I stare at my feet and think of Gatsbro. He flunked Humanity 101. I'd take Dot over him any day. I look back at Jenna. She may not have answers, but at least I know I'm not alone in that department.
"So what about Kara?" I ask. "Where do we go from here?"
"Kara," she says. Her eyes scan an unfocused space between us. I feel like I'm watching her version of a lapse, like she's walking through all the years she and Kara shared, maybe even through years and people who have been in her life that I will never know. She leans back into the couch, looking small and fragile, and yet there is so much more to her than the timid girl I once knew. She's someone who has built hidden underground rooms, changed laws, and saved strangers. She finally focuses on me again. After a long pause, she says, "For now, we'll assume she vented. And you threw things."
There's still worry in her face, but loyalty won. We had only a year and a half together, but that year and a half was the beginning of who we are now.
"I'll keep a close eye on her," I say. "I promise. Maybe she just needs more time."
"That might be something we don't have a lot of."
"You heard something?"
"That's why I wanted to come straight here after the bazaar. So Kara would know where to go too. The Network spotted Gatsbro in LA this morning."
I lean forward and dig my fingers through my hair. "So he's not in Mexico." I know I should be worried, and maybe part of me is, but I almost want to see him again. I want to crack his skull the way I should have in the first place. I want to pay him back for everything, for pretending he cared about us when all we were to him was product, pay him back for cracked ribs and for hitting Kara, pay him back for calling me son. I am no son of his.
"I don't know if he's on his way here or searching the streets of LA, or even on his way back to Manchester. But he's definitely not in Mexico. I have some people keeping an eye out at the San Diego station. If they see him, they'll contact me right away. That will give us time to hide you down here."
I'm not hiding from him anymore. I'm not hiding from him ever again. I may not have lived three lifetimes like Jenna, but I feel like I've lived a whole lifetime this past year, and another one this past week. My reality has flipped so many times I can't keep count. From here on out, I'll make my own reality, but I don't tell her that. I've already given her enough to worry about. Instead, I turn to her and grin. "You don't really expect Kara to stay down in this hellhole, do you?"
For just a moment, the apprehension on her face disappears and is replaced with a smile. It's a small thing, but it feels like I've given a gift to her. I look into her eyes. Her father made them exactly like I remember them--nothing added, nothing taken away--still the beautiful glistening blue pools they always were. No wonder he made the Bio Gel blue. I'll never think of my BioPerfect as the color of an exotic frog again, but the color of Jenna's eyes, and that makes all the difference. I feel stronger, like blue is a completely natural color for the inside of a human to be.
Chapter 72
When we return to the house, Allys tells us that Kara did just what she told us she would do--she went to her room and rested. When I ease the door open to be sure, Kara is lying there still as stone, her face serene, her chest rising in gentle puffs. Sleep of the angels, my mother called it.
Since I promised to keep an eye on her, I thought I should stay nearby, but Jenna says as long as she sleeps, there is no need, so I offer to help with some chores in the garden. Jenna had been right the other day when she had me help dig ditches. The physical labor does help drain the brain--at least for short bursts--and that's better than nothing.
I stay busy the whole afternoon, hauling rocks to build a retaining wall for another herb garden and driving stakes and stringing wire around another garden to keep BeeBots away. Jenna and Allys prefer the real kind of bees that can sting. I guess I do too.
In the late afternoon, I spot Kara out on the porch. She is wearing the new shirt and pants she bought at the bazaar. I'm about to put my own shirt back on and return to the house when Jenna gives me a signal that it's unnecessary. I keep an eye on the porch as I work and see Kara help Allys bring groceries in from the truck and then sweep the jacaranda petals from the porch. She lifts the broom and sweeps away a few cobwebs too.
Jenna brings a bottle of cold water out to me and reports that Kara seems to have recovered from her venting episode. She is doing everything she can to be helpful. Jenna's voice is hopeful, and that fills me with hope too. When she leaves, I attack one last row of rocks. My back aches from lifting the fifty-pound rocks, but it feels cleansing too. I never thought I would say that about such dirty work, and now I wish I had helped my dad and uncles gut our house on Francis Street. Sweat pours down my chest. I stand back and look at the wall. It is straight and sturdy. My dad would have approved.
Maybe it will all work out like Jenna said, if we just give it enough time. I hoist another rock from the pile.
I saw and heard and knew at last ...
I drop the rock and spin around. Kara is a few feet away. She stares at my bare chest and raises her eyebrows.
"I didn't hear you walk up."
She remains silent. Her gaze slowly crawls across my body.
Soon, Locke. Soon.
Soon? What does that mean? I step toward her. "Kara, what are--"
"I just came to tell you that dinner will be ready soon. Jenna says you should come in and clean up. Soon."
She smiles and walks away.
Soon. I finish the last row of rocks, wondering if I have too many loose words floating inside my head, wondering if I am hearing things that aren't even there. BioPerfect? Far from it.
The rest of the evening is calm. Kara helps with dinner and afterward cheerfully offers to do the dishes with Miesha. I even hear them laugh together once. Later she plays a game of tic-tac-toe on the floor with Kayla. Jenna and I watch her, and I think we both feel a loosening in the room, like a net that has been pulled tight over us is finally unknotting.
Soon. But when I crawl into bed and turn out the light, the word still floats in my head.