“How are your legs feeling?” Dr. Brand asked.
Reese sat up, averting her eyes from the battered luggage. “Better than yesterday.” Her limbs felt more solid than when she first woke up from the coma, but every so often they still felt a little rubbery.
“Good. No problems with breakfast?” Dr. Brand had unhooked Reese from the IV that morning, when she had brought her a bowl of nearly tasteless oatmeal.
“No. It was kind of disgusting, though.”
Dr. Brand gave her a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry about that. We have to be careful at first, getting you back on solid foods. When you go home you’ll want to stick to a bland diet for a few days. You should get dressed now. I’ll come back in about half an hour.”
Reese knelt on the floor next to her suitcase. Bungee cords were wrapped around it to keep it closed, and when she unhooked them, the suitcase seemed to sigh as it expanded. She opened it up. Her toiletries kit was smashed flat in the center, and dark stains seeped out through the fabric of the bag. She lifted it out and saw that toothpaste and lotion had exploded all over the top layer of clothing.
She didn’t feel like she had been in a coma for twenty-seven days. Even after reading the Time magazine from cover to cover and trying to absorb all that had gone on while she had been unconscious, she still felt like she had been asleep for one night only. But now as she lifted out the soiled blouse and skirt she had last worn at the debate tournament, the weeks that had passed since the accident became gut-wrenchingly real. Her clothing smelled of toothpaste and time, as if the suitcase had been in storage. She pulled out a blue T-shirt printed with a silver alien head—Julian had given her that—and held it to her nose. A combination of mint and the scent of some place closed-off and cool, air-conditioned and dark. There was something familiar about that smell.
She was swept by a wave of dizziness. She sat down, the linoleum floor pressing cold and hard against her bare thigh. A dull ache began to pulse behind her temples. She took a few deep breaths, trying to calm the sudden, uncomfortable racing of her heart. Her legs tingled, and unconsciously she rubbed the scar on her knee, her fingers tracing the ridge as if she were following a map over her own skin.
The scar didn’t seem to be as raised as it had been yesterday.
She looked down, shifting so that her right leg stretched out in front of her. The scar was still there, but she could swear it had lightened, and somehow it seemed shorter. She remembered that it had slashed almost halfway up her thigh, but now it faded away only a few inches above her knee. That’s weird. Had her medication distorted what she had seen?
She massaged her temples with her fingers, waiting for the dizziness to pass. She wished her mom were here. Homesickness pulled at her with a physical ache in her belly. She groaned. What had Dr. Brand said? The headaches would increase under stress? That almost made her laugh. How could being in a near-fatal car accident and waking up alone in a hospital be anything other than stressful?
She tried to calm down. Breathe, she told herself. You’re going home soon. Everything’s going to be fine. You can freak out when you get home. Today you’re going to see David.
David. For the first time since that night before semifinals, she didn’t feel self-conscious about the way she might act around him. She just wanted to see him, alive, with her own eyes.
She began to rummage through her broken suitcase and pulled out underwear and a bra, socks and a pair of jeans. It was good to put on her own clothes, even though they felt strange sliding over her skin. The jeans were loose on her, hanging lower on her hips than they used to, and when she slipped her arms through the alien T-shirt, even that seemed a bit baggy. Liquid diet. She got up to go to the bathroom and check her appearance, but when she went inside and turned on the light, there was no mirror over the sink. She hadn’t noticed that yesterday. She looked at the back of the door, but there was none there either.
The door to her room opened, startling her.
Dr. Brand was back. “Reese? Are you ready?”
“Just a minute.” Reese hurriedly ran her brush through her dark brown hair before leaving the bathroom. “I’m ready.”
The hallway outside Reese’s hospital room was as blank and nondescript as the room itself: beige walls, linoleum floor, speckled drop-panel ceilings. She could have been in any office park, except that each door was fitted with a camera and keypad instead of a normal lock.
