I looked at Finch, the solid boyness of him, and I knew I couldn’t let him go all the way with me. Not into the black hole of the Hazel Wood. At some point in the past thirty-six hours, he’d joined the tiniest, saddest clique of people, of which Ella had previously been the only member: people I, Alice Crewe, couldn’t bear to see die.
Hell is caring about other people.
*
I woke hours later with a feeling of fleet panic, breathing like I’d just come up from underwater. There was something in my ears, a sense of dying sound. What had woken me?
“Morning.” Finch was awake and watching from the next bed, sitting up with his hands braced behind him.
I fisted the hand he’d held to his chest, remembered how he’d looked with wet lashes in the dark. But his anguish of the night before was ironed away, his veneer of chipper Finchness back in place.
“Morning. I thought I— Did you hear something?”
“Well, yeah. We’ve been having a conversation for the last five minutes.”
“What?”
“You were talking in your sleep. I answered.”
“What did I say?”
He smiled. There was something sly in it. “Nothing. Just nonsense. You know, sleep stuff.”
“Finch. Tell me exactly what I said.”
His amusement faltered at the ice in my voice. I wondered if he was remembering that time I nearly drove a car with him in it into a tree. “Seriously, it was silly stuff. Like you were talking about fishing and toast and crap like that. Please don’t freak out.”
“I hate it when people tell me not to freak out.”
He swung his feet to the floor and looked at me seriously. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I should’ve woken you up. But it was cute. You looked so mellowed out, your voice just sounded so … different from usual. But—”
“But you should’ve woken me up,” I finished.
“Yeah.” He stood and stretched, his T-shirt riding high over his boxers. I switched my gaze to the ceiling, eyes on the mealy yellow circles of plastic stars till he was in the shower. Why hadn’t I believed him just now? What was it in his voice that told me he was lying?
Finch came out fully dressed, and I took his place in the bathroom. After showering I pulled my clothes back on over damp skin, leaving me with a clammy, half-finished feeling. I’d waited too long since my last haircut, and my wet hair brushed down past the tops of my ears. I frowned and mussed it upward. It was thick and corn-colored and wavy, and until I was fourteen it was so long I could sit on it. It was total Disney hair, catnip for every little girl with an itchy braiding finger. Ella had kept it short till I was old enough to put my foot down. And then I’d kept it long till that asshole teacher reminded me it was an invitation. Aren’t you a pretty little house cat.
After that I hated my long hair as much as Ella did. Cutting it off helped make me invisible—no more boys reaching through all that silk to snap the strap of my training bra. No more girls asking if they could touch it, and grabbing a handful before I had time to reply.
“You ready to go?” I asked, walking back into the bedroom.
Finch had ripped open the green foil packet of ground coffee tucked beside the tiny coffeemaker on the dresser. “Yea or nay?” he asked, tipping it toward me.
I dipped my nose toward the anemic smell of packaged Folger’s, and recoiled. “My bosses would go into a coma if they saw me drinking that stuff,” I began, before remembering, for the first time since Ella disappeared, that I’d completely blown off Salty Dog—or was about to. I’d be missing a shift later that day. I thought of Lana, forced to deal with the worst of the regulars on her own. Would she, at least, wonder enough to call me? And how pathetic was it that the only people in New York who might miss me had to pay me to come around?
“You have bosses?” Finch replied, wrinkling his forehead in a fussy rich boy way that made me want to kill him. I tried Christian’s cell phone while shoving my stuff in my bag and my feet in my sneakers. No answer. I called Lana as we walked out to the parking lot.
I could hear the music of her voice picking up as my hand dropped from my ear to my waist. Without looking, I ended the call.
“So, where do you—” Finch began, then stopped.
The rental car, parked on the pavement in front of our room, was filled with water. Filled, like a fish tank. The water was a silty swirl you couldn’t see through.
A tight, sickly laugh bubbled out of me. It was a reminder, clear as day: the Hinterland was with us every step of the way. We thought we were so damned clever, but wherever we went, it was because they were letting us.
Finch walked past me, hands on his head, and looked straight up at the sky.
“I hope you’re not looking for rain,” I said.
I thought he’d be freaked out, or aggressively calm in that Finch way I was growing accustomed to, or even pissed. But when he turned toward me he looked reverent. “The Hinterland did this.”
“Yes.”
“We can’t go back to New York now.”
“We were never going back to New York.”
“No, I mean, even if we wanted to. It’s like … we have no choice but to keep going.”
“What? Yes, we do. We have a choice, and we’re choosing it. This isn’t fate, Finch, this is getting bullied by supernatural assholes.”
Feet planted as far from the car as I could get them, leaning way forward at the waist, I opened the passenger door. A tide of water sluiced out. It lapped around my shoes, brackish and full of specks of green and gray.
“It’s seawater,” Finch said wonderingly, right as a fat silver fish flopped out onto the asphalt. It was wide and whiskered like a catfish, and landed on its belly. Its sides moved gently in and out. The sight of it filled me with pity—another victim of the Hinterland.
The fish was so calm, its whiskery face so ancient-looking, I wondered if it was magic, too. What would it give me, if I returned it to the ocean? What power might I be granted if I ate it?
Finch held up the room key still dangling between his fingers. “You make some horrible coffee. I’ll try to get us another car.”
I said a silent apology to the fish and walked away.
*
It turned out there was nowhere to rent a car that we could get to without a car, and no cab service for miles. Finally we threw ourselves on the mercy of the motel’s desk clerk, a woman who could’ve been the night clerk’s twin sister.
“You could try the fisherman’s bus,” she said. “It stops about a mile from here. It’ll take you to Nike, just short of Birch.” She gave us winding directions to the depot, two miles away.
“If you hurry,” she added ominously, “you might catch today’s bus.”
Finch’s and my eyes met, panicked. “Today’s bus?” he asked. “Today’s only bus?”
She shrugged and turned back to her Redbook, flipping lazily through photos of celebrities who were over fifty and loving it.
We hightailed it out of there, leaving the flooded car behind. Finch’s bottomless wallet was coming in handy again—from an economic standpoint, he barely seemed to register the car’s destruction. At least I’d had my bag with us in the room. I shoved my arm all the way to its bottom, till my fingers ran over the feather, the comb, and the bone. But I didn’t pull them out.