The Weight of Our Sky(32)

Until Vince leans forward to squint at the road ahead. “What’s that?”

I sit up to take a better look. “What?”

“That thing there, in the middle of the road.”

We’re getting closer and closer, and it’s clear that whatever it is, we’re not going to be able to get past. He eases the car to a stop. “Wait here,” he tells me, opening the door. “I’m going to see what that is. It’s madness to have something blocking the road at a time like this.”

I perch on the edge of my seat, watching him. The Djinn flutters his fingers lightly against the walls of my stomach, but I tamp him down. I am the one who saves, I tell him firmly, not the one who needs saving.

Vince walks a little way down the road from the car, peering at the offending blockade, then looks back at me. “It’s just a tree trunk! I’m going to . . .”

“Going to what?” I yell back. Then I realize he’s gone perfectly still, and that his eyes are wide and staring at something right behind me. My stomach immediately clenches in fear. Before I can look around, he’s sprinted back to the car and leaped into the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind him. In what feels like no time at all, he’s swerved the car back around so fast that the tires screech in protest, then slams on the accelerator like we’re being chased by hellhounds. I can’t help the frightened yelp that escapes me, or keep myself from gripping the door handle so hard I leave permanent nail marks in the worn leather. “What is going on?!” I yell over the rumbling of the engine, which is working harder than it probably has in its whole life. Vince doesn’t answer; he just keeps driving like a maniac, shooting periodic glances at his rearview mirror.

Finally, after a full fifteen minutes of heart-pounding racing in which all I do is count and tap in small clusters of three, he slows to something resembling normal speed, and I take a minute to catch my breath. “What was that all about?” I shout at him.

He takes a deep breath. His face, I realize, is deathly pale. “That thing in the middle of the road,” he says. “It was part of a tree trunk—a banana tree, I think.”

“That was it? It must have just fallen over or something.” He’s still, quiet. “You’re not worried about Pontianaks, are you?” I tease him, hoping for a smile, a laugh, anything to break him out of this strange mood. My mother used to tell me stories from her own grandmother, about the bloodsucking Pontianaks, demon women who lived in banana trees and came back from the dead to snatch innocent babies from unsuspecting new mothers. “And if you’re naughty, I’ll tell her to come and take you, too!” she’d say, smacking me lightly on my bottom while I giggled, immersing myself in the delicious terror of it all.

“It didn’t just fall over,” he says finally. “No jagged edges like you get on a broken trunk. Someone cut it down and put it there.”

I frown. “Who would do something like that?”

“People up to no good,” he says, smiling wanly. “The people I saw coming up behind the car, for example.”

“What?!”

He nods. “That’s what I saw when I looked back. That’s what made me panic. They were creeping out from behind those clusters of trees and bushes by the side of the road. They had weapons. . . . It was a trap.”

My hands are shaking, and I clench them into fists to try and get them to stop. “But . . . but . . . Who were they even trying to catch in that trap? Us? It doesn’t make sense.” My breath is coming hard and fast now, and I can hear my voice rising, tinged with hysteria. “We were only there to help!”

“I don’t think they cared, Melati,” says Vince, his voice gentle. “I think that people are angry and frustrated, and they just want to lash out and hurt someone. It doesn’t really matter who.”

“That’s crazy!”

“It’s just the truth. They don’t see us as people, and they don’t want to. They just know that we’re not them. That’s enough.”

My breathing is so ragged and uneven I’m starting to see black spots in front of my eyes. I shut them tight, and immediately see Mama being bashed over the head with an iron pipe. Not one of us, says the faceless man standing over her body as he shrugs, blood dripping down his wrist and landing on the ground before him. Without even thinking, I start to count, my fingers tapping convulsively—one, two, three, one, two, three—but the image won’t go away. Why won’t it go away? I can’t breathe, I swear, I can’t breathe. Again and again, Mama dies right in front of my eyes, and there’s nothing, nothing, nothing that I can do about it. Count, Melati, damn you, count or she’ll die. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three . . . Vincent, the tree trunk, the men and their weapons, Mama covered in her own blood—the whole world fades away until there’s nothing left but me and the numbers.

? ? ?

“Why do you do that?”

My eyes fly open and I see Vincent looking at me. “Do what?” I say, my heart beating so hard I swear you can see it bouncing out of my chest, like some kind of cartoon character. How long have I been sitting here like this? How long has he been watching me? A dark shame begins to blossom from the pit of my stomach.

“Your fingers—they never stop. And I can hear you counting sometimes, under your breath. What are you counting?”