Without warning, all of the lights in the RV flashed on, glowing so molten hot that they shattered. The vehicle began to cough and sputter, shaking under our feet, as its engine found itself miraculously revived after a long sleep.
Zu jammed her hand back into its glove and crossed her arms over her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if willing it all to stop. But we didn’t have time to wait around and see if it would. I moved toward the door, grabbing the front of her sweatshirt to all but drag her out of the RV. She was still stumbling as I pulled her around to the end that faced the road, and Black Betty.
“Come on,” I said, not letting her slow. The brightness was gone from her face, blown out like a candle. “It’s okay,” I lied. “We just need to get the others.”
There was a camera installed in the front windshield of every trailer in that front row; I spotted them one by one as we ran back toward Betty. There was no point trying to get rid of them now. Whoever was going to see us had likely already seen us. We just had to get out of there, and fast.
They could be old, I tried telling myself, throwing Betty’s door open. They could have been installed years ago, in case of robberies. Who knew where the video they recorded was being sent? Maybe nowhere at all.
And at the same time, my heart was beating out a completely different track. They’re coming, they’re coming, they’re coming.
I thought about yelling for the others, but they could have been anywhere in the park. I climbed into the van after Zu and did the only other thing that seemed to made sense in that moment: I banged the heel of my palm against the wheel. The high whine of Betty’s horn shook the sleepy landscape awake. A cluster of birds flew up from the nearby trees, hitting the sky at the same moment I began beating out a faster, more insistent rhythm.
Chubs appeared first, booking it down one aisle of RVs, and Liam a second later, a few rows over. When they saw that it was still just us, they both slowed down. An annoyed look crossed Chubs’s face.
I leaned out of the open driver’s side window and shouted, “We have to go—now!”
Liam said something to Chubs that I didn’t hear, but they did as they were told. I stayed crouched between the two front seats as they boys jumped inside.
“What?” Liam was almost out of breath. “What’s wrong?”
I pointed to the nearest trailer. “They have cameras installed,” my voice rasped. “In every one of them.”
Chubs sucked in a sharp breath.
“You’re sure?” Liam’s voice was calm—too calm. I could tell he was forcing it, even as his fingers fumbled to put the keys in the ignition.
The van’s back tires spun against the mud as he threw it into reverse. I went tumbling on to my backside with the force of his acceleration.
“Oh my God,” Chubs was saying, “I can’t believe it. We got Hansel and Greteled. Oh my God—do you think it was her?”
“No,” Liam said. “No. She’s sneaky for a skip tracer, but this—this is something else.”
“They could have been there for a while,” I said, just as we found the highway again. It was empty and open in front of us, a gaping mouth ready to swallow us whole. “They could have been spying on the people that lived there. Maybe that really was East River.…”
Or it was just a trap, for kids looking for the real East River.
Liam propped his elbow against the door panel and his chin against his palm. When he spoke, the hundreds of snaking cracks in the windshield cut up his reflection. He pushed the minivan up into a faster speed, causing the wind to whistle through the bullet hole. “Just keep your eyes open and let me know if you see anyone or anything acting suspect.”
Define suspect. The rows of shuttered houses? A shot-up minivan?
“I knew we should have waited until it was dark,” Chubs said, tapping his fingers against the passenger seat window. “I knew it. If those cameras were on, they probably got the license plate number and everything.”
“I’ll take care of the plates,” Liam promised.
Chubs’s lips parted, but he said nothing, only resting his head against the window.
“Should I be looking for PSFs?” I asked, as we drove over another railroad track.
“Worse.” Chubs sighed. “Skip tracers. Bounty hunters.”
“The PSFs are stretched pretty thin, by all accounts,” Liam explained. “Same with the National Guard and what’s left of the local police. I don’t know that they’d send a unit all the way out here on a tip. And unless they just so happen to have a resident bounty hunter in this neck of the woods, we’re going to be fine.”
Those were famous last words if I had ever heard them.
“The reward for turning in a kid is ten thousand dollars.” Chubs twisted around to look at me. “And the whole country is broke as a joke. We are not going to be fine.”
I heard a train in the distance, its horn so similar to the ones that had passed by Thurmond at all hours of the night. It was enough for me to dig my fingernails into the skin of my thighs and squeeze my eyes shut until the nausea passed. I didn’t even realize the conversation had rolled on without me until I heard Liam ask, “You okay, Green?”
I reached up and wiped my face, wondering if the wetness there was from the rain, or if I’d been crying without realizing it. I didn’t say anything as I crawled to the rear seat. I didn’t jump into their conversation about where they would need to look next for East River, though I wanted to. There were hundreds, thousands, millions of places the Slip Kid could have set up camp, and I wanted to help them puzzle it out. I wanted to be part of it.
But I couldn’t ask, and I needed to stop lying to myself. Because every second I stayed with them was another chance for them to discover that skip tracers and PSFs weren’t the real monsters of the world. No. One of the real ones was sitting in their backseat.
For once, the music was off.
It was the silence from the speakers that unnerved me, more than the deserted roads or the empty shells of repossessed houses. Liam was a constant stream of motion. Looking around the abandoned small towns we drove through, glancing at the gas level, fiddling with the turn signal, fingers dancing on the steering wheel. At one point, his eyes flashed toward mine in the rearview mirror. It was just for an instant, but I felt the small twinge in my stomach as sharply as I would have if he had taken a soft finger and run it down the length of my open palm.