Away From the Sun (17 page)

I let out a deep breath and nod. “It’s not like yours, though.”

Her eyes light up and she waits for me to continue.
 

“It sounds weird, but I can hear things. Better than anyone. If I wanted to, I could concentrate and try to locate anyone in this settlement by the sound of a voice. If you and Ethan were having a conversation on the other side of Elkhorn, if I knew where to listen, I could hear every word.”

“Wow,” she says. “That’s amazing.”

I can’t help but grin. “I know,” I say. “It’s been pretty useful. In fact, I actually heard the raider guy you call Scarecrow and Paxton talking about you. I heard their plans. They never mentioned you by name, so I didn’t know they were talking about you. It’s crazy to think about it now.”

“I can’t believe you were in Crestwood at the same time as us,” Waverly says.
 

I nod. “Locked away, waiting to be delivered to the world of the undead.”

“And you found your way here,” she shakes her head.
 

“Kind of by accident,” I say, “kind of not.”
 

“Yeah, you told me about Evie,” she says. “Are you still thinking about telling Paxton?”

“The longer I’m here, the more I want to go back to Crestwood, even though it’s run by Shadowface. It’s nicer there. People seem happier. Or ignorant, but does it matter which?”

“You could never go back there, knowing what you know now,” Waverly says.
 

“All I know is that Shadowface is a supplier and a group of crazies want to kill him.
Or her.
”

“Her?”

I nod. “Stephen and I were questioned by a man named Samuel in Marion. But with my…you know…” I tap my right ear, “I could hear a woman talking to him, telling him what to do before the meeting. Then, Jeremiah and his groupies attacked and the woman came into the room. Honestly, Waverly, I think
she
is Shadowface.”

“Interesting,” Waverly says, staring blankly at the floor.
 

“Here’s something else that’s crazy,” I tell her. “I’ve seen the woman before.”

“What?”

“Here in Elkhorn about three years ago.” I tell her my story of hiding away from the masses of people that were fleeing the university who all but magnetized the greyskins to them. I tell her about the dead bodies on the ground. I tell her about hiding in the closet for two days. Then there was the man and the woman. The woman seemed powerful. Rich. It even sounded like she had something to do with the outbreak.
 

“But what was I supposed to do with that information?” I ask. “All I cared about was staying alive and finding you.”

“I tried to call you,” Waverly says.
 

I shake my head. “I tried too, but by the time I got to a phone, no calls were getting through. I lost the ability to contact anybody.”

“The world crumbled quickly,” Waverly says.
 

“Yes it did.”

There is another long minute between us, but this time it doesn’t feel awkward. It feels like an appropriate time to reflect, even if I don’t want to. Finally, Waverly breaks the silence with a question.

“Can I hug you?” The tears well up in her eyes again, and it’s too hard to hold back my own.
 

“Won’t you see my future?”

“It’s a way for me to look out for you,” she says as a tear falls to her shirt.
 

I nod at her and smile. She wraps her arms around my waist, and the feeling is something I haven’t felt in a long, long time.
 

I feel love.
 

The white light blinds me for just a second. Now I’m looking in through a tiny window of the future, only this time it is Remi’s.

There are five people standing together. The sky is a mix of orange and purple hues as the clouds shadow the setting sun. I recognize all of them but one person. There is Remi, Gabe, Evie, and myself. The stranger is a woman that I have never seen. She is walking to the group of us from an SUV in the distance. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like there are others in the vehicle waiting.
 

Gabe rubs Remi’s back as she holds Evie tightly. Remi has tears in her eyes as she looks to Waverly. “Is this it? Is this what you saw?” Remi asks.
 

Waverly nods at her. “It’s the only way,” she says. “This isn’t a future that we should try to change. Evie has an important job to do.”

Remi wipes away the tears from her cheeks with her left hand. In her right arm, Evie stares at her.

“Why are you crying?” Evie asks.
 

“Because we have to go away,” Remi says.
 

“No!” Evie cries out.
 

