While Em and May climbed in, I glanced Lou’s way. He was holding his own against two opponents, the three of them together performing an elaborate dance of punches and kicks.
The tires lost traction—but only for a moment—as I backed away from the tree. I threw it in drive, rolled up to the melee, and managed to clip Warren’s hip with the front bumper, sending him to the ground hard. Lou used the opening to kick Caroline in the chest before diving into the bed of the truck. As I sped off, he yelled through the back window, “The gate is blocked! Take a right!”
I turned down the single-lane gravel road that had no outlet and drove as fast as I dared around the blind turns. Lou knocked on the back window, May opened it, and he slithered through the small opening with a diverse array of grunts.
“What now?” I said.
“There’s a way out ahead,” he said between loud gulps of air. “Keep driving.”
We were all soaked, and I had to turn up the defrost to keep the windshield from fogging. Trees and underbrush lined the road. We passed the occasional driveway to other multi-acre plots. Though we were close to the ocean on this hill, snow had fallen once already, and patches of it remained in the shadows that went untouched by the low winter sun.
A mile or so down the road, Lou told me to slow down and turn into a small opening in the trees and underbrush. I yanked the wheel. Branches cracked and scraped against the truck as we bounced along what may have once been a road but was no longer. I had to keep a firm grip on the wheel. After twenty yards, we came to a small grassy meadow. Despite the four-wheel-drive, the truck spun out a few times in the sod before we reached a muddy driveway on the other side, which led to a paved street I recognized. We were on the south end of McKinleyville, by the reservation near Dow’s Prairie. I’d lived in McKinleyville my whole life, but I’d never known there was this back way into Fieldbrook.
No one was on our tail. We’d escaped again. But any relief I felt was tempered with the knowledge that the Friends would just keep coming. Relentless. They would find me and my family wherever we went. I had to end this somehow.
“What do we do now?” I said.
“We go ahead with the plan,” Lou said. “We get your girl out of Arampom, then . . . I don’t know. I got some buddies back east I could call. I’m all wrapped up in this thing now too, so . . . I’ll take care of it. These guys don’t fool around. The hicks out here won’t know what hit ’em. Trust me.”
Lou had us drop him off in Arcata, the small college town a few miles south, so he could check on his son, make sure the Friends hadn’t found his new apartment. He didn’t want our help. “This is family stuff,” he said.
“So you’re just leaving us?” I said.
“You’ll be fine. Act like you been here before. Get some dry clothes and meet me at the mall in an hour. We’ll go to Arampom from there.”
He and my sister hugged before he walked off through the rain.
While driving to the nearest store to buy some dry clothes for all of us, my mom called.
Chapter 16
WHEN MAY HAD TURNED eighteen, she’d filled out all the paperwork and jumped through all the hoops to become my legal guardian and free me from foster care. I remembered the day she’d picked me up, how happy I’d been. She was pregnant with Em and showing. The father was absent at the time, but he’d come back. I was just becoming a teenager, and she was trying to grow out of being one. We fought plenty, but we always made up, and she never gave up on me. I did well in school and stayed away from drugs, but I was a needy kid, and May worked, took classes at the community college, had to take care of a baby, and sometimes the father of that baby.
I’d been selfish and resentful sometimes.
When May had earned her associate’s degree, she’d made a reservation at her favorite restaurant. Em’s father didn’t show up, and neither did I. I went to see a girl. And May celebrated her special day with two-year-old Em.
I cringed inside whenever I conjured the memory. I wasn’t there for her then, but I was going to be there for her now.
“What can’t wait?” May said after I got off the phone with Mom.
I’d pulled over sometime during the conversation. The sky was loosing hail, and the countless tiny impacts made a kind of loud static in my ears. “That was Mom,” I said, raising my voice over the ice rocks banging against the metal roof. “The Friends went after Lonnie, that guy I told you about. Mom helped him escape, but he’s leaving the area tonight, so we have to cure Em now.”
That meant we’d miss Kaliah’s window for escape that Lou had worked to create. But if I didn’t take this opportunity now, Em could have Ghost Heart for the rest of her life.
May shook her head, looked out the window, and sighed. “I don’t know this Lonnie guy and I’m supposed to trust him with my daughter? This isn’t right. I don’t like this.”
“Mom trusts him.”
“Mom’s an addict, Charlie.”
“Who’s Lonnie?” Em said.
“He’s someone who’s going to help cure you so you don’t have to take that terrible medicine anymore,” I said.
“I don’t mind,” Em said.
“I know, but we may not always be able to get that medicine.” Then to May, I said, “You didn’t see Mom this
