The Thread (12 page)

14

Callie

W
e’re back in time.
My mind keeps getting stuck on that thought. I stare down the street at the cars parked along the curb, the cars Kirin says are all from twenty years ago or more. They just look like cars to me, but there’s something strange about the street, something . . . subtle.

Subtle
, types out that stubborn little part of my brain, the part where the old Callie is sending her e-mails.
Subtle: from a fourteenth-century word having to do with something with a thin consistency, something that is delicately woven.
Is time like a fabric, with the same thread running through it all? Has the thread pulled us backward, to an earlier moment in its weave?

Then my brain gives a little jump, and now I’m back to staring at the boy, trying to comprehend that this skinny kid has to be the one who took Kirin’s brother. He’s the same boy Safira saw all those years ago.

What’s happening?

Kirin glances up at me, and his face is so pale, almost gray, that I’m scared he’s going to fade away, like a ghost, leaving me here alone with the boy.

I don’t want to be alone with him. He looks harmless enough—he’s just a kid, smaller than I am—but he gives me the creeps.

Maybe the whole thing is a dream. Maybe I’m really back in bed sleeping.

“What’s your name?” Kirin’s voice makes me jump. How can he care about the kid’s name when the boy has just confessed to what he did? I take a step down into the stairwell, trying to see Kirin’s face, trying to understand. I feel so slow and stupid, that sort of underwater feeling you get in dreams sometimes, as though the air is thick and your feet are like lead.

This has to be a dream.

And then I realize what Kirin’s doing. He’s solving the crime, he’s finding out how this thing happened. If we’re actually back in time . . . if this kid really was the one twenty-one years ago . . . then maybe he’s grown up now, and he’s the one who took Ayana. When we get back (
how do we get back?
), we can find him, tell the police . . .

“Come on, kid,” Kirin is saying. “What’s your name?”

The boy hunches over, as though his belly hurts. “Ricky,” he mutters. “I’m Ricky.”

Kirin leans down, looking into the boy’s face. “So this little kid, Ricky? Is it a girl or a boy?”

The boy turns his head away. “Dad always wants girls,” he mutters. “Only girls.”

Kirin’s staring at the boy. He starts to say something, stops, then starts again. “Ricky, what year is it?”

The boy doesn’t answer him. He just clutches his stomach and moans, and Kirin lets out an impatient breath. But his voice stays calm as he asks, “Ricky, where’s this little kid now? Can you show us?”

The streetlamp’s pale light washes over the boy’s face when he turns toward Kirin. He has a ring of dirt around his mouth, and his hair sticks up around his head like a spiky helmet. His eyes are so wide they’re nearly black. As I stare at him, he seems all wrong somehow, the way things can seem in a dream. If I looked at him more closely, I feel like I might notice he’s missing an eyebrow or that he has an extra nostril. I might look down and see that he has goat feet, or a tail hanging out the back of his blue jeans.

This has to be a dream. It really, really has to be.

The boy and Kirin are still talking, and I’ve missed what they’re saying. Kirin gets to his feet and looks up at me. “Let’s go then.”

“Where? Where are we going?” I don’t want to go anywhere with this kid. But I don’t want Kirin to leave me either. I take another step down into the stairwell so that I’m closer to Kirin, close enough that I can put my hand on him. He feels solid. He feels like he’s really here.

“You okay, Callie?” He’s looking into my face, and now I’m
sure
he’s really here with me, that I’m really here with him.
This isn’t a dream.

I shake my head. “I feel sick.” I do feel sick. I feel like I might throw up.
If this isn’t a dream . . . Something’s not right. Something’s . . . wrong.

Kirin takes my hand and pulls me up the steps out of the stairwell. “We’ve gotta go with him,” he says in my ear. “We have to find Amir.”

• • •

The boy seems calmer now that we’re walking through the streets. He’s no longer shaking, and he keeps turning to look at Kirin, smiling a little, as though he’s hoping Kirin’s going to be his new best friend. Kirin’s just staring straight ahead, though, with this look on his face. It’s a happy look, I realize. In fact, he looks happier than I’ve ever seen him.

“Why?” Kirin asks suddenly. “Why did your father make you take . . . the little kid?”