“Oh, kid,” Remi says as she pulls Evie in to hug her tightly.
 

The woman approaches us, respectfully keeping her distance as Remi says goodbye to the little one. Waverly watches the two of them, a look of sadness, mixed with determination in her eyes.
 

Remi holds on to the child for a long time, almost as if she is refusing to let her go. Eventually, she turns to the other woman. “Swear to me that you will do everything you can to give her a good life.”

The woman steps a little closer and wraps both of her hands around one of Remi’s. “She will be protected, and I will raise her as my own. As long as I am alive, Evie will be cared for, and will know only love.”

Remi swallows hard and gives the child another tight squeeze. “You’re going with Jenna now, okay? You’re going to have a great time. Can you be a strong girl for me?”

Evie looks at Remi and nods. “I can be strong,” she says.
 

“Good,” Remi says.
 

“Strong!” Evie says with a smile.
 

It’s difficult for Waverly to watch this unfold. She turns from them, and walks a few paces away. There are no tears in her eyes. Her jaw is set firmly as though she knows what she has to do next.

Waverly doesn’t turn her head to watch as Jenna takes Evie into her arms. No more words are exchanged, and Jenna walks with Evie toward the SUV as Gabe and Remi watch them. There is nothing but silence until the final car door closes, and Evie leaves them.
 

Remi buries her head into Gabe’s chest as he rubs her back gently. He whispers comforting words to her until she finally composes herself. Finally, when Waverly knows that the time is right, she turns to face Gabe and Remi.
 

“It’s time,” Waverly says.
 

White light.
 

I’m still holding my sister. The visions happen so quickly, I’m not sure Remi will be able to comprehend that I saw so much in such a short amount of time. I keep holding on to her tightly to give myself time to process the information. But what information do I have? The vision means very little to me. Who was Jenna? Why did Remi seem so attached to Evie? Why were we giving her away? Hope for the future? Where was Ethan? I feel sick that I didn’t see Ethan with us. Does that mean that I wasn’t able to save him? There are too many questions. The more that float through my mind, the more I feel that I
can’t
tell Remi about this. Wouldn’t telling her all that I saw just make it more confusing? But she’s going to ask me, so I have to come up with something.
 

We finally pull away from each other. She looks at my face and smiles at me, but my mind is so preoccupied that I’m not sure if I return it or not.
 

“Uh oh,” Remi says. “You saw something bad, didn’t you?”

“No,” I say immediately. “Just…different.”

“What do you mean
different
?”
 

“It was a simple vision, really,” I say. And this is where I decide to lie. “I’m just trying to figure out what it means and what it has to do with me.”

“Okay…”

“I saw you walking through a grassy field,” I explain. “You find this shiny rock in the middle of the field. You stand there and you stare at it for almost a minute. You think about picking it up, but you decide not to. Instead, you just keep walking and that’s it.”

“Are you being serious?” she asks. “That’s it?”

“Weird, I know.”

“That’s lame,” she says. “So, was the grass really green? Because that would mean that I’m going to be alive until spring or summer, so that’s good news to me.”

“It was,” I say.

“Interesting,” she says. “Except, I don’t like that I was alone.”

“I wouldn’t look into it very much,” I say. “It could mean anything. Maybe you’re in a place where you can be alone and not have to worry.”

“Was I carrying a gun?”

I take a deep breath, really starting to feel uncomfortable with all this. “Nope. Nothing. But you seemed happy.”

Remi nods to herself as she bites her lower lip. “I wonder what it means.”

“Like I said, sometimes it doesn’t mean anything.”

“But what you just told me has nothing to do with you.”

“Maybe it does. Maybe I was the one that left the rock there for some reason.” My explanations sound about as dumb as my made up vision. A pang of guilt takes hold of me, but I try not to let it show on my face.

“Well, whatever happens,” Remi says, “hopefully I’m walking to meet you somewhere.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”

I get out of there as quickly as I can. I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t hold it together if I’m lying to her about the vision. And what was that story I came up with? A rock in the middle of the field? How dumb was that?

