Out of This World (44 page)

“Last chance,” he says.

“You want me to sit down?” I say. “Make me.”

Dad's chair clatters down on the linoleum and he starts for me, but Mom grabs his arm.

“Ted, don't,” she says. She looks at me. “Go to your room, Des.”

I walk down the hall to my bedroom, go inside and slam the door.

Well, I handled that real well, I think, as I fall down on my bed. Digging into my pocket, I pull out the pebble and tap it lightly on the bedpost. Donalita appears and falls across the bottom of the bed with her arms open wide. I reach over and clamp a hand over her mouth as she's about to—I don't know what. Sing? Laugh? Start talking in tongues?

“You have to be super quiet, dude,” I tell her as she scoots up alongside me.

From down the hall I can hear the soft murmur of my parents' voices—arguing about what to do with me, I guess. A couple of times Dad's threatened to put me in some military
academy run by one of his pals from back when Dad was in the service. Mom hates the idea because she comes from old hippie stock and she's a total pacifist. God knows how they ever ended up together.

“I can be quiet,” Donalita whispers back. “I can be quieter than the quietest mouse you ever didn't hear because it was so quiet.”

She snuggles closer to me.

“This probably isn't a good idea,” I say.

When she first insisted she had to come with me, I gave in because I needed the moral support, even if the friend I brought along was only a pebble in my pocket. But if they catch her in here now, I
will
end up in that military academy.

“Were they mean to you?” she asks.

“Depends on your perspective. Looking at it one way, I was mean to them first, by not coming home. They don't get why I didn't, and I can't tell them everything—which bites—but if they knew all the details, they'd have a total meltdown.” I sigh. “This is, like, the worst day ever. I mean, Josh …”

She gives my arm a squeeze. “I know. We should go away— just get away from everything.”

“Except it'll still be waiting for me when I get back, only amped up to eleven.”

She frowns.

“It'll be worse,” I explain.

We lie there awhile, listening to my parents' voices.

“I keep thinking about Josh's mom,” I say. “She's taking it so hard and she has to carry all that weight by herself, alone in a big empty house.”

“I liked her,” Donalita says. “Maybe we should go stay with her. We could all comfort each other.”

I turn away from her and push my face into the pillow and try to muffle my sobs. I can't help it.

Josh is gone and everything is a shambles.

I walk aimlessly around my bedroom while I wait for Lupe, trying to decide what to take with me. In the end, I just shove some underwear and a spare hoodie into a backpack.

I expect her to come tap on my window like Josh and Des used to when they wanted me to sneak out. Instead she just steps out of the otherworld, right into the middle of my room, which just about gives me a heart attack. She puts a steadying hand on my arm.

“Sorry,” she whispers.

“It's okay.”

“Where do you want to go?” she asks.

“I don't know. I don't know what to do. Maybe I'm making a huge mistake. Maybe I should let them turn me over to the authorities. Maybe I
am
dangerous.”

She shakes her head and puts a hand on my shoulder. “That's them talking, not you. You know what's true. Your truth is all that matters, and you can't let them put you in a cage. Trust me. I know all about being made to do things I didn't want to do—things that someone would
never
choose to do on their own.”

I think of Nanuq's binding medallion that I broke, how it controlled her and the other dog cousins.

“I guess you do.”

“Come back to my place,” she says. “You can lay low there while you figure out what to do next.”

“Thanks. The one sure thing is, I can't stay here.”

“Do you have everything you want to take with you?”

I lift my backpack from the end of the bed.

“I wish I could take my board and drum kit,” I say, “but I doubt I'll have any use for them anymore.”

“We can come back for them,” she says. “There's not any place they can put them that I can't get into.”

I don't suppose there is.

“Can we make a short stop on the way?” I ask.

“Sure. Where to?”

“The backyard of where I used to live when I was a kid. Do you know where that is?”

She nods. “But I thought you and your sister didn't get along.”

How could she know that? I lift an eyebrow and she shrugs.

“Gossip. Cousins tend to know everything that goes on around them,” she says. “After the two of you got involved with the Riverside Kings, you were on everyone's radar.”

“I want to say goodbye to my little sisters,” I say.

“Now? You're not moving out of state or even out of the county tonight. It's late. Maybe you should try to see them when things calm down a little.”

“But what if my parents fix it so that I can't ever get near them again? Then they'll believe whatever they're told about me. They'll think I didn't care about them.”

“There's no place they can hide them from me.”

“I know.”

I think of what happened to Josh today, and what happened to so many of the Wildlings. Nanuq is still out there, wanting us all dead.

“But,” I add, “Wildlings don't seem to have much of a life expectancy these days.”

I know she's going to say something about how the dog clans will keep me safe. I can see it in her eyes. And then I see her change her mind.

“Sure,” she says. “No problem. Here, take my hand.”

