I shook my head and righted myself. “I feel better now.”
Remy shook his head angrily. “We should be closer to figuring this out by now. Can’t Bill do anything?”
I glanced at Arthur to see if he’d heard, but he was snapping pictures of the burns with his phone. As the flash went off, another painful spasm went through my esophagus, and I hunched over, vomiting.
Remy swept my hair back with one hand and drew light circles on my back with the other until the sickness had passed. I spat into the mud to get the taste out of my mouth, then straightened.
“We need to take you to a doctor,” Remy whispered. “We won’t tell them about . . . We’ll just see what they can do.”
I shook my head
“Something’s wrong, Franny.”
“I’m handling it,” I lied.
I clutched at the tree trunk, waiting for the next jolt of pain twisting through my gut to let up.
Cold wind. Light falling all around me, being pulled into the center by an insurmountable force and the sound moving through me, everything, all at once, happening again and again—
Focus on the tree, I told myself, but it wasn’t working. I was lost in that dark place.
Something pressed against my hand. Hold on to me, came a voice through the darkness.
“Hold on to me, Franny,” Remy said again, and I opened my eyes and stared at my hand, still on the trunk but knotted tightly into his.
The creases of my raw pink knuckles, the light blue chips left on my nails from when Sofía brought polish to work for us last week digging into his hand, the red scars twining all the way from the tips of my fingers down my wrist and up to my—
The scars. They started halfway up my hand. There weren’t any on my fingers at all. I stepped back from Remy, pushing my sleeve up, and found the jagged ridges faded a half inch below my elbow, where they used to end.
“My scars,” I said. “Look. My scars. They shrank.” I thrust my arm out in front of Remy, and Arthur shone his phone toward us as he trudged over.
Remy’s mouth screwed up. “Are you sure?” He lifted his T-shirt around his stomach. “Mine too,” he said. “It’s like a third of the size it used to be.” In fact, it was little more than a wine-colored V-shape under the right side of his ribs.
Arthur turned his arm over under the light, illuminating the intricate pattern of purply-red. “Mine’s the exact same.”
“What do you think this all means?” Remy asked.
Arthur looked back to the burnt mud. “Like I said, we’ve definitely got two aliens in Splendor.”
“Not that,” I said. “The shrinking scars.”
His brow furrowed. “No idea. I’m more concerned with saving the world.”
His phone chirped just then and mine buzzed in my pocket and Remy’s must have too, because he took his out as well.
It was from Nick: Creep on the move! Following!
Another e-mail popped up from Bill, blocking out Nick’s text.
Frances, it read, Only I can help you. DO NOT TRUST THE . . .
My heart gave one sharp pulse.
Frances.
Frances?
When had I told him my name was Frances?
I wouldn’t have done that.
I couldn’t.
I didn’t.
My blood went cold.
“Earth to Franny!” Arthur was saying, waving the back of his hand in front of my face so I could see the stick-and-poke letters spelling out BUTT on his knuckles. “We don’t have much time—come on!”
He was right. Now was our chance. Probably our only one. We bounded up the hill and beelined toward the cellar.
Remy and I tore the brush aside, and Arthur stepped in with the bolt cutters at the ready. He crouched and fitted them onto the loop of the padlock.
“Wait,” Remy said, and we both froze and looked at him. “After this, we’re officially criminals. I mean, not fence-hopping delinquents. We’re talking felony-ing our way into someone’s cellar.”
“Yeah?” Arthur said.
“That’s all,” Remy said. “I just wanted to commemorate the loss of our innocence. As you were.”
Arthur cracked a smile, and an exhausted, fairly sick laugh rocked through me. “Farewell, indeed.”
Arthur put pressure on the bolt cutters, and the padlock snapped, dropping with a clatter against the wooden doors.
Remy reached forward to open it, but I brushed his hand aside. “Let me,” I said. “That way, if we get arrested for this, we can tell your dad we coerced you.”
He smiled faintly. “Who would buy that?”
“You won’t be the one who opened the door.”
“So?”
I shook my head, trying to explain. “You’re the one who has stuff to lose here. College and a career, and all that. When this is all over, you need to be able to get out of here, Remy. You have to leave before this town sucks out your soul, which means maintaining some level of plausible deniability. You’re the one with the future.”
“Stop it, okay?” Remy said sharply. “You have a future. And wherever it is, I’m in it. I’m not leaving you.”
Arthur squinted between us. “What the hell are you two even talking about? Just open the door!”
So Remy reached out and opened that last door, the one we couldn’t close again.