After the End by Amy Plum
Juneau looks at me inquisitively like she’s wondering whether I’m going to cry, but those rivers have dried, and it’s only the furrows they carved in my heart that are left. “What happened?” she asks when she sees I’m not going to break down.
“She’s sick. Severe depression. She tried to kill herself last year, and when she didn’t succeed, she said we would be better off without her. And then she left.”
Juneau sits there looking horrified and firms her grip on my hand. “Do you know where she is?” she asks.
“Yeah, Dad tracked her down. She’s living with her aunt outside New York City.”
“Oh, Miles. I don’t even know what to say.” She looks shaken up. Really upset.
“It’s okay,” I say, feeling like I’m comforting her instead of vice versa. “I mean, I miss her, but you get used to someone being gone after a while.” I’m a big fat liar. And it doesn’t look like Juneau’s buying it.
“I just can’t imagine it,” she says. “I’ve never known anyone to get sick.”
“Yeah, well, mental illness is just the same as any other illness. At least that’s what people keep telling me. It happens all the time.”
Juneau just looks at me funny, like she feels sorry for me. My gaze drops to her lips, causing my heartbeat to stutter, and I quickly turn my focus back to the road.
“What about your dad?” she asks.
“What about him?” I ask, and realize how defensive it sounds once it’s out of my mouth.
“Won’t he be worrying?”
“Well, he knows I was in Seattle,” I say carefully. “I really should check in with him so he doesn’t freak out.”
Juneau bites her lip.
“What?” I ask.
“Frankie was really clear about me not letting you use the phone while I was with you,” she says.
Well, Frankie stumbled upon a grain of truth, I think, and wonder what I’m going to tell my dad once I do talk to him. I mean, I can’t just hand Juneau over to him. Not now that I’m sure she’s not the person he thinks she is.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, pulling my hand away from hers so I can take some sharp bends in the road. A hawk takes off in flight from the ground near us, carrying its unlucky prey—looks like a mouse—in its claws.
“Sure,” she says.
“All that money you were flashing around in Walmart . . . where did you get it?”
A flash of suspicion crosses her features, but then she shrugs as if it can’t hurt to tell me. “I traded a gold nugget for cash.”
“So you’re not actually . . . working for anyone?” I ask, and it comes out all wrong. But she doesn’t seem to notice and shakes her head.
“The only job I’ve ever had is hunting for food. I’m one of the best shots in our clan. Oh, and apprentice clan Sage, of course. Which I have a feeling is over now that Whit is out to get me.”
She tries to say it flippantly, but besides the one smile I got at breakfast and just now when I talked about Mom, she’s been colder toward me today. Maybe it was the kiss, but I have a feeling it’s something else. She seems remote. Something has changed in her.
She picks up a battered old notebook and pen that I keep stashed in the passenger-side door. “Can I use this?” she asks, and begins scribbling something.
“What are you writing?” I ask.
“A note,” she says.
I thank my lucky stars for the kazillionth time that she’s not a big talker like most of the girls I know in L.A. and turn on the radio. We drive without talking for the next two hours, the bird napping in the backseat and Juneau looking out her window, glancing up occasionally to see how far we’ve gone.
When we’re a mile away from our destination, she sits up and pays attention until finally we arrive at the town limit. “Stop there,” Juneau says, pointing to a sign reading ENTERING SPRAY, POPULATION 160.
Tearing the page from her notebook, she folds it up, tears a hole in one end, and laces a piece of string through it. “Okay, Poe. This is the end of the line for you,” she says, getting out of the car and scooping the bird out of the backseat. It squawks belligerently, as if it understands what she was saying and prefers to stay in the warm car and be chauffeured across the Pacific Northwest.
She holds it to her as she ties the note around its foot. “Miles, could you tear two blank pages from the notebook and fold one over the front license plate and the other over the back?” I don’t even bother asking why and do what she says, hoping that none of the 160 townspeople decides to leave Spray just as I am doing something that looks extremely iffy, if not downright illegal.
Juneau waits until I am done and then carries the bird toward the sign. She makes sure he looks directly at it, and then bows her head and whispers something to it. Standing for a moment with her eyes closed and the raven squeezed close to her chest, she throws it up into the air. It dips for a second, and then flaps upward, circling overhead.
“Get back in the car,” Juneau says, “and start driving into town, slowly.”
“Can I take the paper off—” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“Just drive, Miles.”
“Your word is my command, O dark mistress of bird wrangling,” I mumble, and press the gas, rolling into town as slowly as possible. In the rearview mirror I see the bird finish its circling and head back in the direction we came from.
“Stop,” Juneau orders before we reach the first building. She jumps out, takes the paper off the license plates, and then hops back in. She pulls the atlas to her lap and traces on it with her finger. “We’re going to drive south out of town, and then take 26 east until we get back to the main highway we were on.”
I glance at where she’s pointing. “So we’re going toward Idaho? Which means we’re backtracking,” I comment.
“Not quite—we’ll end up a half hour south of where we camped,” she says, and raises her chin like she thinks I’m going to contest her choice. Instead, I shrug and drive through the small town, stopping for gas at the far end of the main street before continuing on Juneau’s chosen route.