Dr. Brand paused at the end of the hall in front of a door marked CONFERENCE B. She entered a code while standing in front of the camera, and then a small green light came on at the base of the keypad. She pushed open the door. “Go on in. I’ll be right back with your paperwork.”
Reese stepped into the conference room. It was a plain, rectangular space with an oval table in the center, surrounded by rolling chairs. A blank white board hung on the wall to her right, and across the room was a window covered with the same mini-blinds that hung in her hospital room.
David was standing at the window.
He met her halfway across the room, his arms sliding around her tightly. “Are you all right?” she whispered, her face pressed against his shoulder. He smelled like her suitcase: air-conditioning and a slight layer of dust. His clothes had been in storage too.
“I’m fine,” he said. She felt his voice reverberating through her, his breath on her hair, and in that instant an odd sensation pushed at her: a feeling of discordance. As if two instruments sounded but were not in sync.
She pulled back, disoriented, as her body tingled into awareness of how close she had been to him. David’s face blurred in front of her, and she grabbed the back of a chair for balance.
“Reese? What’s wrong?”
“I think I just need to sit,” she said carefully. He put his hand on her elbow and guided her to the table. She could feel the imprint of his fingers on her arm long after he let go and sat beside her, his knee brushing gently against her leg. “It must be a side effect of the drugs.” Her voice sounded shaky. “Dr. Brand told me there would be some. Side effects. Have you felt any?”
“Some weirdness in my legs, yeah. I don’t think anybody wakes up from a coma feeling totally on top of the world.” He smiled slightly, and she noticed that his face was thinner. There were hollows in his cheeks she had never seen before, and they gave his cheekbones a new prominence that made him seem older. His black hair had grown out so that it swept softly over his forehead.
She realized she was staring at him. She flushed and glanced away. Outside the window she saw a vista that appeared to be nearly identical to the one outside her room. The same tan desert, baking under the sun. “I can’t wait to go home,” she said. Her words came out sounding more fervent than she intended, and homesickness flooded her again, thick and hot.
“Me too,” David agreed heartily.
The door opened, and Dr. Brand entered with a man in a black suit. He was tall, with short dark hair and sharp blue eyes that moved briskly from Reese to David. “This is Special Agent Bradley Forrestal,” Dr. Brand said as she took a seat. “He’ll be telling you about what’s next.”
“Good morning,” Agent Forrestal said, flashing them a brief smile. He set a metallic briefcase on the table and opened it, pulling out a laptop and sitting down. “Dr. Brand says you’re both recovered enough to go home tomorrow. I’ll be escorting you back to San Francisco, and I’ll be your contact once you’re home if you have any questions about the treatment you’ve received here.” He withdrew two stapled documents from his briefcase and slid one to Reese and the other to David, then passed them each a pen. “Before you leave we just need you to fill out some paperwork. It’s all basic information, and at the end there’s a nondisclosure agreement for you to sign. Basically, it says that you agree to not talk to anyone about the treatment you’ve received here.”
Reese began to flip through the document. “Why can’t we talk about it?”
“I’m sure Dr. Brand explained to you that you’re in a classified
military facility. Neither of you is authorized to discuss anything you’ve seen here, that’s all.” He gave them a fake smile—the kind, Reese recognized, that adults give teens when they’re only pretending to level with them. “I’m sure you understand—you wouldn’t want to compromise our national security, would you?”
The condescension in his voice made Reese bristle. “I sure wouldn’t, sir,” she said with exaggerated sincerity.
David swallowed a snicker.
Agent Forrestal looked slightly puzzled, but Dr. Brand leaned forward, her eyes narrowing on the two of them. “There are real repercussions to sharing your knowledge about this facility with anyone, even your parents. We’ve spoken with your parents, and they understand that they can’t ask questions about where you received your treatment. I hope you do too.”
Dr. Brand’s tone was cool, but her words left no room for argument, and Reese was somewhat ashamed of her snarky comment. “Yeah, of course I understand,” she said.
“David?” Dr. Brand said.
