looping red bow. Inside the box, a sheet of paper, with a single word. And when Michael looked up with a question on his lips, Mom had disappeared. He was scared, lost-in-a-department-store scared. He came to realize that the howling outside was not a wind, but people at the windows. Gray-faced people. He shouted, but Mom wouldn’t answer. Finally, he looked at the paper.
The word on it read:
Snow.
He could feel snow.
Michael lay in the cold, then sniffed. He opened his eyes, looking around, brushing the flakes off his nose with the back of his hand. He wasn’t totally surprised to feel tears there, too.
Purple light, over the rim of the basket. Snow falling gently. He could see the pink underbellies of clouds that told him it was almost sunrise—though the clouds were a lot closer than usual. He watched one that looked like a lowercase t drift past. He started to sit up, but noticed Holly’s head lying against his shoulder, her eyes closed, her breath steady. Sleepin’ on the job, lady, he thought, grinning. He hesitated a second, then thought, Well, it’s okay ’cause she kissed me first, and he leaned in and kissed her, quick and light, on the edge of her lips. Man. Seriously: so soft. Holly shifted in her sleep, the side of her mouth tugging into a little half smile.
Michael thought: pocket.
Pocket? What’s in my pocket?
Patrick was sitting across from him, looking at the wicker floor, his back against the opposite wall, one knee drawn to his chest. In his hands, he held the vial that Holly had stuffed into Michael’s pocket in the First Bank of Charleston.
The ropes creaked overhead. They drifted. Patrick looked up at Michael, then back down at the wicker floor, his lips twitching and pursing. He seemed to be gathering something to say in his head. After perhaps ten minutes, he said softly, “There’s no more Game Master, is there? Everyone can cheat now, huh?”
Michael watched him, unsure how to respond. He lifted Holly’s head from his shoulder, positioning it gently against a corner. He scooted toward Bub, and the question within Michael was: What lie should he try to assemble for Patrick? But he realized he did not know. Right then, sitting across from his little brother in the waking sky, Patrick seemed a kind of mystery to him. How did you save yourself, Bub? Michael thought wonderingly. How did you fall into yourself and come out? I tried so hard to save you; I did my best. But I didn’t control this.
“Do you think the Bellows cheated where Mommy is, too?” Patrick asked.
Michael felt his pulse, his breath, searching his stillness: the old automatic habit, waiting for some secret aspect of himself to present him with the Truth about the future of his Game. . . . But nothing came this time, of course. That was all over.
What if Mom did make it to Richmond, and she’s still okay? some small part of him thought. Is that possible?
After the pain and terror of all his own false predictions, Michael tried to push down the idea. Jopek had said the Safe Zone in Richmond was overrun.
But Jopek had lied about a lot of things. I don’t “know” for sure that things are good . . . but maybe that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad. I don’t know, but I’m going to keep going, anyway. And maybe that was hope.
“I . . . I dunno, Bub,” Michael said honestly.
Patrick nodded, his lips pulling into his mouth. He didn’t blink, but a moment later, the half-light in the sky lit the trails down his cheeks. He clenched the vial tighter in his small hands. How had the vial survived all Michael’s falls since the bank? I mean, How? For some reason, Michael thought of what Patrick had said. The deer. The deer knocked ’im down. Bobbie could have been right, Michael supposed. There could be something watching over them. But if there is, he thought, I don’t think I could understand it in a billion years.
“If I give this to other Good Guys,” Patrick whispered, “it’ll really make everything all better?”
Michael found himself smiling. “I think it will.” He searched himself, and he found, with a relief like warm wind, that he wasn’t lying. Or, he didn’t think he was.
“I m-m-miss Mommy,” Patrick said. “She’s a good . . .” Patrick blinked, frankly confused. He struggled to find the word. “She’s good,” he finally decided.
Yes, she was good, Bub. Is.