Intrepid (32 page)

I thrummed my fingers on the table and tried to dissipate the nervous warble that wiggled through me. Impatience found me because, despite the fact that I didn’t know what to do next, I wanted to do more than sit on my toosh and wait. I wanted to act on what I’d learned.
 

When Ringo joined me in the kitchen, he slid next to me on the bench and put his arm around me. We sat in silence for a while, unsure of how to untangle everything. How was anyone supposed to begin a conversation like the one that needed to happen? It didn’t take long for my mouth to remember it had a mind of its own so that I started it incorrectly. “I hate you,” I whispered.
 

“No. You don’t.”
 

“I want to.”
 

“I want you to, too. It might make you feel better to put your Energy into a little bit of hate.”
 

I leaned into the crook between his arm and chest, and I nuzzled my head into the patch of body just above his armpit. He smelled the same, like pinecones drizzled in thunderstorms. It was the smell of home and normalcy, even if those things didn’t exist for me anymore.
 

“Where’d you go today?”
 

“I just wanted to try a Jump on my own. I’d read about the 620s on one of the forums, and I wanted to see if I could numb how I felt to the point of not feeling cold.” The lie came out and sounded so close to the truth that even I almost believed it. I’d never been good at lying before, but the surprise of it was welcome. Like Lindsay said, I needed to start holding onto a few secrets of my own.
 

It’d been so good to see her—to know that I would never meet a Lindsay on another world who didn’t know me. Despite all the secrecy she’d lived with, trusting her was as simple as blinking. Perhaps the blow of her particular betrayal was softened by the fact I’d already had to forgive so many others for it lately. With everything else, it made sense that Lindsay was in on it too, and it made sense that she meant well.
 

I had to start looking at people for their intentions rather than their actions, because I was learning that intent was anchored to belief, belief was anchored to faith, and faith was anchored to love. At the core, I had to start experiencing everyone within the gradations of love they existed in because it was the only way to forgive them for the rest of it. And I needed this act of forgiveness in the same way the moon needed the sun for illumination because in letting go of blame, there was a different kind of freedom—the freedom of acceptance.
 

Ringo reached down and held up my wrist. “How’d it come off?”

“How did what come off?”

“The tracker… how’d it come off?”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I lied. I shrugged and pulled my hand away.
 

He raised his eyebrows. “I’ll get you a new one tomorrow.”
 

I removed my head from his shoulder and sat up. Lindsay was right about this too—they had no right to track me like an animal. “No, you won’t. I’m not a heifer at the ranch that needs to be tagged. I’m a human being, and it’s time y’all started treating me like one.”
 

“It’s for your protection, Tex. What happens if you accidentally Jump and we can’t find you?”
 

“Then you teach me a protocol for how to rendezvous. Tell me coordinates that are safe to go to or a forum I can reach that is only connected to you, and if I make a mistake, I’ll know how to come back—”

“Texi—” he warned. It was the same warning he always used, but I felt the pangs of it in a different way. For the first time, he was wrong to use that tone with me.
 

“How can you expect me to trust you if you can’t even trust me? I’m tired of the lies.”
 

“There are things you don’t get yet.”
 

“Then help me get them! Stop telling me I won’t understand. I’ve done nothing but try since you left that stupid letter, and I think I’m handling things well, considering.”
 

Ringo scoffed. “You call today
well
?”

I felt trapped from where I sat, and I pulled one leg up so that I straddled the bench on my way out of the seat. But Ringo grabbed my hand to still me.
 

I glared at him and said, “I will make mistakes. I will not be perfect. But I will not be tracked.”
 

“Your mistakes will cost lives, like it almost cost Iago’s today. Trust me. Ever since you were a baby, I’ve done everything in my power to protect you, and I need you to trust in that.”
 

“But you set out to kill me before you tried to save me.” The truth of that statement flattened on my ears. It went so deep into hurting that it no longer felt painful.
 

Tears pooled in Ringo’s eyes, and I didn’t know how to take it. I’d never seen him cry before, not even that time I mistook his big-toe for a nail when we were building that tool shed behind our house. He took a deep breath and said, “I couldn’t do it and still call myself a human being after doing so. Instead, I transported you to Geronimo. Papa. He raised me, you know? He was the only one I could trust. The night I took you, before I moved into the correct Vein, I realized I’d been followed. Then I discovered the tracker on you. It was in the little medical bracelet wrapped around your tiny ankle. I cut it off, left it where we were, and transported you to Geronimo. I stole a truck and crashed it into a tree near you, because I knew the Sheriff’s department, and therefore Papa, would find you easier if there was something to draw their attention to you. Then I returned to find the medical bracelet with your tracker and Jumped over and over again to lose their trail. I Jumped into so many different universes before they finally caught up. They almost killed me trying to find out where I’d taken you, but luckily, I’d already Jumped through so many Veins that they couldn’t figure it out.”

My breath was shaky as it found its way in and out. This was how my life in Geronimo began. With everything else, this was not a story I thought to ask about.
 

Ringo pulled the rest of it off like a bandaid. “When I escaped, I was nearly irreparable. Never Jump when your wounds go that deep, because there’s a solid chance you won’t survive it in one piece. Had it not been for Papa and Sheriff Garza, I would have died. My body wasn’t healing fast enough to stop all the bleeding…”
 

I closed my eyes and thought of Iago and Liam. They’d Jumped with open wounds, but Liam healed quickly while Iago hadn’t. There was still a chance that Iago wouldn’t heal right, even though Ringo’d promised he was safe.
 

