Nora glanced at Charlie’s hand—the one she’d shaken. “You don’t believe me.”
“Sure, I believe you,” said Charlie. “I’ve believed weirder. Plus that file thing. Plus, you’re my sister.”
“Then why the hell aren’t you taking this seriously?”
Charlie squared himself to face his sister. He studied her face, his brown eyes shifting back and forth across it as if he was searching for something. When he finally seemed to find it, his own face sobered. “No Doritos,” he said. “No food. For now. Got it. I can do that.”
Nora nodded. “Just until after twelve, all right? If we can get you past the collection time, we should be in the clear.”
“Cool,” said Charlie. “So where are we going?”
Nora turned the car back on and set her eyes towards the road. It was 9:20 a.m. and her absence at S.C.Y.T.H.E. would be known by now. She pulled back into traffic.
“Anywhere but here.”
3
Case # 77721
Mason Christopher White
Age: 21
Cause of Death: Choking
Nora had learned how to perform the Heimlich maneuver by age eleven. By age eleven and a half, she had practiced on three teddy bears, one Baby-Eats-a-Lot doll, and a coughing man at Pizza Hut who, it turns out, suffered from particularly vocal postnasal drip. No one at Mason’s frat party had been quite so diligent, leaving him to choke on a bottle cap after he’d plucked it off with his teeth. The case had come through one particularly rainy morning as Nora sipped on chamomile tea and nibbled at a bran muffin. The muffin promptly hit the rim of the garbage can under Nora’s desk and landed with a bounce on a cushion of discarded tissues. Choking cases always made her lose her appetite. Along with learning the Heimlich maneuver, eleven-year-old Nora learned all of the potential complications that came along with it: the broken ribs and gastrointestinal hemorrhaging. Notto mention the number of people who choked to death simply because they were so embarrassed to be choking at all that they left the company of others to asphyxiate without making a whole thing about it. Choking, Nora had long-ago concluded, was something to be wholly avoided at any cost.
* * *
Civilization gave way to an endless gray sky and the endless gray roads beneath. Neither Nora nor Charlie had spoken in over an hour. Even Jessica held her tongue from her cage in the back seat. Nora’s grip on the steering wheel had loosened, her knuckles steadily regaining their color with each passing mile. The farther they’d fled from her branch of S.C.Y.T.H.E., the easier she breathed. Not that they were out of the woods. They wouldn’t be that until she had the mental presence to formulate a real plan. S.C.Y.T.H.E.’s national headquarters would eventually hear about the girl who’d stolen a case file, and a soul who wasn’t a soul yet. As long as she was in the country, she had a target on her back, and so did Charlie.
Something gave a gurgling roar in the passenger seat. Nora shot a look at Charlie, who gave his soft middle a gentle pat.
“She’s hungry.”
Nora cocked a brow.
“Señorita Munch Munch,” Charlie clarified, indicating his stomach with another pat. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about the señorita.”
“Weirdly enough, Charlie, I had,” Nora said with an eye roll. “And I’d stop listening to the señorita if I were you. All that processed junk you eat is going to put you in an early grave.”
“I thought that was supposed to be choking’s job.” Charlie’sstomach growled again. “You summoned her with all that processed food talk, you know.”
Nora just shook her head. “And that’s another thing. Choking to death, Charlie, really? You know who chokes? Babies choke. And little kids who don’t chew their food properly. And toddlers who suck the plastic eyeballs off their teddy bears. And then you, apparently. It’s embarrassing.”
“Sorry for not dying cooler, sis. We can’t all be Mom and Dad, I guess.”
His words hit Nora like a piano falling out a window in a cartoon. She could practically see the little yellow birds flying in a halo around her head from the impact. Their mom and dad had died in an accident of some sort. That was all Nora and Charlie were ever told, in order to spare them the trauma of visualizing the details. What it did instead was leave a void that Nora had spent her life trying to fill by studying death. She could tell you exactly how many people a year died from being struck by lightning (twenty-four thousand), which bodies of water carried the most dangerous predators and bacteria (anything in Florida), and the safest time to cross the street (two p.m. on a Tuesday). But she couldn’t tell you how her parents died, and that, more than any accident could, had always killed her.
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Fuck you,” Jessica agreed.
Charlie’s stomach rumbled again, and Nora decided even the señorita was on her side.
“Sorry.” Charlie put his hands up, his face soft with genuine remorse. “Sorry. I think I’m hangry. I’m not used to going this long without at least a little snacky snack.”
Nora sighed. It was true; Charlie never deprived himself ofanything he wanted. Not the last slice of pizza, not the boy Nora had mooned over their entire junior year of high school, and certainly not a snacky snack. Charlie lived to enjoy living. It wasn’t something Nora understood, and it certainly caused her a fair amount of frustration over the years. But that was Charlie, and it had been since the death of their parents. Bubbie always used to say he was a lost soul, but since Nora had started her job and seen real lost souls, she decided he was just kind of an ass.
