“A nut job, like Sharon’s mom?” he counters, still studying the dark pencil marks that deface the back
cover of the old photo album. It’s the one thing I haven’t lost in all the running. Even the graffiti loony
Uncle Jeb left on it during his last visit has sentimental value now.
“Point taken.” If Sharon is still alive, it will be because her mother, loony Aunt Maggie, could give loony
Uncle Jeb a run for the title of Craziest of the Crazy Stryder Siblings. My father had been only slightly
touched by the Stryder madness—he didn’t have a secret bunker in the backyard or anything. The rest
of them, his sister and brothers, Aunt Maggie, Uncle Jeb, and Uncle Guy, were the most devoted of
conspiracy theorists. Uncle Guy had died before the others disappeared during the invasion, in a car
accident so commonplace that even Maggie and Jeb had struggled to make an intrigue out of it.
My father always affectionately referred to them asthe Crazies. “I think it’s time we visited the Crazies,”
Dad would announce, and then Mom would groan—which is why such announcements had happened so
seldom.
On one of those rare visits to Chicago, Sharon had snuck me into her mother’s hidey-hole. We got
caught—the woman had booby traps every-where. Sharon was scolded soundly, and though I was
sworn to secrecy, I’d had a sense Aunt Maggie might build a new sanctuary.
But I remember where the first is. I picture Sharon there now, living the life of Anne Frank in the middle
of an enemy city. We have to find her and bring her home.
Jared interrupts my reminiscing. “Nut jobs are exactly the kind of people who will have survived. People
who saw Big Brother when he wasn’t there. People who suspected the rest of humanity before the rest
of humanity turned dangerous. People with hiding places ready.” Jared grins, still study-ing the lines. And
then his voice is heavier. “People likemy father. If he and my brothers had hidden rather than fought.…
Well, they’d still be here.”
My tone is softer, hearing the pain in his. “Okay, I agree with the theory. But these lines don’tmean
anything.”
“Tell me again what he said when he drew them.”
I sigh. “They were arguing—Uncle Jeb and my dad. Uncle Jeb was trying to convince him that
something was wrong, telling him not to trust anyone. Dad laughed it off. Jeb grabbed the photo album
from the end table and started… almostcarving the lines into the back cover with a pencil. Dad got mad,
Jared nods absently, still studying. “The beginning… the beginning… It has to mean something.”
“Does it? They’re just squiggles, Jared. It’s not like a map—they don’t even connect.”
“There’s something about the first one, though. Something familiar. I could swear I’ve seen it somewhere
before.”
I sigh. “Maybe he told Aunt Maggie. Maybe she got better directions.”
“Maybe,” he says, and continues to stare at Uncle Jeb’s squiggles.
She dragged me back in time, to a much, much older memory—a memory that had escaped her for a
long while. I was surprised to realize that she had only put these memories, the old and the fresh, together
recently. After I was here. That was why the lines had slipped through her careful control despite the fact
that they were one of the most precious of her secrets—because of the urgency of her discovery.
In this blurry early memory, Melanie sat in her father’s lap with the same album—not so tattered
then—open in her hands. Her hands were tiny, her fingers stubby. It was very strange to remember being
a child in this body.
They were on the first page.
“Do you remember where this is?” Dad asks, pointing to the old gray picture at the top of the page. The
paper looks thinner than the other photographs, as if it has worn down—flatter and flatter and
flatter—since some great-great-grandpa took it.
“It’s where we Stryders come from,” I answer, repeating what I’ve been taught.
“Right. That’s the old Stryder ranch. You went there once, but I bet you don’t remember it. I think you
were eighteen months old.” Dad laughs. “It’s been Stryder land since the very beginning.…”
And then the memory of the picture itself. A picture she’d looked at a thousand times without ever
seeing it. It was black and white, faded to grays. A small rustic wooden house, far away on the other
side of a desert field; in the foreground, a split-rail fence; a few equine shapes between the fence and the
house. And then, behind it all, the sharp, familiar profile…
There were words, a label, scrawled in pencil across the top white border:
Stryder Ranch, 1904, in the morning shadow of…
“Picacho Peak,” I said quietly.
