In Time (The Darkest Minds, #1.5)(24)

I like that. There are choices now. Possibilities.

“This place you’re going,” I say, “is it nice?”

She already wrote the address down for me. Smart thing had it memorized, and realized, even before I did, that we could roughly navigate our way there by zooming in on the skip tracer tablet’s map until it showed the surface streets around San Bernardino. I’d only been to California a few times, enough to start feeling a bit nervous once we hit Quartzsite, one of the last few Arizona towns along the I-10 before the border.

Zu shrugs.

“You’ve never been there before?” I press. “Even though it’s your uncle’s place?”

She weaves her fingers together, then rips them apart.

“Ohhh,” I say, “he doesn’t get along with the rest of your family?”

I get a thumbs-up for that. “Are you sure he’s…I mean, I know it’s your uncle, but he’ll be okay taking you in?”

Zu wraps her arms around herself, miming a big embrace.

“I hope so, kid, ’cause I don’t think you can stick with me if I go looking for, like, the Children’s League.”

It’s like I’ve slapped her in the face—the moment the shock passes, she looks visibly upset. At first I think it’s because what I’ve said was a little mean, but she’s freaking out, shaking her head, waving her hands. No—her mouth forms the words in the dark—not them.

“Why not?” I haven’t heard, you know, pretty things about their methods, but they do get their point and demands across in a way the parents sitting around on the steps of Flagstaff’s city hall never did.

She’s frantically looking around the different compartments of the car, pulling out sheets of paper, then putting them back when she sees there’s something important written on them.

“Dorothy, Dorothy—it’s okay, calm down.” I can tell she’s getting more and more frustrated—and just when I think she’s going to pull the Band-Aids off her face and write on the backs of those, she finally just settles on using the last of the ink to write the message on her palm.

NO!!! THEY ARE TERRIBLE! SCARY! YOU ARE BETTER THAN THAT!

I snort, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. For a few minutes, I can’t say anything at all. There’s a stone in my throat and I can’t swallow it. A few minutes ago, all I could taste in my mouth was the McDonald’s hamburger I scarfed down for dinner. Now it’s so dry my tongue sticks to the roof of it.

“All right,” I tell her. “All right. I’ll figure something else out.”

Because even if it’s not true, I want it to be.

You can see the border station from a good three miles away. The floodlights are cranked up so high they look like they form a solid white wall. It’s only when you get closer that you start seeing the lengths of barbed wire and the enormous military tanks and trucks they have haloed out around the freeway, and the small, old building where the border agents used to sit and wave you through.

We pulled over a while back to get Zu situated, but I still feel sick about it—really, genuinely sick with fear. I’ve got her folded down in the gully of space where the dashboard curves out, but she’s only covered with a blanket and a large duffel bag of clothes we picked up at one of those Goodwill drop-off sites. I wonder if she can even breathe under there, and I wonder what’s going to happen if they demand to search the truck, and I wonder if she’s somehow going to have to save me from this, too.

“Don’t say anything or move no matter what, okay?” I tell her.

There are bright orange signs everywhere telling me to reduce my speed, but they seem a little redundant. The floodlights are so damn bright it’s hard to see anything and you have to take your foot off the gas to avoid crashing into the barrel barriers or any one of the uniformed National Guardsmen and -women.

Shit, shit, shit. I grip the steering wheel. I have the AC going at full blast, so high it’s practically deafening, but my back is sticking to the faux leather seat. You’re fine, Gabe—Jim! You are Jim! You are Jim Goodkind and you have every right to be driving through here—

A soldier steps out of the little station building, lifting her hand against the glare of my headlights. I’m waved forward, but not through, like I was stupidly hoping.

She raps her knuckles against my window and I roll it down, trying to remember how to breathe. In out in out in out in outinoutinout…

“Can I ask what business you have in California?”

Say something. Say anything. There is a little girl right next to you and she needs you to act like the twenty-five-year-old you are, not the three-year-old your wimpy-ass guts are telling you to be.

“The aqueduct…” I swallow, forcing what I hope is not a demented smile onto my face. “My boss thinks someone on the California side might have tampered with it. Water levels are suspiciously low. I have to check it tonight before they come in tomorrow morning.”

I have no idea what words are coming out of my mouth. I have no idea if there’s a canal that flows from California into Arizona. I always thought it was the opposite—that California was hogging the Colorado River and leaving us with nothing—but maybe I just spent too much time with drunk, bitter Grand Canyon tour guides growing up. I’m smiling so hard, though, I’ve lost all feeling in my face.