Push (3 page)

“No.” He looks at me, then back at the road, his knuckles white where he grips the wheel.

Disappointment and worry sit in my chest like an unchewed chunk of cold, greasy pizza.

“But he’s alive, Miki. I know that much.”

“Alive for how much longer? I keep thinking
they
have him. That they’re going to use him to make an army of shells. Like that girl in the cold room. The one he”—I break off, then force myself to finish—“killed.”

“Terminated,” Luka whispers, then says, louder, “No.” He shakes his head rapidly from side to side. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think they have him. They don’t need to keep him alive to make shells. They just need his body, hooked up to machines. If
they
took him, they’d have—” He breaks off, swallows. “He wouldn’t still be alive.”

“You’re right.” I desperately want him to be right. “And since Carly remembers him, that means he
is
still alive . . . somewhere.”

“Exactly. So what are the chances that the Drau have him? Slim to none, right?”

I nod. The weight that’s been crushing my chest lifts a little, but I’m afraid to hope, afraid of the hard crash that’ll come if we’re wrong.

Luka touches my forearm, then puts his hand back on the wheel. “We don’t have much if we don’t have hope.”

I stare out the window, thinking about that, wondering if it’s true.

As soon as we’re out of sight of Carly’s house, I say, “Pull over,” determined to follow the one possible lead we do have.

“What are you doing?” Luka asks, following me when I get out and head for the trunk.

I drag out Jackson’s backpack and start going through the pockets. “Looking for clues.”

Luka sighs. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.

“I know the chances of finding anything are slim, but I have to try,” I say, pulling out an empty water bottle and a ten-dollar bill. I shove them back in and move to the next pocket.

“There won’t be anything, Miki. We can’t bring anything back with us when we respawn.”

“Got a better idea?” I glance at him.

His mouth compresses in a thin line. He shakes his head and mutters, “Knock yourself out.”

I pull out Jackson’s textbooks one by one, fanning the pages in case there’s something hidden in between, then stacking the books in a neat pile. “There might be something in here that helps us find him.”

Luka’s quiet for a minute. I think he’s going to offer up more objections. Instead, he moves closer, picks up a book from the top of the pile, and double-checks in case I missed anything.

I move to the smaller front pouch and find a paperback copy of Andrzej Sapkowski’s
Blood of Elves.
My copy. The one I lent him.

It’s the last thing in the bag.

“There’s nothing here.” I start to shift everything back into Jackson’s pack when Luka reaches over and taps his finger on the textbook at the top of the pile. “What?” I ask.

He stares at the book, his dark eyes unfocused.

“Luka?” I ask. “Something special about Jackson’s law text?”

“No, it’s just—” He shakes his head. “I swear I thought of something, but it’s gone.” He waves a hand. “Poof.”

“Don’t focus on it.” I push the rest of the books back into the pack, then shove it deeper into the trunk, wishing I could shove aside my disappointment with it. “Think about other stuff and it’ll come to you.”

“Yeah.”

“You were right,” I concede as he gets the Jeep moving. “That was a waste of time.”

“Now what?” Luka asks, sounding bleak.

Good question. One I can’t answer. But I have to find an answer. Jackson’s life may depend on us.

“We talk it out,” I say. “We list everything we know, every possibility. We look for a pattern, or something that doesn’t fit the pattern.”

“It’s gonna be a short list.”

“It’ll be an empty list if we don’t at least try. So what do we know?”

“That he didn’t respawn with the rest of us.”

“And that he’s alive,” I say, needing to affirm it as fact.

Luka cuts me a sidelong glance. “If we figure out why he didn’t come back with us, maybe we can figure out where he is.”

“Maybe because he wasn’t
with us
in the first place,” I say. “He was on a different team.”

“And if his team’s still fighting—”

“Then he’s still there.”

I’m allowed a millisecond of hope before Luka shakes his head. “Our team wouldn’t have respawned until the mission was complete.”

Which means that even if he was on a different team, Jackson should have come back with us once the mission was done. “What if he got pulled on another mission?”

“Without coming back at all?” Luka frowns. “I’ve never heard of anyone going directly from one to another.”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.” Luka opens his mouth to answer, but before he can say anything, I contradict myself. “Yeah, it does. We always respawn at the exact second we left.”

