On the Edge of Gone Page 22

  Behind me, Iris and Mom are walking fast. Not fast enough. The source of the footsteps turns a corner, one arm raised at a familiar angle, her tab lit up above. She’s muttering, flicking through her projection.

  The woman’s gaze rises to meet mine, uninterested at first. Then her eyebrows lift. I recognize her at the same time she does me. Anke.

  “I—I—” I start, stuttering. I’ve almost gathered the words—almost remember what I’m meant to say—but I falter when Anke’s gaze goes past me.

  To Iris and Mom.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “EXCUSE ME!” I SAY. “ANKE! COULD YOU TELL me where I can find—”

  “Was your mother let back on board?” she asks.

  Iris and Mom haven’t turned the corner yet. Run! I want to scream, but if they do, they’ll be sure to attract Anke’s attention. What are their options? Run? Ignore? Engage? Iris chooses the second. With one arm clamped around Mom’s, she continues her idle chatter, disappearing around the corner like she didn’t hear a thing.

  “Hey!” Anke stalks past me. “Hold up!”

  “Excuse me!” I’m nailed to the ground and watch her break into a full-on run. “Excuse me!” I shout for the third time, though it doesn’t slow her down. My mind buzzes with ways to distract her or to convince her everything is fine. Yes, my mother was let back on board, no, it’s temporary, she’s helping my sister, they’re assisting with repairs . . .

  I turn the corner a second after Anke does. Iris and Mom have slowed down. There’s no point in pretending they can’t hear this. Anke is already out of breath. She presses a hand to her chest.

  Iris fakes a smile. “Hello?”

  I clear my throat. “I was . . .”

  Anke indicates Mom with a tug of her chin. “We kicked you out. What are you doing acting like an engineer all of a sudden?”

  “Captain Van Zand let me back on board.” Mom smiles, but I don’t know if there’s any point in faking it. Anke will double-check with the captain no matter what.

  “A druggie like you, while my family is out there starving? Both of you suddenly got let on board? Are you blowing the captain or something?” Anke’s gaze flicks from Mom to Iris. When she continues, her Amsterdam accent is even stronger. “Yeah, didn’t think you were. You’re sneaking on board? You lying piece of—How can you justify bringing someone like her on?”

  “Please—” Mom starts.

  “Justify?” Iris says. “We have to justify saving someone’s life?”

  Anke spins, sending all her red hair flying. She jams a finger at me. “You want to save a life? My niece is half a year old. You get that? Half a year! She can live another ninety damn years, if someone’d give her that chance! And you’re letting her starve and helping all your family on board? Why you and not me? I paid for it. It’s my daughter who died. I—I paid. We can’t even mourn her right.”

  “The captain invited Iris,” I tell her, though it doesn’t change anything. Iris’ll think I’m an idiot for correcting Anke at a time like this. “Iris is allowed here.”

  “And she is, too?”

  “Please,” Mom says. “Leave my daughters out of this. We’ll discuss this ourselves.”

  “I’m done being reasonable. And I’m done asking nicely.”

  She’s still got her finger in my face. My eyes are on her ragged fingernail, the callused skin. I wonder incongruously how a woman like her gets fingers like that.

  “I could turn you in. Get all three of you kicked out.”

  “Denise had nothing to do with this!” Iris cuts in.

  “Shut up, both of you.” Her narrowed eyes remain fixed on me. There’s nothing left of that nervous, finger-picking woman I met my first day on the ship.

  “It’s not right what’s happened—what’s happening—to your family,” Iris says. “We’ll help however we can. We can get them food. But Denise isn’t to blame.”

  “I told you to shut up. I know you’ll help me.” Anke is breathing heavily. “You will now, at least, not that I saw anything of it these past days. You’re supposed to—the ship is supposed to—I shouldn’t even be working right now.” She closes her eyes as if gathering herself. “Denise, you’re giving me that scooter first thing tomorrow. And whenever else I ask, too. I’m getting my little niece to safety, and you’re helping get her on board, same way you did to your mother here.”

  “And then . . . ,” I say, my voice small.

