River: A Novel (11 page)

 My mind
wandered then to what currency looked like here. Though I hadn’t seen anything
resembling money at Dan’s place, he also appeared well off, and I assumed his
Lulling invention kept him on good terms with the Speakers. He had been to the Domain
regularly as part of his job, but dreaded the affair. Danny wrote the citizens
of River detested violence of any kind. Except at the Domain, punishment had
become part of the entertainment. This detail explained his unwillingness to
divulge his parents’ suites.

 River
Elodie’s parents had always been nice to Danny. He had gone to brunch with them
a couple of
times and
wrote that it had always been pleasant. I just couldn’t picture it, rather
picture them. Were they
my
parents, too? Would they recognize me as
someone not their daughter? Would some essential DNA residue mask any
differences? Did we have nicknames for each other? I needed to perfect the
whole Mom and Dad thing. There was too much I didn’t know, such as when their
birthdays were, and if mine was the same as before. I imagined birthdays were
kind of a big deal, considering the one baby per household rule. The population
control thing made me grimace. It was as though the whole town
was a model for creepy psychological
experimentation.

  A hand on
my shoulder made me jump, and my racing heart skipped a beat. Dan was so
uncharacteristically quiet here that I was sure I would never get used to it. 

  S-O-R-R-Y
   

 
He paused when he saw what I was
reading, resting his hand on my shoulder
. 

  Y-O-U  O-K-A-Y?

 I nodded
and touched my fingertips to his. “I don’t know what I was afraid of. A doctor and
a seamstress. They sound… nice.” Shrugging, I stared at the words, even though
I had finished.  While picking up an eraser I could feel Dan’s eyes on me. “Too
bad your parents work for the dark side, not that we don’t, in a way. But they
choose to, right?” As I looked up, he was transfixed by the paper with a nearly
contemptuous expression, as well as wizened with aged sadness. 

 The silence
between us was torture. Having been used to his boisterousness, I didn’t
realize how little I’d said, before. Here I spoke just to have some noise in
the air. All I wanted was the distressed look on Dan’s face to diminish, if it
couldn’t be erased
entirely.

 I fumbled
for words. “Well at least they’re well off, I guess.” He took the paper from me
and began to write. I wasn’t sure why he hadn’t responded until now, but I
didn’t like the look on his face. Maybe his parents were worse than he was
letting on.

 He turned
the page toward me, finally looking up. The smile was back, strained and apologetic.
With confusion evident, I read after staring at him for a second.

Elodie

 I stopped
right there; it was never a good sign when he began a sentence with my name. Old
Dan always began with my name when he would confess that whatever torture he’d
been putting me through had really been a practical joke: “
Elodie,”
he’d
begin, the picture of
somber
, “calm down
.
The building is not
on
fire. I just blew up
the toaster and am messing with you
.”
Enter his silly grin while I narrowed my eyes. He used to love to get me going—thought
it was hilarious. I tilted my glance away from the paper to him.

 “It’s bad,
isn’t it?” I asked in a choked whisper. He was so still that he didn’t even
blink. My gut twisting in anticipation, I read on.

              
Marcus is The Doctor
. 

 I looked back
at Dan, not understanding. He’d already written
that he was a doctor. Had he forgotten?

 Without
pulling his eyes away from mine, he lightly touched his throat where his voice
box would have been.

“No, that
can’t be. There must be some kind of mistake. These are the… my… parents. They
can’t be…” My whimpers trailed off as the smoke cleared. River Elodie’s father
was Dr. Mute. Part of the Massive Evil Plan the Speakers had cooked up. But was
he my father as well? Was River Elodie… me? These questions were buzzing around
the biggest question of all—who was I? Was I Elodie Grahm who lived in New York
City, orphaned at birth, currently disillusioned from her life’s dream, and
seeking solace in immature, self-destructive ways? Could I be Elodie
VonCambridge, quasi-muted resident of a strange town called River, living off
blood money her family history had earned by taking away the basic human right
of speech? I still wholeheartedly believed myself to be Elodie Grahm: loser-ish,
mousy
me.
The other Elodie… well, the more I discovered about her; the
more I wanted
to
chug a
gallon of anti-Lull coffee and run far away from here.

 “I just need
a minute,” I mumbled while trudging to his bedroom, closing the door behind me.
The last thing I wanted was for Dan to see me shrivel up and cry. He would just
feel guilty, as if he’d had something to do with it, when he was a victim. Unless
my brain was really warped, and the person I was had never existed, I could be
in the victim category with the rest of the Mutes. There had to be a way for everything
to be fixed. I wanted Dan to have his voice back—along with the rest of the people
my alleged father had muted. I wanted to be back in New York, nervous for my
first day at a new job. I wanted my old life back—Danny and Petra’s, too. I
needed to get us all back there somehow.

 With eyes
burning around sluggish tears that wouldn’t complete their mission and fall, my
thoughts became scattered and incoherent. Curling away from the world seemed
like a really good idea. The coffee I‘d had earlier was producing no effects on
me, and I drifted off, my limbs as heavy as my heart. The darkness behind my
eyes was a welcome change from seeing nothing except the words I had just read,
and Dan’s misery when his hand had drawn away from his throat. While dozing
off, the only thoughts I let in were of going back to the city I really lived
in, waking up in my own world with Danny’s voice and Petra’s friendship, and escaping
this Hell… when my body suddenly went numb.

 Heavy.
Weights seemed to be on me, holding
me down into darkness. I was close to waking but couldn’t quite figure out how
to get there. My
mind
wouldn’t let me remember what it was to be awake. 

 Blind
. I flexed my tightly closed eyelids,
wondering how this could be—needing to wake up, wanting nothing but sleep. 

