“No,” he said immediately. “No way. I once got stranded on a Greyhound for nine hours with nothing to eat but a pack of Tic Tacs. And the toilet backed up. Friends don’t let friends take the bus.”
Gemma raised her eyebrows. “So we’re friends now?”
“Sure we are,” he said, reaching out and chucking her gently on the arm. When he took a step forward, she could smell him. He didn’t smell like hot dogs at all, but like something clean and also a little bit spicy. “We became friends when we agreed to take a road trip. I’ll pick you up at nine tomorrow.”
April screamed when she found out that Gemma was coming down to Florida after all—Gemma had to yank the phone away from her ear to avoid having her eardrums blown out. April was so excited, she didn’t even ask Gemma how she was planning to make the trip—thankfully, since Gemma thought she might die if she had to admit Perv Rogers was going to drive her.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. Their fight had been completely forgotten. “Gemma Ives. I didn’t know you had it in you. And your parents just caved?”
“I guess they were done playing bad cop,” Gemma said. Lying gave her a sticky feeling in her chest, like she’d accidentally inhaled a condom. Fortunately, her father’s business trip would keep him in Shanghai for at least the next week, so that left only Kristina to deceive. Still, Gemma had no idea how she would deal with lying to her mom—and not just lying, but sneaking off to a different state.
She wasn’t exactly a natural rebel. The one time she and April had decided sophomore year to try an e-cigarette, Gemma had been so terrified the next day that she was dying of cancer that she had confessed to her mom just so she could be reassured.
But at eight a.m. the next morning Kristina would be in a long board meeting of one of the charities she supported, which meant that Gemma had a solid four hours to get the hell out of the state before her mom even found out she was missing.
Kristina and Gemma ate in front of the TV that night, side by side, as they often did whenever Gemma’s dad was traveling. Usually, their game was to turn on a trashy reality television show and make fun of all the contestants. But tonight, Gemma was too antsy and distracted to concentrate.
“Can you believe her lips?” Kristina said, gesturing with a fork at the TV. “It looks like she got attacked by a vacuum cleaner.” Gemma laughed, but a second too late. Kristina turned to her. “Are you all right? You seem quiet.” Then, alarmed: “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” Gemma said. She set down her dinner—takeout from Whole Foods, since her mom considered cooking selecting from the various prepared options—on the coffee table and nudged it away from Rufus’s nose with a toe. The sticky feeling was still lodged in her chest. Without meaning to, she blurted out, “Why did Dad leave Fine and Ives?”
Kristina turned to her, obviously startled. For a second, she looked almost afraid. Then she became immediately suspicious. “Why are you asking?”
Gemma shrugged. “Just curious. I mean, it was his, wasn’t it? It still has his name and everything. I was so little. . . .” Gemma was two when her dad had first decided to leave Fine & Ives, but the subsequent lawsuit had dragged on for more than three years. She remembered nothing about that time; her childhood memories consisted mostly of hospital visits, doctors and constant evaluations, illnesses, relapses, injections, and bitter medicine spooned to her by her mother. But she did remember her parents had celebrated the end of the lawsuit in her room at Duke University Hospital, and she remembered being overwhelmed with happiness and with a sense even then that it wouldn’t last. It never lasted.
Kristina turned back to the TV. But she was no longer watching. That was obvious. And after a second she picked up the remote and clicked the mute button. “Your father and Matthew Fine had . . . disagreements about the company’s direction.”
“What kind of disagreements?” Gemma pressed.
Kristina sighed. “To be honest, Gem, the details were never clear even to me.” She said the words lightly, and Gemma knew they’d been practiced before. “Matthew Fine wanted to make some investments and your father disagreed. It was all boring and very, very complicated.” Kristina’s eyelids flickered: a sure sign that she was lying.
Gemma thought that would be the end of that, but then Kristina turned to her.
“I know your dad can be difficult,” she said, making a weird face, as if the words were sour. “He’s made his mistakes, like everyone. But he’s a good man. Deep down, he is.”
