White Space

“Bad luck for boats.” Emma shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Anyway, he wouldn’t go into the emergency room. Made me take it out right there at the kitchen …” She suddenly straightened, the grin slipping off and a look he couldn’t decipher creasing her forehead and cutting small lines at the corners of her narrowed eyes. “At the kitchen table.” She paused. “Just like now.”

“Hey.” Leaning forward, he touched a finger to her right forearm and felt her shiver. “You okay?”

“You look kind of peaky,” Bode said.

“No, it’s …” Shaking her head, she exhaled. “I’m fine. Just a little déjà vu.”

“So what about the sled?” Bode asked, returning to his first question. “Can we use that to get out of here?”

“We’ve been over this … Hey, Case,” he said, as his brother wobbled through the kitchen door. “Where’s Rima?”

“Upstairs,” Casey said, gingerly lowering himself into a straight-back chair. “Lizzie wanted something from her room, and Rima didn’t think she should go alone.”

And you let them go? Alone? That they weren’t all in the same place where they could keep an eye on each other made him uneasy, but he kept his mouth shut. Casey had been so edgy before, not himself. The way his little brother looked now only scared him more. The hollows beneath Casey’s eyes were as livid and purple as the bruises on his neck and that huge lump on his jaw. God, had Big Earl punched Casey before, back at the cabin, and he’d just not noticed? And that thing in the snowcat choking the life out of him … Too close. A couple more seconds, Casey would’ve …

“Did I hurt you?” Emma said, suddenly looking up.

“What?” He had to work to look away from visions of Casey lying dead in that snowcat, or broken, his blood seeping between the warped boards of that damned cabin, as Big Earl bellowed.

“I asked if I hurt you,” she said, her careful eyes on his. “You jumped.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said, but he heard how rough his tone was, and swallowed. “So, Case … how you feeling?”

“Betcha still hurting,” Bode said. “You’re pretty beat up, kid.”

“I’m okay,” Casey said, though a small grunt escaped as he shifted on his chair. “Is there anything to drink?”

“Moo juice in the fridge.” Bode opened a cupboard. “Or you gotchyer Kool-Aid, gotchyer Swiss Miss, and we got water.”

Casey made a face. “That’s it?”

“Not unless you can figure a way to suck macaroni and cheese through a straw. What’ll it be, kid?”

“Hot chocolate. I can get it,” Casey said, half rising and then cautiously sliding back onto his seat as Bode waved him down. “Okay, if you’re offering. Thanks.”

“You sure you’re all right?” Eric heard the slight nagging note, but he hated this feeling of helplessness more. “Emma, is there anything like aspirin or something in the med kit?”

“Yes,” she said, giving him a long look he couldn’t read. “Some Motrin, too.”

“What’s that?” Bode asked.

“Ah … like aspirin, only not.” She looked back at Casey. “Might make you feel better.”

“No, really, guys, stop fussing. It’s not like I’m a doll … What?” Casey looked from Eric to Emma and back. “What’d I say?”

“Déjà vu all over again,” Emma said, and hunched a shoulder. “We seem to keep repeating some of the same phrases, that’s all.”

“If we’re as tangled as Lizzie says, maybe that’s what happens,” Eric said.

“Naw, come on.” Bode flapped a hand. “They’re just expressions.”

“You really believe that?” Emma said. “Still?”

Casey filled the small silence that followed. “So why were you guys talking about the sled?”

“Bode wants to bug out,” Eric said.

“Hey, Devil Dog.” Bode ran water from the tap into a kettle. “When you say it like that, sounds like I want to cut and run just when things are getting hairy.”

“Well, you do.”

“Then what would we do about Lizzie?” Casey asked. “We can’t leave her here.”

“Watch me.” Bode set the kettle on the stove, then turned on the gas. A hiss, and then a circlet of blue flame sprouted. “Now, see, that’s just wrong. Where’s the gas coming from? What’s powering the lights?”

“Everything. This place, the fog … that’s how it works here. Or just think of everything as energy, just in different forms.” Emma paused, her eyes ticking back to Eric’s again. “Even us.”

The same thought had occurred to him. Odd, how the two of them seemed to be on the same wavelength. But it was a good feeling, one he’d never had before. “I don’t see it happening any other way.”

“You know, you guys keep looking at each other like that,” Bode said, prying the plastic cap off a can of Swiss Miss, “one of you’s gonna catch fire.”

Eric saw the spots of sudden color on Emma’s cheeks as she ducked her head. “No,” she said, carefully drying his wound with clean gauze. “I was just thinking about how this must work, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” Bode said, spooning cocoa mix into a mug. “You keep telling yourself that.”