His eyes shifted from Reese to Dr. Brand. “Yes, I understand.”
“Good,” Agent Forrestal said. “Then let’s fill out that paperwork and get you two home.”
Reese filled out the form—name, birth date, parents, address, school, various questions about her health—and then flipped to the last page, where there was a line for her signature above her name. Clarice Irene Holloway. She scrawled her name across the line and pushed the documents back to Agent Forrestal as David did the same with his.
“Can I call my mom?” Reese asked.
Agent Forrestal glanced at Dr. Brand. “Do you have a phone set up for that?”
“I do. It’s just down the hall in the empty office.” She looked at Reese. “When you’re ready, I’ll take you.”
“Is there anything else we have to do here?” Reese asked Agent Forrestal.
He shook his head. “You’re all set. I’ll see you both tomorrow morning, bright and early.”
CHAPTER 9
Reese hadn’t been outside in twenty-nine days. When she plunged through the door out of the hospital and into the bright morning, she was assaulted by heat. She sucked in a breath of dry desert air and raised a hand to shade her eyes from the blinding sunlight.
She had awoken before dawn, eager to go home, but now she turned back to look at the place where she had spent almost a month unconscious. The hospital was a one-story, prefab building painted tan, with a plaque affixed to the door that read BUILDING 5—PLATO.
That word, PLATO, had been on her wristband too.
When she got dressed that morning, the bracelet had snagged on her long-sleeved T-shirt. She had forced it over her knuckles and dropped it in her suitcase along with a copy of the nondisclosure form she had signed the day before. What did PLATO mean?
“Hey, you coming?” David called. He was waiting for her about ten feet away.
“Yeah, sorry.” She followed him and Dr. Brand down the concrete path, dragging her bungee-corded suitcase behind her.
Agent Forrestal was in the parking lot with the Jeep. He loaded their battered luggage into the vehicle, and then David and Reese climbed into the backseat.
“Have a safe flight,” Dr. Brand said. As the doctor’s gaze flickered over them, Reese felt a strange reluctance to leave. Of course I want to leave, Reese thought, watching Dr. Brand head back to the hospital. Talking to her mom the day before—finally—had made this place feel like a cage. She had tossed and turned all night, overcome with impatience to get out of there. Yet the sight of Dr. Brand walking away from the Jeep made Reese uneasy, as if something was unfinished.
Agent Forrestal turned on the Jeep’s engine, and Reese started at the sound of it.
“You okay?” David said.
She tried to shrug off the weird feelings. “Yeah. I just can’t wait to be home again.”
As they drove down the dusty road away from the hospital, Reese saw a couple of other buildings nearby, marked with signs identifying them as BUILDING 3—PLATO and BUILDING 2—PLATO. In the distance were more structures, some with curved roofs that reminded her of airplane hangars; others with windows flashing in the sun. They were all beige or tan, their walls blending in almost perfectly with the surrounding desert, as if they were meant to disappear into the background.
It was a quick drive to an airstrip, where a single small plane was parked, its door already opened into a short stairway. Another man in a black suit, whom Agent Forrestal introduced as Special Agent Daniel Menzel, helped load their suitcases inside. Then David and Reese climbed in. At first she could barely see because the interior of the plane was so dark compared to outside. She fumbled her way into the seat behind David—there only appeared to be about six of them—and squinted as her eyes adjusted. She reached to pull up the window shade, but her fingers touched only glass. There was no shade. All the windows were painted black.
“The location of this facility is classified,” Agent Forrestal said. She glanced up, and his face was a dark shadow framed by the bright sunlight coming through the door. “That’s why the windows are black.”
She pulled her hand away from the glass, and despite the desert heat, a chill snaked down her spine.
California smelled of dry grass and oak trees, a scent that immediately made Reese remember summers at her grandparents’ house in Marin, hiking around Phoenix Lake as her mom argued good-naturedly with her grandfather about criminal law. Her eyes watered as she inhaled deeply, homesickness now throbbing like a drumbeat inside her as she climbed down from the plane.