Gemma nearly said, If you say so. But she swallowed back the words. No point in getting into an argument with her mom—not when, if everything went according to plan, there were so many arguments in her future.
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 5 of Lyra’s story.
SIX
GEMMA WAS ABSOLUTELY SURE THAT something would go wrong. Kristina would know something was the matter and refuse to go to her board meeting. Perv would show up at nine and the truth would come out and Gemma would be locked in her room until menopause.
She was a nervous wreck. She couldn’t imagine how thieves and murderers kept their cool. She could barely sneak out without her stomach liquefying.
But her mom just kissed Gemma’s cheek, as she always did, and promised to be home later for another Whole Foods and reality TV marathon. One good thing about being relatively friendless and a total Goody Two-shoes: no one ever expected you to do anything wrong. Gemma was suspicion-proof.
She packed her bag, unpacked it, realized she’d packed all the wrong things and far too many of them, and repacked. She was too nervous to sit at her laptop, although she did pull up the Haven Files again on her phone and swipe through the maps section, partially to reassure herself of its existence.
Perv showed up punctually, driving the same eggplant-colored minivan. This time, Rufus hauled himself to the door but let out only three restrained barks of welcome.
“Bye, Roo.” Gemma knelt down to hug her dog, taking comfort in his familiar smell. She knew she was being ridiculous—she was only going to be gone for a few days, maybe less if her mom got really aggressive and decided to fly down to Florida to get her—but she couldn’t help but feel she was leaving forever. And she was, in a sense. She was leaving her old self behind. She would no longer be Gemma-who-did-everything-right, who-listened-to-her-parents, Fragile Gemma of the Broken Body. She was Gemma-who-rode-with-strange-boys, Gemma-who-investigated-mysteries, Gemma-who-defied-parents-and-lied-to-best-friends.
Ninja Gemma.
“Ready to rock?” Perv asked, when she came outside with her backpack slung over one shoulder. Today he was wearing a green T-shirt that made his hair look even blonder and a pair of striped Bermuda shorts.
“Sure.” Gemma let Perv take the bag from her, though it wasn’t heavy, and sling it in the trunk. “How long is the drive, anyway?”
“Normally? Nine hours. When I’m behind the wheel?” Perv opened the door for her before she could do it for herself. He didn’t just talk quickly. He did everything quickly. If he were a comic book character, there would be little zoom-y lines drawn behind him. “A record eight hours and forty-five minutes. That’s with a standard three pee breaks. Fine. Four,” he said, when Gemma looked at him. “But don’t blame me if it throws our timing way off.”
All morning, Gemma waited for Perv to run out of things to say. She soon realized that it was a lost cause, as were her attempts to ignore him. Trying to ignore Perv was like standing in the middle of a highway, trying to ignore the eighteen-wheeler about to turn your brains into pancake batter.
A typical conversation with Perv went like this:
“Hey, check it out. A Hostess truck. Can you imagine pulling a heist on a cupcake truck? That’d be the most delicious crime ever. You’d be a national hero. One time when I was little I tried to make cupcakes by pouring pancake batter into actual cups—my mom’s china, to be exact. Turns out, interestingly, that china doesn’t do very well at
high heat. You know what else doesn’t do well at high heat? Cell phones. Remind me to tell you about the time I accidentally microwaved my phone. . . .”
And on and on and on. Occasionally, he paused expectantly and waited for Gemma to say uh-huh or no way, or fired a series of rapid questions her way in an attempt to draw her out. For the most part, she responded in as few words as possible. She was too nervous to have a normal conversation, especially with Perv. She’d never been good with strangers and she had zero experience with boys, so the combination—boy and almost stranger—meant that her tongue felt as if it was wrestling itself every time she tried to speak. She was hoping he might take the hint and suggest they listen to music, or just leave her in peace.
No such luck.
“So your dad’s some big pharma guy, right?”
“Used to be.”
