Breaking Point

“Mom, that music’s contraband!”

She jumped on the bed, pulling me up, where we jumped and twisted and danced. It was like melting. I was an ice cube and she was the sun and I was powerless to stand against her.

“We used to do this when you were little, remember? I would hold your hands and spin you, and you’d giggle and shout ‘Faster!’”

The chill started in my bones and worked its way out to my skin, and soon I was shivering so hard I could barely stand. Maybe she wasn’t perfect, maybe things weren’t always easy, but she was my mom, and she was dead. Erased. As though she’d never existed. And nothing, nothing was left of her but an old magazine rolled up in my sweatshirt.

“Get me out of here,” I said quietly.

Chase gently pulled me back into the bedroom, gathering the bag of food beside the window.

“Stop!” I heard Beth yell.

In a snap I’d detached Chase’s grip and was running back toward the front of the house. One step into the entryway and I ran smack into Sean.

“Ember!” His breath hitched, but he recomposed quickly. “We’ve got a problem.”

Chase had succeeded in grabbing my arm and jerked me to his side. “What is it?”

“I told him not to come back here!” Beth said.

“You talked to a soldier you didn’t know?” I shrieked.

“I recognized his friend from your arrest,” she said indignantly. “I thought they were with you.”

And there, from the shadows, stepped Tucker Morris.

I couldn’t think of a word to say. Not one word.

“I’m sorry,” Tucker croaked. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Chase asked in a low, dangerous voice. His weapon was drawn, but Tucker didn’t seem to notice it. Distantly I registered the sound of Beth crying.

“We got hit.” Tucker’s voice was strained. “Cara and me. We got hit outside Greeneville on the way to see her cousin.” He scratched his neck nervously. “Before we left they said something about your house. That a driver came here. It was right before he kicked me out.” He pointed at Sean, then gulped down a deep breath. “And then… then everything fell apart. I went back to the printing plant, but everyone was gone. I thought maybe you’d try to come here. I didn’t know where else to go!”

I hadn’t even considered that my mother’s name had been spoken while Tucker and Cara were still in the building. But it had. I’d gotten lazy. I’d put Beth in even more danger.

My stomach turned to water. “Billy?” I asked. “Billy was gone?”

“They were all gone!” Tucker responded. “Lights off. Empty.”

“Oh no.” I reached for the wall for support.

“Where is Cara?” demanded Sean.

“She’s dead, man. She’s dead. They hit her.”

It took a second for Tucker’s words to sink in. Cara was dead. Billy was missing, probably captured. A silent scream filled my body.

“Turn around,” Chase said. Tucker complied. Chase patted down the back of his shirt and his pockets, but found no weapons. “Did you turn us in? Is that what you did?”

“No! I went with Cara. That’s all.” Tucker’s face twisted.

“Get out of this house!” I shouted suddenly.

“Keep it quiet!” warned Stephen in the background.

“You can’t be here! Have you brought soldiers here? Are they following you?”

“No!” Tucker shook his head. “No, I got rid of them in Tennessee. But I didn’t know where to go. I don’t know the other check station… things. I don’t know!”

His fingers twined before him, as if he were praying, and for the first time since I’d known him he looked genuinely panicked.

“How did you get here?” asked Chase. His pacing was getting faster. I began to feel my heart keep time with the cadence of his voice.

“A car… I took a car. Her cousin’s car.”

“Where is it now?”

“I parked it at a dump a few neighborhoods over. Hid it, you know? So no one would look twice. And then… then I started walking. I remembered this place from the overhaul but couldn’t get the street right. I didn’t know where else to go. Man, she’s dead.”

“Shut up,” said Chase coldly. “It’s not your first time.”

My spine zipped straight up my back.

“We have to leave,” I said. “Right now. Right this second. He can’t be in this house.”

“We’ll get the other car,” said Sean.

“No.” I wouldn’t leave here knowing that Tucker could come back for Beth.

“No,” Chase agreed. “He’s coming with us. He doesn’t leave my sight until we clear the area.”

Tucker nodded gratefully.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. I felt sick. First an apology and now a thank-you? It felt all wrong.

“Beth, get out of here,” I said. “Go home. Now.”

That was all there was. I pushed her out the back door and she ran, and I hoped she would never, never come back to this place. Stephen watched on blankly, but I had nothing to offer him.

“Good-bye,” I said quietly, watching the spot in the black hole of night where she’d vanished. I hadn’t even told her to her face. I wasn’t going to say how much I loved her and how the memories of her kept me sane. It was just the same as it had been with my mother, only now, I was the one disappearing.

Good-bye, I said. To the little girl with the crooked eyebrows who cut her hair with her mom’s scissors. To the smell of vanilla candles after curfew. To the drooping plants on the kitchen windowsill, the shared hairbrush on the bathroom sink, and all the goodnights before bed.

Good-bye, Mom.

We passed through Chase’s yard, running in silence on numb feet. My head felt muddled. Cloudy. A sense of disillusionment filled the night air. I knew without a doubt that I would never come home again.

It’s just a house, Chase had said. Just a house, not a home. Just a shell. A vessel. I wanted it buried, just like I wanted my mother’s body buried. So that it could rest. So that I didn’t have to wonder what happened to it after its life had passed. I wanted Beth to be safe and alive. For tonight she was, and I guessed that was all we could ask for.

I didn’t know why Tucker was here. I didn’t know how Cara had been killed, or why he’d driven all these miles to find us, of all people, for help. One second I wondered if he’d murdered her. The next I was sure he’d been telling the truth. Whatever the case, we had to get him out of town fast. He was a grenade. He was poison.

We got to the car and once inside, Chase started the engine. He made Tucker sit behind the partition, right behind me, so that he could always see Tucker in his peripheral vision.

We drove away from our houses, from the haunted apartments where we’d met, from the wall where I’d watched him run faster than Matt Epstein. Past Beth’s street. Past the turn to Western High. Onto the highway where the black night before us blended with the black asphalt in defiance of the cruiser’s high beams.

“Don’t stop,” I said.

Chase didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me.

* * *

TUCKER and Sean talked some. I tried my best to listen, but it was too muffled through the glass. I hated that he was right behind me. I felt like there was a loaded gun aimed at my back. I sat at an angle with my back to the window so I could see all of them. Tucker kept his eyes down.

The atmosphere grew increasingly tense. Chase was starting to worry me. The long hours without sleep were wearing on him, but it wasn’t just fatigue that tightened his jaw and the cords on his neck. He’d been deeply upset by Tucker’s presence in my home; I could feel his anger crackle between us. And we weren’t going anywhere that might offer comfort. Chicago had not been kind to him; its presence represented War, scavenging for food and shelter, and later, the FBR. It was not a place of happy memories.