Amethyst
News had been spotty for most of yesterday, the radio towers losing their reach after fifteen-some odd miles. They had officially entered a dead zone. The last bit of news yesterday afternoon was an announcement that the Lost Children had staged a protest in the lobby of Hunter’s Point Mall in Ivy Ladder and what sounded like hundreds shouting, “Let us out! Let us out!” over a loudspeaker. This had happened on March 13, but news stations said nothing about it until the next day. This was just another tactic to keep students in line and not too “excited.” Or rather inspired by what was happening, they couldn’t rein all of them in.
The sound bite crackled and popped like it was an old newsreel. The sound of gates being drawn and guns discharging on the sound bite rattled inside Amethyst’s head for miles. The station went silent before they could find out what side the shots came from.
The pair wove through the mountains that hugged Moss Point; the heavy smell of sap baking in the hot air filled the SUV. Moss Point was a larger town in the Bluebird Territory just north of Bluebird Stream, the town Amethyst was from. Amethyst’s mom had gotten them this far, and at their current pace, they would reach Arestromer in three days. In that moment, she was measuring the time by how many breaths she could get past her lips without her mom realizing her stomach was in knots. This pain was nothing new and because of this whenever it hit her, she tried her best to keep quiet and not worry her mom. She had her methods for keeping it tame. She would breathe deeply, swallow about 1000 mg of extra strength pain killers and hope it would go away sooner rather than later. That was all she really could do.
She had this constant ache for close to two years now, and all a typical doctor could do was guess what it was as there was no physical indication that anything was wrong with her body. It was suggested by one of the last doctors she saw before they left that it was psychological. She can’t remember his name because she was in so much pain at that appointment. Most of the time, the pain she had was manageable; but other times, it was like being hit in the head with a hammer and the impending dizziness and darkness that would follow. It was like her body couldn’t contain the pain, and it just ripped her from the inside, trying desperately to create more space. That wasn’t one of those times, but nonetheless, her mind was occupied with when it would end.
Her mom looked straight ahead, letting a man merge in from of them. “We’re getting close to a burger place. Your turn to eat.”
She looked up and nodded. “Hm,” which in her language meant “Yes, burger sounds good, and I am OK with stopping.” She couldn’t help but to lie.
The members of the Authority were jumpy. Fleeing from the lockdown had become so commonplace that they were questioning everyone. Producing papers indicating Bluebird citizenship was an easy way to be taken in for questioning. There were over four thousand citizens who were due to have their citizenship expire because of a new law that deemed the foster children from the Crow Territory no longer citizens on January 1, 2074. They were temporarily relocated to the Bluebird Territory as children so they wouldn’t starve because of the famine.
The famine was long since over, but older laws had complicated the situation. Anyone, regardless of whether they did paperwork or not, was a citizen if they lived in the territory for more than ten years. Instead of reaching an agreement with the Crow Territory president Luke Talis, the Bluebird Territory president Xavier Snow decided to just simply put laws that would make movement by noncitizen citizens illegal. Her mom had gotten them fake papers for each of the three territories they would trek through with various identities. Amethyst didn’t know when she did this, but she did notice their nice TV was gone along with most of the jewelry her mom owned but never wore out. She used to tell Amethyst she’d get some of it when she turned twelve; then it was pushed to eighteen and again to when she was married and finally when she had a kid of her own. She guessed, in a way, she had gotten her inheritance early.
It was comforting just not having to worry about TerraTech (TT) to the same degree. Floating around were stories of students being taken from class, led to the nurses’ station, and tested for the mutated gene by TerraTech officials. Their identities were then tagged in the national citizen database. It was the only way to know who was biologically Crow as the information wasn’t kept track of. Those were the only citizen noncitizens they were concerned about. The kicker was no one was entirely sure how many there were, and over 4,000 was the best estimate. The exact number was believed to be around 4,735. An exact number was hard to pinpoint because some were shuffled around as kids to other families after the adoption process was finalized.
