Flying (22 page)

Someone pounds on the door.

I skitter faster and get to the spot where the walls meet. I move beyond that, trying not to sneeze from the dust and the ceiling particles that swirl around like dirty snow. Then I lose my balance. My foot shoots into a ceiling tile and breaks through. The rest of my body, unfortunately, follows. I scramble, trying to get a hold on something solid, but I'm not quick enough. I fall, belly first, but I tuck forward and turn. Bam. I hit the floor, feet first at least, in a good stuck landing, just like at the end of a particularly difficult tumbling run.

“Holy sugar diabetes!” a woman in a white apron swears. She drops the pitcher of pancake batter in her hand.

“Sorry. Sorry.” I try to actually use some observational skills. I'm in the kitchen. Things steam on massive metal grills. There are bowls and spatulas everywhere. A guy stares up at me, away from the steel counter where he is chopping onions with a massive knife. My heart beats so hard that I can feel the pulse of it even in my fingers. I manage to stand up straight. “Sorry.”

The woman bends, starting to wipe up the batter. “Holy Gobsmackers, what are you doing?”

I give her some paper towels, trying to fight the urge to just run away.

“My boyfriend … he's out there.” I force my voice to sound panicked. It is not a hard fake. “He's … he's really mad at me. He hit me this morning and he said he won't let me go back home and I … He scratched up my ankle.”

I pause.

The man with the onion stares at me, basically flabbergasted. That's a word my mom would use, but it's perfect: flabbergasted.

“Oh my glory.” The lady taps my wrist to make me stop wiping at the gooey batter. “We have to call the police.”

“No. We … His dad is a cop.” I am turning into such a good liar.

“That doesn't matter,” she says. The pancake batter oozes into a pumpkin shape.

The guy with the knife goes, “Oh, yeah, it does, man. Those cops protect their own.”

Nobody says anything. Something on the grill sizzles. The room smells of onion and grease and eggs. It's a comforting smell. I gently move my wrist out of her grip and stand up. “I am so sorry. I am really super sorry about the mess. I just, I just have to get out of here. Is there a back door or some window I can go through?”

The woman nods and stands up, too. The man gestures toward the back of the room. There is a tiny metal door squished next to the giant stainless steel refrigerators and some piled-up cardboard boxes. “Right through there. You want me to go out there and talk to him, honey? A guy who hits don't deserve a looker like you.”

“A guy who hits doesn't deserve anyone,” the woman says. She blows hair that has escaped out of her bandanna, trying to move it off of her face without actually touching it. “And no fighting, Billy. You're on probation.”

He brings the knife down, slicing the onion into two parts. “It'd be worth it.”

“No,” I say. “I'm good. Thank you, though.”

I start through the kitchen and almost get all the way to the door, rushing without rushing, if that makes sense, before I remember to say, “Thank you for being so nice. I am so exceptionally sorry I broke the ceiling.”

“No big,” Billy says. “Stuff happens.”

Yes, it does.

 

CHAPTER 15

A couple minutes later and I'm fast-walking down River Street, getting sicker and sicker to my stomach with every freaking step I take. Aliens. Mom is missing. Probably my dad is missing, too. Someone—some
thing
—was impersonating my best friend, or has brainwashed him, or whatever. And I have nowhere to go. I check my cell phone. Nothing. No signal.

The world is dreary, and suddenly way more dangerous than it seemed two days ago, when I was just trying to deal with crappy classes and a computer-science question that was totally beyond me because it was about binary and I missed school the day we originally did binary, which should be the easiest lesson of all. That doesn't matter now.

The guy on the roof said to trust Lyle and not China. Was that because they had already done something to him or with him? Was it all just a big trap, and was Pierce in on it? What the heck?

I wish there were still pay phones around. I could call Seppie, even though Lyle and I didn't want to put her in danger by involving her—if that was even Lyle. Wait. When did Lyle
stop
being normal? Did he eat pizza with me as normal Lyle? Did he run through the compound? Comfort me at Dad's apartment? Because I totally thought we had a moment there. Was that even him in the back of China's truck? I think … I think it was … Right? I try to remember when things started to seem off.

