CHAPTER ONE
One Month Earlier
If I could pinpoint the moment things changed, it would be as simple as this: a high school library in Illinois, cozy, me working at a table with my science fair group.
Then it was time to go.
The library was closing, so we cleaned up our scraps of paper and left behind the pods of tables and chairs, collected our coats, and exited the warmth of the orange-and-brown-hued room.
“Katie! You forgot this.”
The second I set foot outside the library, my science-fair partner, Alina, followed with the registration form in her hand. I let myself be mesmerized by the color of her nail polish. Just for a moment. A sparkling, electric blue. Once I met her eyes, I’d have to lie.
“Take it!” she urged. “Me and Ruthie are all set. You’re about to miss the deadline, and we’re not doing this without you.” The last comment was nice and took the edge off her bullying tone. I gently took the paper from her hand. Alina was no longer trusting that I would register online. It seemed I was the last person at Lincoln West High School who didn’t own a smartphone.
Full of intensity and promise—the competition and the future hers for the taking—Alina placed both of her hands firmly on my shoulders. “Repeat after me: We will advance to state. We will advance to state.”
Ruthie, our other partner, sidled up to Alina in the doorway. “We will advance to state!” she chimed in and affectionately nudged Alina with her shoulder. I took in their happy faces and wanted in. “Come on, Katie! You’re too sweet. It’s okay to want to crush everyone.”
Maybe there was a way this time.
“Thanks,” I said and looked over my shoulder, as if there were somewhere I needed to be. I had to think this through. Maybe I could form an argument to convince my parents. No one knew who I was. They didn’t have to come. This couldn’t be traced back to them.
I knew we’d advance. That was the problem.
“See you at seven forty-five tomorrow? We need to work on the presentation boards.”
“See you then,” I agreed.
As I walked softly through the nearly empty hallway, trying to lighten the thud of my thrift-store clogs, I glanced at the questions on the registration form.
I should be satisfied that I’d helped Alina and Ruthie come this far. That should be enough. For sure, the project wouldn’t have been as good without my help. I knew that was an arrogant thought, but it was true. When I’d arrived in January, I’d lurked in the back of the science-fair meetup, where twelve kids worked on their entries after school. Then I couldn’t stop myself when I overheard Alina’s spark of an idea on desalination using UV light. If I hadn’t jumped in, Alina and Ruthie would still be fixated on their rechargeable battery.
I exited through double doors at the end of the main hallway, where glass trophy cases lined both sides, chock-full of strictly sports accolades, so similar to the other six high schools I’d attended over the past three years. In Nebraska for 76 days, 108 in Missouri, 91 in Iowa …
In the horseshoe driveway outside the school, my PE teacher was juggling a Tupperware container under one arm while fishing her car keys from her purse. “Bye, Katie!”
“Bye!” I said, impressed she remembered my name. It made me feel a little bit at home and like maybe I could be Katie. A French bulldog tied up to the bike rack growled low in its throat, indignant. I bent down to scratch under his smooth, warm armpits.
It was May, and though the temperature was brisk, the sun was still high at 5 P.M., lifting my spirits. I stood next to a newly planted tree, its light pink blossoms cheerily defying its scrawny stature, and watched for my dad, who was usually waiting for me. He’d pull into the half circle, I’d leap into the passenger seat, and then we’d begin the long drive home on country roads, letting loose for once and loudly singing along with pop songs on the radio. It was odd my dad wasn’t here yet. He had a military sense of time.
I froze. I had that familiar, spreading sense that I wasn’t alone and I was being watched.
Then I saw them.
They were in a different car—a silver truck—parked across the street where no one would notice them observing the front doors of the school.
I knew what it meant.
The school behind me moved underwater.
Usually I saw it coming. A month, a week, definitely a couple of days in advance. This one I hadn’t sensed at all. I thought for sure I’d get to finish the school year. Three more weeks with Alina and Ruthie and our project.
The wind whirled copper-colored hair in front of my eyes. I tucked it behind an ear, looked both ways, and made my way toward them, darting across the four-lane road. All around us was flat expanse, grasses waving in the wind. Half of the truck was on the road, the other half sagging into a ditch. All four windows were rolled down. I inhaled the fresh Illinois air and took a final glance at Lincoln West High. The bulldog was the only one watching.
At the car, I met three pairs of eyes, my baby sister’s wide like saucers. Mine came to rest on my mom’s beautiful gray ones. They were haunted.
“Poppy,” she said. “It’s time.”
* * *
That my mom was driving should have been warning number one that things had shifted. In all my seventeen years on the run—and I could remember maybe thirteen of them—this was a first. After years of our well-oiled machine working flawlessly, a cog had broken loose.
I hesitated at my mom’s open window. “What happened?” I asked. “Did someone recognize you?” I was shaking my head, a subtle no.
My mom remained quiet. She waited patiently for me to come to my senses, her eyes calmly holding mine until I remembered: there wasn’t another choice except to leave. Right now.
There was no point arguing that it was impossible to be discovered in this tiny rural town. My parents constantly preached that privacy was a thing of the past; it was almost nonexistent now. We lived in its rapidly eroding margins. Times had changed over the past eighteen years since my dad and pregnant mom first went on the run. Now it was the hardest thing in the world to hide.