The entrance was right next to them as her mom decided to go around the back. In her stomach, she could feel the pain subsiding as if it knew she was about to eat. She didn’t think about what she would eat or even if she wanted a burger in the first place, but the idea of something warm in the pit of her stomach sounded like the remedy to some of the pain. The building looked like a double-wide camping trailer with large bolted-on signs declaring the place Ricky’s Burger Joint. The bright teal font was faded from the sun. Inside, there was only standing area and only one table in the corner, where there were, Amethyst assumed, a girl and her father eating their burgers with a side of fried pickles. She ordered a burger and fried pickles to go, wanting to sit in the back of the car and lie down while eating her food and letting the cool afternoon air go over her body. She knew this probably wouldn’t happen until the food was cold, but it was nice to imagine.
Her mom didn’t expect her back so soon, and she was listening to what news channels she could get. “It is Wednesday, March 14, 2074, and thirty-seven degrees Celsius. Pres. Luke Talis has halted negotiations with the energy company Rising Star so he could instead focus his energy on the influx of relocated Crow-born children and developing programs to reacclimatize them to the culture of the territory. The estimate of over 4,700 now has to account for the 1,100 who have been sent back.”
“The drought that is facing the Robin Territory is now entering its one-hundredth day.”
“Five Bluebird Territory students will fly to the United States to compete in an international spelling bee.”
Amethyst hoped to hear more information about the protest in Ivy Ladder, but the signal they were receiving faded, and now they could only get a clear connection to the local highway channel. In this part of the country, people were talking about normal things like the weather and sports in fifteen-minute intervals. She couldn’t remember the last time she heard a news story about simple subjects like weather or traffic and not twenty-four-hour coverage about floors of apartment complexes being empty and supermarkets not being able to keep up with citizens stocking up on food and batteries so they could flee.
Her mom didn’t let them stock up because she said it would be too obvious that they were running. They didn’t even pack large suitcases but totes with mostly their technology and paperwork and money. She packed her last school transcript in the off chance that she would be able to go back to school and actually finish. Her mom had filled the trunk a few days before they left with blankets, flashlights, nonperishable food, and a first aid kit. Her mom didn’t know that she knew this, but she knew she had a gun.
Amethyst knew she should give her mom more credit but the idea of a gun in the car seemed like such a stupid thing to do in the first place.
She split her burger with her mom, who chewed as she scanned the map that lay over the dashboard. Amethyst didn’t eat her half. They had a thick stretch of dark green terrain to get through before they even saw some semblance of civilization. They were avoiding the smaller towns, where they might stick out to locals. Amethyst had been dying for a nice coffee for over a week. The last coffee she had was instant from a gas station.
The only other time she saw her mom this focused on anything was when she was looking over the furniture catalog for the apartment. Her dad wasn’t even as obsessed as her mom was, and he was an architect. Her mom compared every finish and fabric against one another and even used tools online to see what it would look like with the sun reflecting off it or the moon. Frankly, she found the entirely of it ridiculous, but it was nice to see her mom so happy.
When they weren’t driving and things were quiet, she thought about Sasha and what he was doing in that moment. His family wasn’t on the run, but Sasha was, for the most part, in an entirely different world from his dad. His dad was a major head researcher for TerraTech in their domestic technology division, and the easiest way for one to explain what they were and what they did was really to tell you what they didn’t do. The skinny on it was that when they were formed, they found novel ways to use the rare species of animals and plants in medicine. They also handled security for top officials.
Sasha was involved in the Lost Children in a less dangerous way. He didn’t do anything that could get him thrown into jail. He avoided going to school, but he was very active in all the anti-Crow-war forums. Amethyst used it for a time, but the more she was away from it, the less it made sense. It was like they spoke in code, like Tt con-v on Wilkes and other walls of text she didn’t remember. It started out as a way for her and her classmates to air out their grievances and call papers out on their outright lies about what the “children” like themselves wanted out of the negotiations, and it just became a dark place.
