Ruthless (20 page)

I'm not moving anymore. That's not good. I went away for a while, and when I came back, I wasn't moving anymore. It comes to me that Grandpapa would want me to move. He'd want me to keep going.

Getting going hurts. It hurts so much I sail up out of my body again and watch it work from a safe distance. From up here it's interesting, more than anything else. It's strange how I move. Like a spider that's missing some legs. I've never liked killing anything, but I've put spiders like that out of their misery. A quick stomp and then no more herky-jerky movement, just a smear on the ground.

I don't want to be put out of my misery, though. I want to live. I want to go back to good things.

The sun is getting too close to the horizon. Once it disappears completely, I've got to go in for dinner, which means there's not enough time to finish our fort today. It's the best fort Caleb and I have ever made. It goes out into the river, so there's an on-land section of it and an indoor-pool section of it.

“Hand me that twine,” Caleb says.

I give him the rope while I shovel wet gravel. I'm bolstering the main wall of the indoor swimming pool.

“When we grow up we should make a house for real just like this,” I say. “Have it go out over the river. There'd be glass floors and you could look down and see the water.”

“What if it floods?” Caleb is always practical.

“You'd put it up on stilts like houses at the beach, so if it floods it just hits the stilts.”

“That'd be cool. And it could be really tall, too, up into the branches of the trees, like a tree house.”

I like it when Caleb plays along. “And instead of beds we'd have hammocks,” I say.

“And you could make me dinner every night.”

I laugh long and hard. “In your dreams.” Upon reflection, I add, “I would make breakfast, though, because I like doing it. You can make dinner.”

“Deal.”

A thud wakes me up. Somehow I know the thud was me falling to the ground. Which means I must have been up and walking. There's no memory of being up and walking, but I'm sure that's what was going on.

Scattered pine trees surround me. Where did the flat field go? I have no idea. All I know is that I was visiting the memory of a long-gone fort. I'd completely forgotten that ever happened. The next day we discovered the river had washed away all our hard work. Why didn't we rebuild? Even now, nine years later, I think that fort was pretty amazing.

Wait, no. This isn't important. I shouldn't be thinking about
a fort. There are pine needles stuck to my face. I'm facedown in a pine forest. I need to be thinking about how to survive.

I was walking and that's good. I know that's good. I need to see if I can do it again.

Getting up is an otherworldly torture. Once up I decide to never fall down ever again. Doing that twice would be too much to ask of my body. Moving forward is a lot to ask too. That feeling of leaving myself comes over me again. I don't think it's a good thing. Fighting the sensation, I try to stay in the pain, stay with my legs and my arms, my head and my stomach. I try to remember the Wolfman.

Up ahead there's a patch of forest that seems brighter than the rest. It doesn't look like the dawn, although the sun can't be too far off. It doesn't look like much of anything at all, actually. It might not even really be there. But it gives me something to focus on, something to dull the pain. I wonder if the glow is emanating from the redheaded girls. I don't see them, but that doesn't mean they're not there. They haven't steered me wrong yet, so I point my feet in their direction.

After a few more yards I decide that the light is real. It's not the other girls. It's too big and bright for that. It's a bluish-white sort of color. There's something very pure about it. In the mist it dissipates into a broad, soft glow. No sign to be seen of what is behind it. It almost makes me think of heaven. It's possible I could be walking toward heaven. I have no idea what it's like. My pastor said that before you went to heaven, you were baptized by a Pentecostal fire. It wasn't clear what he meant by that, but it stuck with me. Maybe
this pain is a Pentecostal fire. Maybe I'm getting ready to go to heaven. Maybe that white light will be the end of all of this. I don't want it to be the end, but if that's what God has planned for me, it'll be okay.

My mom is in the doorway, a cardboard box labeled
GOODWILL
under one arm and a DVD in her hand. She looks concerned, or maybe just a little sad.

“You're giving away
The Black Stallion
?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought maybe it got in here on accident, or something.”

“Nope.”

“I thought it was your favorite movie.”

I shrug.

“Not anymore?”

“I'm never going to watch it again, Mom.” This is a true statement.

“Too old for it now, I guess.”