“And the world moves on from that second,” Luka says. “Which means Jackson would have come back exactly when he left, at the pizza place, before getting pulled again.”

“Which means we still know absolutely nothing.” I slump in my seat, deflated.

“DAMN,” LUKA MUTTERS AS WE PULL INTO A DRIVEWAY. “I WAS gonna just leave the keys in the mailbox.”

No chance of that now. There’s a woman coming out of the garage. She’s tall and lean, her honey-brown hair falling loose to her shoulders. She stops and shades her eyes and then walks toward us.

“Jackson’s mom?”

Luka nods. “We need to come up with an explanation of where he is, stat.”

“So I guess that means we can’t ask if she has any idea where her son is.”

Luka snorts. “Like your dad knows where you are when you’re on a mission?”

“Time’s frozen when I’m on a mission, isn’t it? I doubt my dad has a clue I’m even gone.”

“Ditto for Jackson’s mom. It’s a waste of time to ask her.”

“At this point, I’m a grab-any-straw kind of girl.”

He shakes his head. “I know. But there’s no straw here to grab. And asking her anything is against the rules.”

The rules that we don’t talk about the game outside the game. Stupid rules that make no sense. Rules we’ve all broken, but only with each other, never with an outsider. I tip my head back, eyes closed. “You realize that we have big neon zero when it comes to leads. Not an auspicious beginning to our rescue operation.”

“Auspicious? Can you spell that?”

I glance over and punch him in the shoulder, trying to match his halfhearted attempt at humor.

Luka pushes open his door and climbs out. “Hi, Mrs. Tate.”

“Hey, Luka.”

I get out and linger by the passenger door, not sure if I should say hi or just fade into the background.

Jackson’s mom walks over. She’s close enough now that I can see her eyes—not Drau gray like Jackson’s but dark, dazzling green. I’ve seen that color in my nightmare—Jackson’s nightmare—the one he shared with me about his sister and the car accident that dragged him into the game.

There’s a hint of wariness in Mrs. Tate’s expression as her gaze darts to the Jeep, then back to Luka. It hits me that she’s already buried one child and now here we are, in her driveway, with her son’s car but without her son. That’s one thing Dad always says about Sofu dying before Mom: that it’s better he passed before Mom got sick, that parents aren’t meant to bury their children.

I stare at my feet. Jackson’s mom isn’t going to bury another child. He’s coming back. I’ll find a way to bring him back.

“Jackson asked me to drop off his car,” Luka says. “He decided to hang out with some guys.”

She’s quiet for a second. “Are they drinking?”

Nice one, Luka. Try to shovel us out and instead dig us in even deeper.

“No, no, nothing like that. They already had a car and he didn’t want to leave his on the street.”

“You didn’t want to go with?” she asks, and I hear the questions she doesn’t ask:
Did Luka take off because Jackson’s involved with a bad crowd? Is he doing things he shouldn’t?
I figure every parent thinks those things once in a while, even when they trust their kids.

“It’s all good, Mrs. T. It’s a group project. I’m not in their class.” He’s sticking to the fairy tale he already spun for Carly.

The frown fades. Mrs. Tate looks back and forth between the two of us, clearly waiting for an intro. Then she surprises me by smiling and saying, “Miki,” as if she knows me. “You’re the kendo champion.”

I open my mouth. Close it.

Jackson talked about me.

To his mom.

I don’t know how that’s supposed to make me feel, but I can’t deny the whisper of warmth that melts the edges of the ice that’s been riding in my veins ever since I realized Jackson didn’t make it back.

“Um, yeah. Used to be. Not anymore. I mean, I don’t compete anymore. I still practice in the basement, though.” Okay . . . could I be any more nervous meeting Jackson’s mom? And exactly why am I so nervous?

Luka shifts his weight beside me—right foot to left, then back again. The silence stretches. Mrs. Tate tips her head, like she’s trying to figure something out.

“We should, uh, get going,” Luka says.

With a backward wave, Mrs. Tate heads for her front door and Luka and I grab our backpacks from the Jeep.

“Shouldn’t we give those to his mom?” I jut my chin at the keys in Luka’s hand.

He stares at the keys like they have fangs. “Shit.”