It doesn't matter. Or, it does, but I can't dwell on it. Right now I need to figure out a way to get help. Seppie will think I am completely whacked at first, but I'm sure she'll believe me eventually, and she'll have advice. She always has advice. So how to reach her? My cell is obviously being blocked. Probably traced, too. Okay … I need a stranger … a random, nice stranger who would loan someone covered in ceiling dust his or her phone.

Today in Nashua, New Hampshire, seems like the kind of day when families and single people sort of straggle about and do errands. They go see movies and buy groceries for the week. They do home-improvement projects and make trips to the hardware store. They go to dance lessons. These are the people I pass by as I trot away from the diner and deeper into this little city. Normally, I would trust any of them. Just locate a sweet-seeming mom type person and ask for help. But how do I know who is one of them?

People stare at me funny. A man in a yellow windbreaker lifts his chin at me like I will contaminate him somehow. These guys in skater clothes jostle each other with their elbows and whisper. Their eyes are right on me. I must look like a survivor of a zombie apocalypse.

I round the corner, shivering, and come out onto Main Street, and there he is, standing by the entrance to Apple Tree Books. His hair is all mussed from the wind and his cheeks are red. Lyle? Not Lyle? Crap. I pivot and run back the way I came, but he's seen me. His feet pound on the sidewalk behind me.

“Mana! Wait up!”

I do not wait. I rush forward, sprinting as fast as I can. My arms pump to get up speed. Lyle races after me, yelling, “China! I found her! I got her!”

Don't trust him.
The memory of the warning echoes in my head.

Don't trust who?

Lyle gets my arm, because he's always been a faster runner, the fastest runner ever. I whirl around, angry, scared. I pound my hands into his chest. “You are not Lyle.”

“What?”

“You are not Lyle,” I scream. “Get away! Get away from me!”

He wraps his arms around me, pushing me against him, for some reason. Maybe to keep me from hitting him, maybe to keep me from running away. His chest is hard against my face. His T-shirt smells a little sweaty but not like pine—more like mint. The zipper of his coat pokes at my ear.

People have stopped walking. A twentysomething woman in a camouflage coat has whipped out her cell, which I totally could have used three minutes ago. She's probably calling the police.

“Mana. Mana! She's—it's okay,” he says as I flail. “It's me. It's Lyle.”

Stopping the struggle because I'm not getting anywhere, I still myself and say softly, “How do I know?”

“What?” His voice is an exasperated confused question.

“How do I know? How do I know you're Lyle?” My heart pounds against my chest—a thousand beats a second, it feels like.

He loosens his hold a little bit so we can really examine each other. His eyebrows lift high. “Mana.
What
is
up
? You know I'm Lyle.”

I shake my head hard, over and over again, like I'm trying to get it off my body. Then I realize I'm doing it and how weird it must seem. “No, you're not. Lyle is a vegetarian. Lyle does not try to impress people with big words, because he is not pretentious like that, and Lyle knows that his mother is not mellow, and he doesn't get winded, and he smells good.”

“Of course I'm a vegetarian.”

Footsteps pound up behind Lyle. I peek. China's face is ruddy and worried. His eyes close a little as he glowers at me and demands, “What is going on?”

“She doesn't think I'm me, or … I'm not sure what it is,” Lyle says to him. “She ran from me.”

I struggle against him, try to force my way out of his arms.

“Let her go,” China commands him. “People are watching.”

At the same time that Lyle lets go, China opens his arms up like a man surrendering. His voice comes out solid and calm. “Can you tell me what happened?”

I back up a step, scrutinizing him for clues. “How do I know you're China?”

“You don't.” He says this like it is totally normal, all flat-toned and passive. I have no idea how Mom can stand to work with him—he's so blah and cocky all at once.

“Great,” I mutter. A siren starts up again. A bus rumbles down the street.

A woman yells, “Miss! You okay?”

I can't think of how to answer her, the nice woman who wants to help but can't. Nobody can. I'm alone.