“I guess.” But my agreement is a lie. It's not that I'm too old for it. It's that I know the end will make me cry, and I can't have that. A new trailer-load of training horses arrived today. The business is taking off, Regionals are next week, and I need to win to keep the clients coming. At our last youth group meeting we read the part of Corinthians where it talks about putting away childish things. I'm thirteen. It's time for the childish things to go away. It's time to stop believing in fairy tales.

I've managed to prop myself up against a tree. How long I've been resting against it, I have no idea. I'm proud of myself though. I promised to never fall down again, and I managed to avoid that by resting against this tree. Even so, it's worrying that the drifting-away thing happened again. It's getting so hard to stay. There's something important, though. Something I need to remember.

My head lolls back against my will.

“No. Wake up.” Snapping back upright, I say, “What is it?”

Inside, I answer,
I don't know.

But there was something. There was definitely something.

The light. I'm walking toward a light. It's not ahead of me anymore. It's strange, though. Everything seems a little lighter. The mist diffuses the light, so it's not easy to say if this is morning or what. Looking around, I find the bright light to my left. Striking off toward it, I decide it's brighter than before, but not by much. During my drifting off I think I veered away from the light. Hard to say. I was visiting another memory from the far-distant past.

I won my first Worlds title five years ago. Feels like a thousand lifetimes. Feels like I've been Ruth Carver, show beast from hell, my whole life, that there was never a time before it. But there was a time. A little window of time where I caught fireflies and built forts and watched
The Black Stallion
. Why did I stop all that? Why did I turn off all the switches inside? Was that necessary?

I have no idea. All I know is, I put myself into a box. In that box I could have Becca and Courtney, but them not even very much, and Caleb, in the weird way I had Caleb. That was my box. That's what I got. Everything else was for the greater glory of the
Carver name. But there wasn't much joy in it. It was a mission to be ­accomplished.

As much as I love my mother, as much as I want to hug her and tell her how much I've missed her, as I think about my box and how little was inside it, resentment flares up within me. I've carried an awful lot for a long, long time. More than a teenage girl should.

I've carried an awful lot these last few days. More than anyone ever should.

But the light is there. It is real. I'm walking toward it, and the world is a lighter shade of gray than it was before. I have no idea how I'm walking at all. I can only think that I'm not the one responsible, that God is guiding me to the place I'm supposed to go.

Something flashes to my right, a moving strobe light through the trees. In a second it is gone, but I realize what it was. A car driving down a road on the other side of the forest. I pause for a second, debating. Should I veer toward the road or keep going toward the light? Pain insists I pick quickly, and I stay on the path toward the light. The road isn't safe, and Wolfman is out there.

The thought of him sparks a new energy. I'm able to stay in the pain and in my body without drifting away. I'm able to focus on what's ahead. It's some sort of man-made light. A cluster of them, high up off the ground.

Fighting the drift away, I stare at the ground, picking my way with care, trying to make things easier on my broken body. When I look up again, I recognize what I'm walking toward. It's a gas station. A great big, newly built gas station. It's probably two football fields away.

Another set of headlights strobes its way through the trees. The road must lead to the gas station. The road is closer to me than it was before. Much closer. I don't like that. I don't want to be near roads anymore.

The headlights turn around, blinding me for a second. I watch as they bounce up and down as the truck pulls over to the side of the road. The truck goes dark as the driver turns off the headlights, but I can make out the shape of the truck as it heads into the trees.

I can think of only one reason why someone driving a truck, upon spotting me, would turn off their headlights and go off-­roading in my direction.

I attempt to run. It isn't a run. It's a broken shuffle. But I broken shuffle as best I can. I glance back once. The truck is parked. He's pulling some kind of long stick thing out of the bed. After that, no more glancing back. Just broken shuffling and pulling in a giant lungful of air so I can yell “Help!”

It doesn't sound like much.

I keep trying.

He's closing the gap. Not with a broken shuffle but with a dead run.

There's no way I can get to the gas station before he gets me. The best thing I can do is yell “Help” as many times as I can, as loud as I can, while shuffling forward.

I think it's five times before the train slams into my back, sending me breathless to the dirt.

Rolling over, I see him standing over me. That long stick thing was a shovel. He has the gun, too, but I can sense what's about to
happen before it happens. He's going to throttle me to death. It's quieter that way. He wants this to be quiet.