I expect him to sprint for the door and hand them over. Instead he tosses them to me.

“I don’t think I can spew one more lie without breaking,” he says.

Leaving my pack on the drive, I jog toward the door just as Jackson’s mom is closing it.

“Mrs. Tate,” I call. She pauses and looks at me, leaving the door wide. I can hear a phone ringing somewhere inside the house. “Jackson’s keys.” I hold them up.

She holds up one finger in the universal sign for
wait
, then gestures me inside and hurries down the hall to grab the phone. Not sure what else to do, I shrug in Luka’s direction and step inside. After a few seconds’ deliberation, I leave the door open behind me.

Mrs. Tate’s voice carries to me, a murmur of sound without words. I wonder if she rushed to answer because she thought it might be her son calling. That’s what my mom would have done—run for the phone if she thought it was me.

But I know it isn’t Jackson calling.

And my mom will never again run to catch my phone call.

With a sigh I take a couple of steps deeper into Jackson’s house, curious. On the outside, it’s a few decades old, like mine. But inside, it’s been renovated. I think a wall or two has been taken down to create an open flow from living room near the front of the house to dining room near the back. Slate tiles in the foyer. Hardwood floor stretching down the hallway and through the rooms I can see. The walls are the color of cappuccino.

I sidle in another step, my gaze darting to the staircase. I wonder if I could get away with running upstairs, finding Jackson’s room, searching it. I could say I lent him some school notes. Or a textbook. Maybe a copy of
Bleach
. Or—

Right. Like I’ll get away with that. Back on the driveway, I got the feeling that Mrs. Tate’s already suspicious or, if not suspicious, wary.

I take a step back toward the door, which brings me alongside a narrow, rectangular console table with a bunch of photos with brushed-nickel frames. I step a little closer, wondering if I should just drop the keys on the table and go.

But I can’t resist those photos.

Leaning in, I examine each one. A little girl and an even littler boy, holding hands, smiling wide, impossibly cute. Same girl and boy a few years later, standing in the surf as it laps across white sand, bright pails in their hands. A family of four: mom, dad, older sister, younger brother with the Grand Canyon in the background. I’m guessing I’m looking at twelve-year-old Jackson. That would be around the time he was first pulled into the game.

I can’t help it. I trail my fingertip lightly over the image of him, then move to the next. A picture of the girl, looking about fourteen or fifteen, sitting in a kayak, smiling at the camera, the sun reflecting off the water around her. Her hair’s light brown, streaked gold by the sun, tied back in a ponytail, her eyes hidden by sunglasses.

The final picture is a close-up of the same girl’s face—a face I recognize. I’ve seen it before, eyes closed, skin pale. I’m dragged back to the cave where dozens of clones with that exact face lay lifeless and rotting on rows and rows of gurneys.
Please don’t let Jackson be somewhere like that. Please.
I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly chilled.

“We took that shortly before she . . .” Jackson’s mom says softly, right beside me. I almost jump through the roof. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, I . . . I’m sorry.” I hold the keys out to her and drop them in her upturned palm. I can’t stop myself from shooting a last glance at the picture.

“Lizzie,” she says. “My daughter.”

I nod. I almost say
I’m sorry
again. But I know how I feel when people say that to me. Why are they sorry? It isn’t their fault.

Instead, I say, “Time doesn’t heal all wounds. It’s a lie people say to make us feel better. Make themselves feel better.” As soon as the last syllable trails away, I want to reach out and catch it and take it back. I don’t know why I said that.

The expression on Mrs. Tate’s face is an odd combination of sad and surprised. “No,” she says, drawing out the word, “time doesn’t heal all wounds. But it dulls them. Remembering hurts less. The good stays bright and sharp. The bad gets pushed to a place it can’t hurt us as much anymore. You’ll see.” She touches my arm in sympathy.

I open my mouth only to find that I don’t know what to say.

Jackson must have told her about my mom. I haven’t even told my dad that Jackson exists, never mind anything personal about him.

“Go on, now.” A dismissal, but not an unkind one. Mrs. Tate smiles at me. “Luka’s waiting.”

I take a step toward her instead of away and before I know it, I’m hugging her. Really hugging her. And she’s hugging me back.