I had one last moment to myself as I walked around to the empty seat on the other side of the truck. I felt so embarrassed that I was close to tears. To distract myself, I noted the red wildflowers, some flattened by tires, others leaning toward the sun. Suddenly I had the sensation that I’d been here before—outside of a car, separated from my family inside. Deja vu.
It felt real enough that I quickened my movements. I yanked open the heavy door and slipped into the back seat of the strange truck. The air in the car was warm and smelled like honey. I relaxed once I shut the door, closing me in with my family. It was okay—we were still together. We hadn’t been split up.
My sister held a box of graham crackers, and one cheek looked sticky. I waited for my strong dad, always our leader, to greet me.
“Dad?”
“Hi, Poppy,” he said, but he didn’t turn around. He stared out his window. He seemed preoccupied, deep in thought as he looked out into the fields.
My mom twisted around so she could see me. She looked chic in her vintage clothing: an ankle-length skirt, cowboy-style ankle boots, and a thin gray T-shirt under a mauve cardigan that fell past her hips. Her long hair hung in a sheet down her back. Seeing her outdoors always startled me, like she was an apparition from one of my dreams. She wasn’t often out in the open. Even now, while we were parked, she positioned her back to the school. She faced front again, but wordlessly she reached behind her for my hand, then squeezed.
“Did you leave anything inside?” My mom tipped her head to the building.
Maybe she meant a jacket or a water bottle or a photograph of me pinned on a wall. But I thought of the science fair and Ruthie and Alina and how much I’d loved working with them. My joy when Alina said they couldn’t do it without me.
“No,” I said quietly. “Not a thing.”
CHAPTER TWO
The truck barreled down highway bordered by acres of cornfields. I kept checking behind us, but I hadn’t seen another car for miles.
I guessed we were close to the safe house where we’d lived for the past six months, where things hadn’t seemed urgent. Over the years, my parents’ worry seemed to ebb and flow—I was never sure why, exactly. But these past six months, it had ebbed and I’d relaxed.
If we were going home, the highway would eventually give way to a choice of gravel roads. We’d take a left and drive for another five minutes, past mailboxes marking other offshoot gravel roads. There was so much space between houses and farms that we had never even seen the neighbors.
On a regular day, my dad would have slowed the car to a stop at the end of our driveway, the crunch of gravel popping beneath the tires, and I’d have to get out of the car to open the gate; that had been the worst in the rain and snow. Yesterday, before I showed my profile to the small camera for my mother, I held my face to the sun and basked for a second. A kaleidoscope of light had sprinkled through my eyelids and I’d made a wish: Please, can we stay.
I liked that house. My mom would sit at the round, country-kitchen table with her much too expensive paints and ask me all about my day and the science project. I could picture her taking a brush from the bowl of murky, blue-tinged water and squeezing liquid from the bristles while I chatted with her after school, telling her funny stories about my new friends. The house was the closest my sister, Emma, and I had come to having a home. I’d stood at the kitchen sink and stared out the window at the changing fields during the end of fall, the snowy winter, and the recent spring. Who could ever find us here? I thought.
Just this morning, when I was leaving for school, my mom was happily painting, deep in concentration. The canvas was so big and she was so far from finishing it, I’d taken it as a comforting sign that we were nowhere close to moving. Now I assumed they’d destroyed that painting, the way they always destroyed her artwork before leaving.
“Next time, can I use my real name?” Emma asked, breaking the silence.
Before my parents had to respond, I jumped in. “No, there’s no using your real name. Ever. What are the family rules?”
When Emma didn’t immediately answer, my mom lifted her eyes to the rearview mirror. The truck drifted just over the yellow line, into the oncoming lane, as my mom waited for Emma to answer. I double-checked that my sister’s seat belt was fastened.
Emma sighed heavily, slunk low in her seat, and talked to the roof of the car. “One: no using your real name.” Emma blew upward into her bangs and flared her nostrils. “Two: no staying in one place too long. Three: if something’s weird, take one thing and run to the meeting spot.”
“Good,” my mom murmured, straightening out the car. “What else?” A shaft of golden light hit her arm where she’d draped it over the back of my father’s headrest.
Emma was only eight. My mom said it was a dangerous age. At seven, Emma had believed in time machines. But at eight, Emma was starting to get it, like her feet were fully planted in reality. She could grasp what we were doing now, but, at the same time, an eight-year-old was not totally reliable.
Emma couldn’t seem to remember the final rules, so I broke in with, “Four: keeping our family together is everything.” I wanted to end there, on a happy note.
“Five.” My dad lifted his cheek from his palm and spoke clearly to the windshield. “Don’t ask about the past. For your own safety. It’s the smallest mistake that will get us caught.”
I noticed he said will.
* * *
“I was never a Katie,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. The smell of earth and cattle blew in through the vents.
“Yeah, well. I don’t pick the names, babe,” my mom said. Now that we were in an area with more cars, she held the steering wheel in a proper nine-and-three position as if she hadn’t driven in years and was nervous.
Copyright © 2022 by Marit Weisenberg