  “And then, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Deal?”

  I swallow a lump. “Deal.”

  Samira and Nordin aren’t at the hospital.

  I take the scooter around the AMC, finding nothing, and end up dragging it onto the rubble. I wait on a ledge. The stone is cold even through my coat, so I draw up my legs, wrap my good arm around them for heat. I close my eyes. If Samira and Nordin are nearby, I’ll hear their scooter before I see it, anyway.

  Half an hour later, thunder in the distance snaps me out of my dozing.

  Still no sign of them.

  I rub a gloved hand over my cheeks. They’ve never kept me waiting before. After the way we split last night, maybe they’re no longer interested in me and my lies. The thought is almost a relief. I’ve been scattered since agreeing to bring Mom on board, and between that and Anke, my mind still feels like it’s going in all directions at once. If Samira kept pushing at me the way she did last night, I would’ve given in.

  I should go.

  It’s ten minutes before I push myself upright and slide-stumble down the debris to my water scooter. It’s another hour of searching for more barrels before it hits me that Samira and Nordin may not have given up on me by choice. Something might have happened.

  I release the scooter’s clutch. “Shit,” I breathe. As the scooter slows, I swing my flashlight around as though that’ll give me an answer.

  It doesn’t. Nothing will. Any note I leave at the AMC will be swept away by the wind. They have no tabs to come within range of mine. They’d said they were visiting shelters, but I don’t know which ones. There’s no Internet to search for their names on, no home address to visit.

  I knew they were going to die. Everybody left behind will.

  I just—didn’t think it would be so soon. Their deaths were supposed to wait for that nebulous afterward—after the shelters, after our return to our broken homes, when we tried to rebuild but failed.

  I guess nothing has gone according to plan.

  The lightning comes closer. It lights the world for fractions of a second, leaving afterimages in my vision, letting me see—no matter how briefly—the world beyond the beam of the scooter’s headlights.

  Water. Water everywhere. Massive cracks running along submerged buildings. Entire areas have caved in, showing half-there apartments and offices open to the sky. One corner of a building is just gone, like someone took a bite out of it.

  Darkness. Another flash. The building by my side is a skeleton looming overhead. The top floors have been blown off.

  “Samira?” I call out tentatively, when the world is dark again.

  Her name dies on the water.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I RETURN TO THE SHIP AT MIDNIGHT. EVEN IF I’d wanted to stay longer, I couldn’t. The scooter’s power was running low. On the way back, when I pushed it too fast across the open fields, it sputtered and stuttered and I thought it’d choke on me then and there.

  That reminds me of how much I rely on the scooter, and that reminds me of Anke borrowing it in the morning, and that reminds me of how Mom has been hidden for hours now and may already have been found, and I wish I could go straight to bed and stay there until the ship lifts off and all of this resolves itself.

  I grimace as I climb off the scooter. My legs have been clamped to the seat forever. They feel like clay that’s been baked too long, stiff and cracked.

  “Dibs,” the bald engineer calls.

  I jerk at the sound. Does he know about Mom? If she was found, who would be told? Would anyone wait for me here?


  “It—the scooter—needs to be recharged,” I tell the engineer, and forget to smile.

  I spend too long debating whether to go to my room or check on Mom first. Room, I decide finally, since I need to shower anyway and Iris might be waiting for me. I’m right on that count: she bolts at me before the door even slides all the way open.

  “Can I—”

  She’s asked the question a hundred times. It still takes me a moment to realize what she means. Her arms extend toward me, frozen in midair. I nod, and a second later she’s wrapped around me. I hear abrupt gasps by my ear. Is she sobbing?

  “Did something happen?” I curse the way my words sound so stiff, as though I don’t mean them.

  Did Mom happen? I think, but the Nassau is the safest place for kilometers around; as long as she hasn’t been found, nothing could have happened, could it? And if she were found, would Iris stand here like this, wouldn’t they have made her pack our bags like when they kicked out Mom and me—

  Iris releases me. Dirt is smudged across her clothes and her cheek where she touched me. “I was worried.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say automatically.