A month or so before they left, there was an article published at school that stated the number of children at 4,735 and that, because of missing files, that number may grow. The article continued at the very back of the paper with the known names. Rachel York published the article at school, and a bigger paper simply lifted the names. Shortly after her article was published, she left school. No one was certain why she did this. She wasn’t an outcast. People liked her. Everyone knew her since her first year.
Amethyst’s mom turned the car back on and began rolling her napkin on her jeans before tossing it into a plastic bag she kept on the passenger side. Amethyst pulled the cotton blanket up to her cheeks and tried to stay still to keep the stomach pain at bay. The soft snap of damp twigs reached her ears as they pulled out of the burger joint’s lot, and they were on their way toward Amaryllis, the first instance they would be crossing any territory’s border. On this leg of the journey, Amethyst would be Sarah Vaughn. It was ridiculous to her that anyone would think this tan-complected, dark-haired, and brown-eyed teenager was a Sarah, but as long as she said it convincingly, she guessed it didn’t matter.
* * *
Her mom was drinking coffee when Amethyst woke up. The radio was softly playing news, weather, and traffic report that looped every fifteen minutes. The loudest sound was the segment’s theme audio. Arnett turned her head slightly, with the air playing across the top of her head twisting up the brown bob like a crown. “There’s a bagel in that bag.”
“Five dozen protest signs have been removed from the gate at the city hall after complaints by citizens . . .”
“An accident involving multiple cars and a tow truck on the Burly Loop has stopped traffic for more than five hours. Emergency services are finding it difficult to clear the road of debris . . .”
“Good morning.” Amethyst uncoiled her body from around the blanket and grabbed the bag on the floorboard. She was logging out of the GPS and downloading new maps, the satellite connection finally strong enough. They wouldn’t have to depend on a paper map anymore. “This area smells like farm. How much longer until we’re out of it?”
“Amie, most of the territories smell like farm—well, shit, I suppose.”
“I don’t think I can eat this right now. Can I have some coffee?” Her hand hovered over the cup holder, and her mom nodded.
“We’ll have to get you some new clothes. I’m adding another rule: no wearing the same thing at every stop. You’ll change in the car.” Her mom added more maps to the queue to be downloaded.
Amethyst didn’t know why it just sank her. The rule of mostly stopping at major cities was hard enough, almost as hard as the rule to not talk about Sasha, but keeping track of everything she wore and changing in the car added to the long list of things she already would forget. She had a closet full of clothes at home, but she usually wore four pieces: leggings, a Lake Placid T-shirt, a Sherpa hoodie, and a jean skirt she’d sometimes wear over the leggings. She didn’t see herself as imaginative.
In the middle of her thoughts, she almost didn’t see the skyscraper coming into view. It looked like a gently pulled bow or a sailboat wading through lush greenery. She couldn’t see anything but it and the trees until much later. The farther they drove, the closer together cop cars became. The Grasshopper police cruisers were a deep emerald green, almost camouflaged against moss-carpeted woods like bejeweled beetles. Some had only their lights on. Every few moments, a stream of white and green light from the blinkers of the green and white cruisers would fill the car and reflect off the many screens on the dash. Her mom kept driving.
The cruelly shiny border sign was in full view ahead of them, but they were stuck behind a long line of cars. Her mom pulled out the fake papers and put them into the cup holder. She must have adjusted her seat belt half a dozen times. Amethyst moved to the front seat, poised and ready to answer and add to any questions her mom would be asked. The officers wore wide-brimmed emerald hats and tall black boots over riding breeches. A hand would stick out; the officer spent a millisecond inspecting before scanning and handing it back.
Amethyst took out one of the passports and looked for something that looked like a barcode.
“It’s the seal, Amethyst. The seal is where they scan.”
“Oh,” Amethyst felt foolish in the moment.
“Have a little more faith in me.” Her mom chuckled, still holding the steering wheel at a perfect ten and two. They were next in line, and the progression suddenly stopped. The scanner that looked like a silver price gun seemed to be broken. The officer hit it with his open palm a couple of times; then he tried it again and then his partner’s scanner. His partner was a woman, and as he further inspected the document, she asked for more forms of identification. The man obliged, handing over a finger-thick stack of paper in one wide arm sweep. He didn’t look through it but instead slid his finger over it like a flip-book and handed it back. They were waved forward. Her mom drove a little too fast and stopped with a sharp lurch forward. She could hear the stress on the tires.