I do, and she steps us away into the otherworld. We walk for a while through desert scrub untouched by humans. When we come out again, we're in the backyard of Papá's house. I send Ampora a text while Lupe slips into the shadows beyond the back porch's light. A few moments later I see the kitchen curtain stir and then Ampora comes outside. She stands a couple of feet away, arms crossed across her chest.

“Did you get the text I sent?” she asks. “I meant it.”

“I know you did. Thanks.”

“Why are you here?”

“I'm going away and I want to say goodbye to the girls.”

“Going away?” she says. Her gaze flicks around the backyard, trying to pierce the shadows. “With your
boyfriend
?”

“I'm not seeing Theo anymore.”

And Josh is dead, but I'm not ready to tell her what that really means for me. Not when she thinks he'd been planning to come back to see her.

“I don't know how smart running away is,” she says, “but at least you've still got
some
sense in you.”

“Theo's not what you think.”

“No, he's probably worse.”

“I don't want to argue with you.”

What I really don't want is for her to get into another hissy fit and not let me see the girls.

She just looks at me for a long moment, then she finally nods.

“It's funny,” she says. “For a long time I've been kind of hoping you'd get out of my life, but now that you're going, it actually feels a little weird.”

I don't say anything. I want to, but I can never tell what will set her off.

“I'll get the girls,” she says and turns back to the house.

“No way,” Cory says when J-Dog and I return to my crib. “We're not taking a civilian on what's probably a suicide mission.”

“Excuse me?” J-Dog says. “Aren't you the piece of shit who held a gun to my head out back here?” I see the crazy start up in his eyes.

“Bygones,” I say to J-Dog. “Let it go, or don't come.”

J-Dog scowls. I see him weighing it out, deciding to bury his pride. That's huge for him and my heart swells a bit, knowing how much he's got my back. Of course, could be he's just itching to play with the rocket launcher.

“We aren't going to rough up some gangbangers,” Cory says. “We're going after a monster who can move so fast you'll barely see him before he's ripping out your throat.”

“Let him try,” J-Dog says.

“I'm telling you, it'll be over before you even—”

“Shut up,” I say. “The both of you.”

I point a finger at Cory. “You're coming because you can get me to him.” My finger moves to J-Dog. “And you're coming because you're too much of a dumbshit to do the smart thing and stay out of it. But this is my show—everybody got that? When
we find Nanuq, it'll be my finger on the trigger. Sucker owes me and I'm taking him down.”

“Or you'll die trying,” Cory says, stepping heavy on the cliché.

“Or I'll die trying,” I agree in all seriousness. “Then you can do whatever the hell you want. Everybody understand?”

Cory shrugs. J-Dog glares at both of us, but finally he nods.

“Okay, then,” I say. “Cory, you heard from those friends of yours?”

“It's still early.”

I nod. “Then we start walking, right? See what we can find on our own?”

“That's the plan, such as it is. We can go anytime.”

I sling a sawed-off so that it hangs against my chest—easy to reach. I've got a Glock in my waistband. I pick up the rocket launcher. J-Dog's prepped me on how it works, and it's ready to rock 'n' roll. He picks up his own.

“So let's go,” I say.

Cory puts a hand on my shoulder, the other on J-Dog's and he walks us out of my crib and into the middle of some desert scrub—what this part of Santa Feliz must have looked like back in the day.

“Fuck me,” J-Dog says, getting his second look at the otherworld, but his first understanding of just how out of his league he is at this moment.

“No thanks,” Cory says and he starts walking across the scrub.

We follow.

I wake to find Tío Goyo sitting cross-legged on the dirt beside me. He's got an unfamiliar look in his eyes and it takes me a moment to realize that it's respect.

I sit up and look around. There's no city hall, no stage, no Santa Feliz. Just dry dirt and dead grass, with the odd island of scrubby trees. I can smell the ocean to the west, see the mountains far to the east. Other than that, the landscape doesn't change for as far as I can see.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“One world over.”

“And when?”

“You've been unconscious for almost five hours.”

Five hours? I've been out that long? Though, all things considered, I'm lucky to be around at all.

“That was a good trick you pulled on everyone, back at city hall,” Tío Goyo says.

“I guess. To be honest,” I add, “I wasn't sure it would work.”

I didn't plan it. It just came to me as I leapt to intercept the bullet.

The moment of my second death is seared into my memory:
how I let everybody see me in my human shape, shifting into the mountain lion and getting shot, then finally returning to human form. How, in between that last shift from Wildling to human, I used what I'd learned from Tío Goyo—though I had to do it faster than I ever had before. Faster than should have been possible. I shifted to spirit form, but instead of returning my body to the ground, I left it there to die on the stage while I went on into the otherworld. I didn't know if I'd remain a spirit hawk forever or not, but even that seemed like a better option than dying.