“I love saying the word pharma. Pharma. It sounds like a type of plant. Say it.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes. I’m driving. You’re here for my amusement. Humor me.”
“Pharma.”
“See? Totally a type of plant.”
They stopped just after noon at a rest stop in South Carolina that featured a Panera and a McDonald’s. As they were getting out of the car, Gemma made the mistake of calling Perv Perv—out loud.
“Seriously?” He made a face.
“Sorry.” Gemma felt immediately guilty. Perv was nice, and secretly she’d been flattered when April caught him staring at Gemma in the cafeteria, even if it was probably only because he had dirt in his eye or something. Nobody ever stared at her except in a horrified kind of way, as if her face was a graphic image of a car accident. And Pete was cute—in a very messy boy kind of way, but still, undeniably cute. And he was giving her a ride.
Perv—Pete—shook his head. He didn’t look mad. Just surprised and a bit disappointed. “You really think I’d steal underwear from Chloe?”
Gemma tried to make a joke out of it. “Are you saying you’d steal it from someone else?”
She was relieved when Pete—she would only think of him as Pete from now on—cracked a smile. “Maybe,” he said, “under the right circumstances. Like, for the good of social justice.”
“Why would stealing underwear be good for social justice?” she asked.
“Politics are complex, Gemma,” he answered solemnly, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
They agreed to meet back in the car—or rather, Pete decided they should have a race to see who could get back to the car soonest, claiming he had once ordered a McDonald’s meal, peed, and purchased several plastic figurines from one of the twenty-five-cent machines that always cluttered the rest stops, all within a record four minutes.
Gemma didn’t like to eat in front of strangers, ever since the time in seventh grade when Chloe had made pig-snorting noises when she’d carried her tray at lunch, and half the class had joined in. Instead she followed Pete into the rest stop and scarfed a granola bar while peeing in a stall, feeling pathetic and stupid but still too embarrassed to buy what she wanted, which was a Happy Meal. She didn’t feel so much like Ninja Gemma sitting with her pants around her ankles and granola bar crumbs on her bare thighs.
She made it back to the car first, and Pete emerged about thirty seconds later at a sprint, holding an enormous bag from McDonald’s. He stopped when he saw her and threw up his hands dramatically, nearly losing his soda cup.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “You beat me.” Then, unlocking the car and seeing she was empty-handed, he said, “You’re not hungry?”
“Not really,” Gemma said, even though she was. She turned away so he wouldn’t see her cheeks burning.
When they climbed into the car, he plopped the McDonald’s bag in her lap. She could smell the fries. They smelled like grease and salt and heaven.
“Share mine,” he said. “I don’t want you to starve to death. It would be awkward to explain to your parents.”
“I doubt I’m in danger of starving anytime soon,” she said. She wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her—compared to some of the girls at her school, she was a massive balloon that floated over the crowd at big parades—but it didn’t seem that way. The idea of her parents made her stomach turn a little. She checked her phone. One o’clock. Her mom would be home any second, would discover Gemma was missing, and would send out an Amber Alert.
“Fine. But you’re in danger of turning into a walking toothpick, like Chloe. Every time I see her, I feel like I have something in my teeth.”
She liked him a hundred times more for saying it, even if it wasn’t true. She couldn’t help it. Chloe looked like pretty girls were supposed to look, at least according to every fashion magazine and blog. And Gemma looked like the girl who’d swallowed the pretty girl.
She dug her hand in the bag and popped fries in her mouth. They were delicious. She didn’t care that when she leaned forward her stomach rolled a little over her waistband. Pete wasn’t even looking at her. He was busy scarfing his own burger. Gemma decided she liked the way he ate—with total attention, like the food was a complex math problem he had to solve.
“So you really didn’t steal Chloe’s underwear?” she asked after a moment.
“’Course not,” he said, although since his mouth was full it came out cough noff. He made a big show of swallowing. “Want to know my theory? My theory,” he said, without waiting for her to respond, “is that Chloe DeWitt was and is hopelessly in love with me, and when I didn’t steal her underwear, it drove her crazy. She had to pretend that I did.”