They had landed at an airport, but it didn’t look like a regular airport. It wasn’t until they were herded into a black town car and began driving away that she saw the signs for Travis Air Force Base. Reese had never heard of it before, but after they left the base and turned onto the freeway, she realized they were north of Oakland. She gazed out the tinted windows as they drove south toward San Francisco. Nothing seemed to have changed. There were the rounded brown hills in the distance, dotted with gnarled live oaks; the bay, gray and windswept; the sprawl of Oakland; and then the Bay Bridge, with traffic just as backed up as always.
But as they left the Bay Bridge behind and the freeway curved up in a concrete ramp over the edges of the city, she saw an electronic billboard mounted on the side of the ramp with a message scrolling across it: 9 PM CURFEW ENFORCED WITHIN SAN FRANCISCO CITY LIMITS. VIOLATORS WILL BE ARRESTED.
“Hey, look at that,” she said, pointing it out to David. “That’s crazy.”
David leaned across the seat toward her to look out the window. “I didn’t think anything happened here. Did Dr. Brand give you those magazines to read too?”
“Yeah, but they didn’t focus on San Francisco.”
Agent Forrestal glanced over his shoulder from the front passenger seat. “It’s a precautionary curfew. There was rioting in Fremont and parts of Oakland, and the city of San Francisco wanted to prevent any further outbreaks of violence.”
“How long is the curfew going to last?” Reese asked.
“No idea. It was eight PM at first; they raised it to nine PM last week.”
They exited the freeway at Cesar Chavez, and at the bottom of the ramp traffic barriers were piled up on the side of the road, as if they had only recently been pulled aside. It reminded Reese of Las Vegas: the blocked interstate, the exploding gas station, Mr. Chapman. She turned to David. “I forgot to tell you—I told Dr. Brand about Mr. Chapman. I told her to call the police.”
“I told her too,” David said. “Hopefully, she did.”
“Are you referring to your debate coach, Joe Chapman?” Agent Forrestal asked. “Dr. Brand informed me about what you said. We’ve passed on your information.”
“Did you find out what happened to him afterward?” Reese asked.
“I believe his body had already been identified and returned to California.”
Hearing Mr. Chapman referred to as a “body” made Reese sick to her stomach. She turned h
er head to look out the window, rolling it down to let in some air. They were paused at a stoplight, and on the corner yellow police tape was wrapped around a collection of Dumpsters. A biohazard sign was taped to the side of each one. The Dumpster lids were closed, but something was poking out of one of them. She could swear it was a wing from a bird.
They arrived at Reese’s house in Noe Valley first. She was already reaching for the door handle as Agent Menzel pulled the car over in front of a yellow Victorian. She glanced back at David before she opened the door. “Um, bye,” she said, feeling awkward.
“Bye,” David said. “I guess I’ll see you around?”
“Yeah. I’ll see you around.” She got out of the car and then impulsively leaned inside again. “I’m really glad you’re okay.”
He smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay too.”
She backed out self-consciously and closed the door, nearly banging into Agent Forrestal as he climbed out of the passenger seat.
“I’ll bring your suitcase,” he said. “You go on up.”
Reese’s mom opened the door before Reese finished walking up the steps from the street. The sight of her in the doorway sent a torrent of relief through Reese, and she took the last few steps two at a time until her mom crushed her into a tight embrace. She smelled of jasmine shampoo and laundry detergent, and Reese’s eyes stung with tears as the tangled knot of anxiety and homesickness inside her began to unravel, making her limbs feel watery. For a long time her mom held her, and Reese heard her directing Agent Forrestal to leave the busted suitcase in the front hall.
“Here’s my card if you need to be in touch,” Agent Forrestal said.
“Thanks,” her mom said, and reached one hand out to take it. Finally Reese heard Agent Forrestal’s footsteps recede down the steps, and the town car drove away.