Wordless (4 page)

I paused to look at my handiwork. The scratchy pencil marks only vaguely resembled the original letters. Good. They were close enough … and different enough, especially on the yellowed back of the postcard that would soon be facing the wall again.

The second word was short, only two letters. The first looked like two pyramids, linked in the middle with no bases. The last was one I’d already copied—the second letter of the other word.

When I finished, I crouched in the corner with my lighter and the white piece of paper. Before long, there was nothing but flaking ash, which I stomped into the concrete.

But there was smoke, too.

“Tavin?” Drey said, his voice as sharp as the sudden pounding on the door. “I smell something burning. And why is your door locked?”

My own feet tripped me up in my hurry to get to the door. I didn’t often lock it, and I never failed to open it after he knocked. I cursed after smashing my knee into the metal chair and whipped the door open to find him frowning up at me.

“What’s going on, Tav?”

No doubt my face looked too guilty to deny everything. “I was … I was smoking.”

Drey sighed. “You know that’s bad for you. And if you don’t, take it from an old man.”

“You’re not old,” I said.

He smiled—but then he sniffed the air. “That doesn’t smell like a cigarette. Or dope. What on earth were you smoking?”

He sidled into the room before I could think of anything to say. I tried not to look at the greasy smear of ash in the corner. Fortunately, the concrete floor was already pretty grimy.

But Drey wasn’t looking at the floor. He was looking at the desk, and only then did I remember that I hadn’t re-hung the postcard or closed the squeaky drawer, which was open like a mouth shouting the truth.

“What’s this?” Drey asked, picking up the postcard with the message scratched into the back. The pencil sat nearby, looking like a murder weapon at the scene of a crime.

Before I could invent some excuse about pretending to write—which would have worked, since Drey couldn’t tell the difference between real or fake letters—he asked in a tone of utter surprise:

“Why does this say ‘help me’?”

four

H-E-L-P M-E

So that was what those letters meant. The news was nearly as shocking as the fact that Drey could read.

“How do you know what it says?” I demanded.

“I … well … ” Then his surprise, which had obviously lowered his guard, vanished. “Never mind! What is this doing here? Did you write this? And what was burning?”

I folded my arms, not caring that I looked—and sounded—like I’d reverted to the age of ten. “I’m not telling until you tell me how the hell you’ve been able to read all this time! Why didn’t you ever say anything? Why didn’t you teach me?”

The hurt was audible in my voice—yep, definitely ten—and Drey’s expression turned regretful for a second. Then his grizzled jaw hardened. “That’s none of your damn business. I don’t owe you any explanations. But you’re in my garage, so
you
owe me an explanation of what’s going on in here!”

He’d never before drawn a line between his and my territory, always treating me more like family than an employee. I dropped onto the edge of my cot without saying anything. I didn’t think I
could
say anything without embarrassing myself. My throat was too tight.

The letters that apparently said
Matterhorn, Switzerland
stared at me from the back of the postcard in Drey’s hand. He’d told me that he’d asked what they meant, but now I knew he hadn’t. He’d read them himself.

“I kept it secret for your own good,” Drey said in nearly a whisper, putting a hand on the desk almost like he was steadying himself. “And I still can’t tell you anything, so don’t ask. No one knows I’m not wordless. Please don’t mention it to anyone. Forget this ever happened.”

I was looking into my hands, not at him. Pencil smears darkened the tips of my fingers. It all made sense now, why he was so smart and knew so many things. All of those legends and histories—I’d assumed he’d heard the stories from other people, but who around here could have told him? Anger melted the lump in my throat.

“If I have to forget you can read, then you forget you read those words,” I said. “Forget you smelled smoke. I’m not sharing secrets if you won’t.”

Drey looked tired, more tired than I’d ever seen him. He hesitated, studying the postcard he’d given me years ago that now bore an ominous but cryptic message, as though wondering if my secret was worth trading for.

It apparently wasn’t, because he left the room, taking my view of the mountain with him.

That didn’t make me angry—I was already angry enough. Besides, I didn’t need the copied message anymore, now that I knew what it said. Not that I knew what I was going to do about it.

All I
did
know was that she—the Word of Life—had asked for help. She was the only one who’d spotted me with a trash bag in that courtyard. No one else had been in there; I’d been on the lookout, seeing as I’d been sneaking around. And she was the only one who could think I was stupid enough to help her, probably from the way I’d gawked at her.

The message had to be from her. For me.

But why the hell would she need my help? What could I even do? I was impotent, and she was one of the most powerful people on the planet.

