Does Chrys even know what his gift is? Does everyone there know what everyone’s gift is, including Chrys’s?
Ron certainly hoped not. Chrys couldn’t even trust Ron to know what her gift is, so it’s unlikely she’d tell anyone else.
Ron has so many questions, so many things she wants to say to Chrys, but she decides not to answer the email. If Chrys isn’t coming, she’ll send an update. And if Chrys is coming, then she’d be on her way already.
Maybe she’s already almost here.
Ron closes the laptop and puts it back on the table. She wants to meet Chrys before Chrys finds Giselle. Hopefully, she’ll be walking into town the normal way, and not with some strange gift or something.
Stomach fluttering with excitement, Ron gets up and heads outside. As she goes down the stairs, she sees Carl walking down the path between those two houses to the store. He’s talking loudly on the phone and has the scanner gun clipped to the side of his belt.
“I don’t know what happened!” he shouts, raising his other arm in the air, exasperated. “But it still works. Nothing has changed.”
He tries to open the door of the store as Ron reaches the bottom of the stairs. It doesn’t open but he pulls the handle angrily a couple times.
“The store is closed today,” Ron says.
He turns to her and narrows his eyes. He pulls the phone away from his ear and presses it to his chest. “What would you know about that, huh?”
“Well, seeing that the door refuses to open, I’d say it’s just common sense, wouldn’t you? Besides, Giselle told me it probably won’t be open today. Maybe check back later.”
“Just mind your own business.” He turns away and brings the phone back to his ear. “I’m telling you, it’s ready and it works.” He starts to walk back in the direction of his cabin. “Of course I have proof. I mean—”
Ron watches as he leaves, trying to hear as much as she can of his conversation.
“No,” he continues, now past the two houses. “I mean, I haven’t seen it with my own eyes, but I’m pretty sure—” Another pause. When he starts talking again, Ron can barely hear him. “I’ll prove it to you. Just let me…”
She can hear that he’s still speaking but can’t make out the words anymore, so she heads to the entrance of town, where the highway turns off into Bluewater. Her mind is churning—thoughts of Chrys coming and Noah dying and Carl talking all flooding her mind.
It works. Nothing has changed.
He could have been talking about the scanner, or about whatever he made on that laptop. He could even be talking about something else. Who knows the number of things he has invented. But whatever it is, it seems like he’s going to get concrete proof of it to show someone. What kind of proof will he try to get?
Ron is near the entrance. She sits down on the sidewalk, in the shade of a tree, looking out at the entrance.
She waits.
Chapter 27
By the time Hunter and I make it to the entrance of the town, we’ve had four bottles of water and two sandwiches between us. The town looks sleepy and quiet. Even as we walked along the highway, only one or two cars drove by.
We turn into the town, walking on the sidewalk.
“Chrys!”
I look across the road. Ron is running toward me, arms out. She barrels into me and hugs me tightly, picking me up off the ground. I can’t even hug her back because she’s pinning my arms to my side.
When she finally puts me down, she says, “I got your email.”
“I take it this is your friend,” Hunter says beside me.
Ron turns her attention to him and looks him up and down with a face like she’s smelling something bad.
“Yeah,” I say to him. “This is my friend Ron. And Ron, this is Hunter. He’s in my cabin too.”
Ron’s eyes go wide. “This isn’t… you know, Giselle’s?”
“No, no. Giselle’s brother is a guy named Remington—”
“Remy,” Hunter cuts in.
I wave him away. “Whatever. Anyway, Hunter just tagged along because he wants some snacks or something.” Hunter raises a finger, about to say something, but I keep talking. “So it looks like you know who this Giselle person is? Can you tell me where she lives? I’ll just drop off the envelope.”
“Yeah, funny story,” Ron says. “I’ve been staying with Giselle, and her wife, Iris, this whole time.”
“Ron! Why are you—why would you—”
Ron spreads her arms out innocently. “They run the store in town. Things just happened that way because I went to the store when I first got here. But anyway, best to give Giselle the letter after you leave. Don’t wanna make her suspicious. How long’ll you be staying?”
I smile. Ron has this way of talking super properly when she’s around white people, and I can tell that she’s been talking properly for a while. Maybe I do it too—I don’t really know. But I feel so much more comfortable talking to her, less self-conscious, and I can tell she’s starting to shake off that properness as she talks to me.
“Just for a couple hours,” I say. “Gotta go back before sunset. I’m gonna try the last task tomorrow.”
“That’s great! But there’s not much to do in this town and I’m pretty sure the power is still out, so maybe Iris and Giselle won’t mind if I invite you back to their place.”
“The power is out?” Hunter asks.
We both turn to him, having forgotten he was still there.
Ron drops her smile as she looks at him and stands up a little straighter, the properness taking its hold once more. “Yeah, it went out suddenly this morning.”
“Why?” he asks.
She sighs. “Do I look like the electric company to you?” She turns back to me, relaxing a bit. “I’ve been sitting out here for a couple hours,
