Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (4 page)

boots, the clothing, the passcard. Someone’s trying to help
 me. Why? Maybe because someone else is planning to hurt
 me. Maybe Jori was right after all.
Jori.
I run past the nurses’ station toward her wing, my boots
 crunching against the gritty layer of concrete that’s popped
 off the walls. Each wing has a set of security doors, and
 when I reach the ones leading to Jori’s side of the floor,
I have to let the handle go because it’s so hot. Dropping
 to my knees, I try to look underneath the door. I smell
 smoke . . . and something else.
Tear gas.
Up until this moment I had no clue what tear gas
 smelled like, but I don’t really need that much training. It
 feels like someone just jammed a blowtorch into both my
 eyes and down my throat.
I pull the neck of the hoodie up over my mouth and
 nose. I’ll have to get to Jori a different way.
I listen at the stairwell door. The people who were just
 coming up the steps have opened the door to the floor
 below. I wait a second until they’re gone and then go down
 two floors, thinking I might be able to loop back around
 and use the stairs on the opposite end of the floor to go
 back up, but when I pull the door open at the second floor,
I instantly regret it. Two men in black and gray military
 camos turn and fire at me. I let go of the handle and drop
 onto the floor as bullets rip into the metal fire door.  
Sliding down the handrail, I practically fall the rest of
 the way to the first floor, bursting out of the stairwell into
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smoke and mayhem in the main lobby. An injured nurse,
 dragging one leg, is moving toward the front door, trying
 to stay behind  the huge potted palm trees next to the ceil-
 ing-high windows. I dive behind the security guard’s desk
 and find I’m not the only one taking cover there. There are
 two others.
Make that one other. One of the physical therapists is
 there. Dead. That leaves a nurse I’ve never seen before.
She’s completely rigid and her eyes are unblinking. If she
 weren’t breathing so rapidly, I’d think she was dead, too.
I feel the prickly sensation of adrenaline in the tips of my
fingers. My mouth fills with metallic-tasting saliva. Some-
 one speaks. It could be a man or a woman. Whoever it is
 sounds like one of those computer-translator thingies. Like
 a voice you’d hear on a GPS. Robotic. Jerky. Not human.
“We are here for Sarah Ramos. She is sixteen years old.
Tell us where she is and we will leave.”
Behind one of the potted palms I see Steve crouched
 down. I make eye contact with him. He mouths, “I’m
 sorry.”  
I shake my head violently because I know what he’s
 about to do.
He stands and points. “She’s there. Behind the desk.”
I stare at him in terrified disbelief. Two hours ago he
 was promising me extra pie, and now he’s betraying me?
He hangs his head, pulls his scarf practically over his face,
 perhaps out of shame. I can see he’s genuinely sorry.
When they shoot him, I can’t say I feel the same way.
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CHAPTER 4
 hurricane of hot metal sweeps toward me. The win-
A  dows behind the guard’s desk collapse in on themselves.
Through sheer luck, I’ve crouched down behind a filing
 cabinet and I’m not hit, but the gunfire is so loud I can
 hardly hear anything for a full ten seconds after it stops.
The woman lying next to me is staring up at the ceiling
 with lightless eyes. I hear the sound of boots making their
 way through a field of glass and debris.
Another hail of bullets flies over my head. How many
 bullets do these people need to kill one girl?
I hear a woman’s voice. “Have your people put their
 guns down.” Her voice seems to curl around every word.
It’s soft, southern, sweet.
The computer voice responds, “Hold your fire until my
 signal.”
“My signal, darling. My signal. Let’s not forget who’s in
 charge.”
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They take their time coming to check on me. I guess
 they figure that no sound and no movement might be proof
 in itself. I reach across to the dead woman next to me and
 put my hand on her chest. After wiping her blood onto the
 side of my face and neck, I sit as still as I can, open palms
 resting in my lap.
“Is she dead?” the southern woman asks hopefully.
It’s Hodges. I know it is. I’ve never heard her speak
 before, but I hear her bracelets jingling on her wrist.
The guy with the gun leans over the top of the guard’s
 desk. He looks down at me, and I know he can only see the
 top of my bald head.
“I think.”
Hodges sighs dramatically. “We didn’t come all this way
 and spend all this money to think we killed her.”  
The soldier hops over the counter of the guard’s desk
 and lands with one foot on the  body next to me. He’s off-
 balance as he reaches down and tips my chin up with the
 still-smoking muzzle of his rifle. I feel my skin blister but
 force myself to stay limp.