“Good afternoon . . . good afternoon, lady,” the officer said to Amethyst, slightly leaning into the window.
Amethyst smiled and waved. His eyes were almost black, like tiny lead balls. His lopsided smile was a tight line.
He pointed to the GPS. “Haven’t seen one of those in a while.”
“Just gonna drive it until the wheels fall off.” She slapped her hand against the steering wheel, nearly missing.
The officer nodded and held out his hand. As he inspected the papers, Amethyst saw his eyebrow lift.
“These are new. When did you both relocate?”
“A few weeks ago. This one wants to go Merriweather University, early admittance.”
Amethyst nodded. She didn’t want to go to that granola school.
“My daughter goes there now. She’s in her second year. Far cheaper than some of the other territory schools. Maykis is robbery.” He took off his hat, his black hair slicked against his head from the sweat.
Maykis is a hundred times better, Amethyst thought. The top schools were Talis University, Maykis University and Kroft Technical, all three were founded by the most powerful families in all the unified and unified territories. To gain admittance was like securing a higher rank for your family name.
He scanned both of the passports and handed them back to her mom. She put them in the cup holder and slowly pulled forward before steadily picking up speed five miles over the already high speed limit.
“You did really well. He seemed to believe you.” Amethyst’s mom took out a hard candy from the glove box and put it in her mouth, taking off the wrapper in one pull after. She always found that gross, but how does one tell their own mother that? She tossed the wrapper on the floorboard and turned the GPS, flipping to only the second out of our many queue maps. “So I have a whole backstory?”
“Well, fragmented pieces and such. You’re eighteen. I added a few extra months, and you’re looking at colleges. I just made the Merriweather part up then and there. No one is gonna think it’s odd that a girl of your age is traveling all over to look at colleges during spring break. Just when we get to the ununified territories, let me do most of the talking.” Amethyst hated the entire situation. She would rather be studying for exams and doing anything else but running. Running was always the idea her mom floated to when things became less tame in the territory. The only reason she relented was because once she was in Arestromer she could see if this Doctor Miles was all he was cracked up to be. On the boards she was on for Lost Children, he was mentioned practically weekly for helping those who had the illness, Who the hell knew if he had a cure but if he had something that reduced the frequency of it, she would gladly take it.
The sun had set, and the beam of the headlights crested out ahead of the pair, transforming the black asphalt into a winding, never-ending island. The trees seemed to recede further into the background. The ununified territories was a snide and shorthand way of saying a group of countries totally uninterested in participating in the long history of violence the unified territories inflicted on one another.
Maykis Isle was the one exception. It was less of a country and more of a gigantic campus for TerraTech, the world’s largest technology and agriculture company. If you had a communicator, was prescribed anything, and had food on your table, TerraTech had a hand in it.
The road became narrow as they made a smooth turn around a gently sloping hill. A few houses sat at the top. The only evident way up to them was thick concrete stairs illuminated by rods of light below each step. In that moment, Amethyst would have loved to be supine underneath a fluffy white comforter on an actual bed. She wondered what they were sitting down to eat and what they were talking about at the kitchen table. Amethyst couldn’t remember the last conversation she had at the dinner table with her dad. She only remembers she didn’t sleep well that night.
“When we reach the city limits, we’ll stay in a hotel. If I make good time, we should have six, maybe seven hours to spare.” Her mom seemed to be counting the invisible hours on her fingertips as she tapped them on the steering wheel.
“Don’t worry about it,” Amethyst really meant it. To take further time away from the trip meant to prolong her getting any help.
“No, no. We’re going to stay in a hotel,” Her mom shook her head indicating that the decision was final.
Amethyst moved to the back seat, looking into the back window, watching the white dashes stretch and pull themselves out from under them, her blanket still in a coil at the center. “What’s my name?”
