Throat (26 page)

“So what are you thinking about? Look at me. Stop a second. What are we doing here?”

“I don’t understand. Me and you?”

He nodded.

“Me and you are fine.” I looked into his eyes and softened my voice. “Look, I know I’m not making much sense. One thing you need to know about me … I’ve never been all that great at the whole … people thing. Mom always says I don’t have enough patience for it. Either you trust me or you don’t.”

“I could say the same thing about you. Except I’m not holding anything back.”

Now it was my turn to touch his face. He left my hand there.

“I don’t want to fight,” I said. “I trust you, Sagan. Surely you get that by now, don’t you? The secrets are just … safety things.”

“I want to keep you safe.”

“You do. I mean … there are some things you can’t do. Not right now. But I swear … I will tell you everything. When I’m ready. You have to believe me. I wouldn’t have told you about—Wait, I know. Have you got a pen and a piece of paper?”

“Sure.” He fumbled around in the glove box of his Jeep. “Here.”

I took the pen and wrote something down. Folded the paper and stuffed it in the pocket of his jeans. Sagan started to pull it out. I stopped his hand.

“Don’t look at it till you get home. Hide it somewhere safe and promise me you will guard it with your life.”

“Wow. Okay, sure. What is it?”

“The address to my family’s apartment.”

Sagan kissed me.

“Um. I could do this forever,” I said.

“Not me,” he said.

“Huh?”

“I’ve got a secret too.”

“Okay, what is it?”

He walked over and held open the passenger door to his Jeep.

“Get in.”

We went down to the main road and he turned left. When we got to the next big intersection, Sagan turned right. We had never been in that direction before.

“Another tour, huh?” I said, a little disappointed.

The road went a good ways with nothing on either side, just lowlands and soggy woods. Then up ahead I saw it.…

“Is that a guard shack?”

Sagan didn’t say anything. Just pressed on the gas and the Jeep accelerated.

“You tricked me. You tricked me!” I said. “You’re taking me off the base, aren’t you?” I put my hand on the door handle. “Turn this Jeep around or I’ll jump out.”

Sagan nodded and spoke without looking at me. “You’ll jump out doing …” He glanced at the speedometer. “Fifty-two miles an hour?”

“I will,” I said. “If you don’t turn around.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

He wasn’t smiling. I unhooked my seat belt and leaned toward the door, ready to open it.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” I said.

“Nope.”

I opened the door. We were moving fast, but my eyes were so good I could see individual blades of grass whipping by on the shoulder. I leaned toward the opening.

“Hey!” Sagan yelled. The Jeep swerved a little as he grabbed at my arm. “What are you doing? Shut the door!”

I leaned a little more, tensing my leg muscles.

“Emma!”

I pulled the door shut and sank back into the seat, defeated.

“I can’t,” I said, as much to myself as to Sagan.

We passed through the gate and kept on going off the base.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Sagan said. “You were really thinking about jumping, weren’t you? You’re crazy, you know that?”

We drove a little ways not speaking, both of us hot. We were passing a big new subdivision on the left, stubbly cotton land on the right.

“So what’s the big deal, anyhow?” Sagan said finally. “You left the Space Center to go mall hopping the other day.”

“That was different.”

“Different how?”

“That was just me, okay?” I said, shooting bullets at him with my eyes, though I was pretty sure he couldn’t see them on account of my shades. “I wasn’t in somebody’s car. I could do what I want. I was in control of the situation.”

“So it’s that bad … what might happen to you … that you have to be on top of it every second?”

“Now you’re starting to get it.”

Sagan made a sour expression. “So you don’t think I could protect you.”

“No,” I said. “Like I said, nobody could. Just tell me where we are going.”

“I told you, it’s a secret.”

“Kidnapping me is a secret?” I said.

“I didn’t kidnap you. I asked you to get in my car, and you did.”

“But what if they had stopped us!”

“They never stop you going out, only coming in.”

I sat back in my seat, pouting. “So what now?”

“Just wait.”

“You’re not taking me to the police, are you?” I said, again feeling the need to jump. “Please, swear you wouldn’t do something that stupid.”