I don’t need to ask. I saw her note. And it explained everything.
So, traitor, you want to play? The game has officially begun.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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35
JUNEAU
TWO HOURS SOUTHWEST. NOW TWO HOURS southeast. A pretty big detour just to throw Whit off our trail. But I need him to think that I’m mis-Reading. That I don’t know where my clan is. Of course, there’s the chance he knows exactly what I’m doing.
I hesitated before sending the note with Poe. But even without it, Whit would still see me releasing Poe through the bird’s memory. See Miles and me getting back into the car. He would know I released Poe on purpose: he would already be suspicious. So the note only served the purpose of making me feel better. I can’t help a satisfied smile from possessing my face. The feelings of anger and betrayal are still on a low simmer inside me, but the fear has evaporated. It’s me against Whit, and I am ready to fight.
I glance at Miles, and though it’s against my better judgment, I feel the overwhelming temptation to reach over and put my hand on his. Not out of anything romantic, I tell myself, just for reassurance. After what happened last night, I don’t want to give him any ideas. I can’t get close to him. I won’t be distracted from my quest. He is only here to help me get to my destination, I insist, but my gaze strays back to his hand.
My face blazes as I remember our grappling match in the tent, and I suddenly realize that the boy who kissed me is sitting just a couple of feet away, watching me and . . . waiting for an answer. “I’m sorry, what?” I stammer.
“So next stop is Idaho?” he asks.
“I think so,” I say.
Miles is silent for a moment and then says, carefully, “You’re asking me to drive more than two hund
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he says slowly. “Was it fire this time?”
“Was what fire?” I ask, confused.
“Did you read a fire? Or was it the raven? Or what?”
I watch him to see if he’s being sarcastic. He’s not. He’s just trying to get me to talk. “I’d rather not discuss it,” I say finally.
“Juneau, you can tell me. I’m not going to laugh at you,” he says.
Frankie said I have to tell him the truth. But in this case, I just can’t. “You wouldn’t understand anyway,” I snap, hoping that will shut him up.
It does. He bites his lip and reaches over to turn the radio up. Good. That conversation’s over.
I turn my thoughts back to the three prophecies I received last night. The one about Whit was clear enough. But when my next step was revealed, it might as well have been spoken in Chinese. I didn’t understand a word of it.
Prophecies are usually cryptic, but I don’t even know how to approach decrypting this one. I pick up Miles’s notebook, jot the words down from memory, and study them one by one.
Finally, Miles turns down the radio and asks, “Do we have time to stop for lunch?” His voice is back to normal—he’s gotten over the insult I used to shut him up. Good.
I close the notebook and tuck it under my seat. My head hurts from thinking so hard, and the puzzle remains unsolved. “Let’s just make sandwiches,” I suggest.
We pull into a tiny town called Unity and dig Cokes, chips, and sandwich stuff out of the trunk. “We can eat in the car,” I say, but Miles frowns and gestures toward a lone picnic table sitting nearby under a tree. “Can we sit outside and eat? I’m getting sick of the car.”
My instincts say to keep going. But Miles looks tired. Discouraged.
“Hopefully they fell for our ruse in Spray and are headed toward the Pacific Ocean now,” I concede. “I don’t see why we can’t stop for fifteen minutes.”
Relief floods his face. We spread the food out on a table, and he begins to eat standing up. “My butt fell asleep back near Canyon City,” he explains, brushing crumbs from his mouth as he bounces on his toes.
“How long do we have until we hook up to the main highway?” I ask.
Miles jogs to the car and comes back with the atlas and a pencil. “Another hour and a half and we meet back up with 84 at the border of Idaho,” he says, making a dot on where we are and tracing lightly to the edge of Oregon.
We’re reconnecting with the road we started on. But Frankie’s directions were vague—go southeast—and I have no idea what comes next. Damn cryptic prophecy, I think.
And then I’m struck by an idea. I touch Miles’s arm. “Will you try something with me? I’m going to say a sentence, and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.”
Miles furrows his brow. “Okay,” he says hesitantly.
I pronounce the words of the prophecy carefully: “Follow the serpent toward the city by the water that cannot be drunk.”
Miles looks confused. “That means absolutely nothing to me,” he says. “What is it?”
“It’s our directions,” I admit.
“This was one of the signs you got last night?”
“Yes,” I say uncomfortably. Don’t tell him any more, I think. I take a swig of root beer and let the bubbles fizz on my tongue before swallowing.
“You heard those actual words?” He sounds incredulous.
I nod. DON’T TELL HIM, my inner voice is now shouting. I have to tell him, I think. If I don’t follow the rules in the prophecies, I might as well give up now.
He scratches his head and looks suspicious. “How’d you manage that?”
“I used an oracle,” I say.
He huffs in amusement. “Did you convince Poe to talk?”
I take another sip of root beer and shake my head. I feel guilt rolling off me in waves and am surprised that Miles can’t sense it. I look away from him, and by the time I look back a dark cloud has stretched across his face.
