Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

‘You’ll go alone. I have to organize the search party so Congdon will let me get you up there, and then I expect you to disappear, okay? We’ll get the medicine, the supplies, and then it’s up to you to slip into the shadows. Understand?’

The surprise on his face was almost funny, but he quickly recovered and another emotion flooded his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have doubted you.’ Then he thought of another obstacle. ‘The ankle bracelet. How am I supposed to disappear if they’re tracking me?’

I squeezed his hand. ‘Don’t worry. I have a plan.’

‘Do you always have a plan?’

He turned his head, studying me, waiting patiently for my answer, and it struck me how absorbed he was in every single thing I said. I’d revealed my big secret; I’d told him I killed a man and all he wanted to know was whether I’d bashed his head in hard enough. If anyone else had asked me a direct question about myself I’d shrug it off with an easy lie, something to redirect the conversation. With Lucas, though, I wanted to excavate the truth. Right now, sitting here together, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t tell him.

‘I guess the worse things are, the better prepared I am. I started working at Congdon because it felt like home. Sad, I know, but I can’t help it. People are honest about who they are in a psychiatric facility. They don’t pretend things are fine. My job reviews always say I’m good in a crisis, that I’m the first person to jump into a dicey situation.’

‘Like wrestling down a patient who tried to strangle you and escape?’ Lucas grinned.

‘Yeah.’ I smiled at the stern. ‘They think I’m brave. The truth is I’m not comfortable unless something’s on fire or someone’s having a meltdown. I don’t know what to do with things that aren’t broken. The quiet times… it’s like I’m just waiting for things to go bad.’

‘And they always do?’

‘I’ve never had to wait too long.’

Moving carefully, a fraction of an inch at a time, Lucas tugged my zipper down to trace my neck with one finger, the faint but still visible line where he’d choked me the first time we met, and his expression filled with regret.

‘Lucas.’

He tilted his head, leaving his hand on my neck, his touch falling somewhere between penance and petting. ‘Are you waiting for me to break, too?’

‘You know this is completely inappropriate.’ I glanced around us to make sure the deck was still empty, wondering how much longer this privacy could last. ‘Dr Mehta will remove me from your case.’

His answer was entirely nonverbal; he leaned in, pushing my hood back to nuzzle my temple and smell my hair, as though he needed to learn as much about me as quickly as possible.

‘It’s unprofessional. Unethical.’ I turned into the bulk of his jacket, trying to make myself get up, to end this now.

‘You just said you’re helping me escape so I can get back to my father.’

‘So you’re saying I’ve already crossed the line? Why stop now?’

‘Yes.’ I opened my eyes to see his breathless, wind-slapped smile, but as he said my name and started to lean in, a movement caught the corner of my eye.

Bryce stood on the deck, watching us.

‘GETTING OFF WITH Tarzan? Now it makes sense why we’re doing all this crap for him. It’s not therapy, it’s a freaking date.’

That’s all Bryce got out before Lucas exploded off the bench, aiming his full weight at the center of Bryce’s body. I was half a second behind him but had to duck out of the way as Bryce doubled over, swinging wildly in all directions. He made a grab for Lucas, who twisted to protect his bad shoulder and the two of them flipped around like clashing bulls, ramming into the equipment and railings on the platform.

Ordering them to stop, I wedged myself between their bodies, trying to push them apart.

‘What the hell?’ came a shout from somewhere above us. A door banged open and feet reverberated against metal. Just as I pulled Lucas’s good arm back, an elbow flew into my face and sent me reeling backward into one of the giant steel pulleys. The world went black and someone shouted, then a long guttural scream seemed to be ripped apart by the wind before it cut off.

A scuffle nearby, flesh on flesh, heaving breathing. I shook my head, desperate to get my sight back. When the stars finally cleared Butch stood in front of me holding Lucas’s arms behind his back. Both of their heads bowed toward something beyond the rail.

I ran to the railing and saw Bryce sprawled on the main deck, not moving. Shit, oh shit. I climbed down the ladder and reached the deck right as Dr Mehta came out of the cabin, clinging to the door. Above, I could hear Dad’s voice joining the mix in the sudden silence of the idling engines.

Before anyone could reach him, Bryce kicked out, looking for a foothold, and rolled over to boost himself up on all fours.

‘Bryce—’

‘Don’t move.’ Dr Mehta ordered, but he didn’t listen. I crouched down next to him and he shoved me back, catching me in the hip and sending me stumbling toward the railing. Holding Dr Mehta off with a warning hand, he dragged himself to his feet.

‘What happened?’ Dr Mehta asked.

Dad’s voice came from above and I had to crane my head to see him, standing with his hands on his hips and hair whipping in the wind. ‘Lucas started fighting that orderly. He attacked him and shoved him off the deck.’

‘Bryce was antagonizing him,’ I jumped in.

Bryce leaned back against the railing and clutched his side, lip curled with equal parts pain and loathing. When he spoke, every word landed like angry spit marks on the deck.

‘Maya was making out with the patient.’

A horrible silence followed, where everyone on the entire boat looked at me. I stepped instinctively away from the weight of their collective gaze, gripped the freezing railing, and tried to think of any justification for what I’d done, any reason for Dr Mehta not to fire me on the spot.

I turned to her. ‘It’s not—’

She held a hand up, a look of total disappointment swallowing her face, until it turned into something else, a sickness. Then she ran to the edge of the deck and vomited.

The trip home was short, but the amount of panic I crammed into it could have filled several terrifying weeks. I sat in the captain’s bridge, wedged between two control panels, while the rest of the Congdon staff supervised Lucas on the main deck. Butch threw sympathetic glances my way every now and then, and once even broke the silence to say, ‘I don’t blame you, Maya. That kid’s hot.’

‘Butch,’ Dad barked.

‘What? I’m comfortable with my masculinity. I can say it.’

I stared at the North Shore, the pine, spruce, and birch trees that began here and stretched hundreds of miles to the north and west, into the Superior National Forest, the Boundary Waters, and beyond. Josiah was out there somewhere, maybe suffering, maybe a murderer like me, maybe just a father, freezing and alone. An hour ago I’d had a plan that would have given him back his son. Now all three of our futures were in jeopardy.

As soon as we docked, I followed the van with Lucas, Dr Mehta, and Bryce back up the hill and stood outside Dr Mehta’s office for a good part of the morning. Wherever she was, she was either too busy or still too nauseous to look at me. When one of my sessions came up on my calendar I went and conducted it, counting each minute as closely as I counted speech errors in the oral reading passage, waiting for someone to seize my badge and toss me out of the building. Nothing happened. Afterward I raced back downstairs, feeling as unstable as Dr Mehta had on the deck of the boat. Up wasn’t up. Down wasn’t down. Before I reached the administrative area, I ran into her in the main corridor and she started talking as soon as she saw me coming.