You Can't Catch Me(74)

Then a strange thing happened. Serene came and stood next to me, slipping her small hand into mine, and patting me on the back the way Tom was caressing Tanya. I was both repulsed and comforted by it, but I didn’t know how to make it stop.

And then my mother spoke.

“Was it in Ohio?” she asked, breaking the spell.

I pulled my hand gently from Serene’s and patted her on the head. She smiled at me and ran back to my mother.

“Jessica?” my mother prompted.

“Yes.”

“Why did she go there? She never said.”

“She was taking a year away. I think she found New York overwhelming.”

“You never should’ve brought her there,” Tanya said, raising her head and speaking through clenched teeth. They were yellowed and crooked from years of no dental care, but she still resembled Kiki enough to make looking at her hurt. They had the same eyes, the same innate wish to please.

I rocked back on the creaky wooden chair I was sitting on.

“You don’t think I feel guilty enough already? But honestly, you’ve got some nerve pointing fingers. She would’ve been fine there if it weren’t for all of you.”

Tanya looked down at her hands. There was dirt caked under her fingernails. She’d been weeding the garden that morning, she’d said when I first arrived, and had just made tea. The pot had gone cool now.

I banged my hand on the table. “I mean it. How can any of you stand to live with what you did?”

“Jess . . . ,” my father warned. He, of all of them, was the most like a stranger to me. He’d been Todd’s right-hand financial man, always tucked away in Todd’s study in the big house with the only computer on the property. We learned after Todd died that he was managing Todd’s investments, and he was good at it. Very good. It was mainly because of him that there’d been so much money to distribute to the survivors. My dad had a knack for making well-timed stock purchases in all the companies Todd used to rail against, Apple and Microsoft and Shell and Monsanto—names we didn’t even understand most of the time. I never saw a Mac or an iPhone or any kind of technology at all except for the brief moments we spent in town, until Liam rescued me. But my dad knew. While Todd was predicting the downfall of civilization, that moment we were planning and digging for, my dad was making Todd rich. For what, was never clear.

“Don’t speak to me,” I said to him. “Not now. Not when you never bothered to before.”

“I don’t think that’s fair,” my mother said. “We—”

“You did your best? No. No, no, no, no, no. Do not even fucking start with that today. Your best would’ve been not to join up with Todd in the first place. Your best would’ve been to leave when you had a kid or when Todd decided that we all had to live away from our parents and become little soldiers of the apocalypse. Your best would’ve been to tell Todd no when he decided I was going to build that cabin on my own where he was going to—”

“Stop!” my mother yelled. “Not in front of Serene.”

I looked away from my mother and at Serene. She was pressed against my mother’s side, and she had a small smirk on her face, like she was enjoying the drama. I felt a bolt of rage go through me. Why the hell did she get the innocent childhood? Why did she have to be shielded? But no, that was jealousy. My parents suddenly caring about the welfare of a child who wasn’t me. It wasn’t her fault they chose her over their own flesh and blood. It wasn’t my fault, either, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it now. There was no way to turn back the clock and bring my childhood back.

So instead, I stood, turned on my heel, and stormed out of the kitchen.

At least I could leave on my terms, if nothing else.

The rest of the night in Jackson is a bit of a blur. When you’re done in with exhaustion, it’s easy to lose track of time. Thank God JJ’s there to keep me on track.

The first thing we do when we get back to camp is eat. I don’t think I can, but JJ makes some pasta and sauce and orders me to eat it, and I do. I also down two glasses of water, only then realizing how dehydrated I am.

“What now?” I ask after I finish a second bowl of pasta. My stomach’s still unstable, but I feel more focused.

JJ keeps her voice low. There isn’t anyone in the campsites on either side of us, but voices carry in the night. “Get some of her clothes out of her tent, take them up to the showers with you, and get cleaned up.”

“But I have to pay the attendant. What if she remembers me?”

“We’re not hiding that we’re here, remember? And you’ve got to get cleaned up, dress in her clothes, et cetera, so you can take her car back to the airport.”

The thought of putting on Jessie’s clothes almost makes the pasta come up. “Yeah, okay. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll clean up and then get some stuff together here. When you get back, you’ll drive her car to the airport.” She hands me her laptop bag.

“What’s this for?”

“Use the Wi-Fi up at the showers to book her on one of the morning flights. Whatever you can get. Use her Molly credit cards and ID.”

“But they’ll know she didn’t take the flight. They can check the manifest.”

“It will look like she’s trying to hide where she’s going. That’s what’s important.”