And then I understand. “The paths,” I say, my voice jumping with hope. I turn back to Elias. “He said it before about how you can cut through the Forest to the paths. Maybe he’s taking her to another one.”
I step away from him, everything in my mind a whirl at once. “We have to try to find them,” I say, my hands shaking as I wipe sweat away from my upper lip.
Elias opens his mouth as if to protest and I stare at him. He looks into the Forest where Catcher and Cira are dodging trees. “Grab the packs,” he says. “We’ll have to run to catch up.”
I jump at his words, relieved to have a plan—something to focus on and occupy my thoughts so that I don’t think about Cira being in the Forest. Cira with blood on her arms. Cira, who isn’t immune to the Mudo. Who’s still weak from the blood loss and now infection.
I grab what I can, shoving the full canteens into the packs and throwing what I can’t carry at Elias. We run through the empty village to the gate at the other end, opposite where we entered.
Elias shoves it open and starts running down the path, jumping over brambles and dodging fallen tree limbs. My chest is searing but I push myself forward as the full pack sways and bumps against my back. We have to find them. She has to be okay.
As if hearing my thoughts Elias says, “She’ll be all right.”
I nod because I don’t have the strength or the energy for anything else and because I need to believe him. All I can do is force one foot in front of the other and try to stay between the fences as I stare out into the trees, desperate for a glimpse of Catcher or Cira.
We come to a branch in the path and Elias doesn’t hesitate before veering right. At some point they should cross this path; they have to. As my feet pound against the ground I can only think: They will make it. They will make it.
Elias begins to pull away from me and I wave for him to go ahead. My legs are burning, my lungs screaming. He turns a corner and then freezes. I slow down, stumbling to a walk. He doesn’t draw his knife and so I know that it’s not Mudo he sees; it’s not danger.
He has to have found Catcher and Cira. I don’t want to but I force myself forward, my arms and legs shaking. I can tell from the set of his jaw, from the way he holds his body, that there’s something around the bend I don’t want to see.
Chapter 33
He holds out a hand for me to stop but I don’t. I can’t. I have to know what happened. I suck in as much air as I can, pressing my fingers to my lips and steeling myself for whatever lies ahead.
Before I can see anything I hear the whimpering and I change my mind. I stop in the middle of the path, one foot hovering above the ground. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to face whatever it is Elias is watching, whatever it is that’s around the bend.
I realize that this is the way the world works. If I could stop the spin, stop the rotation, I would have done so long ago. I would have stopped it the first moment that Catcher’s lips met mine under the moon in the amusement park. I would have held us in that eternity forever.
But of course everything presses forward, even as we dig our feet against the reality of it all. One event tumbles from the next out of our control and we are dragged along, helpless.
That’s why I force myself to raise my eyes, to take that step and to face what’s happened. Even though I know more clearly than I’ve known anything else that what I’m about to see will break me.
Catcher sits in the middle of the path. His sister, my best friend, Cira, is laid across his legs. He bends over her, his head against her chest. The sound coming out of his mouth is like the moans of the Mudo. It penetrates me and carries me down into myself so that it’s almost impossible to stand.
I look over at Elias, at the way he stands there staring. His face is white, his lips like a ghost. His eyes are wide and his chin trembles. And I realize then that he doesn’t think of himself as an outsider—as a stranger. He’s one of us. I reach for his hand but I’m too late. He walks down the path to Catcher.
Elias kneels on the other side of Cira. He places a few fingers against her cheek. And then he reaches across her to Catcher and grips his hand. I swallow, barely able to catch my breath as I watch them, my own grief storming all around me.
“Did they …? Is she …?” I can’t say it. I take a step forward until I can see her face. See the way she stares into the Forest as if the rest of us aren’t here.
Catcher shakes his head no and I sag against the fence with relief until I feel the trace of Mudo fingers along my arm and I pull away.
