Page 78

“Luna. It’s true. Carmine knew it. He didn’t care. He kept them all together. Made them—us a target, and the point is, he found me. He found your father.”

I rest my head on the floor and sigh, letting my body go slack.

As a child, this is where I’d nod and pretend it all made sense.

I’d put my attention on counting every pea on my plate, saying “wow” and “really?” at any pause.

Sometimes Dad would roll his eyes and say, “Here we go,” or chide her with a laugh.

Whenever I wanted to ask her why the government would care so much about where she went to the doctor, or how so many grownups could execute such a complex plan when they could barely organize a bake sale, I’d just say, “That’s scary. ”

And once—I was maybe eight—Dad said some version of “whatever” and changed the subject. Her face scrunched like a used tissue. I could see her emotions change, but I didn’t know what they meant yet. They went dark gray and swirled like cigarette smoke.

Dad put his hand on her arm, but she yanked it away. He wasn’t offering an apology—those were pale blue circles—and it was too late for comfort.

“How can you dismiss me like that?”

“I’m not dismissing you .” He said it casually, with a flick of his fork over his mashed potatoes and a glance at me, as if checking my reaction. “I would never do that. I’m dismissing these theories.”

“You are dismissing me. You are. You’re treating me like a crazy person when all I’m trying to do is protect you and our daughter. ”

When she jabbed her finger at me, I flinched, and this is what set Dad off.

“From what, Giulia? From being sane? From being normal? You’ve got her going to school with little folded up tinfoil squares in her pockets.

She’s been pulled out of class how many times so you can make sure she hasn’t been abducted?

You spend…” Here he laughs in a way that I thought meant he found something humorous in what he was about to say, but now I realize it was shame.

“Every parent-teacher conference is you grilling the staff on how they’re grooming her. ”

“She’s under threat!” Half off her seat, Mom pounded the table. I’d never been so scared of being protected.

“By whom?”

“ You !” Realizing what she said, her lip quivered. “People like you who don’t see what I see. Who don’t research right.”

But it was too late. Her accusation had stung him too hard.

“The only person…” He paused here as if considering whether or not he should finish the sentence.

I just sat there, wishing he’d stop talking, trying to communicate telepathically that it wasn’t worth it.

He needed to stop where he was. And when his fist clenched and unclenched, I watched his self-preservation lose the battle. “The one grooming her is you.”

What happened immediately after is lost to me. It didn’t matter. Nothing changed.

And yet, here we are, in the space between life and death.

There’s witch magic. Valence lines. I can open locks with my mind and my mother can travel on quantum light particles. The moon sings.

“I’m not special,” I say finally. “There’s not some demon looking around for me because I got vaccinated and it ‘activated’ the DN?—”

“You what?”

“I got vaccinated when I turned eighteen.” I interpret her sigh and the silence that follows as disappointment. “I’m not sorry.”

“You might be later.”

“Are you kidding? I thought you got your brain back.”

“I got my power back. My brain was fine. I could do my own research as good as anyone and I have the critical thinking to know that chemical slop is not safe.”

“Where did polio go, Ma? Measles? I don’t know one kid who got mumps.”

“You’re proving no one needed vaccines.”

“Because everyone else got their shots! That’s how vaccinations work. I cannot believe I still have to explain this to you.”

“You were always a little know-it-all.” I feel her shrug. “It doesn’t matter now.” Her shrug opens up a new space for me to dig my fingers.

“Hold still one second.”

“You never believed me anyway. Maybe that was your father’s fault.” She lets out a little grunt of effort. “I almost have it.”

“That’s why you took me away.” I dig and dig. The rope moves, loosens, opens just a bit.

“You started not believing me on your own. That’s a good thing. The right thing. You’re so smart. You were a smarter kid than I ever was as a mother.”

“But I was wrong?” I hook my whole finger in a strand just as Mom pulls on my rope.

“I don’t know, Luna. Just wiggle!”

Letting go of her rope, I rub my wrists together. It’s loose. Very loose.

“You’re out!” Mom cries.

I am. I sit up and slip my hands free.

The collar keeps my chin up. The ceiling is dark, but not so dark that I can’t see a shape dangling from the crossbeam like a bag of dogshit hanging from a fence.

I have enough head movement to see Mom’s bound hands in the corner of my eye.

I find her wrists and the loose strand I made.

Tugging that slack bit of rope with my chin up, I see out the windows from a different angle.

There are trees, and behind them, a night skyline.

The lights in the windows don’t illuminate.

They don’t twinkle through the changes in air.

They are simply a lighter gray. Yet I’ve seen this slice of skyline before.

The matching double towers are at a slightly different angle, but it clicks from the gondola ride.

We are on that boat in Central Park Lake. The one that concerned Carmine. The pointy side of the room is the front of it. And on the opposite side, there is a door.

Someone is behind it. I feel them there.

My wrists come apart. “I’m out!”

The door slaps open.

An angel-faced boy in his mid-teens, dressed in white from head to toe, points at me, finger shaking, eyes crazed, and in two words, shouts with a squeak and roar. “It’s you !”