The thought had her so filled with yearning and excitement that the blank wall in my head slipped entirely.
I saw the whole journey now, saw her and Jared’s and Jamie’s careful trek across the country, always
by night in their inconspicuous stolen vehicle. It took weeks. I saw where she’d left them in a wooded
preserve outside the city, so different from the empty desert they were used to. The cold forest where
Jared and Jamie would hide and wait had felt safer in some ways—because the branches were thick and
concealing, unlike the spindly desert foliage that hid little—but also more dangerous in its unfamiliar smells
and sounds.
Then the separation, a memory so painful we skipped through it, flinching. Next came the abandoned
building she’d hidden in, watching the house across the street for her chance. There, concealed within the
walls or in the secret basement, she hoped to find Sharon.
I shouldn’t have let you see that,Melanie thought. The faintness of her silent voice gave away her
fatigue. The assault of memories, the persuasion and coercion, had tired her.You’ll tell them where to
find her. You’ll kill her, too.
“Yes,” I mused aloud. “I have to do my duty.”
Why?she murmured, almost sleepily.What happiness will it bring you?
I didn’t want to argue with her, so I said nothing.
The mountain loomed larger ahead of us. In moments, we would be beneath it. I could see a little rest
stop with a convenience store and a fast food restaurant bordered on one side by a flat, concrete
space—a place for mobile homes. There were only a few in residence now, with the heat of the coming
summer making things uncomfortable.
What now? I wondered. Stop for a late lunch or an early dinner? Fill my gas tank and then continue on
to Tucson in order to reveal my fresh discoveries to the Seeker?
The thought was so repellent that my jaw locked against the sudden heave of my empty stomach. I
slammed on the brake reflexively, screeching to a stop in the middle of the lane. I was lucky; there were
no cars to hit me from behind. There were also no drivers to stop and offer their help and concern. For
this moment, the highway was empty. The sun beat down on the pavement, making it shimmer, disappear
in places.
This shouldn’t have felt like a betrayal, the idea of continuing on my right and proper course. My first
language, the true language of the soul that was spoken only on our planet of origin, had no word for
betrayal ortraitor. Or evenloyalty —because without the existence of an opposite, the concept had no
meaning.
And yet I felt a deep well of guilt at the very idea of the Seeker. It would be wrong to tell her what I
knew.Wrong, how? I countered my own thought viciously. If I stopped here and listened to the
seductive suggestions of my host, I would truly be a traitor. That was impossible. I was a soul.
And yet I knew what I wanted, more powerfully and vividly than anything I had ever wanted in all the
I could not separate myself from this body’s wants. It was me, more than I’d ever intended it to be. Did
I want or did it want? Did that distinction even matter now?
In my rearview mirror, the glint of the sun off a distant car caught my eye.
I moved my foot to the accelerator, starting slowly toward the little store in the shadow of the peak.
There was really only one thing to do.
CHAPTER 10
Turned
The electric bell rang, announcing another visitor to the convenience store. I started guiltily and ducked
my head behind the shelf of goods we were examining.
Stop acting like a criminal,Melanie advised.
I’m not acting,I replied tersely.
The palms of my hands felt cold under a thin sheen of sweat, though the small room was quite hot. The
wide windows let in too much sun for the loud and laboring air-conditioning unit to keep up.
Which one?I demanded.
The bigger one,she told me.
I grabbed the larger pack of the two available, a canvas sling that looked well able to hold more than I
could carry. Then I walked around the corner to where the bottled water was shelved.
We can carry three gallons,she decided.That gives us three days to find them.
I took a deep breath, trying to tell myself that I wasn’t going along with this. I was simply trying to get
more coordinates from her, that was all. When I had the whole story, I would find someone—a different
Seeker, maybe, one less repulsive than the one assigned to me—and pass the information along. I was
just being thorough, I promised myself.
My awkward attempt to lie to myself was so pathetic that Melanie didn’t pay any attention to it, felt no
worry at all. It must be too late for me, as the Seeker had warned. Maybe I should have taken the
shuttle.
Too late? I wish!Melanie grumbled.I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. I can’t
even raise my hand! Her thought was a moan of frustration.
