“What are you doing?” Milli asked.
“I need my phone,” I said.
Milli pushed his hand into his pocket and came back with my phone in it. “I’ve got it.”
“I need mine,” Avion said.
With a quick sneer, Milli shook his head. “No you don’t. Why would you need yours?”
I saw Avion dwarf immediately. She just assumed it would be okay, but Milli’s question brought her right back to the reality, or potentially what she believed was the reality. She didn’t even ask again because, of course, prisoners weren’t entitled to their phones.
When the door opened on the third floor, Milli started to reach for the button to close the elevator, but I pushed his hand away. He glared at me, but I ignored him and instead stepped off the elevator. “You guys keep going. I’ll meet you out front.”
Though the elevator ran all the way from the top, secret greenhouse floor to the basement level and it was the quickest way to get around the place, there were also stairs that ran the length of the house as well. With the elevator doors closing, I bolted over to the staircase and took the steps two at a time heading back up to the fourth floor with our bedrooms and ran down to Avion’s bedroom. Thanks to the key she had given me, I was able to let myself in, then I rushed around and started trying to find her phone.
The apartment was getting close to being fully furnished and looked pretty damn good. I noticed, from the couple of times that I had been to Avion’s actual apartment, that she’d attempted to model her space here after her old home. It actually made me stop moving for a moment.
She missed her apartment.
That gnawing fear came back. The one that, every single time I tried to push it away and thinkmaybeI was getting over it, it came flying back with new evidence.
If Avion had the chance to leave, she would.
My whole body got this horrible ripping feeling that ran from my toes up to my head. It was trying to force me to go get Avion immediately and just flat out ask, and it was trying to force me to never bring up that she could leave. It was me wondering what everything meant between us, from her volunteering to work for me to laying in the greenhouse for hours until people were panicking and looking for us. It was as if I was floating in space with only enough fuel to get to a single destination, but there were ten in sight and I wasn’t sure which one would be the most fruitful.
For the first time in a very long time I felt absolutely lost.
It brought my mind careening backwards to when I was a little boy living on the streets for the first time. It gave me a similar feeling; not knowing where to go or what to do. I began to think my life would always be that way, endless days of struggling to survive, when I finally met Merrick.
Merrick.
The thoughts shook me loose and made me move again. Merrick was the first person to clear the fog away and now he was dying and I was standing still like his life didn’t rest in my hands at the moment. It was the kick in the pants that I needed as I finally jumped back to action. I found Avion’s phone sitting on a wireless charger on a table in the living room, so I snatched it up and ran from the apartment, making sure to lock the door as I left.
Rather than the elevator, I took the stairs all the way down to the main floor and rushed through the home to the front door where Milli, Tamryn and Avion were just getting into a car that was waiting there. I ran around to the driver’s seat and hopped in, stopping only to turn around to where Avion was sitting in the back with Tamryn and handing her the cell phone. She looked at me with pure shock, but gave me a small smile and nodded.
“Thank you.”
I didn’t respond, honestly because I didn’t know what to say, nor did we have the time to say it, so I just turned around, started the car, and left the estate behind with a loud, NASCAR-like screech.
My parents’ estate was about 45 minutes from mine and we rode most of the time in a tense, emotional silence. Milli tried to call a couple of times to check on Merrick’s status, but when he couldn’t get an answer, it made everyone start to assume the worst. Everyone in the car tried at different points to say something that would ease the tension, but it didn’t work, everyone just remained silent, unable to find any response that wouldn’t make all the others feel worse.
Finally, the only thing that could ease the tension came--we pulled up in front of the house. A couple of gunmen immediately pulled up massive assault rifles and pointed them in our direction, but Tamryn climbed out and they lowered them.
“How is Merrick?” she asked, already scurrying towards the front door. “No one is answering their phones.”
“Sorry ma’am,” one of them replied. “He’s stable, but he’s in bad shape.”
Following Tamryn, we rushed into their mansion, and I could see that the place was a wreck. Nothing had been cleaned and furniture and trash was tossed everywhere. Part of me felt tempted to stop following behind my mom and start barking orders for people to clean, but the second I started looking around, I felt a pair of hands on my waist. I looked behind me and Avion was standing behind me, looking up at me and urging me forward.
“Let’s check on him first. Then we’ll clean.”
It was just exactly what I needed to hear at that moment, and it was kind of shocking to me that Avion had already gotten a grasp of what I needed at any given moment. I’d always considered myself a very grounded person, but Avion often made me feel like I was still being pulled so far down. When I had my eyes locked in hers, it felt like I was standing on solid ground; maybe for the first time ever.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thank you.”
We continued after Milli and Tamryn until we were finally rounding the corner into Merrick and Tamryn’s bedroom, where Merrick was laying on the bed. He had his shirt off and bandages wrapped around an obviously still bleeding gun wound. There were several people hovering over him, including a doctor who was trying to tell him repeatedly to go to a proper hospital.
“No,” Merrick grunted. “Not until--”