Gemma stared at him. There was a little bit of sauce at the corner of his mouth and she had the momentary urge to reach out and wipe it off. “You’re insane. Do you know that? You actually might be certifiable.”
He shook his head. His expression turned serious. “Those girls are clones, Gemma. They lack brains.”
She turned toward the window so she would stop noticing things about him—how nice and long his hands were, with freckles sprinkled across the knuckles. His funny Adam’s apple, which rioted up and down his throat when he spoke. Even if he was nice, he was still a cute boy, and cute boys did not go for girls like Gemma. She’d seen enough romantic comedies to know it.
“Clones have brains,” she said. “You’re thinking of zombies.”
“Zombie clones, then,” he said, and put the car in drive.
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 6 of Lyra’s story.
SEVEN
THEY WERE NEARING JACKSONVILLE WHEN they heard about the explosion off Barrel Key, and the fire burning out of control on Spruce Island. Gemma had been searching the radio for something that wouldn’t tempt Pete to sing along. It turned out when he wasn’t talking, he was singing, usually off-key, and with some random jumble of words that had only a vague relationship to the actual lyrics. She was looking for gospel, bluegrass, hard-core rap, anything. The first hour of impromptu karaoke had been all right—she’d actually enjoyed his rendition of “Man in the Mirror” and had nearly peed her pants when it turned out he knew every word to Britney Spears’s “. . . Baby One More Time”—but after the second hour she longed for quiet, especially since Pete wouldn’t stop harassing her about singing along.
When she hit a news station, she almost skipped right over it.
“—local officials confirmed the fire . . . at the Haven Institute for—”
“Come on, DJ, how about playing a song?” Pete spun away from the station just as Gemma froze, stunned. The radio skipped to a Jimmy Buffett song.
“No. Stop. Go back, please.” Gemma turned the radio back, past the crackle and hiss of silent frequencies, until she heard the newscaster’s voice tune in again.
“. . . unconfirmed rumors . . . a deliberate attack . . .”
Pete was pretending to pout. “Jimmy Buffett, Gemma. That’s, like, Florida’s national anthem. I think it’s mandatory that we hear ‘Margaritaville’ at least once a day. Otherwis
e we might get kicked out of the state.”
“I’m begging you. Please. This is important, okay?” She cranked the volume button, but the sound quality was awful. She had no idea where the station was broadcasting from, but it must have been closer to Barrel Key, and the voices kept patching in and out, interspersed with snippets of music from another station.
“Tom, is it true . . . actually took credit on Facebook?”
“. . . problem is . . . nobody talking . . .”
“Police say stay away until . . . situation under control . . .”
“Military presence . . .”
“Rumors of a protest at Barrel Key . . .”
But by then the interference was too great, and they were listening to some old-timey singer warbling about heartbreak. Gemma punched the radio off. She needed silence to think. There was a fire at Spruce Island—possibly an attack. But by whom? And what did it mean? Why would anyone attack a research institute? She thought of the man who’d grabbed her in the parking lot, with his coffee-stink breath and the wide frenzy of his eyes.
“Barrel Key,” Pete said slowly. For once, he wasn’t smiling or twitching or trying to make her laugh. He was just frowning, holding tight to the steering wheel with both hands. “That’s where you’re going, isn’t it?”
“That’s where you’re going to take me,” Gemma said. And maybe it was the way she said it, or the way she looked, but he finally stayed quiet after that.
They got to Barrel Key just after six o’clock. Gemma had powered down her phone hours earlier, after sending a single text to her mom—Gone to see April in Florida—just so Kristina wouldn’t be tempted to call out the police or the National Guard. Still, she knew her mom would be frantic. She had probably called Gemma’s dad by now, too, and this gave Gemma her only satisfaction: he was thousands and thousands of miles away and couldn’t punish her.