• • •
Cam wanders the streets aimlessly, not knowing or caring where he is. He’s sure that Roberta has put out a search party already.
And what happens when they find him? They’ll take him home. Roberta will soundly chastise him. Then she’ll forgive him. And then tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, he’ll try on the crisp uniform hanging on the back of his door, he’ll like how it looks, and he’ll allow himself to be transferred to his new owners.
He knows it’s inevitable. And he also knows that the day that happens is the day any spark he has within him will die forever.
A bus approaches down the street, its headlights bobbing as it hits a pothole. Cam could take that bus home. He could take it far away. But neither of those choices is the idea pinioning his mind at that moment.
And so he prays in nine languages, to a dozen deities—to Jesus, to Yahweh, to Allah, to Vishnu, to the “I” of the universe, and even to a great godless void.
Please, he begs. Please give me a single reason why I shouldn’t hurl myself beneath the wheels of that bus.
When the answer comes, it comes in English—and not from the heavens, but from the bar behind him.
“ . . . have confirmed that Connor Lassiter, also known as the Akron AWOL, is still alive. It is believed he may be traveling with Lev Calder and Risa Ward . . . .”
The bus rolls past, splattering his jeans with mud.
• • •
Forty-five minutes later, Cam returns home with a new sense of calm, as if nothing has happened. Roberta scolds him. Roberta forgives him. Always the same.
“You must stop these reckless surrenders to your momentary moods,” she chides.
“Yes, I know.” Then he tells her that he’s accepting General Bodeker’s “proposal.”
Roberta, of course, is both relieved and overjoyed. “This is a great step for you, Cam. A step you need to take. I’m so very proud of you.”
He wonders what the general’s response would have been had Cam not accepted. Certainly they would come for him anyway. Forced him into submission. After all, if he’s their property, it’s in their right to do anything they want to him.
Cam goes to his room and heads straight for his guitar. This is not an idle kind of playing tonight; he plays with a purpose only he knows. The music brings with it the impressions of memories, like an afterimage of a bright landscape. Certain fingerings, certain chord progressions have more of an effect, so he works them, changes them up. He begins to dig.
His chords sound atonal and random—but they’re not. For Cam it’s like spinning the dial of a safe. You can crack any combination if you’re skilled enough and you know what to listen for.
Then finally, after more than an hour of playing, it all comes together. Four chords, unusual in their combination, but powerfully evocative, rise to the surface. He plays the chords over and over, trying different fingering, finessing the notes and the harmonies, letting the music resonate through him.
“I haven’t heard that one,” Roberta says, poking her head in his room. “Is it new?”
“Yes,” Cam lies. “Brand-new.”
But in reality it’s very old. Much older than him. He had to dig deep to coax it forth, but once he found it, it’s as if it was always there on the tips of his fingers, on the edge of his mind waiting to be played. The song fills him with immense joy and immense sorrow. It sings of soaring hopes and dreams crushed. And the more he plays it, the more memory fragments are drawn forth.
When he heard that news report coming from the bar—when he stepped in and saw the faces of the Akron AWOL, his beloved Risa, and the tithe-turned-clapper on the TV screen, he was stunned. First by the revelation that Connor Lassiter was alive—but on top of that, a sense of mental connection that made his seams crawl.
It was the tithe. That innocent face. Cam knew that face, and not just from the many articles and news reports. This was more.
He was injured.
He needed healing.
I played guitar for him.
A healing song.
For the Mahpee.
Cam had no idea what that meant, only that it was a spark of connection—a synapse within his complex mosaic of neurons. He knows Lev Calder—or at least a member of his internal community does—and that knowledge is somehow tied to music.
So now Cam plays.
It’s two o’clock in the morning when he finally gleans enough from his musical memory to understand. Lev Calder had once been given sanctuary by the Arápache Nation. No one searching for him will know that, which means he has the perfect place to hide. But Cam knows. The heady power of that knowledge makes him dizzy—because if it’s true that he’s traveling with Risa and the Connor, then the Arápache Reservation is where they’ll be—a place where the Juvenile Authority has no authority.
Had Risa known Connor Lassiter was alive all along? If she had, it would explain so many things. Why she could not give her heart to Cam. Why she so often spoke of Lassiter in the present tense, as if he were just waiting around the corner to spirit her away.
Cam should be furious, but instead he feels vindicated. Exhilarated. He had no hope of battling a ghost for her affections, but Connor Lassiter is still flesh and blood—which means he can be bested! He can be defeated, dishonored—whatever it will take to kill Risa’s love for him, and in the end, when he has fallen from Risa’s favor, Cam will be there to keep Risa from falling as well.