“But why?” I ask, trying to understand what drove Cira into the Forest. Trying to figure out why she would do something like that. No one answers me. I think about the cuts on her arms. I think about how she’d already tried to give up once before. I wrap my arms around myself, shaking.
I don’t know how to fix her. I don’t know how to make it better. I don’t know what to say or do to help her. Except tell her that we can survive this. That we will survive.
And I realize that maybe this is the one thing that will always pull the people of my world together. The more we lose, the more we become the survivors.
“Maybe we should go back to Vista,” I say softly to Catcher and Elias. Cira sits in the middle of the path staring into the Forest, lost in her own mind. Bandages circle her arms, rusty with dried blood from where her wounds pulled open when she climbed the fence. She hasn’t said anything, hasn’t explained anything, and my relief that she’s okay is starting to simmer into anger and frustration.
The blood infection still rages through her, red streaks radiating up her arms, her skin flush with fever. I’m afraid that if we continue out here in the Forest she’ll just get worse. That we’ll be too late to do anything about the infection and it’ll kill her.
“We can’t,” Catcher says, looking down at his feet. His voice is despondent, his eyes ringed with deep bruises from pushing too hard and not sleeping enough.
“She’s sick, Catcher,” I tell him. He grimaces. “I don’t just mean from the cuts. I mean …” I think about the determination on her face when she climbed the fence this morning. “I just don’t know if we can take care of her,” I finish weakly.
Birds explode from a bush past the fence, causing us all to wince with their tangle of cries. The Mudo continue to moan.
“The Recruiters are already in the Forest,” he says. He’s still looking at the ground as if what he’s saying isn’t a big deal.
I push my fingers against my forehead, tension pulling at the muscles of my shoulders and neck. We’re trapped now, no way to go back. I try to keep my breathing steady.
“How far away are they?” Elias asks.
Catcher shakes his head. “They made it to the path the other morning. They’re moving pretty fast. But I still thought …”
“Yesterday.” I can’t even put sound behind the word, can only move my lips. The Recruiters have been running through the paths for a day already. I feel sick, my stomach twisting around nothing since we’ve been slowly running out of food.
“What do we do?” I ask, my voice breaking.
Catcher shrugs. It’s as if he’s given up the way his sister has and I want to slap him. I’ve fought too hard for him and for Cira. I’ve given up everything for them—every chance I could have had for a normal life.
It’s not fair for them to stop fighting now. I turn and pace down the path a bit, needing distance. I can’t be the only one who stays strong while everyone else gets to fall apart; it’s not a role I’m used to or even know how to handle.
Something rustles behind me. I know it’s Elias—I’ve already memorized the sound of his steps on the overgrown earth.
“Gabry,” he says softly, the way you’d approach an injured animal. He sets a hand on my shoulder, his touch light, barely even discernible.
I shake my head. Afraid something inside me will explode and I’ll either lash out in rage or despair. I want so badly to be like Cira. To collapse on the path and have someone else make the decisions. Someone else fight for me. It doesn’t seem fair that I’m not allowed to give up too.
Elias steps closer behind me. I want to lean back against his chest and let him hold me. Let him be the one to keep me standing. But instead I turn to face him. He keeps his hand on my shoulder and now barely anything separates us. Behind him, out of the corner of my eye, I see Catcher still staring at the ground. Cira still lost in her own mind.
Elias’s face is a mirror of mine: pain and doubt. He’s usually so calm and in control, and seeing him like this makes me wonder what in his life has led him to this moment. His thumb barely traces the edge of my throat, so softly that I think I might only be imagining the touch.
It’s supposed to be Catcher standing here with me, not Elias. It’s supposed to be Catcher who holds me and comforts me and gives me strength. He’s the one I’ve always known and trusted and dreamed about. But now all these lines are blurred and confused.
I part my lips. I’m about to tell Elias everything about me. That I was born in the Forest. That I’ve been on these paths and survived and that I hope I can do it again. That somewhere out there is my mother and my past. And somehow, before I even have to say the words, before I utter any of it, I know he’ll understand.
