks to all the running I did at Lake Harmony, I’m in pretty good shape. The bad news is that lack of food and sleep has sapped my strength, and I quickly start to feel it.
Over my shoulder, I see that Rebecca is about fifty yards behind, fists clenched, arms pumping.
I run behind the second building, searching the chain-link fence for a gate or an opening. Anything to get out of this place. In the flip-flops, my feet slap the asphalt painfully. I can feel every rock and pebble through the soles.
Finding only an endless high fence behind the second building, I race toward the third. Rebecca is still behind me. But unless she’s a marathon runner, she must be feeling the strain too. There are no openings in the fence behind the third building either. So I head for the next. This trucking center is huge, but I can’t keep up this pace. My heart is pounding, my lungs are burning, and my feet are killing me. Rebecca is still behind me, but I can see by the way her arms flail that she’s starting to weaken.
A painful stitch develops in my side, and my legs are starting to cramp, but I have to keep going. I didn’t come all this way to give up now. And I’m not going back to Lake Harmony.
Rebecca and I both slow to a limping trot. Maybe she’s cramping too. We pass behind the fourth building and head for the fifth. The pain is gruesome, almost unbearable. But in a strange way my experience at Lake Harmony helps me here, too—I’ve learned to cope with a level of pain I never knew I could tolerate.
We slow to a jog. It’s almost laughable. Pretty soon we’ll both be on our knees, crawling. I keep an eye on her. If she speeds up, I speed up. If she slows down, I do the same. Meanwhile, I’m still searching for that way out.
We get around the fifth building. The asphalt is littered with shreds of cardboard boxes, cigarette butts, broken liquor bottles, empty beer cans, and busted wooden pallets. Looks like there isn’t much trucking activity here. It’s more like a place where teenagers gather at night to drink and hang out.
But if that’s what they do, they’re probably not coming in the front gate. So how do they get in?
The answer is a patch of smooth, bare dirt where the bottom of the fence curls up just enough for someone to slither under. Piled on the other side are big black metal drums, the kind you see on the news when they’ve discovered some illegal chemical dumping ground. Suddenly, as if she’s read my mind, Rebecca starts to run harder.
I go as fast as I can, knowing I need to get under the fence before she gets there. When I reach it I practically dive onto my stomach and start to crawl, but halfway under, the back of my shirt catches. I don’t care about tearing it, but I’m caught and can’t go any further. Damn it! I have to back out and start again. Rebecca is only twenty yards away now. This time I start to slide under the fence on my back, so if my clothes get caught, I’ll be able to unsnag them.
I’m halfway under when Rebecca grabs one of my ankles. I kick my foot loose, and when she grabs for it again, I plant my other foot against her chest and push as hard as I can.
Rebecca flies backward and hits the ground hard. In the meantime I manage to get under the fence. But once I’m on the other side, relief and fatigue settle over me like a heavy shawl. Suddenly I’m too tired to even get to my feet.
Meanwhile Rebecca sits up on the asphalt and rubs her elbow where she must have banged it against the ground. We’re both breathing hard.
“You okay?” I ask through the fence.
“What do you care?” she snaps.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She gives me a hard look. “Shouldn’
t you be running away?”
“Probably.”
“So why aren’t you?”
The answer is that I’m tired and for the moment, with the fence separating us, I don’t have to. But I’m not about to tell her that. Besides, there’s something I’d like to know: “Why are you doing this?”
“What?” She looks at me like I’m crazy.
“Why are you chasing me? Why do you work as a transporter?”
Rebecca frowns. “It’s my job.”
“But you were once at Lake Harmony.”
She blinks with surprise. “How do you know that?”
“You told me. Well, not you. Harry did. About eight months ago. We were all in a car together.”
Rebecca slides her eyes off to the side as if trying to remember.
“He called me blue blood,” I remind her.
She shrugs. “So?”
“I don’t get it,” I tell her. “You’ve been there. You know what it’s like.”
“And your point is?”
“How can you help send other kids there?”
“Maybe they deserve it,” she says.
“Did you?”
“Matter of fact, I probably did.”
“Why?”
She gives me an exasperated look. “What do you care?”
“I just want to understand.”
“You want to understand? Stay there and I’ll be glad to tell you.” She slowly rises to her feet and limps toward the fence. Looks like she must have gotten a cramp or pulled a muscle chasing me. At the same time I also get up and roll one of the big metal drums until it blocks the smooth spot where the fence curls inward. Then I roll a few more drums in tight against it so she can’t crawl under and push the first one out of the way.
Rebecca glares at me through the chain links. “Sooner or later you’re going back. And when you do, you’re going to be sorry.”
“Why are you so angry?” I ask.
“Because I’m in pain, okay? I’m pissed off that you made me chase you. Besides, haven’t you heard? Everyone who goes through boot camp has anger issues.”