Maybe she
had
been looking at the sky with longing. But why? Perhaps that place was somehow a cage for her, even though she was powerful. Or, rather,
because
she was powerful. Maybe she had to pose for so many TV clips and posters that she didn’t have any time for anything else. Maybe the other Words, like Death, were using her.

Or maybe my imagination was running away with me again. Maybe she was the one using me. But I had to find out.

Drey had always told me that anger makes a man lose his head, and he was probably right. Because I was going to try to help her. Even if I was a sucker, at least I would be doing
something
. Whatever it was. The only plan I could think of was to hang out under her balcony until she either turned up or dropped another clue on my head.

The object in my other pocket weighed me down again, and I slid the laminated card out. I leaned back on the cot, resting my sweaty shoulders against the cool concrete wall, studying it, even though the typewritten letters made no more sense to me than the Word’s secret message had.

Dr. Swanson had said that it granted me higher clearance. Maybe I could use this card to get into the Athenaeum outside of my scheduled hours. But anything I did outside of my usual work routine would draw unwanted attention. If I used the card to get in, I couldn’t just drive around in the truck, losing myself in the streets until I could sneak back to the courtyard; the security guards would expect me to report to them or go straight to Dr. Swanson, who would expect the same thing if they let him know I was there—which was likely. Then they would be looking for me.

Deciding to go back to the Athenaeum wasn’t difficult. Waiting until my next shift the following morning was the hard part. I sat on my cot, staring at the cracks in the wall now that my postcard-view of the outside world was gone. Maybe, I thought with relief, she only wanted something little from me, like smuggling something in for her—maybe she couldn’t get Captain Crunch in the Athenaeum. I sure had plenty of that to give her. Because what else could I do?

Realistically, I knew it had to be something more than that. Maybe much more, and I didn’t know how far I was willing to go. I didn’t want to lose my job—or worse. Picturing the Word of Death and his lethal touch made me swallow butterflies, and not normal-sized ones, but monster butterflies careening around in panic, trying to break out of my stomach with their flapping.

I lay down on my cot in my clothes, giving sleep a try, but the train of my thoughts was racing too fast to let me get off and rest. Eventually, I got up to shower in the middle of the night and was still awake when Drey tapped on my door almost timidly a couple hours later. I was already dressed, buzzing with nervous energy, and I didn’t accept the rank-smelling cup of coffee from him this time.

Drey was quiet, offering none of his usual stories as we suited up, me in hospital white and him in our usual green. It was like he was sorry. But he didn’t apologize, or tell me why he wasn’t wordless, as we made our way to the truck and out of the garage. I kept my end of the pact of silence and didn’t say anything about my crazy plan—or lack thereof—to try to help one of the Words.

We pulled up behind the shadowy pyramid with the first rays of morning light peeking over the forested mountains ringing Eden City and the lake. Drey cleared his throat, but I opened the truck door anyway.

“I don’t know what you might be up to,” he said, as softly as possible over the growl of the engine, his hands on the steering wheel and eyes straight ahead, staring across the empty parking lot. “You’re a smart boy—a smart man, even. Just be careful, okay, Tav?”

“I’m always careful.” I hopped out onto the asphalt, failing to mention that I was planning on being a hell of a lot less careful that morning. I slammed the heavy door without another word and immediately wished I’d said something nicer—
warmer
, maybe, or at least a goodbye. But I didn’t want to reopen the door only for that, and then Drey was driving off.

My little white truck was waiting in the same spot. I didn’t grin or even acknowledge the security guards this time. The palms of my hands were already coated in a film of sweat when I got into the truck and started the engine, my body reacting to what my brain knew: I wasn’t headed off on my usual pickup routine.

I collected a few bags of trash, enough to look busy and avoid suspicion, but then drove straight to the gated alley between the still-quiet apartment buildings. The sun was barely lighting the peak of the pyramid as I turned off the engine and slipped out of the truck, leaving the door cracked to avoid the slam of closing it. There was no sign of even a stray person wandering at this hour, though the other days I’d seen joggers not much later than this. Haste would be necessary if I didn’t want more people to start cropping up. The security camera and retinal scan were bad enough, as far as discreetness went.

At least the gate popped open without a wait.

I speed-walked down the alley and into the courtyard, grimacing as my shoes squeaked over the grass. It was wet, as though it had just been watered, clear drops beading on the blades and on the plants in their beds. At least I wasn’t tiptoeing through sprinklers—if this was even the work of sprinklers and not the Word of Water. They probably didn’t do anything like normal people here.

I didn’t let myself think about who I was trying to help as I stopped underneath the darkened balcony. She was just a girl. Just your average all-powerful, insanely beautiful girl.

