Malorie(69)

“No,” Tom says. He wishes he did.

“We do,” a man standing deeper in the tent says.

“Where?” Athena asks.

“The old Farmer Jack. The grocery store office, just like the kid’s mom said.”

A moment of silence follows. Athena looks to the glasses. Tom does, too, sees her eyes reflected in them.

She looks happier than Malorie ever has.

“Do you have one here?” Tom suddenly asks. He can’t help but ask it. The census papers said the people of Indian River claimed to have caught one.

He doesn’t need to explain what he means. These people understand.

“If you mean do we have one locked up in some sort of cage, then no,” Athena says. “But there’s no shortage of creatures in Indian River.”

Tom hears heavier activity outside. Malorie’s words begin to rise in his head and he cuts them off, can almost see the blood of them, slashed.

“Get the mirror from the grocery store,” Athena says. She hasn’t taken her eyes off Tom, and for a second he thinks she’s telling him to do it. But a man near the back of the tent moves to the door.

Are they going to test his glasses? Right now?

You’re going to.

“So this is how it works,” Athena says. “We have volunteers. A long list of them. People who have decided it’s wiser to risk their lives than to hide behind a blanket. People like you, Tom.”

“Someone’s gonna look through my glasses?” Tom asks. “I don’t want someone to get hurt because of me.”

Athena doesn’t laugh, doesn’t smile, doesn’t move to calm his fears, either.

“These two”—she fans palms toward the men seated on either side of her—“are up next.”

Tom doesn’t know what to say. It’s one thing to reveal his invention, and it feels good for it to be received this way. Yet…these men right here?

They’re already standing up. Already getting ready.

“Don’t worry,” Henry says, suddenly at Tom’s side. “This is what they live for here.”

Athena rises from the stool and offers Tom her hand.

“I’d like to thank you for coming to Indian River,” she says. “And for having the balls to present your theory.” Then, smiling: “Make them do something we can relate to. Make them consider themselves…make them look within…like we do. What’s more relatable than self-reflection? Absolutely brilliant, Tom. You belong here. With us. Did you know that? Don’t answer. This is a big moment for you. For me, too. Welcome, Tom. Welcome to Indian River.”





TWENTY-EIGHT


The warring emotions within her are so extreme that Olympia endures actual, physical pain.

She’s told her mom her secret.

She told her!

And Malorie reacted with…pride? She reacted well. As well as she could have, given the circumstances. And it’s those circumstances that cause the war within.

Tom.

Gary.

Olympia doesn’t think Tom will have enough time in Indian River for something truly terrible to happen. They’re on their way, after all; it’s not like Tom vanished years ago and they just discovered his name on the census as being accounted for in a notoriously unsafe town. No. He’s just ahead. Out of sight, yes. But he can’t be too far.

The people there will have to get to know him before they can ask him to be a part of anything perilous.

But then again, what does she know? Tom could walk into the very building in which they’ve caught one, if they actually have done so. Olympia doesn’t think that’s possible. She’s seen them. Most of her life. And, to her, they don’t look like something to be caught.

“This way,” she says, gripping Malorie’s gloved hand and leading her around a dead body in the road. It’s an old man. He looks like he could be a hundred years old. There’s a tent twenty feet away. She thinks the man lived there. There’s no sign of self-immolation.

Old age, she thinks. But she does not say. Now isn’t the time.

And when is? When has it ever been the time?

“Do you see him?” Malorie asks.

Tom.

Tom left the train.

This is too much. This is bad.

“No,” she says. “But he can’t be far.”

“How long?” Malorie asks.

They’re moving fast, Malorie’s words are breathless, but Olympia knows what she means.

“Since I was six.”

Yes. At the school for the blind. It was her first time, and she can see it today, in her mind’s eye, as if it’s happening again. The man Rick who called the night Olympia and Tom were born, he’d just asked her to get a basket from the room everyone called “the supply shed.” Just a regular classroom down one of the many brick halls in the school she was just beginning to call home. They kept paper and tools and a ladder and scissors and just about everything in that room. Olympia was happy to be asked to do it.

Are you big enough to get me a basket? Rick had said. And Olympia was all smiles. It didn’t matter that Rick couldn’t see that smile or that most of the people in the building would never see her face at all. She was glad to play a part, any part, at all.

But on the way to the room, at the far end of the hall, she saw one.