“You didn’t,” he says.
I nod meekly, but reminding myself that rules don’t count in a state of war, I lift my chin and watch as he gathers together his memories of last night, flips through them, and then arrives at the answer. “What was in that tea you gave me in the tent?” His voice is flat. Dead.
“Something we grow in Alaska that’s a bit like brugmansia.”
“What the hell is brugmansia?” he says, and his face is crimson. His eyes dark.
“Angel’s trumpets,” I respond, knowing full well he has no idea what that means either.
“WHAT DOES IT DO?” Miles’s words are like four small daggers stabbing my skull. My hand rises to my forehead. Don’t think of him as a boy. He is your driver. Your oracle. That is all. I force my hand back down to my side and raise my chin. I had to use him—I had no other choice.
“It’s a narcotic, but when diluted enough, like it was last night, it can be used as a sedative,” I say.
“You drugged me.” Miles is breathless. As if someone has socked him in the stomach. Pain is scrawled across his face.
I steel myself. I am in the right. “I did what needed to be done.”
“Couldn’t you have asked me first?” Miles says. He looks like he’s still trying to make sense out of what I’ve just said. Like he doesn’t believe it. Like I’m playing a joke on him.
“You wouldn’t have said yes,” I respond, crossing my arms. And making my voice as flat as I can, I say, “Why would you, when you haven’t believed a word I’ve said so far?”
Miles stands there staring at me in disbelief, his hands shaking with emotion. “That is because YOU ARE DELUSIONAL!” he yells. “I’m not saying it’s your fault. You’ve been brainwashed. But Juneau, for God’s sake, there is no Yara. You don’t have special magical abilities.”
His face is a lightning storm. “But what is your fault is the fact that last night you gave me some kind of homemade drug without my knowledge. All for your crazy fantasy. Was there an aphrodisiac in there too? Because I would rather have kissed that fleabag raven than a freak like you. I can’t go along with this any longer. That’s it!” he says, and with a swift motion, stabs the pencil into the atlas hard enough to break it in half. Then, turning, he stalks toward the car.
His words sweep over me like an errant wind, hitting me square in the face before flowing over and around me and disappearing. Unimportant. Because I am staring at the map and the violent slash of graphite marking where the Snake River transects Idaho directly north of the Great Salt Lake.
I scoop up the atlas and make a dash for the car.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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36
MILES
I AM ON AUTOPILOT. STANDING THERE IN FRONT of her as she told me how she drugged me and used me as her voodoo doll, I felt like I had been stabbed. But it only took one look at her self-righteous expression and I cauterized my wound with a blowtorch. Up until now, I still had a half-baked plan of talking Juneau into going to California with me. One that I had almost talked myself out of. What would Dad want with this delusional teenager?
But now my mind is made up. I don’t care why he wants her. I’m going to deliver.
I let her navigate us down every side road across lower Idaho in order to avoid the highway skirting the Snake River. She shouts out directions over the noise of the radio, which I crank up until it drowns out any other sound.
Seven hours we drive, until the blue haze of dusk settles around us and the trees look like silhouettes cut from black construction paper. A neon sign ahead announces EL DORADO MOTEL AND BAR. I turn the radio off. “We’re staying here,” I say, and Juneau doesn’t argue.
I pull into a parking lot empty except for two semis and a pickup truck and take a space in fr
I pace back out to the car, where Juneau’s pulled her pack out of the trunk and stands watching a couple of truckers eating dinner in the adjacent building through the bar’s plate-glass windows. “Your room,” I say, and hand her one of the keys without looking her in the face.
I pull my own suitcase out of the trunk and slam it shut, and ignore Juneau, who’s still standing there next to the car as if she doesn’t know how to find the hotel room with the big “3” on the door. I’m not about to offer my services. Letting myself into room 5, I toss my suitcase onto the flowered bedspread and pick up the telephone receiver, trying to ignore the overpowering smell of vanilla-scented room freshener. No dial tone. Of course.
I stamp out, pulling the door closed behind me, and make my way back to the office, where Mustardhead is watching a rodeo on an ancient black-and-white TV. “The phone in my room doesn’t work,” I say.
“Pay phone behind the bar,” he says, tipping his head slightly toward the far corner of the parking lot.
I find the pay phone and look at it for a second, unsure what to do. I don’t even know how much a pay phone costs. I remember something I saw in an old TV show and, picking up the receiver, press 0. “Collect call to Murray Blackwell,” I say, and give the operator Dad’s number.
“Blackwell,” comes my dad’s voice, and the operator tells him I’m on the line. Dad acts civil until she hangs up, and then comes the explosion. “Where the hell are you, Miles? I instructed you to come straight home. That was four days ago. If I wasn’t worried of getting you in worse trouble than you’re already in, I would have called the state troopers. What were you doing? Partying it up in Seattle?”
“I’m in Idaho. And I’ve got her, Dad.” I look through the glass at the truckers seated at the counter. They’re both watching me, like I’m more interesting than the music videos blaring from the TV above the bar. I turn my back to them and hunch over to get some semblance of privacy.