Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(31)

Mom emerged from the wings, alone, barefoot, wearing a dress of green and yellow tatters, each one so light and so pale it was as if a ribbon had been cut out of the air and tinted. When she reached the edge of the stage, her whole body drew upward, as if she were being lifted by a string anchored in the center of her chest. We all watched her, breathless, waiting. And then the music started, violins and cellos, and she exploded into movement. Do you remember? Leaping. Spinning. Falling to the floor only to rise up again. Other dancers joined her then, their bodies like twists of wrought iron. You fell back in your chair, eyes wide and mouth slack. Dad was crying quietly and making no attempt to hide it.

When Mom came out the stage door, we all rushed her at once, crashing into this tight little circle, the flowers Dad brought in the center. Mom’s hand and your hand curled around either side of my back while Dad’s long arms reached all the way around us. We leaned into the circle and our breath swirled together, mingling with the scent of Mom’s stage makeup and her sweat and a dozen yellow roses.



“Hey. You okay?”

I snapped out of the memory to find Hannah standing at the edge of my campsite, a flashlight in her hand.

I shook the past out of my head and jumped up. “Is everything all right? Are the kids—”

“They’re fine,” she said, waving me back down. “Greer’s trying to move everybody toward bed, and I needed a breather. He figured you might be up here.”

She settled onto a fallen log. My mask and gloves were in the tent behind me, but she was five feet away, maybe six, so I left them where they were. She pulled two cans of soda out of a plastic bag and held one up to me.

“Ren made a special trip into town and talked a guardsman out of two six-packs of soda. Said he did it just for me.”

I waved the can away. No way to know how many infected had touched it. “He’s lying. He talks Eliot into doing things like that and then he takes credit for it.”

“No way! He said the only reason he did it was so I’d give him a kiss on the cheek.”

“Guess you should kiss Eliot, then,” I said. “Just watch out for Astrid and Makela if you do.”

Hannah stretched her legs in front of her. “Ah, but you’ve been away too long,” she said. “The girls decided that they’re too mature and desirable to waste their time on a boy who clearly doesn’t appreciate them. Besides, they really need to spend more time on themselves, you know?”

“And how do they plan on doing that?”

“Well, Astrid is going to rededicate herself to the art of sculpture. Makela wants to take up hunting.”

“Hunting?”

“Yeah, and you’d better be prepared because tomorrow she plans on asking you and Greer how she can get hold of a shotgun.”

“No way,” I said. “I will not live in any camp that includes an armed Makela Whitman. She’s scary enough already.”

Hannah laughed. I didn’t think there could be anything better than her smiling, but there was.

“You looked like you were having fun with them,” I said.

“They’re good kids,” she said. “Exhausting, but good.”

She upended the soda, her neck gracefully long and pale in the glow of the flashlight. When she lowered the can, our eyes met, and it was as if an electric circuit snapped into place. I quickly looked away and pointed to the key around her neck.

“Any feelings about what that might open?”

Hannah took it in her fingertips and turned it over. She shook her head. “Every time I touch it, I see the color blue, like sky blue, and then I feel happy for a second, but then . . .” Her face darkened. She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just gone.”

She let the key drop. I pulled at the blades of grass by my feet while we listened to the night sounds of the woods.

“I didn’t actually come up here to bring you a soda, you know.”

She was leaning forward, her eyes on me, mussed hair framing her face. I felt a nervous trill in my gut.

“I never really thanked you,” she said. “For yesterday. With those men.”

“Oh.” I shrugged it away. “Anyone would have done it.”

“Not me, apparently. The second they grabbed you, I ran away.”

“But you came back.”

Hannah nodded, but I got the feeling it was an excuse she didn’t really buy. “Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks. Whatever this—however this turns out, I’m really glad it was you who found me.”

She smiled and my face went hot, as if every drop of blood had raced there at once.

“I’m glad it was me too.”

“Also glad I got to see you without that mask,” she said, then lightly touched her cheeks. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have known about those dimples.”

“Hannah! Card! Guys! Where the hell are you?”

There was a crash out in the woods and then a second later Greer exploded out of the trees, his clothes askew, his eyes wild.

I grabbed my mask and gloves. “What is it? Is it Raney?”

“No time to talk! We have to run! Now!”

“But why? What’s going—”

Right on cue, the singsongy voice of Carrie Baldwin rang through the trees.

“Gre-er! I know you’re hi-ding!”