“Of course not,” Sagan said, looking offended. “I told you I wouldn’t. Just hang on a little farther. We’re almost there.”

I anxiously watched the telephone poles we passed, wondering how I would feel if I saw my photo plastered there:
MISSING GIRL
. I also kept having crazy flashes of us pulling up alongside my mother’s car. Even after I reminded myself that she was in another town thirty miles away, it still seemed all too possible.

I tried to distract myself by memorizing the turns we took, but there were too many. The last road we came to cut through the center of a quiet middle-class neighborhood. The houses were mostly two stories with medium-sized yards and flowers around the mailboxes. Sagan slowed to a stop in front of one of them. The house was a little bigger than some and had white frame siding with brick chimneys on either end. There were four cars in the driveway.

“This is where I live,” he said.

“What?”

“I want you to come meet my family. I told them … last night I told them about you.”

“You didn’t!”

“Calm down, please. I didn’t tell them you were … homeless. Just that we had met at school.”

“I’m in high school, remember?”

“You could pass for a college freshman. We’ll … make up a course we’re taking together.”

“Yeah, astrophysics.”

“I’m serious. History. There you go. You’re in my Western Civ class. We’ve been studying together. You’ve been helping me with that while I help you with … calculus. How about that?”

“Oh my God. I’m going to kill you, Sagan. Take me back. Take me back right now.”

“But I already told them that you’re coming. It’s a cookout by the pool. That’s an easy way to get to know new people, right?”

My jaw was hurting from clenching my teeth. “Oh sure. That’s easy. Just me and about a million lies surrounded by strangers. Do you have any idea how stupid you are right now?”

“Yeah. I do. Really I do. But I knew if I just asked you, you wouldn’t come. Please. Guaranteed pain free. They are really nice and easygoing. It would mean a lot to me. Please.”

I couldn’t look at his eyes.

“Please?”

This time I looked at his eyes, and then I was done. I blew air out of my cheeks.

“Anything else I need to know?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Your name is Julia.”

I swore as we walked around to the back. “
Julia
. Are you serious?” But inside I was thankful he had thought to protect my identity.

“Yeah, I’ve been reading
1984
lately,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Julia? Winston? One of the all-time great love stories … well, until they put Winston’s head in a cage full of rats—”

“Spare me,” I said. We were already at the gate to the swimming pool and I wanted a chance to catch my breath.

I checked myself over. I was completely clean and wearing decent clothes, but my stomach was doing barrel rolls. Forget about the homeless vampire stuff.… It had been a long time … 
years
 … 
since I had been over to anybody’s house like this. Because of the curse.

I could hear screams and splashes coming from the back, the kind of sounds that always make you feel like an outsider.

What if his family watched a lot of TV, especially the local news? Would they have seen me? I tried to remember; did they put missing teenagers on TV? The only time I ever saw them was on those little Xeroxed posters at Walmart:
HAVE YOU SEEN ME
? The only missing people who ever seemed to make the nightly news all seemed to fall into one of two categories: (1) kids younger than ten or (2) hot, squeaky-clean moms. Forget about Channel 8 showing up at your house otherwise. I sure didn’t fit either of those profiles. Plus my shades would help.…

“Did you tell them about my eyes?” I said.

“I think so. Yeah, I did,” Sagan said. “Don’t worry. I don’t know who you’re used to being around, but they’re not like that.”

“Not like what?”

“They’re easy. They won’t pounce or anything.”

I wasn’t so sure.

Sagan opened the gate. Nobody seemed to notice us at first; they were making too much noise and talking to one another. Then just when I thought we could safely make it to the sliding glass door and escape inside the house, a little kid screamed, “Hey, Sagan’s new girlfriend is here!” and did a cannonball that threw water all over me.

They all stopped, looking. I was too nervous to count, but there were at least seven or eight heads bobbing in the pool and several adults arranged around the edges on lounge chairs. My first impression was of a lot of pale legs and blond hair.

“Hi, this is Julia, everybody!” Sagan said. “I promised you wouldn’t scare her.”

I glared at him. Good thing he couldn’t see my murderous expression.

