Tumble & Fall (13 page)

“Where are we going?” she asks. Her breathing is ragged and she’s starting to feel claustrophobic.

“You’ll see.” Owen nudges her.

Finally, the crowds thin out, and up ahead, Sienna sees a circle of flickering neon lights. A chorus of polka-themed circus music floats around them, and Owen looks to her with a smile. The Flying Horses, the old-fashioned carousel at the center of town, is the one establishment still up and running. Sienna hears the familiar screeches of joyful riders as the painted horses glide around the track.

She hasn’t been to the carousel since forever. It used to be the family’s favorite rainy day outing. Even climbing the steps to the open double doors makes her heart heavy with longing, longing for a time when Sienna, too small to ride alone, sat snuggled in her dad’s lap, reaching out with their arms entwined, hoping to catch the brass ring.

But as she follows Owen up the steps and past the main entrance, it’s clear that things have changed. The ticket windows are boarded up and the friendly, middle-aged attendants who normally preside over the zigzagging line to the front are nowhere to be seen. Instead, chaos reigns, and the horses seem to be zipping by at an unnaturally fast clip.

“As soon as word got out that the carousel was shutting down, a bunch of older kids decided to get it running again,” Owen explains as they join the horde of people waiting to climb on board.

“How?” Sienna asks. Ahead of them, a group of girls with glow sticks wrapped around their heads are singing a song Sienna doesn’t recognize. She wonders if they all snuck out, as she did, or if their parents know that they’re here.

Owen shrugs. “One of them used to work the ring arm,” he says, nodding to the hulking metal claw that stretches out from the wall. Sienna used to wonder about the people—usually bronzed, blue-eyed teenage boys—that stood on a pedestal behind the arm, feeding handfuls of rings inside, always struggling to keep up with the riders swiping them out on the other end. At some point, a mysterious voice over the loudspeaker would announce that the brass ring had been dispensed, signaling that the end of the ride was near. The arm attendant would step quietly down from his platform and disappear behind a thick red curtain. It always seemed like such an important job, Sienna remembers thinking, to determine when the last ring would be captured, when the fun would come to an end.

“Hey,” Owen says, wrapping his elbow around her neck and pulling her close. “You okay?”

Sienna manages a smile. “Yeah,” she says softly. Seeing town this way has made her feel adrift, and uneasy. It’s the first time since leaving the House that things have felt so dramatically different. Whatever it is that’s happening, whatever comes of the next few days, it’s real. And it’s big. For the first time that she can remember, Sienna feels afraid.

“We don’t have to stay,” he says. “I thought it would be fun to go for a ride, but…”

“No,” Sienna says, leaning the top of her head near his chest, feeling the warmth of his shirt, the flutter of his pulse beneath her cheek. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Owen rests his palm on the top of her head again, his hand warm and strong on her hair. This time, she turns her face to his and he leans down, holding her chin in his palm. He brings his lips to hers and she feels herself melting, as if every cell in her body is slowing down. Everything inside of her feels suddenly released. Her busy brain is quiet and calm.

They’re still tangled together when a shoulder bumps them forward. The line is moving. Owen pulls back and smiles. He takes her hand as they shuffle forward, inching closer to the blurry spin.

ZAN

“Where did they all come from?”

Nick taps the steering wheel anxiously with his thumbs, waiting as a large crowd passes in front of the car. Their car is still one of just a few on the road, but the sidewalks are now teeming with couples holding hands, families clustered together, and large groups of students strolling en masse. The sun has slipped behind the boxy city skyline, and Zan wonders if there’s something about the darkness that makes people afraid to be alone.

Zan stares at the address, scrawled on the receipt in her lap. First, it was just a name and number. Now, there’s a place, a street in a part of the city she knows nothing about. It seems impossible that so much information, so many clues to something she never even suspected, could fit on such a small square of paper.

“My cousins used to live in Somerville,” Nick says as the car lurches around a corner. They are slowly making their way out of downtown, the shops and restaurants becoming more spread out as the roads expand. “I think I can get us in the neighborhood, at least.”

Zan nods. It seems, suddenly, strange that she and Nick are each other’s only company at a time like this, and even stranger that they are driving around the city, in search of a mysterious girl named Vanessa. Strange, but not altogether awful. More like an unlikely coincidence, and one that Zan suspects Leo must have been behind, somehow.