I looked down at my hand, resting against my thigh rather than reaching for the water as she wanted to
do so badly. I could feel her impatience, her almost desperate desire to be on the move. On the run
again, just as if my existence were no more than a short interruption, a wasted season now behind her.
With a sigh, I pulled the largest shrink-wrapped flat of water bottles from the shelf. It nearly hit the floor
before I caught it against a lower shelf edge. My arms felt as though they’d popped halfway out of their
sockets.
“You’re kidding me!” I exclaimed aloud.
Shut up!
“Excuse me?” a short, stooped man, the other customer, asked from the end of the aisle.
“Uh—nothing,” I mumbled, not meeting his gaze. “This is heavier than I expected.”
“Would you like some help?” he offered.
“No, no,” I answered hastily. “I’ll just take a smaller one.”
He turned back to the selection of potato chips.
No, you will not,Melanie assured me.I’ve carried heavier loads than this. You’ve let us get all soft,
Wanderer, she added in irritation.
Sorry,I responded absently, bemused by the fact that she had used my name for the first time.
Lift with your legs.
I struggled with the flat of water, wondering how far I could possibly be expected to carry it. I managed
to get it to the front register, at least. With great relief, I edged its weight onto the counter. I put the bag
on top of the water, and then added a box of granola bars, a roll of doughnuts, and a bag of chips from
the closest display.
Water is way more important than food in the desert, and we can only carry so much —
I’m hungry,I interrupted.And these are light.
It’s your back, I guess,she said grudgingly, and then she ordered,Get a map.
I placed the one she wanted, a topographical map of the county, on the counter with the rest. It was no
more than a prop in her charade.
The cashier, a white-haired man with a ready smile, scanned the bar codes.
“Doing some hiking?” he asked pleasantly.
“The mountain is very beautiful.”
“The trailhead is just up that —” he said, starting to gesture.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
.
“Head down before it gets dark, sweetie. You don’t want to get lost.”
“I will.”
Melanie was thinking sulfurous thoughts about the kind old man.
He was being nice. He’s sincerely concerned about my welfare,I reminded her.
You’re all very creepy,she told me acidly.Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers?
I felt a deep tug of guilt as I answered.There areno strangers among my kind.
I can’t get used to not paying for things,she said, changing the subject.What’s the point of scanning
them?
Inventory, of course. Is he supposed to remember everything we took when he needs to order
more? Besides, what’s the point of money when everyone is perfectly honest?I paused, feeling the
guilt again so strongly that it was an actual pain.Everyone but me, of course.
Melanie shied away from my feelings, worried by the depth of them, worried that I might change my
mind. Instead she focused on her raging desire to be away from here, to be moving toward her objective.
Her anxiety leaked through to me, and I walked faster.
I carried the stack to the car and set it on the ground beside the passenger door.
“Let me help you with that.”
I jerked up to see the other man from the store, a plastic bag in his hand, standing beside me.
“Ah… thank you,” I finally managed, my pulse thudding behind my ears.
We waited, Melanie tensed as if to run, while he lifted our acquisitions into the car.
There’s nothing to fear. He’s being kind, too.
She continued to watch him distrustfully.
“Thank you,” I said again as he shut the door.
“My pleasure.”
He walked off to his own vehicle without a backward glance at us. I climbed into my seat and grabbed
the bag of potato chips.
Look at the map,she said.Wait till he’s out of sight.
No one is watching us,I promised her. But, with a sigh, I unfolded the map and ate with one hand. It
was probably a good idea to have some sense of where we were headed.
Look around,she commanded.If we can’t see it here, we’ll try the south side of the peak.
See what?
She placed the memorized image before me: a ragged zigzagging line, four tight switchbacks, the fifth
point strangely blunt, like it was broken. Now I saw it as I should, a jagged range of four pointed
mountain peaks with the broken-looking fifth…
I scanned the skyline, east to west across the northern horizon. It was so easy it felt false, as though I’d
made the image up onlyafter seeing the mountain silhouette that created the northeast line of the horizon.
That’s it,Melanie almost sang in her excitement.Let’s go! She wanted me to be out of the car, on my