But the actual vision made less sense to me. That’s what I hate about my Starborn power. It constantly presents me with a new puzzle to solve. Up until now, it has mostly involved life or death, but this one was so different.
 

I find myself sitting with Ethan at a table in the makeshift dining area. We are alone and I sit in front of the notepad, tapping my pencil against the paper. Finally, I toss it down.
 

“I’m not writing this one,” I say.
 

“It wasn’t that bad,” he says. “Just weird.”

“But it has nothing to do with Shadowface,” I say. “At least, not directly. There’s no point in writing it down.”

He holds his hands in the air. “Do what you want,” he says. “I just think it would be a good idea to write everything you see.”

I look down at the notepad, having only written about Stephen and I take a deep breath. I turn to Remi’s page and write every detail that I can. It only takes me a few minutes, and when I’m finished, I feel no better about it. But I’ve still got others to look into. There are more futures that might help me figure this one out, too.
 

“I can get everyone today if I have to.”

“Then do it,” Ethan says.

The time to act is now. I don’t wait for Ethan to help me come up with a plan. I don’t care about seeming strange or unpredictable. There are lives at stake here. If I don’t figure out this puzzle, there is no telling what will happen.
 

The first people I come across are Lydia and Evie. They are playing together in the main parking lot outside. This target will be easy. All I have to do is pretend that I want to play with Evie. A touch here, a touch there, and I’m done. No one will be the wiser.
 

I smile and wave at Lydia when I come out, and she stiffens at my approach. The cold wind hits me and I’m forced to pull my thin jacket tight.
 

“Hi,” I say. “I’ve seen you two before, but I’ve never gotten a chance to talk to you. I’m Waverly.” I extend a hand to shake Lydia’s but she only stares at me.
 

“I know who you are,” she says. She looks at the little girl. “Put your coat back on, Evie.”

Evie does as she is told, but not without flashing me a devious grin, her blue eyes almost sparkling in the sunlight.
 

“You’re Remi’s sister,” Lydia continues, “the one that wants to take Evie away.”

“It’s been decided that no one will take her away,” I say. “Right?”

“Still,” Lydia says with a snarl. “I don’t like any of you here. It’s bad news. We were doing just fine before all of you showed up. Now we’re paranoid that we’re on the brink of war. As if hordes of greyskins aren’t enough to worry about.” She wipes her nose with her sleeve and looks away from me.
 

“I wish we didn’t have to worry about all this crap either,” I say. “It doesn’t make sense to me why there are such evil people out there. It doesn’t make sense that we have to live the way we do. But we’re all just trying to survive.”
 

I take a deep breath. I think about just lunging for her hand so I can get this vision over with, but that would make things worse.

“I’m here to help in any way I can,” I say. “And my sister has no desire to take Evie from you.”

“Pssht…” Lydia snarls again. “If they thought it would do them all good, they would take Evie away from me in a heartbeat.” Her eyes finally meet mine. “I’ve raised this little girl. I’ve been with her from the day she was born. I saw her mother die.” She shakes her head and her eyes fall to the ground, lost in a place that only nightmarish memories can take her. “Then I saw her mother wake up. I guess she was one of the first greyskins.” She looks up at Evie who is throwing pebbles as far as she can. “I can never tell her the things I saw.”

I take a step toward Lydia. “Nor should you. You are her guardian. You should never have to feel like you need to protect her from the people closest to you. Please know that my sister was only talking about mentioning Evie to Paxton, not giving her to him.”

“What do you think would happen if she told him?” Lydia says. “He would come after her.”

“But she’s not going to tell him,” I say. “It’s been decided. We’re all here to help. We need to work together.”
 

I reach out my hand again. I mean everything I say, and my offer of friendship comes with a handshake. Lydia looks up at Evie and down at my hand again. “As long as I’m here,” I say, “I won’t let anyone get to Evie. You have my word.”