She sneaks a glance at Nick’s profile, his square jaw set as he navigates the foreign city streets. She wonders what he’d be doing today, tonight, if she hadn’t told him about what she’d found.

“What did your parents say about you leaving?” she asks abruptly. She realizes she knows next to nothing about Nick’s family, except for his dad and the boat. What about his mom? Wouldn’t she want her only son at home at a time like this?

Nick shrugs. “Not much.” He smiles, almost sadly. “My mom’s just happy to have my dad around, for once. And my sisters are too busy being little drama queens to notice.”

Zan remembers Nick’s younger sisters, a pair of golden-haired twins his mother dressed alike until middle school. “What about Clara?” Zan asks. Clara Morrison was one of Zan’s best friends, back before Leo, when Zan still had friends. The fact that Clara was dating Nick meant they all saw each other often, though “dating Nick” was something of a contradiction in terms. The only relationship that Nick ever seemed to have much time for was the one he had with his boat. “I mean, doesn’t she care that you’re gone?”

Nick needlessly checks over his shoulder before pulling into the passing lane. The car whines and rattles as he accelerates. “I didn’t tell her I was leaving,” he says. “We’re not really together anymore.”

Zan tries to look surprised. She remembers being at parties with Leo, who was constantly nearby, his arm slung easily over her shoulder, and watching Clara brood in a corner. Nick was always getting tied up at the harbor, out fishing or working on his boat. He’d show up at the end of the night and kiss Clara hello, before being talked into a late-night swim or game of Ping-Pong with the guys. He just didn’t seem to “get” the idea of a girlfriend.

Zan looks through the window at the abandoned streets. They’ve left the crowds behind them, and are now in a desolate, industrial part of town, the two-lane highway lined with warehouses and boarded-up pawnshops. She wonders what waits for them at the address in her hand, if they ever find it.

The car bucks and hisses in a new and not entirely reassuring way. Nick’s bushy blond eyebrows are locked together in obvious concern.

“What was that?” Zan asks.

Nick leans to look through the windshield, where a thin trail of smoke leaks from beneath the bruised and battered hood. “I’m not sure,” he says. He checks the rearview mirror and turns the wheel, guiding the sputtering car to the side of the road. They slide to the curb just as the hiss explodes into a whistling screech and the car burps a black cloud of grimy exhaust.

Zan fumbles with her door, coughing and shielding her face with the collar of her shirt. Nick is already standing over the smoking hood, waving his hands to clear the air. Once she’s standing a healthy distance from the smell of burning, and mostly convinced the car isn’t going to blow up, Zan can’t help but laugh.

“I thought you said we’d be okay!” she calls out to Nick, now gingerly attempting to pry open the hood.

“I said we’d make it to the city.” He spits and squeezes his eyes shut as the rest of the smoke escapes in a thick puff. “I didn’t say anything about a scavenger hunt.”

“What happened?” Zan asks, tilting the top half of her body forward just slightly, as if seeing better would somehow make her able to help. She knows exactly nothing about cars. She even splurges on full-service gas when it’s an option.

Nick, it doesn’t surprise her to discover, knows a lot. He hovers over the mess of wires and rusted springs, careful not to touch anything directly. “I think the cooling system is messed up,” he finally says.

Zan folds her arms and wrinkles her nose. “Is that bad?”

“Could be worse.” Nick shrugs, slamming the hood. “I could fix it if I had some tools.” He leans against the car and glances at the sky. “And parts.”

“Where does a person get parts?” Zan asks. She looks up and down the side of the highway, as if there might be a CAR PARTS “R” US on the corner.

Nick rubs his hand over his face and checks the screen of his phone. “Any service station,” he says. “But I doubt anything will be open.” He looks off into the distance before pushing himself away from the bumper. “Wait here,” he says. “I’ll check.”

Nick jogs a few paces down the road and holds up a hand to let her know he’ll be back. Zan lowers herself to the curb, listening as the car’s insides seem to rearrange themselves, clinking and settling back into place. She hears Nick’s voice in her head.
Scavenger hunt.