The boy shrugs. “I don’t know.” He gives Kirin a lopsided smile that shows his crooked teeth. He looks so ugly that I want to hit him.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve given up trying to tell myself this is all a dream, but it still feels too strange to be real. I don’t feel like myself. Really, literally, I don’t feel like myself. Instead, I have that feeling you get in dreams sometimes, where it’s like you’re watching a movie or reading a book, and you’re inside someone else’s head, thinking and doing horrible things you never would when you were awake. Like I really want to smack this kid across the face.

Kirin is looking at the boy, frowning, as though he’s trying to figure out something important, something he can’t quite grasp. The boy looks back at him. “My dad,” the kid says, “he—well, he likes children.”

“What do you mean?” My voice is too loud. Kirin gives me a surprised look, almost like he’d forgotten I was there, but then he turns back to the boy. He’s strung tight, Kirin is, as though there are wires inside him that are pulling his muscles. I realize something then:
He thinks he can save his brother.

We reach the corner and turn down Freshwater Avenue, just like we were going to Grandma’s apartment. I look around the streets that are both familiar and strange at the same time, and I wonder how this whole thing works. If we’re really back in time, can we change what happened back then? Can we keep Kirin’s brother from dying? And then what? Will we go back home and find a whole new reality, a reality where his brother never died? What would that mean?

Could we keep Ayana from ever being hurt?

I pull my thoughts back and look at the boy—Ricky—who’s just kind of ambling along beside us, as though he’s almost enjoying this midnight stroll. I think about what he just said about his father. “What do you mean?” I ask again. “He
likes
children?”

“He . . . um.” Ricky wiggles his shoulders, a creepy little shrug. “He likes to hurt little kids. Pinch them and stuff. Cut off their hair. Slap them.” He smiles that same toothy grin, as though he doesn’t understand that this isn’t the time to be smiling, not after what he just said. “That’s just the way he is,” he adds.

“That’s just the way he is?” Kirin repeats, and he still sounds calm, blank almost, as though his words are solid, flat things holding back some huge emotion inside him.

Ricky nods. “That’s how he handles stress, he says. When I was little, he could use me, even though I’m a boy. Better than nothing, he used to say. But then I got too big. So now he says I have to—I have to help him. Bring him little girls. Because otherwise I’m not much use to him.”

And you don’t even get how fucked up that is
, I want to say. I want to grab him and shake him until his ugly teeth rattle inside his little round head.

I don’t like this kid.

He scares me.

He makes my skin crawl.

“Have you brought him other kids?” Kirin asks. “Besides this one?”

The boy squints. “Maybe. Kind of.”

“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?” I bark at him. “‘Kind of’?”

“Well, I got a little girl for him once a few months ago. But then I brought her back to her apartment. Her parents didn’t even notice she was missing. She was okay, all he did was make her cry. I thought that’s what it would be like this time.” He runs a few steps, then turns around and walks backward in front of us, peering into Kirin’s face like he’s looking for Kirin’s approval. “I didn’t know he would . . . I thought it would be okay. He’d do . . . his stuff, and then I’d take the kid back.” He’s smiling and dancing on his toes, like he really wants Kirin to laugh and say that everything’s dandy.

Kirin’s not smiling. He grabs the kid’s shoulder and makes him hold still. “What year is it, Ricky?”

Ricky’s forehead wrinkles. “What do you mean?”

“What year is it?” Kirin asks again. He gives Ricky’s arm a shake. “Tell me,
what year is it?
”

But Ricky doesn’t answer him. “Here,” he says instead, pointing at the building next to my grandmother’s, and then he swings his finger upward. “Up there. On the roof.” He grins at Kirin, then at me. “I’ve got the key.” Like that’s something to be proud of, like he thinks we’ll be impressed.

“Come on,” says Kirin. “Let’s go.”

Ricky takes us in through a door at the back that leads into a laundry room, and then we climb the flights of stairs that lead back and forth, up and up through the silent building. If we’ve really traveled twenty-one years back in time, then right now Dad and Aunt Mickey are kids sleeping in the building next door. I picture myself going to Grandma’s apartment, pounding on the door, asking for their help—but of course they wouldn’t know who I was, because if this is twenty-one years ago, I’m not born yet . . .

