There’d been no news, no calls. Nineteen days of complete Thad silence. I was still counting; I couldn’t stop, and last night I’d dreamed of the Wall. This time the space beside Thad’s name was filled—with a cross. And I held the knife.
I’d stolen his gate. He’d pushed me, but I was the thief.
Rubbing my eyes, I minimized Firefox. Even my browser’s logo seemed mocking. A warm-blooded fox, circling the globe, as fiery as a gate, as elusive as Nil. His eyes were shrouded, giving nothing away.
I’d spent the last four hours scouring news sites. I didn’t bother with the Atlanta paper anymore. I started with Canadian ones, then went international, searching for news of Thad. But any specific search turned up articles I’d read a thousand times, and my generic searches turned up nothing. No news of a missing Canadian found anywhere, no word of a naked boy showing up somewhere strange. The only unusual story I’d found was in yesterday’s edition of Britain’sDaily Mail. Titled “Rhino Raises Hell in Helsinki,” the article reported the capture of a rare black rhino found charging down the streets of Helsinki. Local zoos denied responsibility, claiming all their animalswere accounted for, and the incident sparked a national outcry demanding investigation into the exotic animal trade. “People shouldn’t be housing rhinos in their backyard for sport,” argued one Finnish man, whose bakery shop was damaged in the ensuing chaos. “What’s next, tigers?”
Maybe,I thought.But I’m still hoping for a naked person. Over six feet tall, blond, with brilliant blue eyes and a selfless streak a mile wide.
I stared at the flaming fox, wondering what angle I was missing. Then an idea sparked. Bringing up a fresh tab, I typed the wordNil.
A flurry of results appeared. Most were definitions by online dictionaries and encyclopedias, followed by a few businesses that for some inexplicable reason had named themselves Nil. But one result caught my eye: a personal blog titledNil Nightmares. Maintained by a South African man in his late twenties, the blog detailed his eerily familiar account of eleven months on Nil. He posted links to a private Nil survivor support group, various missing persons sites, and even a few crackpot wormhole theorists. The comments were scathing. Some questioned the man’s mental health, others urged counseling, still more begged for details to get to Nil themselves. It was an abyss of information that confirmed my decision to claim amnesia. Better forgetful than crazy. And Thad was still lost.
With nothing left to search for, I turned off my Mac and climbed into bed.
Even though everything told me Thad was dead, I refused to accept it. Because even though everything about Nil screamed temporary, Thad and I had always felt permanent. I kept thinking that perhaps Thad had miscounted his days, or that somehow Nil had granted him immunity, giving him extra time before his clock ran out. I hoped that any day Thad would show up, flashing his easy grin, flesh and bone, inthisworld. But with each day that passed, my hope shrank,collapsing on itself just a little bit more, like the pinpoint black dot of a gate right before it vanished for good.
A soft knock intruded on my thoughts.
“Charley?” Em’s voice. The door creaked open. “You have a phone call.”
I sat up with a jerk. “Who?”
“A girl,” she said, and just like that, my lingering hope died. Instantly, painfully. Irrevocably.
“She swears she’s not a reporter,” Em was saying, “and that you know her.” Em paused.
“Her name is Natalie.”
CHAPTER
68
CHARLEY
DAY 35, TWILIGHT
Over the past fifteen days, I’d seen a neurologist, a psychiatrist, and a famous psychologist who specializes in victims of violent trauma. She’d actually made a house call after reading about me in the newspapers. Apparently it’s not every day that a seventeen-year-old American from a middle-class family, on track for a volleyball scholarship and with no record of crazy behavior, disappears for months, only to be found naked in a foreign country.
I really needed to pay more attention to the news.
But that would have meant getting my hopes up, something I could no longer handle. I’d stopped my dates with Firefox, refusing to scour news sites for an article I’d never find. I also refused to see any more counselors. They’d all come to the same conclusion: whatever had happened to me was so traumatic that, as a protective measure, my mind had walled off all memories of the incident.
But I did remember. And as painful as the memories were, I’d rather die than forget.
The only effort I made was to go running. It made my parents happy that I actually left my room, not to mention my bed. I’d runfor hours, reveling in my memories.Thad running beside me, his hand wrapped around mine… Thad placing a lei around my neck, his sapphire eyes burning… Thad’s lips on mine, warm and sweet, hungry and wanting. I sifted through each moment one at a time, reveling in the joy and pain of it. I’d run until the fog of physical exhaustion settled over my brain. This morning I’d run sixteen miles, and I only came home because the drizzle became a torrent. I’d forgotten what it was like to get caught in the rain.
Then, feeling bold, I’d tagged along with Em when she went to the grocery store. Waiting to check out, I’d spied a wall of photocopied images, grainy black-and-white photos of missing kids, mostly teenagers. Lured by the faces, I’d wandered over to the bulletin board and studied the pictures. Some were girls, some were boys, most had bright smiles, all had their dates of birth printed in black ink. All were missing. Maybe they were on Nil; maybe they’d met an end worse than Nil. At some point, I started crying. Em had to drag me away, and drag me home.
That was two hours ago.
No longer crying, I sat by my window, watching the rain.
Silver drops speckled the window, each one a dazzling prism attacking the glass. I watched them glisten and fall, like if all the drops could run together they’d form a gate—a shimmering wall taking me back to Nil. But one by one, each drop slid down my window, out of sight, gone forever. Like Nil.
For one perfectly uninterrupted moment, I stared at the rain, aching for Thad, aching for the chance to go back and find him. But even if I could find a gate in the great haystack that was Earth, it wouldn’t matter. Thad wouldn’t be there, and Nil would be nothing without him. My world was here. A world full of silver and gray—and rain.
Thunder rumbled, abrupt and startling. It sounded like a quake.