Leo loved scavenger hunts. Actual games, like the one he put together for Amelia’s birthday party a few years back, but also adventures that seemed to find him, somehow, wherever he went. Zan remembers the time he walked the entire perimeter of the island, by himself, just because he felt like it. It was when they had first started dating, and he’d asked her along. She’d said no; the thought of camping on the beach, on the island’s farthest, rockiest point, scared her more than she wanted to admit. There’s a part of her that feels like this trip—solving this mystery, from clues he left behind—is her way of proving that she’s changed. That her time with Leo has changed her, for good. She’s not afraid anymore.

Now more than ever, she feels like he’s watching over her, sending her on one last adventure, setting obstacles and traps along the way, just to see how much she can take.

“Bring it on,” she whispers to herself with a smirk.

“Bring what on?”

Zan turns to find Nick panting over her shoulder. “Nothing,” she covers. “What’d you find?”

Nick wipes a layer of sweat from his neck with the bottom of his T-shirt, exposing a hard, toned stomach. Zan looks quickly in the direction of the warehouses. “There’s a gas station not far,” he says. “It’s closed. But…”

His voice trails off and he stares at her intensely, as if asking for permission to continue.

“But what?” Zan prompts. She looks into Nick’s blue eyes and sees a new glimmer, the twinkling kernel of a plan.

“Come with me,” he says, walking quickly, the car still rattling and gasping on the side of the road behind him. Zan hurries to keep up.

*   *   *

The gas station is tucked back a bit from the road, attached to a big garage with a sign advertising “Boston’s Best Oil Change—Cheap & Fast!” out front. The highway splits off into a quiet residential neighborhood with few signs of life. Zan wonders if everyone has gone deeper into the city, where at least there are more distractions.

First, they try calling for help. They bang on the doors and peer into the darkened convenience shop, scanning the aisles of junk food and batteries for somebody, anybody, to let them in. Next, Nick tries the doors, shaking the pair at the front on their hinges and putting all of his weight into tugging up the heavy door to the garage. The garage is held shut with a flimsy lock, and Nick searches the edges of the pavement for a rock big enough to smash it open.

Zan walks around the corner, behind the tire pump and vacuum machine. There’s a sad-looking patch of grass that seems to serve as the outdoor break room, littered with cigarette butts and bottle caps. Above a big blue Dumpster, Zan spots a high window with an angled pane, swung open just a crack.

“Nick!” she calls. “Back here!”

By the time he finds her she’s already perched on the Dumpster lid, trying not to inhale the rancid odor of forgotten trash and spilled engine oil. She pushes at the bottom of the window, prying it open as much as she can. “It’s stuck,” she grunts.

“Let me try,” Nick offers. He wedges his elbow into the space between the glass and the garage siding, popping it open a few inches more. He peers inside. “This place is stocked.”

Zan eyes the opening before peeling off her sweatshirt. She drops it to the ground and puts a hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Give me a boost,” she orders him.

Nick looks at her, his eyes wide with alarm. She puts his hands on her waist. “Come on!” she insists.

Nick lifts her easily, and she grabs the dirty sill with both hands. There’s a thumping energy inside of her, as if a motor has been switched on. She feels the way she does when she’s running, strong and in control. Just as she’d thought, Nick has cleared enough space for her to wrangle her upper body inside. Once her head is through and her eyes adjust to the dusty dark, she looks for an easy way down.

The floor is hard and concrete, so falling headfirst isn’t much of an option. But there’s a wall of metal shelving a few feet beside her, and she grabs the corner rail with the tips of her outstretched fingers.

“Okay,” she shouts. “One more big shove.” She feels Nick’s hands tighten around her narrow hips, and in one swift motion she’s clawing at the shelves and swinging her legs down to the empty railing below.

“I’m in!” she calls ecstatically, starting to scale the ladderlike rungs of shelving to the ground. A pile of hubcaps shudders on the top shelf, and one rolls slowly to the edge. It falls with a piercing clatter, and Zan drops to her feet behind it. She’s rubbing the metal marks free from her hands when the whole unit sways ominously to one side. The rest of the hubcaps, followed by half-opened cardboard boxes of bolts and screws, dented cans of paint and oil—it all comes raining down around her. Zan ducks and scrambles to the door, her hands covering her face as the room explodes in a tinny racket.