I was dripping but pretty much undamaged. “Hi,” I managed to say weakly, giving a stupid little wave.

“Well, hello, Julia!” A tall, thin blond woman came over, taking my hand in both of her hands. Obviously Sagan’s mom.

She steered me over to a man standing in front of a gigantic grill, a big oven mitt on one hand. He waved with a spatula. He was as tall as Sagan and had the darkest blond hair in the bunch, and rounder features than everybody else as well. Sagan’s dad, I guessed.

“We’ve got you a place right over here,” Sagan’s mom said. “I hope you like tilapia. If not, we can put some pork on there. Honey! Did you bring out those chops like I told you?”

“No, fish is fine, really!” I said.

I had never felt more like an alien in my whole life. After spending the night prowling the city and drinking blood with vampires, the extreme normalness was making me dizzy.

“Glad to have you,” Sagan’s father said, taking the mitt off and shaking my hand. I found myself desperately focusing on the food: bunches of onions splitting open from the heat, green and red peppers, little ears of corn.…

Sagan introduced me around. My heart was in my larynx. There were siblings and an aunt and uncle and their two kids, an extra friend or three from the neighborhood.… It was impossible to keep all of them straight, so I just stopped trying.

After we sat down, I had to make up a few things about my dad, what he did for a living, the college football team we rooted for, that kind of thing, but I tried to keep it simple. I had trouble remembering names, except to notice that none of them were as unusual as “Sagan.”

“The first kid is an experiment,” Sagan’s dad said. “You keep practicing until you get it right.”

“So, Julia, Sagan tells us you are helping him with his history?” his mom was saying later. We were sitting at the world’s longest picnic table, digging in. One of the little kids was absently kicking my shins beneath the tablecloth.

I gulped a little, having just shoved a giant wad of butter in my mouth along with a small forkful of baked potato. It’s funny what you miss.

“Um. Yes, ma’am. That’s the plan,” I said, garbling the words. “And he’s getting me squared away in math.”

“So what are you planning for your major?”

“Well …”

“The counselors really don’t push it so hard when you’re a freshman, Mom,” Sagan said. “They’re just interested in getting you through the 101 courses.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking his lead. “Gotta be well-rounded.”

“But … what are you interested in?” Sagan’s mom persisted.

“I … don’t know exactly,” I said. “Papi—my grandfather—he always says I was born four or five hundred years too late.”

Sagan’s dad sat down, beads of sweat on his temples. “Whew, that looks good,” he said about his own cooking. “So, Julia … if you could be any person in history … whom would you choose?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “An explorer. Like de Soto or Champlain or Ponce de León.”

“That’s an interesting answer.”

“Not to do any of the bad stuff those guys might have done,” I said quickly. “Just to see what it felt like to explore new places. You know? Before everything changed. See what the forests were like. The wildlife. The … Native Americans. Have some adventures.
Find out where maybe we got parts of history wrong. I’ve always wished I had come over with the settlers at Jamestown.”

“But … didn’t they end up eating one another?” Sagan’s aunt said.

I bit into an ear of corn. “Sure, well. Papi—my grandfather and I read about it. Some archeologists say cannibalism is hard to prove. At least half the original colonists died, yeah. They called it the ‘Starving Time.’ Supposedly a man dug up his pregnant wife, salted her, cut her into pieces, and ate her. Captain John Smith even wrote about it. He said he didn’t know ‘whether she was better roasted, boiled, or barbecued.’ ”

I looked up from my corn and they were all staring at me, especially the little kids.

“This … is … um … good,” I said.

We had homemade ice cream later. “This is the first time I’ve had this since …” I stopped myself.

“What?” Sagan said.

“Never mind. Just something from a long time ago.”

He took me inside afterward. It felt extremely weird walking through his house. These people were so … involved. Artwork all over, photographs on every wall, and stuff that I couldn’t even give a name to. Maybe you could call them … projects? Things with feathers and seashells and bits of colored stones.

“Come see my room,” Sagan said.

We went upstairs and passed a bedroom full of beads and golden twirly thingies hanging from the ceiling that spun in beams of sunlight.

“That’s Bree’s and Jenna’s,” Sagan said.