Page 10 of Ringer
She was almost relieved to hear a dog barking. Everything until then had been so still, so silent, she might otherwise have thought they were too late, that the whole damn place had been rounded up.
Gemma was turning to shush the dog when she saw movement from a dingy white trailer set behind a scrub of balding bushes across the street. A girl or a boy—she couldn’t tell from a distance, not in the half-light—slipped outside and turned to lock the door.
As soon as the girl started down the stairs, Gemma knew her.
“Lyra,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse. It was the first time she’d spoken in hours. “That’s Lyra.”
She and Pete jogged to catch up. Lyra was already moving away from them, head down, as if she was afraid of being followed. Did she know she was in danger? Where was Caelum? She must have heard them approach, because suddenly Lyra whirled around, hands on her backpack straps, elbows out like miniature wings.
“Lyra.” Gemma felt out of breath, though they’d gonebarely one hundred feet. Lyra was more beautiful than she remembered. Funnily enough, she was wearing eye makeup. Not just a little, either. Shimmery, smoky, purple eye makeup, the kind April applied to Gemma when she was “practicing her technique.” She’d dyed her hair, too, a platinum blond. She had gained badly needed weight.
“What are you doing here?” Typically, Lyra didn’t smile or even seem that surprised to see them.
Despite having come to warn her, Gemma found at the last second she couldn’t say the words—couldn’t admit to Lyra that everything her father had promised was a lie.
Instead, it was Pete who spoke.
“You’re in danger,” he said. “The people who killed Jake Witz are tracking you and Caelum. They’re probably on their way now.”
Lyra hardly even blinked. “I know,” she said. “They were here already.”
Gemma’s heart fell through a hole. “Is Caelum... ?”
“Gone.” She frowned a little, as if the word carried an unexpected taste.
The world tightened around them. Even the air seized up and grew too heavy to breathe. “They—they got him?”
Lyra shook her head—a quick, spastic movement, like an animal trying to shake off a fly. “He was already gone. I saw them come, and I hid until they left.”
“They’ll be back,” Gemma said. She could barely understand what Lyra meant—Caelum gone, but not taken, and Lyra now alone. But she knew for sure they would come back. “They’ll be back any second. You have to come with us.”
“I can’t,” Lyra said abruptly. And then, an afterthought: “Thank you. I’ll be careful.”
She turned and started walking again. For a second, Gemma was so stunned she could only stare after her. Then she registered the red backpack Lyra had on, bulging with belongings. Where was she going, at just after six in the morning? Where had Caelum gone?
“Wait,” she called out. Lyra turned around, still with that same blank expression, a little bit patient, a tiny bit irritated, too. Unexpectedly, Gemma was furious. That was the good thing about anger: it was always bigger than fear, always bigger than guilt or disappointment. You could count on anger. “What do you mean, youcan’t?”
“And where’s Caelum?” Pete was on Gemma’s team again, bound to her by exhaustion and frustration. “Where did he go?”
“Home,” Lyra said, as if that made any sense at all. “I’m going after him.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Gemma said. The long night was starting to catch up to her. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw starburst colors, quick explosions in the dark. “The people who came here won’t just quit. They’lllook until they find you, wherever you are.”
“They’re looking for Caelumandme,” she said. “They won’t expect us to split up. And they won’t expect us to get far. They don’t think we’re smart enough.” Her expression changed, just for an instant, like a plate shifting deep undersea and causing ripples at the surface. “Besides, what other choice do we have?”
“You could come with us,” Gemma said. But she knew that Lyra had made her decision. Gemma was fumbling for a way to convince her, hauling at a line stretched thin to a breaking point. “We could drive you somewhere far away,” she said. “Maine. The Oregon coast. Canada. Wherever.”
“Not without Caelum,” Lyra said simply.
“You’ll never find him,” Gemma argued. “Do you know how many people there are in this country? Millions and millions.” But there was no way to explain to Lyra how big the world was, and how far it went. Until a few weeks ago, her world was by the water, by a fence that ringed her off into a few square miles.
“You just said the people who came from Haven will findus.”
“That’s different,” Gemma said. “They’re... bigger than we are. Do you understand that? They have cars. They have drones, and money, and friends everywhere.”
Lyra’s face changed again. A new current swept away all the feeling, shutting her down to a perfect blank. “You forget what they made us to be, though,” she said—softly,gently, as if Gemma were the one who needed to understand.
Gemma shook her head. Her heart was beating through her whole body. Every minute the sun leeched away more cover.
