Elusion(71)

“I wrote him the script because when he didn’t sleep for a couple of days, he would run a high fever and get some flu-like symptoms,” she continues. “Blurry vision, mood swings. Kind of like—”

“How I’m feeling.” I bow my head, my shoulders caving in with humiliation. “But why do you talk about him in the present tense sometimes, and keep all his things the way they were?”

“I read somewhere that it helps with grief,” she says meekly. “It makes me feel closer to him, to think that his presence is still with us in some way.”

I’m so ashamed to have doubted her at all. I’m also strangely hopeful in this moment, like there’s a chance she might be wrong about my dad and he’s out there, somewhere, in need of my help. Still, when she walks toward me and gently eases me into a hug, I don’t feel very deserving of her comfort after what I’ve just put her through. But then I notice how she’s shuddering, and I feel a wetness collecting on the back of my shirt.

“Promise me you’ll stay out of Elusion, okay? At least until they figure out what’s going on. All these kids in comas . . . it’s making me nervous.”

I can’t bring myself to outright lie and say yes, so instead I nod and squeeze her tight.

God knows how far this encounter might have set her back in her recovery, so I decide not to divulge anything else that might counteract the progress she’s made. No more details about Elusion.

My mom needs to be well. I can’t ruin that.

She releases me, clearing her throat. “So have you found out why you saw your father in Elusion?”

“No. I hope that information is somewhere on the QuTap,” I say. “Someone else is analyzing it now.”

She smiles a little bit, sort of like she might be oddly proud of me. “Why don’t you lie down, okay? I’m going to make you a little something to relax. Then if you’re feeling well enough later, we’ll call Clarence Reynolds about all this and see what he has to say.”

“Isn’t that . . . Dad’s lawyer?”

“Yes. I think we should tell him what you did to Patrick’s computer. I’m sure he can give us some good advice about what to do next,” she says as she stands. “I promise you, Regan, I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you.”


Just after six thirty p.m., my eyes finally open. I can’t believe that I’ve been asleep for over twelve hours. I guess instead of waking me up for a call to the offices of Gruber, Lewis & Reynolds, my mother decided that it was best if I woke up on my own.

I’m still groggy from the small dose of Zolpidem she gave me from my father’s old stash—the powder form dissolves really well in hot water, so she brewed me some spiked herbal tea. I can see why my dad used it for insomnia, because within minutes of the first sip, I was so drowsy I could barely sit upright.

I make my way down to the kitchen and see that Mom has already left for work. There are a few new dirty dishes loaded in the dishwasher, and she left me a note on the clear carbon-fiber counter backsplash:

Call me @ hospital if you need anything. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Love you.

My head buzzes as I defrost a peanut butter pocket sandwich. As the seconds tick down on the digital clock of the microwave, my brain begins to recharge, facts and figures blowing up like fireworks.

Patrick has less than a day to recall Elusion.

Avery still has the QuTap. If Patrick calls my bluff, what will I do?

Four lives hang in the balance, with more possibly in danger.

The microwave beeps the moment I remind myself that “Hate Our New Land” spells out “Walden Thoreau.” I didn’t have the chance to really examine this connection because my mother interrupted me, and now is not an ideal time to make sense of it either, because I’m stuck in an Aftershock-like limbo where my mental faculties aren’t very sharp. But I do know that this is another link between Nora and my father. Leading where, though?

I pull my plate out of the microwave and walk over to the living room couch, plopping down on the center cushion and activating the InstaComm wall with the remote. Four video messages are listed—two for my mother and two for me. I highlight the icon with my school photo and then click on it, revealing two screen grabs side by side—the one on the right is of Josh, time-stamped at 4:31 p.m., and the other is of Patrick, time-stamped at 3:02 p.m. I stare at them both, comparing the different contours of their faces, which is totally irrelevant right now, I know, but my thoughts are still fuzzy and hard to control.

With his sparkling blue eyes and chiseled features, Patrick is definitely more classically handsome, someone you’d notice while walking over a pedestrian bridge during rush hour with the hope that he’d bump into you. But there’s something about Josh—with his slightly asymmetrical face and the small gap in his teeth and the barely-there hair—that makes it impossible for me to get his image out of my head.

So I click on his message first, knowing in the back of my mind that the logic I just used is particularly skewed, given the dire circumstances.

Josh’s image flashes to life when I hit Play and the first thing I think is that the life has been drained from his amber eyes. Suddenly I fear that there’s bad news about Nora, or he’s about to tell me that Avery plans to annihilate me along with Patrick.

“Hey, Regan. You weren’t in school today, so I’ve . . . been worried about you. I know you don’t want to talk, but there’s so much I want to say to you.”