I must have succeeded. Rona turned her attention back to Mom.
“Deal?” Mom repeated. Her jaw was set, her eyes blazing. I wondered that I had ever considered her mousy.
“All right,” Rona said. “Come on, kid.” She reached out to grab my elbow, and I was too stupefied to pull away.
“Mom?” I said weakly.
“Everything will be fine,” Mom said in that reassuring mother voice that I’d heard plenty of other kids mothers use, but never Mom. Never before that morning. “Just do what we talked about.”
Rona looked suspiciously from me to Mom.
“You try any funny stuff, kid, and your so-called mother here is a dead woman,” Rona said threateningly. “So are you and your friend.”
“You can’t hurt the girls,” Mom said firmly. “The bank has instructions to destroy the contents of that box in the event of Kira’s death.”
Nice bluff, I thought. Mom spoke so convincingly, I could almost imagine reams of secret papers going up in smoke. I wished there really were papers, instead of blocked-off information in my brain. And I wished I could figure out the full extent of Mom’s plan. I tried to catch Mom’s eye, but she was looking past me. She grabbed me by the shoulders and wrapped her arms around my back. She buried her face in my hair.
“Don’t worry about me,” she whispered into my ear. “There had to be a sacrificial lamb.”
Rona pulled me away from Mom.
“Hey, hey, none of that,” she said. “Come on.”
She pressed the gun into my back and steered me out the door. The feel of the cold metal through my shirt made me so terrified, I didn’t even say good-bye to Mom.
Twenty-Seven
I WAS AFRAID THAT RONA WOULD RENEGE ON HER SIDE OF THE bargain right away and try to leave without Lynne. And then, without Mom, I would have to stand up to Rona all by myself. Would I be able to do that? I didn’t think so. Because if I could, I would be digging my heels in right now, screaming, I’m not leaving Crythe without Mom!
Except Mom had said for me to go. She had told me not to worry about her.
Dazed, I crossed the basement and climbed the stairs. I was barely aware of anything around me except the gun jabbing into my back.
Just outside the kitchen, Rona directed me to a door I hadn’t noticed before. I opened it. It was a small closet, empty except for Lynne’s unconscious form on the floor. She lay curled into a fetal position, her long brown hair covering her face. Her school backpack was still strapped to her back, and somehow that made everything worse.
“If you hurt her …” I said, trying desperately for the threatening tone Mom had used.
“Relax,” Rona said. “We only gave her a mild sedative. For her own good. She was getting hysterical.”
I tried to imagine Lynne hysterical but couldn’t.
Rona gave Lynne a soft kick, and Lynne moaned and rolled over. I saw that her arms and legs were bound. She opened her eyes. As soon as she saw me, she struggled to sit up.
“Kneel,” Rona commanded me.
Seconds later Lynne and I were handcuffed together, her right wrist and my left one. Then Rona took a rope and tied our ankles together too. She grunted in satisfaction when she was done.
“That way, one bullet will stop both of you,” she said.
“Three-legged race,” Lynne whispered in my ear.
I knew what she meant. Lynne and I had been partners at lots of birthday parties and Sunday school picnics and end-of-school class day relay races when we were little kids—she thought we could make a break for it.
I shook my head warningly.
“They still have Mom,” I whispered back.
Lynne’s eyes got big, and she frowned questioningly.
“We have a deal,” I said, loud enough for Rona to hear. She was probably eavesdropping anyhow. “Rona here is flying you and me back to Willistown so we can get some important papers out of my lockbox.” I only dared to emphasize the “my” a little bit. I hoped Lynne picked up on it. “Then she’s going to set us free. And Mom, too.”
“If the papers are what I need,” Rona said. “If you don’t try to sabotage the deal. If everything goes my way.”
“It will,” I said in my best good-girl voice. I suddenly wished I’d had more experience lying. I didn’t think I sounded very confident. But it’s hard to sound that way with a gun in your back.
