Need (15 page)

I try to pull my hand away but he won’t let me. He pulls over and stops the car.

“No. Not happy. I’m honored that you told me, though.” His jaw is so straight and his eyes are so deep, like a tree where the bark is all textured.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I was so mad.”

“It’s okay.” His thumb drags across the skin of my hand, the one that’s not scraped up.

He unbuckles his seat belt and turns his body so he faces me, blocking out the entire window of the driver’s side door. God, he’s huge. He rests one arm on the steering wheel. The other lays across the back of the seats. His solid fingers thrum against the upholstery. I turn to face him.

“How’s your hand?” he asks, like everything is all normal.

“Fine.”

“And your head?”

“Fine,” I say. I want answers. “You’re changing the subject.”

He smiles. “I know. Most girls around here would take the opportunity to tell me all about their injury, then they’d tell me about their clothes and shopping, and the way their parents mistreat them.”

“I’m not most girls.”

“That’s true.”

“I’m not into pity parties.”

He raises his eyebrows and I turn my hand up so I can see my scrape from last night. It isn’t too bad at all, just a bunch of lines.

Nick grabs my wrist. I shiver. Nick gentles his hold.

“Do you know what these lines look like?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“The rune for protection,” he says, not touching the lines, but tracing the air above them.

“You know about runes?” I’m ridiculously shocked. He looks like all he knows about is working out and sports. But he does have Edward Abbey in his car. Who exactly is this guy?

“Do you?”

Sorrow hits me hard. I remember my mom trying to read my fortune, tossing the bone-colored rune stones on our coffee table, teasing me about all the boyfriends I would have someday. Then my dad trying to read the future of the world.

I swallow.

“My mom liked them. And my dad, my dad was really into them. My stepdad.”

“Betty’s son?”

“Yeah.”

I take my hand away and settle it into my lap. Then I realize he’s doing it again. “You’re still trying to distract me.”

He shrugs and doesn’t look contrite or anything.

“That’s not fair,” I say.

“You expect me to play fair?”

“Heroes are supposed to play fair.”

“Heroes?”

“Isn’t that what you’re trying to be? Mr. Rescue Man?”

I reach out to fidget with the dial that shifts the air into the cab of the
MINI
.I open and close the heating vents. I run a finger along the dust on the dashboard.

“Okay. Ask away,” Mr. Rescue Man finally says.

“Really?”

There are a million questions I could ask him. What happened to Devyn? Why is Maine so damn cold? How can we find Jay Dahlberg or the Beardsley boy? Why does he have such a hero complex?

But I don’t ask any of those. I ask the silliest question of all, the shallow question. It just comes off my tongue.

l am not proud of it.

My finger draws a line in the dashboard. It starts to curve like a heart. I stop it and then I just ask him my question.

“Do you like me? You know, [_like me _]like me?”

I cringe the moment I ask and cover my face with my hands. The smell of blood and trail dirt wafts into my nose. Something sinks inside me. What is it? Oh, I know, any dignity I could possibly have left.

“Can I take that back?” I ask softly from behind my hands.

Nick’s voice is low and warm “No.”

I peek between my fingers. “No, I can’t take it back or no, you don’t like me?”

His fingers wrap around my fingers and he pulls my hands from my face so he can look at me, I guess, or else so I can look at him.

“No, you can’t take it back. That’s your question,” he says in a voice so deep and warm and full of things that I can’t get mad anymore. This has to be what people mean when they say they “melted.” I feel all wiggly.

“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”

I swallow. His eyes are deep and brown and… How can a man’s eyes be so ridiculously beautiful and gorgeous, so full of things that I want to know?

“So, what’s your answer?” I whisper, afraid I might still screw it all up.

Those eyes of his widen a little bit.

I hold my breath.

“I like you, Zara,” he says.

I breathe out. Something like joy surges up inside me. I remember leaning against him on the couch. I remember the feel of his chest beneath my head. It had felt so good and safe. Had I really not been just hallucinating? Maybe my concussion hadn’t thrown me all out of whack? Maybe what I was hoping for was something that was actually possible?