“Yeah,” he says. “Dead.”
“You’re absolutely sure?” Hodges asks.
He pulls his glove off with his teeth and reaches down
 to put his fingers on the side of my neck. When his hand is
 right next to my face, I bite him as hard as I can and bring
 one of my boots up into his crotch.
As he doubles over, I grab the hand that grips his rifle
 and squeeze his finger, firing toward the ceiling directly
 above where his fellow soldiers and Hodges are standing.
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She screams as the overhead lights explode. I also hit one
 of the sprinkler heads, or maybe the line that feeds them,
 because water suddenly pours down. I’m soaked within
 seconds.  
I slide on my stomach across the wet, glass-strewn floor
 and dive through the window behind the desk. That’s
 when I realize that I’ve miscalculated. I knew we were on
 the first floor; I just didn’t realize that the first floor wasn’t
 necessarily the ground floor.
I fall fifteen feet and land smack on my chest and face. My
 jaw snaps shut and my teeth close onto my tongue. I spit
 blood and touch my front teeth, shocked that they’re still
 there. I don’t move right away. Not until I look up and see
 a man with a gun leaning out from the window, getting
 ready to fire down at me. Then I move real fast.
I roll toward the building and tuck myself flat against
 the wall. The jutting overhang of the upper floor gives me
 six inches of cover at most. As bullets dive into the ground
 near my feet, I scramble clumsily along the wall, then lose
 my balance, smacking my head against the rough granite
 wall in almost the exact spot where the insert came loose
 from my skull. The pain is blinding, but I keep going.
I’m so cold I can hardly get my body to work. I think
 my wet clothes are starting to freeze. The cold obliterates
 every thought in my head, and my need to get away from
 it overpowers every other instinct, even my urge to flee. I
 try every door I pass, but none of them budge.
Looking over my shoulder, I wonder when one of those
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soldiers is going to track me down. I shove my hands into
 the front pockets of the hoodie, but the wet fabric gives
 no warmth. I feel something, though. Something small,
 plastic, rectangular.
The passcard!
Maybe I can find a place to hide, some little mouse hole
 or a cabinet under a sink somewhere. The police will come
 eventually. You can’t attack a hospital and expect to get
 away with it.
Not unless you attack in the middle of a blizzard. And
 the hospital is in the middle of nowhere. And help couldn’t
 arrive even if it wanted to.
There’s a sudden, painful heaviness in my rib cage, and
 it tells me that I’ve hit the dark truth. I’m on my own,
 stranded here, and no one is coming to help me.
I close my frozen fingers around the passcard and con-
 tinue running along the side of the building until I come to
 a huge garage bay door. There’s a magnetic card reader on
 the wall, so I zip the card through it and immediately wish
I hadn’t. The door rises, incredibly slowly and incredibly
 loudly. I might as well have sent up a flare to let the soldiers
 know where I am.
Once the door rattles to a halt, I don’t want to risk low-
 ering it again. Someone will hear it for sure. I’ll have to
 leave the door wide open. Forget about staying warm.
I press my hands to my head. I still feel that slow drip-
 ping sensation and, now with it, something much worse—a
 terrible, budding sadness unfolding inside my mind. It feels
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like something bad has already happened, and something
 worse is about to follow. I’m more afraid of this sudden
 ache than I am of the men with guns who are after me.
Because this thing—whatever it is—is coming from deep
 inside me. And I can’t run from it.
I’m momentarily paralyzed. I keep gripping my head
 and stare down at the floor, at the wisps of snow swirl-
 ing around the lawn mowers. I need a plan. I need . . . I
 need. . .
What do I need? I’m so cold, I can’t think!
“You need wings, little one. But no one has wings.”
My mother speaks these words to me as if she’s stand-
 ing just over my shoulder. I jerk to my right to look, even
 though I know she can’t be here. Because she’s dead. They
 told me that much.
But I remember her. A little bit, anyway.  
I remember that she said these words to me, and how
 she said them—the last traces of her accent hugging each
 word. But I cannot remember her face.
The next thing I know, I’m pulled into the past.
I’m sitting on a stool, staring at a fat woman with rings on every
finger. It’s not my mother. It’s Mrs. Esteban. She’s stirring a pot
 in a too-small restaurant kitchen, her long skirt shifting with each
 stroke. The scent of cooking rice and spice and hot lard fills the
 room. I could lick the air, it smells so good.
