Outrun the Moon(71)

“What’s that drivel supposed to mean?” Elodie’s violet eyes shrink.

“You and I are going to fetch the main course for our dinner.”

“No, thanks.” She begins to leave, but I grab the back of her dress.

“How dare you.” She whips back around.

“No, how dare you.” I look pointedly around our neatly swept campground and then at our hard-fought bounty on the painting cart, anger whirling in my chest like a frenzied bird.

Katie wears a satisfied smirk, and Francesca, ever the lady, is discreetly tidying the supplies. I take a breath and flap my jacket a few times to cool myself. “I need the kind of help that only someone like you can provide, and I would be grateful”—the word nearly gets caught in my throat—“for your assistance.”

Without waiting for an answer, I march south past Elodie’s tent and continue toward the footpath that meanders to the southern border of the park. After the past few weeks of butting heads with Elodie, I am learning that the best way to get anywhere with her is to simply turn around.

Soon, I hear footsteps behind me. I slow a little to let her catch up, remembering when we undertook a similar mission only five days ago. We both walked differently back then, our dreams making us tall and sure-footed. She had her mother’s proud nose, and I, Ma’s bossy cheeks.

Who are we now, without mothers to define us? Where will our paths lead? I don’t actually believe Fancy Boots can fetch meat better than the others, but something tells me she needs me more than she thinks.

Maybe I need her a little, too.





32



‘‘I WON’T LOOT,’’ ELODIE MARCHES WITH HER fists clenched like snowballs. She brought her pearl bag, which swings pertly on her wrist.

“We never loot; we borrow. And anyway, they might be giving the meat away.”

“I don’t take charity, either.”

“Then I’ll be sure to have Forgivus start a tab for you.”

She scowls. I walk at a fast clip, passing folks clustered under cypress trees, eyes vacant, expressions hungry. Children linger around the broken carousel, held back by their parents. A snowy tiger, flamingo, and bear have dominoed onto one another, and the concrete dome housing the ride looks a sneeze away from collapsing. A few of the swing sets are still standing, while others are twisted heaps of metal and wood.

Jack would’ve loved a chance to ride those swing sets and that carousel. I never brought him here. Ten years have passed since they refused our money to ride the boats at Stow Lake—the only way to get to Strawberry Hill—but time did not blunt my anger. A girl with cloud-like curls and a bonnet with daisies was given the boat I wanted to ride. The girl and I traded stares, hers confused and mine resentful, until her mother pulled her away. The girl could’ve been someone like Elodie.

“You ever been to Stow Lake?” I ask.

“Hasn’t everyone?”

A wine bottle lies broken in the pathway, along with a gunnysack of what looks like onion peelings. Tidiness seems such a luxury now, as the park fills up with traumatized masses. I stop to retrieve the glass shards and drop them in the gunnysack. “It must get tiring for your mouth to always be throwing out jibes.”

Her gaze cuts to the sack in my hand. “What exactly are you planning to do with that?”

“Put it in the rubbish bin, of course.”

“The whole city is a rubbish bin right now. You’re just shifting the garbage around.”

“I’m saving someone a few stitches in their heel, which is a lot more than—”

“You have to save everyone, don’t you, Mercy? Save the world, save Headmistress Crouch, save the leeches even. I know what you were up to, you and those three sheep that baa when you tell them to. I saw you dump those”—she shudders—“things back in the river.”

My bossy cheeks flush. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

“I have a mind to tell Headmistress Crouch what you did. It would serve you right.”

That stops me cold. “If you did, you might kill her of shock.”

“I doubt that. She’s as tough as a buffalo hide.”

She must be bluffing. I erase all emotion from my face and march onward. “Well then, go right ahead. No skin off my chin. There is no St. Clare’s to get expelled from now. And I was only trying to help her, not that I expect you to understand.”

The path zigzags down a grassy knoll to Lincoln Street, the park’s southern boundary. We cross into the inner Sunset District, which is made up of mostly sand dunes, with the occasional building. This part of town is typically cold and blustery, but today, swirls of hot air mingle with the cold. Ma would say this kind of uneven weather weakens energy because our bodies are forced to constantly adjust.

At the bottom of the hill, I find an overflowing rubbish bin. I place the gunnysack beside it.

Elodie tsks her tongue, and the sound is like the scrape of a match.

“Imagine, if everyone picked up a few bricks and put them back where they’re supposed to be, we’d have this city rebuilt in no time.”

“That would never happen. Everyone is out for themselves in the end, even the ones you think you can trust. You think I’m heartless, but I’m just speaking the truth.”

“I never said you didn’t have a heart. But it would be nice if it beat every now and then.”