“It’s Lina Bard right now.”
“Hmm, did Dad come up with it?”
“Yeah, he did.” Her voice was softer.
* * *
When Amethyst closed her eyes, she can still sense within her the presence of her room, feeling like she was still sitting on her own bed underneath the sloping ceiling and the vibe of her stuff around her playing on her skin. She could smell the slightly damp air, rotting wood, and the old-smelling tapestry that hung next to the armoire. There was no ceremony when she left. Her mom asked if she wanted coffee, and she quickly went to the bathroom, grabbed her wristlet, and left. When she got into the car and saw the back filled with totes, she said nothing as they drove past the coffee shop. It took everything in her soul not to cry that day. To cry would be to bust the plan wide open and be caught.
There were piles of powdered glass in the street from last night’s sonic explosion by TerraTech, along with flattened soda cans and bottles, trampled protest signs, and evidence of small fires. It wasn’t a long protest. When the crowd grew to a width of two streets, the warning siren began to bleat, the windows spewed glass like dust, and they ran. Amethyst was too tired to watch the news that night. It had been nearly three years since this all started. It didn’t start with a bang. People didn’t get angry right away. First there were whispers about the news and people who weren’t on either side, just merely ambivalent. Then there were her classmates, brokenhearted who continued to do as they were told. They floated from day to day too sad to do anything else. And when one would expect acceptance of what was happening, rumbles started to quake below the surface.
The next city they would enter was Amaryllis. It was built partially on the side of the Cedar Mountains before the range split, revealing the bay. Bluebirds often got married there. Her mom and dad got married at the courthouse a few blocks from where they lived but had a ceremony there. Amethyst was turning over a jawbreaker in her mouth as the landscape started to be pierced with bolts of steel and glass.
“Turn right on Dowling Road.”
“About two hours, then a nice nap in bed, maybe a bath if they have one.” Her mom glanced at the GPS.
“What’s in the area?” Amethyst reached toward the cup holder for her hot bottle of water. Making conversation would be better than sitting there letting her mom guess at what she was thinking.
Her mom slid the map to the side, revealing a list of the closest attractions. “A mall is around the corner from the hotel. There’s also a park and a water fountain. Maybe tonight we’ll stretch our legs.” There would be no way they could go to a mall.
At the mention of movement, she could feel her feet throb with anticipation. “The news?” Amethyst said, unintentionally speaking low.
“TerraTech is sending new weapons to officers in the Bluebird Territory. Doesn’t say what they are or what they do. Oh god, is this maddening!” Her mom roughly swiped that headline across the screen: shortage on plastic. Another swipe—rolling blackouts in the Crow Territory. She let the story disappear as it was again replaced with dockets of maps waiting to be used, each showing a small square of land.
“Sa”
Her mom held up her hand to shush her. “We shouldn’t talk about him.” She turned her head to the back of the SUV and looked past Amethyst’s face and out the back seat window. Sasha was the last person she had back home that didn’t change with everything that happened. He was still his puppy dog self. She couldn’t just abandon him from her mind like that.
She ignored the warning as she only needed to say one thing. “He told me what they look like, what they do.”
“When was this?”
“A few months before we left.”
“Well, don’t just sit on that information.”
“It’s like a radio waveno, more like a sonar. It disrupts thoughts and makes people faint.” Amethyst put up her pointer fingers and spread them about eight inches apart. “The device is about this big. It looks like a gun, but it’s really shiny. It looks like it’s fake.”
“Where did he see it?”
“In his dad’s files.”
“Are you sure about that? Do you realize what you’re saying?”
Amethyst knew exactly what she was saying. Sasha’s dad was behind a project that was going after people against the negotiations and sending the children (i.e., people like herself) back to their biological parents. She had processed the information often enough through her brain that she no longer internally shook, but instead, she sank deep down into herself, bracing for the inevitable. She had already let all the menacing images of what the thing could look like run through her mind. She was thankful for Sasha, thankful that he had not changed.
