At least, that was how it felt.

I looked at Rachel. She nodded at me. Ema gave me a brave smile. Spoon wasn’t sure what to do. We shared looks. My friends, I thought. The only real friends I’ve ever had. And yet, somehow, I knew that they were much more, that this would not be the last time we would stand together like this.

I felt overwhelmed. We all moved closer together in an almost protective cluster, looking out now as one.

“Guess what,” Spoon said to me.

I swallowed hard. “What, Spoon?”

“George Washington was sterile.”

Chapter 26

HOURS LATER, after my leg got treated for the bite, after the police were satisfied, Uncle Myron drove me home. I expected a full-fledged grilling or a lecture, but he went easy on me. He seemed somewhat lost in his thoughts.

“You took something of a beating,” he said.

I nodded.

He gripped the wheel tighter. “Is this the first time you’ve been hurt like this?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I went with the truth. “Yes.”

“It will be worse in the morning. A lot worse. I have some painkillers that might help.”

“Thanks.”

Myron made a turn, keeping his eyes on the road. “Basketball tryouts are coming up soon.”

“I know.”

We fell into an uncomfortable silence. I was the one who broke it this time. “The other night, I saw you video-chatting with a woman on the computer.”

Myron cleared his throat. “Oh.”

“Who is she?”

“My fiancée.”

That surprised me.

“She lives far away,” he said. “Overseas.”

“You were supposed to go to her.”

Myron said nothing.

“You stayed behind,” I said, “because of me.”

“Don’t worry about it. It will all work out.”

More silence.

“Can I ask you something else?” I said.

“Okay.”

“What’s the deal with you and Chief Taylor?”

Myron grinned. “Chief Taylor,” he said, “is a power tool.”

“His son is captain of the basketball team.”

“So was he,” Myron said. “Years ago. He was the senior captain when I was a sophomore.”

Talk about history repeating itself. “So what happened between you two?”

Myron seemed to mull it over before he shook his head. “I’ll tell you about it another time. Right now I think it’s time we took care of some of your wounds.”

Myron was right.

When I woke up the next day, my entire body screamed in agony. It took me ten minutes to sit up and get off the bed. My temples pulsed. My head throbbed. My ribs were so tender that breathing became a new adventure in spiked pain.

There were two pills on the nightstand next to my bed. I swallowed them down. That helped. Myron had taken the extra Ford Taurus into the shop to get the window Derrick smashed fixed. That meant I’d have to walk. The police, I figured, were still looking for Derrick. I didn’t want to tell them not to waste their time.

A few hours later, I finished my walk to the Coddington Rehabilitation Institute. Christine Shippee greeted me with her arms folded across her chest.

“I told you,” she said. “You can’t see your mother yet.”

I thought about everything. I thought about the Abeona Shelter and the work my parents clearly did for them. I thought about my dad’s letter to Juan, how he wanted to give me a chance at normalcy. I thought about moving back to the United States, that drive down to San Diego, the crash of the car. I thought about that ambulance driver, the one with the sandy hair and green eyes. I thought about the way the expression on his face told me that my life was over, how I knew right then and there that even he, this stranger with sandy hair and green eyes, knew my future better than I did.

I thought about my mom’s face when she first heard that my dad was dead, how she had died on that day too. I thought about how I tried to help her—enabled, I guess—how I kept her on life support, how she clung to me, how she lied and even manipulated her only son. I thought about the spaghetti and meatballs dinner we never had. I thought about the garlic bread.

“Mickey?” Christine said. “Are you all right?”

“Just tell her I love her,” I said. “Tell her I’m here and I will always be here and I will visit her every day and I will never abandon her. Tell her that.”

“Okay,” Christine said softly. “I will.”

And then I turned and walked away.

When I reached the bottom of the drive, the black car with the license plate A30432 was waiting for me. I wasn’t even surprised. The bald man got out of the passenger seat. As always he wore the dark suit and sunglasses.

He opened the back door.

Without saying a word, I got in.

Chapter 27

I NEVER SAW THE DRIVER. There was a glass partition separating the front from the back. Five minutes after they picked me up, we were bouncing through the woods. I looked out. Up ahead I saw Bat Lady’s garage. Just as I had witnessed that day with Ema, the bald guy got out and opened the garage door. We pulled in. The bald guy opened the door for me and said, “Follow me.”

The interior of the garage looked, well, like the interior of a garage. Nothing special. The bald guy bent down and pulled open a trapdoor in the floor. He started climbing down a ladder. I trailed him. We moved through a tunnel in the direction, I assumed, of Bat Lady’s house.

This, I thought, explained the light in the basement I had seen when I was in her house.

When we passed a door, I asked, “What’s in there?”

He shook his head and kept going. When we reached another door, he stopped and said, “This is as far as I go.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you see her alone.”

Her.

He started back down toward the garage, leaving me alone. My head was starting to throb again. The pain meds must have been wearing off. I opened the door and found myself back inside Bat Lady’s living room.

Nothing much had changed. Brown was still the room’s dominant hue. The windows were still blocked by a combination of soot and planks. The grandfather clock still didn’t work. The old picture of the hippies—the first place I had seen the strange butterfly design. The turntable was working now. HorsePower was playing a sad song called “Time Stands Still.” And there, in the middle of the room, dressed in the same white gown I had seen her in just a few short days ago, was the Bat Lady.