“It’s so awesome. The truck stops, you insert money into the side like an ATM, and out pops the deliciousness. You never even see a driver. All the windows are tinted black too. Kind of weird, isn’t it?”
“Weird,” I said, thinking how the CEO of StroBisCo might have useful information about another Chicago junk-food company. Or, if it was unionized, Knuckles would have to know something-deploying strikebreakers fell under his job description. And then, of course, there was my own personal Talmud-Bible-Koran, the notebook. If Mister Kreamy Kone had even the slightest thread of a connection to the Outfit, it would be in there. Right now, however, was not the time to study; now was the time to get my mind and gut ready for what I had to do at noon.
“Is there anything else?” Doug asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “If I don’t come back, take care of Harry.”
“You have to come back,” Doug said. “We have final exams next week.”
I realized then that I hadn’t studied Italian in almost three long weeks.
I grabbed my Italian-English dictionary and looked up three words.
24
By ten until noon, the cool morning sky had been replaced by a sun that shone so brightly it felt like nails being driven into my head.
There was no wind, no clouds, only light and heat.
The Technicolor blue sky looked cheap and fake, and I was tense being out in broad daylight.
I paused at the entrance to Navy Pier, watching tourists come and go carrying plastic bags full of expensive junk and eating large, sweet, colorful garbage, and then moved cautiously up the boardwalk. Twice in that short walk I was overcome by paranoia so strong that I spun in a half crouch, only to see slow-moving people with cameras and fanny packs and cotton candy. I yawned with jittery nerves, my heart beat irregularly-both signs of OD’ing on adrenaline-and I paused.
I stood inside an enormous round shadow.
I shielded my eyes and looked up.
One hundred and fifty feet in the air, the Ferris wheel crept in a slow circle.
My brother Lou is twelve, and in that time he’s probably seen his favorite movie,
Every time the scene played, Lou would recite the monologue with him.
It began “In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. .”
Harry delivers this lesson on criminal creativity on a Ferris wheel.
Lou regards it as a genius meeting place since it’s on earth but above it, and public but also stratospherically private. He knows that I’m all too aware of his love for that seminal scene. I climbed the steps to the platform with my heart hammering my chest and saw strolling tourists, lingering tourists, tourists gaping into the sky, but no one else. And then-
“Sara Jane.”
He was behind me, and I turned to a kid who was my brother, but not.
He was snowy pale with deep circles under his eyes, his thick black hair shaved away.
He wore clothes that were not his own, jeans too big, a pale green hospital shirt beneath a coat too heavy for such a hot day.
Without another word, he turned to enter the Ferris wheel. I followed as he handed an attendant two tickets, we boarded the gondola with its open-air windows, and the great disc made its slow turn toward the sun. By that time we were holding each other tightly and I wept into his shoulder while Lou burrowed against me making low murmuring noises that were not words, but feelings. There was a faint metallic smell to him, like old batteries, and when we parted, sitting opposite of each other, we simply stared while the wheel climbed. Finally I said, “You’re alive,” and he nodded, and I asked, “Are they?”
Lou paused, then said, “Barely.”
“Lou. . where did you all go?”
“I don’t know. We were taken.”
“By who? The government?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know for sure. But I have to go back.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t lose you again.”
“I don’t have a choice. Right now, they don’t know I’m gone. But if I’m not where I’m supposed to be in an hour, they’ll probably kill Mom,” he said absently, looking down at the ground, and I saw deep red burn marks on the side of his skull.
“Lou,” I whispered, leaning forward and gently inspecting his head.
“They attach wires. I know they do it to Dad, too, or did, every day. I heard him screaming when they turned on the computer.” He turned to me, and in a quiet, blank tone he said, “They want something.”
“The notebook. Do you know about it, Lou?”
He nodded. “Our family, the Outfit, the notebook. It’s very valuable, you know. There’s something incredibly powerful in its pages, or so I’ve been told. .”
“They can have it,” I said. “I’ll give it to them now, today, if they’ll let you all go.”
He gazed down at the ground again. “They don’t want it.”
That stopped me. The notebook was a deadly burden but also my single strongest edge-my sole bargaining chip in a twisted reality where all lives had prices on them-and now it was worthless. “What do they want?” I asked.
Lou touched my forehead lightly. “What you have. What dad has.”
“Ghiaccio furioso,” I said slowly. “What you don’t have.”
“They don’t know that yet. That’s why I’ve been here, waiting for you every Sunday for a month. It became too dangerous. This was my last try.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either, exactly. I think they think ghiaccio furioso can control other things besides people. I saw the screen of the computer I was attached to. . it looked like something medical, like a diagram of a brain or something. I don’t know what they’ve gotten from Dad, but they’ve gotten nothing from me, and pretty soon they’re going to realize that they never will. And then they’ll want you.” My brother looked at me impassively and said, “Run, Sara Jane. Run far away from Chicago. Leave, and don’t look back.”
“Never.”
“They know you exist, of course, but it’s as if it hasn’t occurred to them that a girl can possess ghiaccio furioso,” he said, looking absently down at the ground far below. “They assumed it was me because I’m a boy and I have blue eyes. But they’ll figure it out soon enough and by then you have to be gone.”
“No,” I said. “I’ve still got the notebook. Whatever’s in there, I’ll find it and I’ll use it. I swear to God, Lou, I won’t stop until you’re free.”
“It’s not. . possible,” he said, his gaze widening.
“It is. It is possible,” I said. “You have to trust me.”
Lou pointed past me and shuddered. “Down there. Tell me it’s not real.”
A Ferris wheel is like a wagon wheel, its center held in place by spokes, and I turned and looked down at Poor Kevin inching up the one beneath our gondola. He climbed quickly, like a plaid, mad Spider-Man, and although