Her mom pulled the car over on the side of the road. The car came to a slow careen into thick mud. She took her cell phone out of the glove box and began texting, the faux typing noise an unending song of old-sounding clicks of a typewriter. She was probably texting Lucy about what she had said. She wanted to ask in that moment, but Amethyst didn’t want to break her mom’s train of thought.
She handed Amethyst her phone and started driving. “Talk to her if she texts back or calls. We’re making good time.”
The phone smelled like old ketchup from baking in the glove compartment in the hot sun. She had texted Lucy, “Text back as soon as possible.” Lucy didn’t text back, and Amethyst held the cell phone in her hands between her legs for the rest of the ride to the hotel.
“Do you need anything?” Her mom looked ahead, peeked at the map, and refocused.
“I don’t think so. I mean, some more pillows for the car would be nice.”
“Not too many though. We don’t want anyone thinking we’re living in the car. It might make people—”
“I know. I know, Mom.” Amethyst was tired all the rules and tired of all the constant reminders.
“It’s not that I don’t want you to have it. I just want us to be careful.” Her mom looked at the phone in Amethyst’s lap.
“Nothing yet.” Amethyst felt the anxiety creep up her spine. It made her body feel less reactive. Nearly frozen, and she could tell her mom was caught in this loop. She would look at the map, the road, and again the phone. The button was green, indicating that sound notifications were toggled on, yet her mom could not help herself but look.
Amethyst didn’t have anywhere to look but the animated map on the GPS. Her mom had taken her phone before they left. Occasionally, Amethyst would take it to text Sasha or survey the boards about Doctor Miles, knowing she hid it in her suitcase inside a faux bar of soap, but she had to be careful to do this when her mom was in a deep sleep and there was no one else around. Amethyst didn’t know why she didn’t just destroy it, but she wasn’t going to question it and get the one bright spot in her life taken away. Sasha didn’t text back often, but a word was enough for Amethyst. It let her know that he was alive and that he was still himself. It did give her hope that her mom thought they were that close to freedom and normalcy that she could soon be left with her cell phone.
The Dyker Hotel was a two-story glass building curled around a large water fountain. Their room was the farthest back, and from the back hall window, they could see a dark green lawn before it sloped down to the highway. Across from them in the left corner was another group of rooms, and between that was a small courtyard with a square fountain. They would be sharing the bed, but the first thing Amethyst’s mom did was open the paper map and take off her shoes as soon as Amethyst opened the room door.
Her mom spoke toward the map. “Draw the blinds.”
Amethyst drew the blinds and then took her pants before scooting herself up on the white comforter. “No text yet,” she said, looking at the shape of the phone in her pants pocket on the floor.
“She could still be driving. Takes a while to get from Bell Whispers to here.”
Bell Whispers was in the middle of the Robin Territory on the left.
Lucy was Arnett’s friend from college. When this tougher effort to send Lost Children began a year ago, they reconnected. Lucy was one of the first to state it could start a war. They traded information about what the Crow government was up to nearly every day and sometimes all night, just walls of text in rapid succession. Lucy helped her mom prepare to leave without her even noticing it. She was a treasure of a person in her mom’s eyes.
Amethyst did not remember falling asleep, but when she popped up, it was as if she pulled herself out of a casket like Dracula. Her mom was lying next to her, with the map and a few thin markers at the foot of the bed. There were beginnings of daylight, and the soft white orbs of light beside each door were turning on one by one. Her mom was snoring into her pillow. She went to check the phone for a text and saw there was a recorded message. She clicked on the play button and put it to her ear.
“I don’t know where you are exactly, but there are more checkpoints now. I’m nowhere near Bell Whispers. Call me so we can discuss plan B. They’re not letting anyone out of Maykis Isle. I’ll need to get some help from some talented friends. Do you have the numbers I gave you? Don’t text, OK? Don’t text. Don’t. Just record a message.”