“What are the papers?” Lynne asked as casually as if she were making sure of a homework assignment. She knew I was lying, I thought. And Lynne was crafty enough to try to distract Rona.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Rona snapped. “The less you know, the more likely you are to get out of this alive.”
I swallowed hard, too worried to try to cover my panic anymore. How were we going to get out of this alive? The plan Mom and I had talked about depended on us being able to get help from a security guard at the bank before the lockbox was opened. But no security guard in the First Bank of Willistown could save Mom if she wasn’t there with us.
Rona had known that, I realized. That was why she’d agreed to take Lynne but had made Mom stay behind.
But why had Mom agreed?
Rona gave me a shove, and Lynne and I both stumbled. I realized I’d missed a command.
“She’s taking us to the plane,” Lynne hissed.
I nodded and numbly went along. At the front door Rona paused and spoke to a uniformed man. It was a long conversation, and when it was done, Rona turned to me.
“If he does not hear good news from me by eight o’clock tonight,” she said, “he will kill Sophia. Does that motivate you a little more?”
My heart pounded. I could only nod.
We went out the front door and got into the same car we’d ridden in the night before. A different uniformed man drove; Rona sat in the front and watched Lynne and me. Lynne tapped my foot with her shoe, as if we could communicate that way. Lynne was probably trying Morse code or something like that; Lynne probably actually knew Morse code. I didn’t. I scowled at Lynne, the universal sign for, Leave me alone. I’m thinking.
Lynne’s face crumbled, and I reminded myself that Lynne wasn’t exactly having a festive time herself. She stopped tapping my foot and turned her head to stare out the window.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but I don’t think she heard.
We arrived at what must have been the same field we’d flown to the night before. By daylight it looked even smaller and more isolated, just one long strip of concrete runway in the midst of overgrown brush. Off to the side there was a falling-down shack that must have been the airport office. Our pilot from the night before limped out from that shack.
“Khahy!” Rona yelled at him as soon as the car stopped. He came over and there was yet another long conversation among Rona, our pilot, and our driver. The flow of words made my head ache. I tried to tune it out. Lynne leaned over to me.
“I think one of their verb tenses is a variation on the syllable ‘sta,’” she whispered out of the side of her mouth. “They keep repeating that. Do you understand anything?”
I looked over, and Lynne was squinting in concentration, as if she were going to become fluent in Crythian if she listened for just another two or three minutes. She was trying so hard, I couldn’t stand it. I almost hated Lynne just then. Or maybe I hated myself for not trying.
Before I could answer Lynne, Rona ordered us out of the car and over to the plane. Lynne and I silently climbed into the back. Rona and the two men stayed outside the plane, leaning against the open door, still talking.
“I bet they’re arguing about who’s going and who’s staying,” Lynne whispered. “They’re not even watching us. Do you think we could start up the plane and leave without them?”
I stared at Lynne in disbelief.
“Do you have any clue how to fly this thing?” I asked her. “You’d kill us for sure. We haven’t even taken driver’s ed yet. Besides, they’d hear the minute we started the engine. And you can’t just tak
e off in one second flat.”
Lynne flushed red.
“Okay so that’s not such a hot idea. But what’s your plan? Why don’t you fill me in?”
“We have to—,” I started. To my surprise, my eyes filled with tears and my throat closed over before I could continue. I swallowed hard, made myself speak.
“Mom,” I said, “wants us to save ourselves and let her die.”
Twenty-Eight
I HADN’T FULLY REALIZED THE TRUTH UNTIL I SPOKE IT. ONCE THE words were out of my mouth, I felt faint. My head swam, and Lynne’s worried face seemed to recede before my eyes. I couldn’t focus on Lynne’s response for a long time.
“… you sure?” she was saying when I finally made my ears hear.
I nodded, the tears flooding my eyes again.
“What Rona wants—,” I began. I glanced out the plane door, but Rona and the two men were engrossed in their argument. They couldn’t hear me. “It isn’t in that lockbox,” I whispered. “It’s all a bluff. But Mom thinks when we get into the bank, we can tell a security guard and save ourselves. Rona won’t expect us to—to betray Mom.”
