Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

If I could kick you, Tara thinks, you’d have bruises for weeks. What in the hell am I supposed to do with that phrasing? “A dog? That’s not what you mean. Tell me that’s not what you mean?” How do you answer that with a yes or a no?

So she doesn’t answer. She waits. She’s swell at waiting. She’s becoming the best there ever was in the game of waiting, a natural, a pure talent.

Shannon gathers herself, finally understanding that her typical flurry of speech is not the way to go about this, and says, “Did Oltamu really take pictures of a dog named Hobo?”

She says it in the tone of voice in which you might ask someone to tell you the details of her alien abduction. Tara gives her one flick of the eyes, a flick with attitude .

Yes, it was a dog named Hobo, and kiss my sweet ass if you think I’m crazy.

Shannon sets the alphabet board down flat on her lap and stares at Tara as if she can’t decide what to ask next. Tara wants to hold her arms up in a giant V for victory. She has achieved the impossible — not in coming back from a coma, not even in proving she’s awake despite being paralyzed. This is a truly heroic feat: she has rendered Shannon Beckley speechless.

“You’re serious. Do you think the dog matters, or am I going on a wild...” She stops herself, holds a hand up, and walks her words back. Communication with Tara favors the short-winded, which doesn’t play to Shannon’s strengths.

“Do you think it matters that he took pictures of a dog?”

Tara doesn’t know, so she doesn’t answer.

“You’re not sure?” Shannon says, beginning to understand what a blank stare means.

One flick.

“Did he take any other pictures after the dog?”

Two flicks.

“Did he tell you anything about the phone?”

Tara wishes she could think of a way to communicate the odd camera and its unique grid, but she can’t. Or she doesn’t think she can, at least, but then Shannon does what only a sister could possibly do: she seems to slip inside Tara’s mind.

“Was it a real phone?”

Two flicks.

Dr. Pine enters almost soundlessly.

“Can’t you knock ?” Shannon snaps, startled.

He takes a step forward, brow furrowed, hands clasped behind his back, as if he would have been content to remain a spectator.

“Pictures of a dog?” he says.

“That’s none of your business,” Shannon says. Still not trusting him. Tara understands this but she disagrees with it. Shannon hasn’t trusted many people in her life, having been burned too many times, but for all of Shannon’s force of personality and will, she doesn’t have the most intuitive reads on people. Extroverts are too busy projecting their opinions and personalities to intuit anything submerged about anyone in their audience, in Tara’s opinion. Tara, the introvert — and has there ever been a more undeniable introvert than the current model of Tara Beckley? She’s the literal embodiment of the concept now. She does not see herself as superior to her sister in most ways, but she is more intuitive. Tara doesn’t distrust Dr. Pine. The very tics that make Shannon nervous are the reasons Tara trusts him. He’s genuinely concerned about her, and he’s genuinely concerned about his ethical dilemma in this situation.

“Where’s your investigator?” Shannon asks.

“En route. I couldn’t speak to her, but she e-mailed from the plane. She’ll be landing soon and coming directly here.” He pauses. “Would you like to wait until she is here before you tell me what you’ve been asking Tara?”

“Yes.”

“Fair enough.” He paces, hands still behind his back. Outside the window, lightning strobes in dark clouds, and the wind throws raindrops at the glass like handfuls of pebbles.

“Your parents have gone to the hotel to take a short rest,” he says. “I didn’t object. If you wish to bring them back, though...”

“No,” Shannon says, firm, and Dr. Pine seems unsurprised. He looks at Tara, and this time she answers without needing to hear the question voiced. Two flicks: no, he does not need to summon her parents. Mom is an exhausted mess, and Rick will battle with Shannon. Tara needs to save her energy for the Department of Energy — ha! Why can’t anyone hear these jokes? — and whatever information this mysterious investigator will have. Tara wants to hear answers, and that will mean providing answers, a task that she now knows is utterly exhausting.

“You could call the local police,” Dr. Pine suggests. “But you haven’t done that yet. Why not?”

Shannon looks like she doesn’t want to answer, but she says, “I’m not sure. I guess because I haven’t had time to figure out what I would even tell them. And I’ve been instructed... I’ve been warned about trusting the wrong people.”

“Warned by whom?” Pine asks gently.

Shannon shakes her head and gives a little laugh. Dr. Pine seems to read it as frustration, but it’s more than that — Shannon is unsure of herself. Tara knows. Tara is just as curious as Dr. Pine, though. Where is Shannon’s information coming from?

“Who have you told about the Department of Energy investigator?” Shannon asks Dr. Pine.

“Just you.”

“Really?” Those dubious Doberman eyes fixed on him.

“Really.”

Shannon takes a breath and leans back. “All this for a phone,” she says softly. “What in the hell was on that phone?”

Even if they were using the alphabet board, Tara would have no answer for this one.

Outside, lightning strobes again, but it is dimmer, distant. The storm is clearing. Tara hopes she can take some confidence from the symbol, but she doesn’t believe that. There are too many things she doesn’t know, and most of them are happening outside of these walls.

Abby fumbled for her harness. She’d been knocked out, but her helmet was still on, and she was upright, trapped in the seat. That meant she needed to release the harness, but where was the pit crew? She needed them. Needed help.

Something wrong with her arm too. Broken, probably, and it felt like her hands were smashed together. Why couldn’t she separate them?

She opened her eyes and stared at her hands as if they were unfamiliar, and only when a lightning flash lit the yellow cord that bound her wrists together did she remember where she was and that there was nobody in the pit coming for her.

But she was too upright, just like if she’d been harnessed into the seat. Why was that?

A cord was around her neck, too, that was why. She was bound against the headrest, the cord just slack enough to let her breathe but not to let her slump sideways or forward. The kid had positioned her well. He’d also put his black baseball cap on Abby’s head, pulled low, shading her face. That was what Abby had confused for the helmet. To any passerby who glanced in the car, she was just a woman in a baseball cap, dozing in the dark.

Dax Blackwell looked over. “Morning, Abby.”

When Abby turned, the cord chiseled across her throat. She winced, then refocused.

It was the first time she’d ever seen the kid without the baseball cap, and even in the dark, his hair was a startlingly bright blond. It was cropped close to his skull, moon-white and luminescent in the glow from the dash lights.

“Nice touch with the hat,” Abby said. Her voice came out in a dry croak.

“I thought it would help. You had a little blood in your hair. Sorry about that.”

The road rolled beneath them, the lights of Boston up ahead. They were still on I-95, cruising by the northern suburbs. The hospital wasn’t far away.

“You’re lucky you’re necessary,” the kid said. “I’d have very much enjoyed killing you back there, but... priorities. Nice trick with the phone too. I almost missed it.”