What We Saw at Night - By Jacquelyn Mitchard Page 0,51
see us, we’re real. When I skied, everyone knew who I was. I wasn’t this … thing, this creature. Oh, the children of the midnight sun! The moon children!” She clasped her hands under her chin and batted her eyes in a parody of innocent bliss. “Poetry! How tragically lovely. What we really are is the human equivalent of cockroaches, scuttling around in the dark. Aren’t you tired of that?”
I backed away. “Not as tired as you are. There are things inside me that matter more than what idiots think.”
Juliet smiled sadly. “Idiots like Rob?”
“Screw you.” I resisted the urge to slap her.
“Yes, screw me, and goody for you two sweet things. The only thing inside me is the night. The freedom to do whatever I please. I want to live with that freedom inside me every moment.”
“No one lives like that, Juliet,” Rob said. “Movie stars have bad breath. Models have learning disabilities. Athletes have athlete’s foot. Nobody is free the way you dream.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong, Rob. I was that free when I skied. I was that free when we started Parkour. But it wears off. I’m a drunk, like Gideon. I have to keep chasing that high.” Juliet lurched forward and grabbed the arm I’d broken, squeezing hard. “I can’t find something that lasts.
That’s why I have to do this.”
“Juliet, don’t run,” I said.
She let go and took a step back. Her eyes narrowed. “Have you told anyone?”
“No one. I just told Rob, here. Right now.”
“Told me what?” he demanded.
“Juliet wants to leave … she says G.T. is her ticket out of here.” I threw my hands up, hopelessly, towards the starry night sky. “She used to say G.T. meant ‘Great and Terrible.’ It’s what they called her when she was on the ski team. But now I’m pretty sure it means something else.”
She nodded. “You’re right, Allie. It does. There’s a network of the night. There are whole underground cities lived at night. In Europe. Even here. It’s not like I’d go to Florida and sizzle on a beach.”
“Who’s been selling you this crap?”
“People,” Juliet hissed. “Real people. People who’ve been outside this shitty little shitbox hole of a town.”
“Prove to me that this guy didn’t kill Nicola,” I said. “Then at least I’ll know that someone isn’t taking advantage of you. Prove to me that the girls I saw in that apartment are alive.”
“I don’t know what you saw, Allie. Okay? But I will try to find out! I’m only human. And as for Doctor Who, it’s not the same guy. It’s some kind of crazy coincidence. It doesn’t fit together. Give me a few days to find out. Just a few days.”
I stepped over to Rob and looped my arm in his. “If you agree to one thing.”
“What one thing?”
“Whatever I say,” I told her. “Otherwise, I rat. I tell your father, your mother, my mother, Rob’s mother, Dr. Andrew and everyone else I know until somebody believes me or locks you up.”
Juliet shifted on her feet. “What else can I do?” she asked.
“You can come back to us,” I said. “We’ll be a Tribe. We’ll be three.” I looked at Rob and he pressed his lips together, and then he nodded. “For now. Not a couple and a third wheel. We’ll be the tres compadres, like we were before. Just don’t take off.”
Juliet took a long breath and seemed to consider her options. “I promise. But, Allie. What are we going to do for the next three days?”
“We’ll trace,” said Rob. “We’ll boulder.”
“Exactly,” I agreed.
A FEW HOURS later, we were slick with sweat and spent. They’d taken me up to Superior Sanctuary, and I understood now why they’d fallen in love with it.
I also understood something else: Rob had only tagged along with Juliet and made those Dark Stars videos because he was as creeped out as I was by what had happened in Duluth. He wanted clues. And if doing Parkour with Juliet was the only way to get those clues, then that’s what he’d do.
You walk up Mount Everest. It is only for the strong, but most of it is walking. You are miserable, cold, oxygen-deprived and in Hell, possibly delirious and frostbitten, and you end up at the height at which planes fly. But not much of the experience is actually “climbing.” Climbing a mountain is grabbing onto one part of the mountain and then trying to hoist yourself up to the next handhold or footrest. It means