  “I’m just—It’s dangerous out there. A lot could happen.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat. “Mom?”

  “She’s fine. I checked on her.” Iris rubs her puffy eyes. “I was being silly. Just—if something happened to you, I wouldn’t even know.”

  “That’s why I stayed so long. Those friends I had in town. I can’t find them.”

  “Oh. Oh, sweetie.”

  I drop my backpack, unzip my coat, and dangle it on the hook. “After disasters, there are always . . . they make lists of victims and survivors, they . . .” I sit on my desk chair, slowly unwrapping the scarf from my hair.

  Iris sinks, hands on her knees. “I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe they’re fine,” I mumble. I rub my nails across my jeans. Tzz-tzz. To my knee, then back. Knee, then back. “We sort of fought last night. Maybe . . .”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ve tried not to think about it. About the people.” Tzz-tzz. “The others at the animal shelter. Like John. And Tessa. Jolanthe.”

  “Jermaine. Rosa.” Iris’s exes. “Anna. Samuel.” The friends she organized the festivals with.

  I add, “Kev.”

  She nods.

  “Ms. Smid.” Our neighbor, the one who let me ride the elevator.

  “Dad.”

  “Dad got into a permanent shelter.”

  “We know he won a spot from the lotteries. But . . . we can’t know if he made it in after you talked to him. Or what happened inside.”

  “Aunt Alexa,” I say.

  “God. Her.” Iris half laughs, half coughs. “If anyone’ll survive, it’s her.”

  We’d barely talked to her since Dad left for Suriname, but she used to call herself Auntie Cockroach. A car crash, a train derailment, a gunpoint robbery, and the worst it ever left her with was a broken leg, a black eye, and an even bigger smile.

  My own smile barely lasts a second. “She didn’t get a spot on a ship. Or permanent shelter. She emailed us when you were gone, to wish us luck.”

  I forgot to email her back. I think Mom forgot, too.

  “If anyone’ll survive . . . ,” Iris repeats.

  “No one survives out there.”

  I don’t sleep well. My thoughts flit in every direction like caged insects, and when I do fall asleep I wake too often—I’ll bump my arm or move it without thinking, or I’ll have a bad dream and find myself staring at the ceiling, my breathing heavy and my sheets clammy.

  I have the first dream I remember in ages. I dream they find Mom. That they burst into my room and drag me out of bed, and push me into the water outside when I’m still in nothing but my pajamas, and I spike my arm again, and this time no one pulls me off. I watch from under water, stuck, as the Nassau takes off into the air. The dead girl I saw in the airport floats by my side.

  So in the morning, when the room goes from pitch-dark to so bright that my eyes burn, and Anke enters the room along with Captain Van Zand’s brother, my first thought is Oh.

  Not again.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  THEY KNOW ABOUT MOM.

  They must.

  I squint against the light but am out of bed instantly, blankets tossed aside, bare feet slapping against the floor.

  “What’s going on?” Iris sits upright in her sloppy pajama top. Where I expected her eyes to be narrowed—out of anger or against the brightness—they’re wide.

  “Sorry for the wake-up call, ladies,” Anke says. “We need to search your room.”

  “Why?” My voice is steady. It shouldn’t be: I was asleep all of three seconds ago, I’m in a tank top and shorts, my legs are unshaven, my hair is in two sloppy braids, and there are strangers in my room.

  But my voice is steady.

  If I’m getting kicked out a second time, I want to be standing and I want to be steady. I can slip past them if I have to. It’s a big ship—I can run, hide—and I know these thoughts are ridiculous, but I’m eyeing the door anyway.

  “There was a theft last night.” Anke walks to the center of the room, hands outstretched like she’s urging us to stay calm.

  “Theft. Theft of what?” Does that mean Anke didn’t turn us in?

  “If you’ll sit down . . . This should only take a minute.”

  I edge back until I’m sitting on my bed. Iris rushes over. “Why are you searching our cabin?” she asks.

  “We’re searching everyone’s. We’re prioritizing anyone with access to the area the theft took place in, though.”