My voice broke on that awful word. “Betray.”
Lynne stared at me without blinking. Her face seemed to be all eyes.
“Your mom told you that?” she asked.
“She said, ‘Don’t worry about me. There had to be a sacrificial lamb.’ And you have to understand, the way she looked at me, when she said to just do what we’d talked about …” Mom had known all along that Rona wouldn’t take all three of us, I realized. She’d planned the whole negotiation, certain she would have to trade her life for ours.
“Maybe Rona’s bluffing too,” Lynne said. “She wouldn’t really kill your mom, would she? What are the papers she wants, anyhow?”
I hesitated. Part of me ached to tell Lynne the whole story. I didn’t want the burden of it entirely on my shoulders. But Lynne had started treating me differently when she suspected I was a refugee—what would she think of me when she found out the rest of my secrets? Maybe she wouldn’t even believe me.
And how could telling possibly help Mom?
I looked around desperately. The backseat of the plane was so small, I felt trapped. Just a few feet away Rona’s argument with the two men had escalated. They were shouting at one another now. I saw the man who’d driven our car shove the pilot back against the door to the plane. He winced with pain, and Rona immediately began yelling at the driver.
“Tell me now,” Lynne urged. “They aren’t listening to us at all.”
But I was watching Rona. She raised her arm, and the sun flashed on the gun she’d been pointing at Lynne and me all morning. The driver backed away. I saw Rona squeeze the trigger, and the gunshot echoed throughout the clearing. But the driver wasn’t hit. He took off running, straight for the deep woods around us.
“That was your warning!” Rona yelled after him. “I missed on purpose, you fool!”
She glanced over at Lynne and me. I realized that she’d spoken in English solely for our benefit.
“She—She’s not in control,” Lynne whispered to me as soon as Rona looked away. “She’s trigger-happy and she’s not in control.”
I was amazed that Lynne could analyze the situation so calmly. Then I saw that her teeth were chattering with fear; her face was as white as her T-shirt.
Both of us knew that Rona hadn’t missed on purpose.
Rona and Jacques were climbing into the front of the plane now, shutting the doors. Rona turned and faced Lynne and me.
“I don’t want any funny business out of the two of you,” she snapped. “I’m done giving warnings. Next time, I just shoot. Both of you are expendable as far as I’m concerned.”
I should have objected, reminded her that she couldn’t get into the lockbox without me. But I could still see her squeezing the trigger, could still hear the gunshot ringing in my ears. I was paralyzed.
She seemed to know what I was going to say anyway.
“Now that I know where it is, I’ll have no problem getting what I want out of that safe-deposit box. I have some experience robbing banks—did I tell you that?” Rona asked. “It’s just easier using you. If you cooperate.”
She’s crazy, I thought.
I didn’t need Lynne to figure that one out for me.
The pilot closed both doors, checked his instruments, and began preparing for flight.
This can’t be happening, I thought.
I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, we were speeding down the runway. And then we were flying, rising, rising, over trees, over mountains. Ignoring the pressure building in my ears, I peered out the window, searching for Crythe. I could see no sign of it. The village must have been behind us. It didn’t matter. I knew that with every second we spent in the air, we got farther and farther from Mom.
Twenty-Nine
IT’S A LONG WAY FROM CALIFORNIA TO OHIO.
That’s one of those facts I had never fully appreciated sitting in a classroom, staring at a map of the United States. And I hadn’t noticed on the flight out because I’d been unconscious most of the way from Willistown to Crythe.
But now, sitting in that little plane with a lunatic, an old man, and my frightened best friend, I found every second excruciating. I wanted to talk to Lynne, but Rona kept turning around and peering at us with her beady eyes.
Why hadn’t I noticed yesterday how deranged she looked? How bitter the lines were around her mouth, how greedily her eyes glowed, how coldly she surveyed all around her?
