an oven again, but had lost that heavy, leaden feeling that had both flattened us to our knees and lifted the ancient bricks, and it had lost that awful, damp stench from the place where They slept. At the top, my legs gave out and I ate sand.
It took an eternity to force consciousness into my deadened limbs, feeling heat and blood draining onto the ground below me. Johnny grabbed my wrists as I struggled up, my head gonging in a whirling circus of darkness, and by bracing her feet and leaning back like the prop on a tug-of-war team she somehow got me vertical. I rewarded this feat by collapsing directly on top of her; she grunted with the effort, but stayed upright, and slung my arm around her, shoving her shoulder into my armpit to take my weight. I felt bad for weighing as much as I did.
“Is your touch phobia over now, or what?”
“It wasn’t a phobia.”
“We’ve had this conversation.”
“Walk,” she said. “It’s not far.”
Lying: it was miles and miles, a sea voyage, crossing the entire desert, the thousands of miles of it. My vision narrowed to a pinprick. I watched her feet and mine, in our similar blue runners, and tried to sync my steps to hers. It helped to have something to focus on. Focus on something, anything, doesn’t matter what. Just has to be something different from what you’re doing. Step. Step. Step. The sweet smell of her hair. How was she holding me up? Step. Step. My body roared and grated as I walked, the pain mounting with every step, slowing me as we trudged towards the barely-visible top of the buried Range Rover.
I stopped and lifted my head, scenting the air like a deer. We really had won. It smelled just like air. Just ordinary air.
“I know,” Johnny said, turning her face up to the sky. “I know, I know.”
EPILOGUE
“DOORBELL!”
“It’s too early!”
“Nicky! I can’t find my wand! Did one of the boys take it?”
“Ew, boys!”
“I can’t find my shoes!”
“Doorbell!”
“We know!”
I pretended to jam two fun-sized Tootsie Rolls into my ears as I waded through the chest-deep sea of kids, some of whom I didn’t even know—Carla had invited a ton of her friends over so they could coordinate who was going as which princess, except I couldn’t figure out who on earth was supposed to be a princess with a wand, was there a Harry Potter princess?—and clung to the doorknob like a drowning man.
It was too early; most trick-or-treaters would have waited till it got dark, a couple hours from now. Maybe some parents with a baby or toddler, too young to go out alone.
I wiggled the chain off, ignoring the hands pawing at my back, and said, “Trick or... oh.”
“Treat!” Johnny said, and plunged into the crowd, balancing a box teeteringly filled with bags of chips and full-sized chocolate bars and Skittles and Jolly Ranchers and Bonkers and all the weird candies I’d ever imagined in the desert, where I only wanted food from home and thought I’d scream if I had to eat one more date. For a moment I was too stunned to speak. We hadn’t seen each other in months. But the kids were pushing past me, yelling for her.
Johnny said, authoritatively, “Pregaming, you guys, that’s where it’s at.”
“Auntie Johnny!” screamed Chris, and ran for a hug before I could stop him; she dropped the box and threw her arms around him, which was Brent’s cue to sidle up and snuggle for a minute.
I glanced back at Carla, smiling uncertainly in her pale-blue dress and tiara. I wondered if Carla would ever forgive her. I knew without asking—because I hadn’t asked—that I had not been forgiven.
Yes, they had returned without incident, the house had been renovated without comment, Mamoru invisibly intercepted and paid all our bills now. But no one talked about the new arrangement of reparations, and no one talked about when it would end, or what we had exchanged for this new ease, this peace that was so gorgeous and abundant and felt so rich and effortless, the sour cloud of anxiety gone from, I thought, everyone, because our bank accounts were full now.
But other accounts had been emptied. Nothing you could check. Nothing you could prove. Except here, maybe, seeing Carla’s cool smile and Johnny’s supplicating eyes. There would be no hug between these two. The boys had thought their time away (in what turned out to be Sweden, of all places) had been