“Don’t thank me,” I snarl. “I don’t want to be thanked. When people say thank you it means something is over and I don’t want this to be over.”
His hand reaches for me. He slides my messy hair away from my eyes. “Don’t worry. You’re not getting away that easy.”
I push his hand away and sit up in bed. “What’s that mean?”
“It means I still need you. And I told Chek that. I mean…” He sighs a little and looks at Lauren. “I can do it.” He nods his head, like he’s talking himself into this idea. “But I think I do it better when you’re helping me.”
I wrinkle my nose at him. “I barely do anything.” Which is the truth. I do not change diapers unless Nick is not here. He does all of it, really. Unless he’s not here. “Wait,” I say. “You’re going back to work too? Is that why you’re worried? You need me to babysit?”
Nick actually laughs. “No. I’m not going back to work. I just think… we’re just…” He sighs again.
I point my finger at him. “You like me.”
“Sure. I like you, Wen. I know you’re just a kid, but we both know you’re not really just a kid. And you have good ideas, and good opinions, and great instincts.”
“Hm.” I think about this for a moment. “We’re friends.”
“Yeah,” he says. “We’re friends. But you have to go back to Chek.”
“Because he owns me.”
Nick doesn’t answer right away. But he doesn’t have to. I know that Chek owns me. I was only five when he came and rescued me from that horrible place far away, and that was half my lifetime ago. But I remember what he said. I remember the part about ownership, and duties, and jobs, and training, and listening. And all of that came true. It’s not like I even mind much. I love Chek. And I know that once we’re back together I will never think about Nick and Lauren Tate again until we’re face to face one day and I don’t have a choice.
But if I could pick, I would stay here with them.
I got used to the goodbyes.
I don’t like them, but I got used to them.
And anyway, there’s almost always a chance that goodbye leads to another hello.
And I live for the hellos.
THE CURE, PART 2
Birthday #18
It always comes back to the cure.
Up until I was nine, I didn’t think much about who I was. Or, more accurately, what I was. And so I wasn’t thinking about what I wasn’t, either.
When I was nine, I heard the word ‘cure’ for the first time. Well, not the very first time. Obviously, I had heard the word ‘cure’ somewhere else. A school workbook, maybe. Chek insisted that I learn to read the very first month he brought me home. I didn’t go to school like other kids, but I always had two or three school books in my backpack at any given time. I’m sure the word ‘cure’ was in one of those workbooks. ‘Circle all the words that rhyme with ‘sure,’’ or something like that.
But it wasn’t until Chek took me to the doctor that I really had a reason to pay attention to the word ‘cure.’ There was just so much going on back then. The Company was bad. As in, everywhere. And we were still part of it. Chek and me, we worked for them. This was after Santa Barbara but before Kansas. I wouldn’t say I was dwelling on myself or having any kind of existential crisis, but I was beginning to notice that things about me weren’t quite right.
I have always had opinions of people. Random people on the street like kids waiting in line for a bus outside a school, men on their way to work, housewives pushing strollers on their way to get coffee. Mostly I felt sorry for them in their predefined lives. The way they had to follow a schedule and were forced to take part in ordinary affairs.
Chek and I were extraordinary in every way. I mean, me for sure. My quiet, introspective nature, that’s what Chek called it. He was the same way. He didn’t talk much. If we were on a job, we could go a whole day without saying a single word to each other. He could point, or shake his head, or sigh and I would know what he was saying. It’s like being psychic, except it’s nothing like being psychic because we were just reading each other’s unspoken words. And there’s nothing magic about that.
Anyway, the first time I heard of the cure I was in the doctor’s office getting a psych eval. But it didn’t become important until I heard Johnny Boston and his girlfriend, Megan, talk about it many years later. She was the one who was making the cure and this was to save kids, not grown-ups.
“Chek,” I said. “What does she mean?”
Chek put up his hand, palm facing me. A gesture he used a lot. It didn’t mean stop, either. It meant… Careful. Be careful, Wendy. Take your time, Wendy. See before you act. And then he said, “It’s not about you. That has nothing to do with you.”
Obviously, things were tense at the time. This was right before we took those Untouchables down for good and Megan, Johnny, Chek and me—we were all part of the plan. So I couldn’t ask any more questions.
And then Chek died and all the answers to all the questions went with him.
Today is my eighteenth birthday and Chek has been dead for three hundred and eighty-two days.
I stop my truck at the end of the lane.
Three hundred and eighty-two days.
How am I still functioning?
How do I get up every day?
How do I bathe, and eat, and exist?
How am I still alive?
I get out of the truck, keys in hand, and walk over to the mailbox.
Don’t do it, Wendy. Get back in the truck, drive away, and never come back.
But I did that already. Twice, actually. The first time was the day after birthday #17 with Nick. I had this urge to hurt someone, and he was the only one there, so I left before I did something stupid. Then I came back for Christmas. Nick wasn’t there that time. He didn’t know about Christmas, so I was alone. I stayed about… four days? When I first arrived, I really thought I would stay forever. This was it. The open road was over now. I was coming home. I would be normal.
It had potential, that day. And it started out OK. But as per usual, nothing in my world lasts very long. So I got in my truck, drove away, and didn’t come back until now.
I’m not driving away today. I’ve been living on the road for eight months and I’m tired of it. When Nick and I did it together, it was always so fun. But alone?
No.
Living on the road alone is just lonely.
Back out on the lane, I slide the key into the mailbox and open the large lid. It creaks on the rusty hinges.
Then I blink a few times. Because it’s not empty. There is a garbage bag filled with cards.
There is no way to stop my smile.
I gather the edges of the trash bag together, haul it out, throw it on the passenger seat, get back in my truck, and start down the lane.
The tires crunch on the driveway and I go slow. Because I want things to be a certain way when I get to the end of the lane and this is it.
The moment of truth.
And when I see the black truck parked in front of the cabin, I make a weird noise. A sob, maybe.
Because he’s here.
He came.