“She's fine!” China uses his authoritative military voice. He walks toward the woman and flashes his wallet. There must be a badge in there. “She's a runaway. All fine now. No worries. Move on. Thank you for your concern.”

The woman and a couple other people stare at him, then nod and walk away slowly, checking over their shoulders as China returns to Lyle and me. A UPS truck rumbles by. Some cars slosh up the wet rainy-snow mixture on the road. It splats on the sidewalk.

“I can prove I'm Lyle,” Lyle says. His arms cross over his chest and he hops on the balls of his feet. Everything about him appears, quite frankly, adorable. But so did Not Lyle. And this could still be Not Lyle. But he's not winded, this one. Whichever one it is says, “I have no idea why I have to prove it, but I will.”

I nod. “Go ahead.”

“Okay…” He thinks for a second. “I love
Doctor Who
.”

“Anyone who has gone in your room knows that.”

“Okay…”

“We need to hurry up,” China says. He checks all the windows above us, then the alleys, just like a cop in a TV show would. “It's not safe out here.”

Lyle snaps at him. “I'm thinking! Shut up. Give me a second. Okay. Oh! I used to sleep with my sonic screwdriver, and one day you came up to me and asked if you could be my TARDIS.”

“What?” China snorts. “Who is that?”

“
Doctor Who
's time machine thing,” I tell him, but I am studying Lyle. “You remember that?”

He blushes. “I remember lots of stuff about you.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely.”

China grabs Lyle's arm and mine. “Great. Let's play violins and sing the love song later. I've got to get you two somewhere safe.” He points at me. “And
you
have to figure out where your mom would hide that chip.”

I lock my knees so he has to drag me along Amherst Road. “Nope. No way. I am not going with you. How do I even know you're good?”

“What?”

“I'm serious. How am I supposed to know if you really are my mom's partner? She never mentioned you.”

Lyle cocks his head. “Mana?”

I can feel the anger coming off of China. It is waves of heat and impatience. It is a clenched fist, a kicked-in door.

“What?” he manages to sputter.

“Mana,” Lyle starts. “He hid us from the Men in Black. He brought us to the headquarters and everything.”

“I know … but maybe those Men in Black aren't bad.” My voice falters. “Um … although one did actually shoot at me on the roof. Then he warned me about China. So shooting me would not be a nice-person thing to do, and he probably wouldn't just change his ways to be nice and warn me, so the warning was probably a deception to tell me not to trust China and to trust Lyle instead, because they had already made a duplicate you or brainwashed you, and um … okay…”

Crap.

Lyle swears and China whips around to take both my arms in his. “Are you managing?”

“Yes,” I say. “I think so. It's just…” I sigh. “Agh … This is so strange. My head hurts from thinking. It just hurts so much.”

Lyle moves China out of the way and pulls me into a Lyle hug, which is what Seppie and I always call them. It's like a bear hug but skinnier. “Okay, Mana. You're going through a lot, but think about it this way: Dakota Dunham was a total ass who shot acid at you, right?”

“Right.”

“So, you don't trust him. China captured him. That's a bonus point for China's trustworthiness. Right?”

I say it again. “Right.”

Lyle keeps on hugging me. “And then the Windigo thing in your house obviously wanted to kill us. Bad. China helped get us away.”

“Sort of after the fact.”

“True, but still,” Lyle says persuasively.

It makes sense. “But we never saw the Men in Black do anything.”

China grumbles like this is all getting on his nerves. “Your mother said you were smart.”

Lyle lets go of me. “She
is
smart.”

“Then why isn't she acting it?”

“Because it's a lot to handle!”

They square off. Lyle does a lot of finger-pointing and China's hands are loose and fluid, as if he's not really threatened at all, or is trying hard to seem superior and too macho for any of this. But that muscle twitching in his jaw is pretty revealing. I'm sure that he's at least a little pissed. Even though he isn't puny at all, Lyle is so much smaller than China in the muscle-mass department—runner body versus steroid body—but right now he gives the impression that he is just as dangerous and angry. He's angry for me.