Peter radiated the power that he’d gained. And he was right: Part of that power was earned trading against April. Bringing her down is what brought him up, and now he was capitalizing on that clout and April was dead. In that moment I felt the kind of rage where you really aren’t in control anymore, when your animal instincts tie together with your human emotions and words become wild and uncontrollable weapons. Looking back, the thing that made me most angry was how human he was starting to seem, and how important his work actually was. I almost got myself in trouble, but I kept hanging on to his words and keeping quiet. He had said that I was a security risk, and I was. I also needed to maintain my ability to be a security risk to Altus, and I already had an idea for how I was going to get it done.
“Maybe I do hate you,” I said with real malice in my voice, “but I’d rather work on something great with someone I hate than work on something tiny with people I love.”
That was a lie, but it was the kind of lie Peter Petrawicki might believe.
MAYA
We have to go now.” April’s voice tumbled out as she started covering the twenty or thirty feet between us.
“April?!” I shouted.
“Now!”
I turned and got into the truck, immediately hitting the button to make sure the passenger side was unlocked. Then I looked over to see if she was coming, but she was gone. My heart nearly leapt out of my chest when the passenger door was flung open. How had she gotten to the truck that fast?
“Drive,” she said blandly.
I was trying to split the difference between speed and safety, and that required me to pay 100 percent attention to the driving and not to April, the real living person who was sitting next to me in the truck, not dead.
“What’s going . . .” But before I could finish my question, the stereo blared on.
La la la la lala la la
It was Britney.
“Just drive,” April said. I looked over, and she was cradling her face in her hands.
La la la la lala la la
The song gushed through the cab of the truck, rhythms tumbling over themselves in that 2008 Britney way.
Love me, hate me
Say what you want about me
But all of the boys and all of the girls
Are begging to if you seek Amy
I didn’t know where I was going, so I headed toward my Airbnb. I knew how to get there and I figured, once we arrived, we’d have time to actually talk. This wasn’t safe. I was crying too much. Was it relief? Exhaustion? Love? I couldn’t tell. It wasn’t any particular emotion; it was all of them at once.
The song pulsed so loud, and I was blinking through angry tears. I wanted to stop the truck and hold her and have her sob into my arms while she explained what was going on, but she just kept her head down, her face in her hands, her hair spilling down, longer than it had been. She hadn’t noticed my hair, she’d barely even looked at me. Was I mad that she didn’t notice my hair? No, I was mad because this moment was supposed to be simple, and it was not.
I was on a back road, about a half mile from my Airbnb, when Britney was done having her weird wild way with the English language. I expected another song to come on the radio, but as the space between songs stretched out, I realized that it hadn’t been the radio that played . . . The song had just started when April got in the truck. The noise of the road was all that filled the cab now. And the tension and the fear.
“April, are you OK?” I asked.
Without looking up she said, “Yes, I just need you to keep driving.”
Her voice did what seeing her hadn’t. Her voice made it real. It was her. She was alive. Every nerve in my body became ultrasensitive; every tiny hair stood on end. I had found her. I was right! And I realized, briefly, that I didn’t know if I had ever really believed I would see her again. I really did believe she was alive—that was real—but I didn’t actually think I’d find her!
Through the tears that I didn’t have the will to stop, I said, “April, oh my god . . . where have you been?”
“In that abandoned bar . . .” She looked up, and my eyes couldn’t make sense of the left side of her face. “Apparently still in New Jersey.” She must have seen a street sign.
A laugh burbled out of me.
And then, lights behind me. Blue and red and white. Police.
How the fuck was I getting pulled over right now!? I mean, who knew, though. I’d been driving through tears and fear and worry.
“Keep driving,” April said.
“April, it’s the cops. You pull over for the cops.”
She repeated, more firmly, “Keep driving.”
“I can’t, April,” I said as I started to pull over.
She changed tactics, starting to beg. “Please. Please, Maya. Drive.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as I stopped the truck.
Maybe I should have kept driving—what the hell did I know about a situation as messed up as this?—but I have very specific police-interaction protocols. Keep hands visible, don’t move quickly, do exactly what they say.
A tall guy in uniform walked up. His partner had stayed behind in the car.
I rolled down my window as he approached and then put my hands back on the wheel.
“Ma’am, step out of the truck.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, even though this felt extremely wrong.
I opened the door and stepped outside.
“I’m going to put handcuffs on you now. Do you have anything sharp or dangerous in your pockets?”
This was all wrong. “No,” was all I said. He searched me, and then I put my hands behind my back, shaking.
That was when I