Obviously, I wasn’t much of a judge of character. Or I’d been even more blinded than I’d thought.
When we’d been in the air for about half an hour, Lynne started giggling beside me. Rona immediately snapped her head back to glare at her. I stared too.
“Peanuts,” Lynne said between giggles. “I was just thinking that if we were on a commercial flight, they’d be bringing us peanuts right about now. Or pretzels. And they’d ask if we want Coke or Sprite…. Isn’t that funny?”
Her voice sounded high and strange over the planes noises. Her giggles floated out like something entirely separate from her body.
Rona leveled the gun against the seat back. She was aiming at a spot between Lynne’s eyes.
“Stop laughing,” Rona commanded. “Now.”
Lynne stopped.
A minute later, as soon as I dared to look over at Lynne again, she had tears streaming down her face. She was sobbing in absolute silence.
Now Lynne was losing it too.
I patted Lynne’s shoulder, but she didn’t even seem to notice.
I couldn’t worry about Lynne. She and I were going to be okay. There was still hope for us. But Mom …
Just thinking about Mom made me feel like I was standing on a sandy beach and waves kept knocking me down and sweeping the sand away. Every time I tried to get back up on solid ground, I’d find there was no solid ground within reach. I just kept tumbling over and over again, drowning in memory.
When Mom and I were locked in that basement room together, before Rona came back and Mom made her deal, Mom had started reminiscing.
“I don’t think I’ve been much of a mother to you,” she’d apologized. “But I want you to know, I did my best.”
She’d talked about being a naive Crythian peasant, cast out in a strange land.
“I knew I had to get far away from Crythe,” she said. “But that trip across America was torture. All those neon signs burned into my memory…. I’d pull off the road at night and curl up with you in the car and try to sleep, try to forget—anything. All I could do was cry. I didn’t even feel like myself anymore. I felt old, because everything in America was new. It seemed like I had to remember it, because it’d be gone the next day. And then I got to Willistown, and it looked old and unchanging. All those Victorian houses on Maple Street, you know? They looked like they’d lasted. Like you could hide in them and not be scared, because they’d withstood a lot and were bou
nd to withstand a lot more. And they would keep standing. I went to the library, because for the first time I wanted to know more about a place we were passing through. And within an hour, Mrs. Steele had offered me a job and a place to live.
“I know I was strange in Willistown. I know you probably suffered for that. But I didn’t know how not to be Crythian. I couldn’t have bought a TV and let it go blaring in my house night and day, like your friends had. I couldn’t make small talk with all the neighbors and try not to remember every ‘Hi’ and ‘How are you?’ for the rest of my days. I couldn’t let go of my memories of Toria and Alexei, my mama and papa, Crythe. I couldn’t change. I could only … let you be different.”
Mom’s eyes had looked liquid, like twin pools of memory and regret.
“We could have hidden better in a big city,” she’d said. “I know that now. We could have been anonymous, unnoticed. But Willistown was my gift to you. A normal place to grow up. A place for you to become a normal person.”
I hadn’t known what to say. I’d just stared at her, still trying to piece everything together. All those “Hi’s” and “How are you?’s” our neighbors had spoken back in Willistown had been like bridges, foundations for the real sharing that went beyond small talk. But Mom and I had never had those connections. She was still a stranger to me. But a stranger who mattered more to me than my closest friends. She had risked her life for me all those years ago, and she was ready to sacrifice her life for me now.
I couldn’t let her do it.
I’m not going to let Mom die, I thought, and that fierce certainty was solid ground at last.
Calculatingly, I looked around the tiny plane cabin. I was like Lynne, before, full of wild ideas: The pilot was old—could we overpower him? Could one of us get the gun away from Rona? Were there parachutes for us to escape in? I’d never touched a parachute in my life, but I could imagine floating down, calling the police, storming Crythe long before eight o’clock that night.
I might as well have imagined a white horse and a knight in shining armor. My wild ideas were every bit as useless as Lynne’s had been.