“We should keep walking,” Catcher says.
It’s as if his voice jerks me out of a trance; as if I’ve been staring at Elias for a hundred years. I shake my head and step away from him. My cheeks begin that slow embarrassed burn and I glance at Catcher, wondering if he notices. But he’s silent. His face betrays nothing at all.
We trudge down the paths in the thick summer air, choosing which branches to take and which gates to pass through based on the code I figured out in my mother’s book of sonnets. Always walking toward the light—following the paths that will lead us to Sonnet XVIII, the lines written in the lantern room of the lighthouse. The afternoon threatens us with thunder, the sky closing in around us, yet it barely rains and our canteens start to run dry. But Catcher doesn’t want to leave Cira to forage in the Forest for a stream and with the threat of the Recruiters behind us, we keep walking.
At first I feel uncomfortable being near Cira. Catcher hovers around her, helping her when she can’t keep up. She seems to stumble along the path not seeing anything, and I wonder if she really has given up or if it’s the blood infection taking over, making her lose touch.
I can’t stop wondering how much time she has left. If she’ll ever recover.
And then finally the silence between us is too much and I drop back, taking her hand from Catcher’s and holding it tight in my own.
“Tell me again how it will be okay,” she says, her voice hoarse.
There’s so much of her missing, so much of who she used to be—the spark and energy. “It’ll be okay,” I tell her, hoping she believes my words even if I’m unsure of them.
She stops walking, causing me to stop as well, and smiles. She squeezes my hand and I realize how bony her fingers have become, how narrow her wrists. Tendrils of her hair are loose and limp around her face. Freckles scream against her pale skin.
I glance down the path to where Elias and Catcher keep pushing forward. I tug on her to keep going but she holds me back. “I know the infection’s bad,” she says. She has to catch her breath as she talks and it hits me again how much effort this whole ordeal’s been for her. “I’m not even sure if I’ll make it to … wherever.”
Her eyes are glassy. I swallow and shake my head. I feel the superhero pendant against my chest and I pull the necklace over my head. I step closer to her, reaching around her neck as I fasten the clasp. “You’re wrong,” I tell her. “Cira, don’t—” But she cuts me off by pressing her lips to my cheek, soft and dry.
“I’m dying, Gabry,” she says, pulling away. Tears flood her eyes. “I’ll never fall in love. I’ll never have a family—get to be the kind of mother I always wanted. I’ll never know what it feels like to be everything to someone.” She smiles softly. “I’ll never even kiss a boy. Tell me what it’s like?” Her voice is nothing, quieter than a whisper.
I shake my head. I refuse to admit that what she’s saying can be true. That she has any reason to worry about whether she’ll survive. I don’t even want to think about it but she puts her fingers on my wrist and says, “Please,” and I see the pleading in her eyes. How desperately she wants to know.
I nod and think back to the night at the amusement park with Catcher. I think about the evening on the beach with Elias. I don’t know what to tell her, how to explain the feeling of wanting and yet being so scared it won’t happen. That moment when there’s no turning back and his lips land on yours. How different it can make you feel. So beautiful and needed and special.
I start walking down the path and she walks next to me, her hand in mine. “It’s wonderful,” I finally say. “And also a little weird-feeling. I mean, not knowing what to do and how it works.” A laugh bubbles up and it feels so refreshing after spending so long thinking about death and infection and the Mudo. “You worry that you’re doing something wrong,” I tell her. And then I lean closer and whisper, “I couldn’t stop wondering what the last thing I’d eaten was.” I smile as she giggles.
“I don’t want to hear the bad parts,” she says with a grin. “I only want you to tell me the good parts.”
And so I do. As we wade through the late-day heat I tell her all of it, forgetting that we’re in the Forest, that we’re being chased and aren’t sure of where we’re going. Just feeling like friends sharing an everyday afternoon walk.