The wind blows some old leaves across the driveway.

“You like me?” I repeat, because, well, I want to be really, really sure that I heard him right. This is not the sort of tiling you want to get wrong.

He nods and says, “Very much.”

“You like me
very much?”

He lets go of my hands and touches my check. “Too much.”

“Too much?” Trying to keep my voice calm, I say, “No such tiling.”

“If you only knew…”

“Tell me then.”

He leans closer. One inch, another, oh God, oh okay. Yep. I think he’s going to kiss me. Okay. Okay. Another inch. Obviously not a pixie, right?

And then he jolts up straight, rigid, like he’s been shocked. His eyes glaze over. I swear his nostrils flare, like he’s repulsed by the smell of my hair or something, and then his words rush out, “Get in the house now. I have to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

What? What had just happened? Wasn’t he going to kiss me? Had I imagined that? My heart thuds and falls silent. I am not sure if it is beating at all. It’s a great big hole there. He doesn’t like me at all… does he?

I want to clutch at his arm, to make him stay, but I don’t. I won’t. I am not that pathetic. “Where are you going?”

“The woods. I’ll be right back.”

He leaps out of the
MINI
and rushes off toward the forest, not even shutting the door. I bound out after him, shutting my door and running to his side of the car.

“Nick? What is it?”

He tosses the words over his shoulder but doesn’t slow his pace. God, he’s fast, faster than at crosscountry or in gym, almost superhuman fast. I think he’s even faster than Ian. “Go in the house. Don’t let anyone in except me and Betty. I’ll be right back.”

Everything inside of me just crashes, all my internal organs fall, but it’s not the hollowed-out pain that I’m used to these last few months. No. It’s the same kind of pain that I felt right when my dad died: sharp, piercing, all over.

“I’ll be back,” he yells and then he is gone, rushing into the trees, swallowed up by the density of the forest, by the darkness.

I shut his door and shiver. The sun has started to set.

“Go in the house, Zara!” he yells one more time. I can’t see him, but his voice comes to me, faint and far away. “Go in the house.”

So I do.

I know I should try to spend the next hour inside Betty’s house doing chores and not worring about things, but it doesn’t work out. Dread makes its home in my sternum. Just kind of nestles there. What if Nick goes missing, like Jay Dahlberg or the Beardsley boy?

Why hadn’t I asked about this?

It is all too horrible to think about.

I put some mashed potatoes in the oven to warm and start on a letter about Vadivel and Valarmathi Jasikaran in Sri Lanka. They have been in jail a long time and not been charged. Valar-mathi had surgery before she was arrested. She could be dying. They are trapped there, uncharged, in jail, probably tortured and alone.

I simmer and start to write. My fingers clutch the pen so tightly that the wound on my hand throbs, but I don’t care. It’s nothing compared to what the Jasikarans are going through, what Jay Dahlberg might be going through. What Nick might be…No. He’s fine.

I still don’t know how people could do this to each other. How can we survive knowing that we do these things? How can we not help?

Nick is out there in the woods alone.

And I am in here doing what? Writing a letter.

I need a plan.

Okay. If these things are really pixies there’s got to be a way to fight them, right?

I log on. It takes forever because Betty has dial-up. I swear to God. But finally I get on and I type in “fight pixies” in the search engine. All the gaming sites come up. It’s not until page eight that I find something that looks legit.

I scroll past the explanation that pixies are not Tinker Bell, but dangerous, very dangerous, and do not attempt to contact them on your own. I snort. Then I find what I’m looking for:

The only thing that can defeat pixies is iron. Iron can be found in steel. It is essential for the composition of railroad ties, skyscrapers, and cars. Pixies will avoid iron at all costs.

So that’s probably why they’re here. Most of the houses are made of wood, framed with two-by-fours, not steel. There are no skyscrapers anywhere, just trees. There aren’t even that many cars because there are hardly any people.

I can’t wait to tell Nick, but first I have to find him.

Okay. Iron is the basic component of steel.

My eyes scan the room and latch on to the woodstove, made of cast iron. It’s not like I can haul that around. But I can take the fireplace poker thing that we use to turn the logs.