 The right
side of my head was cradled in a pillow of water. How had I fallen asleep in a
puddle? I searched my memory, though all I came up with was running next to a fence.
Birds were chirping—

 It was an
annoying alarm clock. I couldn’t wake up to turn it off. If I fell back to sleep,
maybe I could block it out.

 Music.
My left ear was hearing something
else. Someone was singing—Danny? How could he be awake and I asleep… were we in
Hawaii?   

  A familiar
tune found its way to me with the twinkling of strings. He was singing
and playing music. If I could just
wake up, I could tell him how beautiful it was.

 The room
shook. My body was moving, falling.

 With a
heavy breath, I opened my eyes, gasping, and unable to focus my thoughts. Arms were
around me. Tapping on my arm—

 “What? Danny?”
I didn’t recognize my shallow voice. I couldn’t move.

 “Where am I?”
When I finally saw him, he was frantically
trying to pick me up. I had to let him; my body was dead
weight.

   
A-R-E 
Y-O-U  O-K-A-Y?

 “Yeah,” I muttered
after a long moment of translating. My head lolled a little to the side, and my
arm flopped when I tried to use it. “Well, I don’t know,” I whispered,
realizing my eyes wouldn’t stay open. Danny tunneled away from me.
No, don’t
go—
 

 I couldn’t
open my mouth as my eyelids clamped shut.

 “Elodie, I
heard you. Wake up, now. Rise and shine. C’mon girl, you’ve been gone too long.”

 Danny
sounded unusually hyper for the morning hours. Plus,
he
was waking
me
up? Maybe my alarm hadn’t gone off. Something was beeping, though not the usual
sound, why wasn’t he shutting it off? I tried to roll over to click off the alarm…
ah, but I hated it when one of my arms fell asleep. Sleep, I just needed a few
more minutes, and then I’d get up—

 I started at
wetness on my forehead. A washcloth was over one of my eyes. Disgruntled, I
opened the other eye, glaring. “Danny, I told you ten more minutes.” I turned
over and looked for a blanket, finding an arm instead.
That
woke me up. We
were on the sofa, my head resting in his lap while he stared at me, concerned,
but not altogether unhappy.

 “How did I
get out here?” My question was a croak before I cleared my throat, sat up, and
looked around. I remembered going into Dan’s bedroom, then… just a sad blur. “Were
you… I don’t know how to ask you this. You weren’t talking to me just now, were
you?” Cringing, I felt terrible asking him
,
but his voice had been so clear that it didn’t seem part of a
dream, though it had to have been. There was no other explanation—Danny
couldn’t speak. Feeling horribly callous, I shook my head dramatically to
emphasize sleepiness while recanting, “Sorry, I was dreaming.” 

 He just
shrugged and pointed to the kitchen. I followed, still kicking myself. Danny
flicked on another light. It was early evening, though already dark. The days
were getting shorter, and I shivered, pulling the sleeves of my hooded sweater
over my hands. He started making coffee while I sat down and examined the
now-clean sheet of paper,
looking for remnants of the earlier revelation that my possible father took
human voices away. There was nothing left, to my relief. I didn’t want to see
any evidence of that knowledge, so I pretended that I still didn’t know. It was
harder now that I was awake, though. The one good thing about sleep was that I
didn’t have to live in the now; I could forget, go somewhere else with
different horrors and joys. Honestly, I was never really afraid when paralyzed
in my dreams. The fenced-in parking lot was frightening, however. I always
wanted to get out of there.

 
You
okay?
Danny’s signing broke the thread of my
daydreams. At least I had that phrase down—he asked it every ten minutes. 

 I nodded. As
Dan finished making coffee, soothing smells of caramel and chocolate wafted
toward me. I filled a cup eagerly, needing a fix. It was hot, and I patiently
set the mug down to cool, wrapping my hands around it to distract myself from the
curious look on Dan’s face. It was akin to a double entendre. He was waiting
for me to tell him I really was okay, but he also had a strange smile. I pulled
a recent memory from my mind. It was the Kissing Grin. 

 “Why are
you looking at me like that?” The grin
got bigger. “Daniel
Jerret
Thaskey
. What did
you do?” My voice became squeakier as I scolded him. 

 Eyes wide
with innocence, he shook his head quickly and pointed to his chest as if to
say:
Not me!
Corroborating my assumption, he signed with gusto, which made
me think he was enjoying my predicament.

 It
wasn’t me, it was you.

 My self
esteem got a quick nod that I understood, and then the potential embarrassment
kicked in. “What happened?” I asked in such a way that almost dared him to tell
me. My unconscious life was apparently just as eventful as when I was wide
awake. He grabbed the paper and started writing vigorously, too impatient to
wait for me to interpret his signs. I flushed after catching a couple of words.

 Dan’s grin
was back as he turned the paper toward me. Leisurely, I plucked it off the
table, praying it wasn’t too bad. Or at least that I had been fully clothed
during the episode rapidly unfolding in my imagination. My eyes found the page
reluctantly.

 I waited for
you to come out, but then assumed you had fallen asleep, so I rested my eyes. All
of a sudden, you were shaking me awake and signing that I was talking to you. You
signed perfectly that you had fallen at the edge of River near the Domain—that
someone was after you because of the whole thing with Petra. I signed back that
you have been here the last few days with me, and you could speak. You acted as
though you didn’t know what I was going
on
about just before you hit me. Then
you
kissed me on the cheek. After
that, you passed
out
.
By the way, my
full name here
is
Daniel John Hampshire
.

 “
Where
did I hit you?”  

 His smile
turned into a lopsided smirk as he wrote, obviously wanting some payback for
his pains.