  I want to tell her, Right, and it doesn’t have anything to do with what you saw last night? but the presence of Captain Van Zand’s brother keeps me silent.

  Iris sits at the foot of my bed. “Don’t you have cameras to identify the thief? We didn’t do anything.”

  The door slides shut. We watch them search under Iris’s mattress and bed, feel the fabric of the chairs, peek into the closet.

  “The cameras aren’t on.” I keep my voice low, though it carries easily in a room this small. “They want to preserve power.”

  “That’s very trusting.” Iris watches Anke search our backpacks.

  “We’re saving people’s lives. We thought we could be,” Anke says. I’m more fixated on her arm in my backpack than on what she’s saying, though. That bag is nearly empty, but it’s mine. She’s messing it up. Her hands might not even be clean.

  When she does stop, I immediately wish she hadn’t. “Denise,” she says, “I need to search your bed next.”

  My gaze flicks to my pillow. “I. I. Could I.”

  “She doesn’t like people touching her bed.” Iris stands, guarding me.

  “You’re touching it,” Captain Van Zand’s brother says.

  Iris shoots him a withering look. “I sat at the foot, which is the only place that’s OK for even me to touch, and I’m her sister.”

  Anke’s sigh sounds closer to a hiss. “Look, we have more rooms to search.”

  I squirm. No. Not squirm. I’m rocking. Back and forth. “Wait,” I say.

  “You can’t—” Iris goes on.

  “Just ’cause she’s too precious to—” the man argues.

  “Wait,” I repeat, softer this time, so soft that I’m not even sure Iris hears it. “Can I, can I just, wait. I can lift the sheets and mattress myself. You can look. Right? Is that good? Right? Is that good? If I lift them?” I force my jaw shut.

  No one says anything for several moments. I can’t tell if Anke is thinking of a counterargument or if she really is trying to make this work. Her lips tighten. “OK. If you listen to my instructions exactly.”

  “You’re indulging her?” Captain Van Zand’s brother says. “She’s just being difficult. Have you ever seen an autistic kid? Trust me, they’re not the kind to take water scooters into the city like she did.”

  “Denise, just get it done,” Anke
snaps.

  I don’t stand until they’re far enough away from the bed, as if they might jump at me and touch the bed themselves regardless. I blink away tears. It’s dumb, I know that—I’m treating Anke’s hands like some kind of nuclear hazard—but this is my space, mine, and too little is left that’s mine as is. I can’t even face Iris. With the way she tried to help, it feels as though I’m betraying her by offering this solution myself.

  I keep my head low and follow Anke’s orders one-handed. Take off both the satin and regular pillowcases, show her the pillow, shake it (although I tell her she can feel the pillow herself: that’s OK, since the pillowcases will cover it again anyway)—lift the sheets, shake them, lift the mattress long enough for her to shine her light underneath, let her feel the mattress (which is OK, too, since she’s just touching it from the bottom) . . .

  They tell us to stay in our room for another hour.

  I wash my hands, straighten the sheets, wash my hands again, and wrap the pillow in its cases.

  “That was a good solution,” Iris says.

  “Sorry,” I mutter.

  “For what?”

  Being difficult. Not letting her help me. I keep my eyes on the sheets as I make the bed and let out a small laugh. “I was sure they were here because they found Mom. I even dreamed about . . .” My hand stills, the sheet between my fingers. “Mom. They’re searching the ship. They’ll find her.”

  “Shit. Shit.”

  I spin, facing Iris. “Even if she stays out of sight, they’ll turn the cameras on for sure after these thefts. Anke can’t cover for us forever.”

  Iris backs away until the backs of her knees hit her bed and she lets herself sink onto it.

  I try the door. Locked. They’re serious about wanting us to stay in here. I try my tab next. The map works fine, and so does the rest of the public information, but they’ve taken down the message system.

  “They don’t want anyone warning the thieves,” Iris says.

  “Shit,” I echo.

  “What did they even steal? What restricted spaces do you have access to? It’s not me; I only clean public areas.”