I am seven, maybe eight. Some kids were chasing me, so I
 ducked down an alley and then into the back of this pupusería,
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smack into the large back end of Mrs. Esteban. She is a cook here,
 and she also lives in the third-floor apartment directly below my
 mother and me. She let me hide from the kids who were chasing
 me, but now she’s impatient for me to go. She has work to do, and
I’m distracting her.
“Why won’t they just leave me alone?” I say, slapping away
 my stupid, stupid tears. I hate that anyone can make me feel like
 this, that I have no defense against it.  
“Because you are different from them.”
“How?”
“You go to a different school than they do. You talk differently
 than they do,” she says. Then she sighs. “And you are different
 in other ways.”
“What ways?”
“Has no one told you this?”
“Told me what?”
She shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling. “You have
 green eyes.”
“So?”
“So? So? Ay!”
She wipes her hands on a kitchen towel and slings it over her
 shoulder. “Your mother used to work for a very wealthy man who
 has green eyes. You’re old enough to figure it out.”
I don’t understand what she means right away. Then I jump
 up from the stool and yank on her apron. “Who was it?”
“Oh, chica. Your mother should be the one to tell you this.”
“Who!”
“I can’t think of his name. He builds all the big buildings in
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the city.” She is snapping her fingers, trying to jog her memory,
 but nothing comes.
I kick her in the ankle and run outside as she shouts names at
 me. I am in a blind rage as I run back out into the alley—right into
 the group of kids who were taunting and chasing me. Suddenly I
 am on the pavement, my face pushed into a grease-slicked puddle.
I hear a group of girls giggle. The sound of girls laughing can be
 the ugliest sound in the world. I feel someone walk over my back,
 and I raise my head to see several pairs of shiny black loafers and
 ruffled socks skipping away.
The memory ends abruptly, like someone’s shaken me to
 get my attention back. I’m facing the garage wall. I see a
 hedge trimmer, a pair of clippers, a small scythe.
A weapon. That’s what I need. That’s what I want.
Hiding doesn’t suit me at all.
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CHAPTER 5
 look around for something. Anything. I don’t even
I  know what.
In the garage there are three huge lawn mowers. They’re
 the kind the landscapers here stand on to mow the acres of
 grass that surround this place. Next to them is a small trac-
 tor, with belt treads instead of tires. I look at it longingly,
 but I know I can’t take it. Where would I go, especially in
 this weather? And it would draw a lot of attention. If I’m
 going to escape I’ll need to do it quietly. I have a feeling
 no one is going to let me leave if they can possibly help it.
A row of lockers lines one wall. Maybe there’s some-
 thing in one of them that can help me. I find a hammer
 in a nearby toolbox and give one of the keypad locks a
 couple hard whacks. The first locker springs open; it’s full
 of nothing. The next one is more helpful. There’s a set of
 blue coveralls and a big overcoat; it’s green canvas on the
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outside and flannel on the inside. I strip off my wet clothes
 and put the coveralls on. I’ve got to roll the sleeves and pant
 legs up about six inches to get it to fit. I put the overcoat
 on, and it’s so warm and soft I momentarily hug myself in
 grateful relief. In the next locker I find a lunch box with
 a sandwich and apple inside. I stuff them into my pockets.
Then I remember the passcard and the pills. I need to get
 them out of my wet clothes.
I put my hand in the pocket of the hoodie and come
 away with the plastic bag. One of the two remaining gel
 capsules has popped, and the baggy is leaking whatever was
 inside. It probably happened when I slid out the window
 and landed on my chest. I put the baggy in the coat pocket.
I smash another few lockers before I come up with a
 stretchy black cap. I put that on and instantly feel a thou-
 sand times warmer. I find a pair of leather work gloves
 lying on a nearby bench and put those on, too.  
This garage is full of landscaping tools, but what am I
 going to do? Carry a rake with me to defend myself? I need
 something smaller.
I go back to the tool closet where I got the hammer and
 have another look around. At first I think I see a gun, but
 then I realize it’s a nailer. It’s about two feet long—the kind
 you use to fire nails into concrete with a shotgun shell. I
 have no idea how I know what it is and how it works, but
I do. I put it in the inside pocket of the huge overcoat,
 holding the handle of it with my armpit. I take a handful
 each of shells and nails and put them in the pocket, too.
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