It all seems too impossible, too much like a silly
Back to the Future
type of movie. I’ve never been inside this apartment building before, so I can’t tell if it looks different now from what it does—well, normally, in the twenty-first century—but it seems so quiet, and the walls look almost watery in the faint light from the landings. Once again I’m gripped with the certainty that I’m dreaming, that none of this is real after all.

But at the same time, I’m panting from the climb, and my face is wet with sweat. I can’t remember ever feeling breathless and sweaty in a dream.

We’ve reached the top of the building at last, and Ricky shoves open the door onto the roof. The cold air against my sweaty face feels good at first, and then I’m shivering.

“Here,” Ricky says. “Back here.”

We go around something long, a kind of box that’s full of little murmurs, as though something alive lives inside it. “Those are my dad’s pigeons,” Ricky says. “That’s why he has this place. Because of the pigeons.” He stops beside what looks like a big metal box that comes up to my waist. “This is where he keeps their food and stuff.”

The box has a hinged lid that’s padlocked shut. Ricky fits another key into the padlock, and then he lifts the lid. “He’s in here.”

Kirin makes a noise and leans down, stretches his hands into the darkness. “Amir? Amir?” He’s acting like he expects to be able to pick up his brother and take him home—and then what?—but I know it’s too cold for a little kid to be sitting happily inside that box. After a moment, Kirin stands up, and his voice has that odd flatness again. “There’s no one here.”

Ricky swings a leg over the side of the box, then clambers inside. “He’s gone.” He sounds like he’s going to cry. “He was right here. Pop gave him medicine to make him sleep. Pop must have taken him.”

“Where would he take him?” Kirin asks, but before Ricky can answer, we hear the door bang open on the other side of the rooftop.

“Ricky?” a voice calls. “You up here, son?”

Ricky scrambles out of the box and pulls on my arm. “Get inside,” he whispers. “Don’t let him see you.”

I turn to Kirin, not sure what I should do, but he’s turned around, facing back toward the door. “I want to talk to him,” he says. “I want to ask him where Amir is.”

“No,” Ricky whispers. “He’ll be mad. He—he might hurt you. Get inside. Hide. Hurry.”

Kirin hesitates.

“Ricky!” shouts the voice from across the roof.

Something about that voice makes my stomach heave, and I find myself scurrying to climb into the box. I yank on Kirin’s arm. “Come on!”

When we’re inside the box, crouched together on the metal floor, Ricky lets the lid down over our heads. It drops into place with a soft metallic thud.

The darkness smells like grain. I’m sitting on something hard and sharp, some sort of tool, and I shift my weight carefully. Then I grope through the darkness for Kirin’s hand. His gloved fingers close around mine, and I hold on tight, as though his hand is my only chance of safety, the only sane, normal thing in a world that’s gone crazy.

“What are you doing up here, son?” The man’s voice is closer now.

“Nothing, Pop. I just came up to check on the kid.”

There’s the sound of footsteps coming closer, and then the man says, “I took care of your mistake, Ricky. I had to. After you messed it up. I have no need for another
boy
.”

“What—what did you do, Pop?”

“I took care of it. Your little mistake. Next time be more careful.”

“I—I will. But, Pop—what’d you do with the kid?”

I don’t like Ricky, but I can hear something that sounds like courage in his voice. I find myself wishing I could take his hand and hold it tight, the way Kirin is holding mine.

We hear a thud, and Ricky’s voice gasping, as though he’s been hurt. And then the man’s voice again: “Since when do you ask me questions, son? Since when do you
dare
question me?”

“Sorry, sorry, Pop.” There are tears in Ricky’s voice now. “But—did you
hurt
the kid, Pop?”

“What’s gotten into you, Ricky? I took care of it, like I said. I got rid of him.”

Beside me in the dark, I hear Kirin suck in his breath so audibly that I slide my hand up his wrist, trying to quiet him.

“Wh—where, Pop?” Ricky is saying. “Where’s the kid now?”

“Ricky,” the man says, his words slow and deliberate, “why do you care?”

There’s something so strange about listening to this conversation, because in a weird way, it could be any ordinary conversation between a bratty kid and his impatient father—except that they’re talking about killing a child. I keep hearing that same desperate bravery in Ricky’s voice, and I can’t help but admire him a little.