“I intended to leave you with Papa to raise you on Geronimo. I was going to go back and take the consequences for my actions. I was going to say that I realized my mistake, but when I got back to where I thought I left you, you were already gone. I was gonna work my way back into the Shadow Boxers—regain their trust—so I could protect you from the inside. But then I realized that wouldn’t work. There were spies everywhere, and to leave you would put you into more danger than to stay with you. Papa and I decided that the only way to protect you was to keep access to you and knowledge of you limited. So we enlisted Mr. and Mrs. Ortiz, commandeered Santiago, and created a little world on Geronimo for you. It was the best decision I’ve ever made—to stay with you.”
 

I felt the eye-roll begin, but I was able to catch it before it moved full circle. “But you didn’t stay with me. You left some cryptic letter and sent me off with two teenage boys.
Boys
, you hear me? They don’t know what they’re doing any more than I do, and you left them to explain everything.
You
should have been the one to tell me.”
 

Ringo got up from the bench and shook his head. “We all have our parts to play, and that was not my role. There are things I had to do on Gaia, things that are just as important as you are. Your entire life, I’ve been moving pieces around the political chess board for you, and now that the Change has happened there are still equal amounts of people who support you as those who don’t.”
 

I groaned. Again with the secrets. I realized I didn’t understand all the politics of things yet, but I didn’t accept the explanation he gave. It felt like a cop-out.
 

“But perhaps you’re right,” he said. “It was a mistake to leave the most important part up to the boys, and I promise things are about to change. I never make the same mistake twice.” He leaned down to kiss my forehead before walking towards the door. “We’ll talk more tomorrow, okay? It’s been a long day, and it might do you good to get some rest. You look like crap.”
 

“Don’t sugarcoat it or anything.” I felt the smile form on my lips. It was such a Ringo thing to say, but I knew now not to mistake brutal honesty for true honesty. He was still keeping things from me. “Love you more than crawfish heads,” I added.
 

He laughed the laugh I’d been craving—the one that was gargoyle infested in that guttural, rain-gutter sort of way. “Love you more than toe fungus.”
 

There was comfort in the fact that love never changed, but even though I loved my faux-father, it didn’t mean I could trust him—nor did it mean I could stay with him.
 

Ringo paused at the door and the smile fell off his face. “The tracker is non-negotiable. You’ll have a new one by morning.”
 

I watched him disappear through the door and stood up to head to my own room. He was right… the tracker was non-negotiable because I wouldn’t be there in the morning to negotiate the terms surrounding it.
 

Liam
 

‘On Finding Answers’—
The Manifesto

Answers are an elusive lot. They are but fireflies off in the distance, flickering to remind you they exist, but disappearing before you get a proper look. You will not catch them by sitting still.

No.
 

You must find a jar with a proper lid, chase down each fidgeting bulb, and clamp the lid down tight once you catch one. Only then can you examine it, study it, and pick it apart for meaning.
 

But beware… a closed lid robs the jar of oxygen and extinguishes the light you’ve caught. In the darkness you hold in your hands, your once-bright victory is stolen, and your eyes will be directed back out into the horizon where it will witness the millions of answers still yet to catch.
 

—S1,V1
 

Chapter Forty
 

I propped my head up with laced palms under my skull, and I watched the stars shoot along the sky. Here and there clouds made dark holes as they moved along with the wind, but not even counting the stars cleared my head like it usually did. I couldn’t stop thinking about Texi.
 

Who did she meet in the 620s, and what did she know about me that I didn’t? My entire life, I thought I knew things about her that she was still in the dark about. Now, the tables were turned, and I didn’t know how to feel about it. Then there was the fact that Ringo was here. Something big must be going on for him to break protocol.
 

There were entire constellations of confusions drawing haphazard pictures across my thoughts. The dots kept connecting so that I understood absolutely nothing. What was it she wanted to talk about when she got back? I should have let her say it, but after trying to kiss her, I was too terrified to stay in the galley with her. I couldn’t figure out what had come over me. Her eyes were swirling in blue-hued purples when my fingers tangled in her hair. I wanted to pull her into a kiss, and I almost did. My face was centimeters from hers, drinking in all the Energy that was raging in her eyes, but her voice came between us like a cement blockade.
 

Kissing her could be dangerous.
 

Dangerous.
 

What a stupid word. Wasn’t danger relative? Wasn’t everything?
 

When she knelt down to examine my gashes, and I recognized every curl that fell out of her ponytail and every wrinkle that grazed the skin around her eyes. I knew everything about her, except for where she’d gone. Her return should have been infuriating, and the fact that she left should have sent me into a rage. But she was back and safe, and that fact did things to my lungs that it shouldn’t have. The way they constricted forced a sob from my throat, and when I reached out to touch her, I was more confused than ever.
 

I didn’t tell Ringo everything. For the first time, I kept intel to myself, and I didn’t know why. I should have told him that she wasn’t the dangerous one… I was. I didn’t tell him about the otter-shark or the mammoth-bears, and I didn’t tell him that I suspected I wasn’t a normal, average Saltador. Did he even know there was something different about me? He had to know!
 

I asked Texi what I was, but I had a feeling she didn’t completely know herself. I couldn’t Splice. I knew that within my gut. But I could do something bigger and more chaotic.
 

I stared at the dark spots of clouds in the sky, unable to see the bigger pictures within the stars. The horizon was as cloudy as my objectivity. I knew what objectivity
should
look like in this situation, but I couldn’t bring myself to see things as they should be seen. All my life, I’d catalogued hers under the heading “Subject.” I wrote down every detail I noticed as scientific data points, and I analyzed evidence that made me believe her mutation would catch.

With distance, I was able to take everything into consideration. With her here, she was all I could see. She was on the other side of this universal mirror that made me question everything I used to think was true. How was I supposed to know that in examining her life, I was examining mine, and how could I have understood that in anticipating her survival, I was anticipating my own?