this time of night,” Johnny mumbled, studying her computer; I looked over her shoulder to see that the two black dots were much closer now, almost touching.
“How far is it to walk?”
“Just over an hour. Got that in ya?”
“Who knows.” Past the streetlights, the rooftops stood out black against an intense, deep-green glow. That would be even brighter in the desert, but I had no desire to see it. “John? The northern lights... can people usually see them here?”
“Nope.”
“So it’s Them. Like you said before.”
“A sign saying They’re close. Celestial disruptions, all the rules tangled up. Solar storms and magnetosphere disturbances and comets knocked off their paths, nudged by a nongravitational force that can’t be calculated or measured. Don’t think about it. Come on.”
I trudged after her, my back aching from being curled into a comma on the bus. Our street led into a road lined with houses and tall trees, maybe even the GMO drought-resistant ornamental ones Johnny had created a few years ago. The ever-present solar panel tiles blended into the tiles on walls and balconies; several houses had shaped theirs into pictures like the tanagrams the twins used to love: a chicken, a face, a camel, a cat. Streetlight gleamed companionably off satellite dishes strapped to stone minarets. Our sneakers were silent on the road, although we still startled a few feral cats out of garbage cans and gardens, squeezing their skinny bodies through the iron gates everyone seemed to have here. Their eyes shone from blocks away, turning into streaks as they ran. It was so quiet I could hear the patter of their feet on the asphalt.
“The—” I began, and froze. A fat, low SUV had pulled silently across the road twenty yards ahead of us, scattering the cats. I couldn’t read the text on the door, white against navy paint, or see lights or a siren, but I knew cops when I saw them. My senses had gone berserk from fear and I could smell their exhaust from here, sharp and greasy over the chrysanthemum odour of Johnny’s fresh sweat.
Steps sounded behind us; Johnny rose onto her tiptoes, hands spread.
“Don’t run,” I whispered.
“I won’t.”
“Don’t.”
“I won’t, I won’t.”
“How did they find us?”
“Beats me.”
Dark forms emerged from the alleyways, cheerful, teeth gleaming like their reflective badges in the faint light. They were shouting, not in English. I didn’t need to ask Johnny what they were saying. They had guns; so much for protective custody.
I exhaled slowly as they approached, five cops, surely far more than was needed for two teenage runaways. Or were they arresting us for prostitution or whatever? Damn, should have worn fake wedding rings or something. Don’t move, I ordered myself and Johnny, lips moving silently. Don’t give them an excuse to shoot us. Don’t give them an excuse to Rodney King us. Don’t move.
Instead of handcuffs, they used plastic zip-ties, three around my wrists, two around John’s, as she gritted her teeth against their touch. I rolled my eyes when I knew they weren’t looking. It was her they had to worry about escaping, not me. The plastic was tight as all hell, my fingertips beginning to tingle before we had even been bundled into the cage of the SUV. Maybe she couldn’t get out of these after all.
I shut my eyes as we pulled out. It had all been so fast. Johnny had insisted that our positions and trajectories be indecipherable even to ourselves—waves not admitting we were particles, particles denying being waves—but we’d been caught no more than fifteen minutes after getting off that bus. We tumbled around in the cage, seatbeltless, as the cops chuckled and joshed and slurped from their travel mugs, occasionally jerking a thumb back at us. The interior stank of coffee, body odour, and stale urine—about the way I expected a cop car to smell.
What now? My mind began to race, just like on the plane. Oh God, back to the station. Split up, me in a crowded cell yelling for someone who could speak English, demanding my one phone call, a cop-show fallacy that they would laugh at if anyone understood me. And who would I call anyway? Johnny somewhere else, arguing in ten languages, pulling whatever cards she could for either of us: the fame card, the kid card, the Canadian card, whatever might help. Would it be enough?
The darkness in City Hall. The faceless men, the press of our space, shoulders and hands, the sour smell of children, the smell of fear.