My thoughts weren’t calming. My heart was thumping as loud as a jackhammer at the crack of dawn—which was about what time it was, sunlight trickling down from the peak of the pyramid, turning the world to gold.

Would she even be awake? In my eagerness to help her, I hadn’t really considered the possibility that she wouldn’t be. I almost wanted to laugh.

Then, out of nowhere, something hit me like a pile of bricks, so heavy it flattened me on the wet grass.

Not a something—
someone
. A person, sprawled on top of me. A girl covered in blood.

She breathed against me, her hair in my face, so at least I knew she wasn’t dead. A blow from her elbow to my head had dazed me, but I was pretty sure I’d heard a snap when she landed. I wasn’t hurt, and I’d only partially broken her fall, so it must have come from her foot or leg as it met the ground. I wondered where all the blood was coming from until she tried to lift herself off of me, pressing against my chest.

The thumb of her right hand was missing. The gaping wound glared at me, weeping red all over my white jacket. White obviously didn’t go well with trash
or
blood.

I yelped at the same time she gave a stifled cry of pain. She must have somehow forgotten her thumb was cut off when she’d tried to use her hand. She almost fell on me again—albeit from a much lesser height than her balcony. I grabbed her wrist to steady her. My hand was now wet with her blood, but I hardly noticed as I pushed us both upright until we were seated in the grass facing each other.

There was no mistaking that face, scattered strands of wavy brown hair sticking to her tear-streaked cheeks.

It was her. The Word. She was definitely as beautiful as I’d previously thought, if not more so, but that was beside the point. I’d wanted her to show up or drop another clue from her balcony, but she’d done both in one go.

“If you’re here to help me, stop staring and start moving,” she said. Her dark eyes were focused, looking right at me, her voice and breath ridiculously steady for the amount of pain she had to be in. “But don’t pull that bracelet off yet or we’re both in trouble.”

After registering that she had a husky voice I would have found sexy on any other occasion, I noticed that my hand was still around her wrist, encircling it along with a black plastic bracelet.

My fingers were sticky when I pulled away. Though her tight black shirt and pants hid most of the blood on her, save for what was on her hands, they couldn’t disguise the horribly wrong angle of her ankle.

“Did you hear me?” she said calmly, maybe even coolly. “My ankle is broken. If I try to move and cause myself more pain, my heart rate will spike and they’ll notice.” She nodded at the bracelet, now mostly red instead of black as she held her arm upright, blood running down her wrist. It amazed me that she wasn’t trying to staunch the flow with her other hand, until I noticed what it held.

Her severed thumb.

“Gods,” I said, involuntarily leaning away from her. “Don’t you want to … don’t you need … a doctor or something?”

She smiled grimly. Rather, she gritted her perfect, pearly teeth and followed my stare to her thumb. “Anything but,” she said, then took a deep breath. “I can reattach it myself, but only after I take off the monitor. That’s why I cut it off in the first place.”

“You cut off your thumb?” My voice came out higher than I would have preferred.

“Yes!” she said, suddenly impatient, gritting her teeth again. “That’s the only way I can get the monitor over my hand. And the longer you wait, the sooner I bleed to death, since they’ll know the moment I take it off—and the location. So I can’t heal myself until it’s gone, and I can’t get rid of it until we’re moving. Go!”

“Where?” I asked, leaping up and looking around, as if the flower bed might hide a first aid kit or a splint.

“To your truck! You have spare black bags in there, yes? Bring four of them.”

“Four? Why?” Plastic bags weren’t very absorbent or very structural, as far as mopping blood or splinting a broken ankle went.

“Because one bag would tear. You’re going to use them to carry me. You have to get me out of here, out of the Athenaeum.” Desperation was offsetting the steady tone of her voice. “You have to help me.”

Her words hit me like another blow to the head, and I couldn’t think to argue; I simply reacted. I turned and ran, slipping across the grass and down the alley until I reached the truck. I wrenched open the door, cursing as I left bloody streaks on the white paint. Thank the Gods the truck was blocking me from the security camera so they couldn’t see what I was doing.

A roll of paper towels flew out of the glove box as I ripped into it. I wiped as much blood as I could off my hands and face and the door before I tore four bags off the roll in the back of the truck and quadrupled them into each other. After taking the laminated card from my pocket, I stripped off the not-so-white jacket, leaving myself with an undershirt that was mercifully dark blue. I threw the jacket and the bloodied towels into the beefed-up bag and even ripped open one of the actual trash bags, grabbing a few handfuls of crumpled wrappers and plastic cups and takeout boxes to stuff in there too, filling it about a fourth of the way.