Trying to be quick, I call the ambulance house and ask for Betty, but she is out on a run in Trenton, where a logging truck has smashed into a minivan.

“She’ll be tied up some good for a long time,” Josie tells me.

“Okay. Just ask her to call me. It’s Zara.”

” ‘Course it is, dear. I’ll give her the message.”

So that leaves me home, alone, with all my million questions and absolutely zero answers.

I walk outside again and stand on the porch, listening. No birds sing or even twitter. The wind howls and rustles through the tree branches. A pine cone drops onto our roof and rolls down by my feet, making me jump. My hand clutches the poker.

“Wimp,” I mutter.

I march over to Nick’s
MINI
and put my injured hand on his door handle, pulling it open. It smells so much like him. I touch the steering wheel with my fingers. Something inside me shudders again, and not in a good way. I don’t want him to be in danger. I pull my hand away from the steering wheel. It stings. The lines do make the rune for protection. How weird. I turn around in a circle so I can see all around me. A prickly feeling creeps through my hand and up my arm, marching toward my heart.

“Nick?” I whisper.

I push the hair out of my face. The wind whips it back. I grab an elastic band off my wrist and yank my hair back into a ponytail. The sun has almost set behind the trees. It casts an orange glow, a last stand against the night.

“Nick?” I say louder.

No answer.

I try it even louder.

“Mick? You out there?”

That’s when I hear it, the angry howl of some kind of dog. I freeze.

And then I hear something even worse. From the edge of the forest comes a hoarse whisper that is not Nick’s voice, but I recognize it. I heard it last night when I went running.

“Zara,” it says. “Come to me.”

I take a step toward the voice, just one step. “Nick?”

“Zara…”

I stop and look around. The clouds darken with the setting sun, turning into something somber and full of potential dangers. The trees lean with the wind, the younger ones almost bending. I wrap my arms around my own trunk, trying to make the spidery feeling go away.

“Zara…”

“Nick, is that you?”

No answer.

“Who are you?” I yell.

“Come to me.”

“Tell me who you are!”

“Zara…”

I stomp my foot down. “Look. This is crazy. Tell me who you are and I’ll come, okay? But I’ve got to tell you that if you’ve hurt Nick-or if you are Nick gone psycho-I am not going to be happy.”

My words dangle like a warning in the cold air. My insides warm up like I am on fire. Anger will do that to you.

“Zara…”

“Enough with calling my name!” I scream, raging now. “It’s ridiculous.”

I storm into the woods then, not thinking about it, just powered by rage, ready to beat someone up, even though I’ve never beat anyone up before. Friedrich Nietzsche says, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.”

I race maybe fifty feet into the trees and then I stop, feet skidding on the hard surface. I am doing exactly what everyone has been telling me not to do, what I’m not supposed to do, exactly what I had promised Nick that I wouldn’t do. I almost scream.

I am so angry at myself, angry at the voice, angry at Nick. My hand clutches the poker.

The voice whispers out from behind me. “Almost there, Zara.

Don’t stop now.”

I whirl around. I can’t see anyone standing among the trunks.

“Where are you?” I demand.

No answer.

“Who are you?”

“You know.” The voice comes from my right this time. I pivot. It doesn’t sound like Nick. The voice is older, slicker.

“How do you know my name?” I ask, listening hard.

“I’ve always known your name, princess.”

Zara means princess. Right. I don’t care what my name means. I rush toward where I think the voice is coming from, flying over stones and pinecones and tree roots.

“Where are you?”

Nothing breaks the endless tree trunks, no swath of cloth, no eyes, no hair. Trees are all I see. Trees.

Trees. Trees. I pivot, looking for the house, which should be to my right, but it’s not there. Just trees. Damn, it’s dark in the woods.

Fear grips my stomach, only this time it isn’t just fear for Nick. It’s fear for me, too. I can’t be lost I can’t be lost that quickly.

“Where are you?”

“This way.” The voice comes from my left this time. I bomb after it, darting through the trees, going farther and farther into the increasing darkness. It is almost night.