Amethyst woke up her mom immediately. Her mom rubbed her face in the pillow before mouthing “what?” with her eyes still closed. Her mom listened to the message, walking to the bedroom as Lucy’s voice became more panicked. In her head, Amethyst could not help picturing her Lucy on the side of the road, recording the message, looking at the long stretch of cars along the highway, with the Authority directing the traffic across the strip of grass so they could go back. Her mom slid on her boots. “I’m gonna need a lot of privacy for this. Be ready to leave in a few minutes.”
“OK.”
Her mom quickly went to the bathroom, and Amethyst could hear a flutter of typing that lasted a nanosecond before she turned on the sink.
She didn’t hear the recorded message as her mom had her wait in the car for her on the side of the road, not exactly a safe place for a teenager to be at 4:29 a.m., but she knew it was to keep her safe in other ways. Later that morning, she bought Amethyst coffee from an actual coffeehouse and not at a gas station. She was somewhat annoyed because she woke her up, and she wanted to enjoy sleeping for at least another hour, tricking her mind into thinking she was still in the hotel’s queen-size bed and not in the back seat of an SUV.
Lucy still had not responded. As they headed toward one of Lucy’s talented friends, the number of patrol cars thickened in the artery of the downtown freeway. All the people in the cars looked normal, like they were off to do normal things like go to work or school or kill time in a convenience store parking lot.
“Do you think they know what’s going on? Like, really know?”
“The human mind has a knack for protecting itself.” Her mom shook her head, almost in agreement with herself.
Running often didn’t feel like running. It felt like standing in plain sight, waiting for something to happen. You’d think there would be a rush, some kind of adrenaline pumping, but it was all anxiety. It was all quiet. Most of the time, her mom was silent; and when she wasn’t, she was telling her what she should do. She just followed directions, and beyond that, not much went through her mind.
The talented friend met Amethyst’ mom in the parking lot of a mall. He was a tall man with hair down to his behind. He wore navy slacks and a white button-down. His left forearm had one large porcelain-white splotch. Amethyst couldn’t hear his voice from where she was standing, but his laugh made her want to laugh, and she had no idea what they were talking about.
She got to stretch her legs but only as far as the other end of the lot and in her mom’s line of sight. The lot wasn’t empty. The shopping cart return areas were mostly empty. Kids were being unloaded and reloaded into SUVs, and families were packing their trunks with groceries in cardboard boxes. One little girl was being wheeled around in a shopping cart toward a white car by whom Amethyst assumed was her dad. She held on to a box of fruit snacks or bribe as her mom would call it. There was a duck pond, and every few moments, there would be a stiff breeze that smelled of mowed grass and manure. She walked through each row of cars as if she was trying to find her own.
Her mom waved her over as she was about to turn down another section. The man’s name was Joshua. He had a thick French accent. “I wanted to see who was the reason for all this! How are you, my dear?”
“I’m here.” She didn’t mean for it to sound as ungrateful as it did, but she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep consistently for a while.
Her mom’s entire disposition had changed, and she was beaming at the man. She leaned in and whispered in her ear, “He’s found us an easy way out of here. We’re going there now.”
She didn’t even know what this plan entailed, but from her mom’s mood, she was excited herself. She and her mom walked back to the car, and they followed his compact red car for a few miles before turning into a local road. They both parked in a large cobblestone driveway before they followed him up a sloping hill and down a trail. Amethyst made sure to take her cell phone out of the tote and conceal it in her underwear. A few cyclists passed them. A short-haired blond woman on a blue bike waved and smiled.
Joshua led them to a wooden door tucked into the side of a hill. It would have looked like something out of a fantasy novel if there wasn’t a clearly man-made stream beside it. A large orange pipe drained into the left side, and it didn’t look all that fresh. Some areas seemed to be frothy and stagnant.
A stiff breeze of refrigerated air filled Amethyst’s nose as the door was opened. She expected to see a cutout of a tree or some other indication that the room was formed from a tree, but there was only cold concrete. He led them down a long hall and to another much heavier door kept closed with a large red padlock. The sound of the water rushing through the ground beneath them was so steady that it was drone-like.