Part 9 (1/2)
”Okay,” he said. ”So you swing the boom, and I'll pull the tiller.”
Alice nodded. Zach steered toward the sandy bank to give them plenty of room to come about. ”When the sail s.h.i.+fts, we're going to have to change sides too,” he told Poppy. ”So get ready.”
He pulled on the tiller, and Alice pulled in the rope so that the sail tightened and swung. The boat turned in a single graceful movement, and then, with the wind and the current coming at them the wrong way and almost no idea what they were doing, the boat listed to one side and went over, dumping them all into the river.
The water was shockingly cold, and the impact of it rattled him down to his bones. He grabbed for the side of the boat.
Alice sputtered to the surface. Poppy was treading water, holding on to the mast and the sail.
Zach swam to the keel, which rose from the hull like a shark's fin. ”Get clear for a second.”
Poppy kicked away from the boat, dog-paddling toward Alice.
Zach threw his weight against the hull, and it righted itself, its sail lifting up off the water. He scrabbled to pull himself on board.
Alice heaved herself onto the deck, and then both of them grabbed for Poppy, who kept one arm pressed across her chest to hold the doll in place even as she was hauled onto the boat. Another barge was pa.s.sing to their left, creating a rippling wake that made their boat rock wildly again. And Zach could see that two barges followed it. For a moment they just drifted farther in the wrong direction, sail slack, holding on.
Alice lunged at Poppy. ”This is enough. The end. Enough with the creepy doll and the lying and the trying to make this true.” With those words, her hand darted out and s.n.a.t.c.hed the doll from where it was half zipped inside Poppy's wet hoodie.
Poppy screeched, and Zach gasped, but it was too late. Alice threw it overhand, up and out toward the barge and the deep water.
Everything froze for a long moment. The Queen hit the waves with barely a splash, the water seeming to soak her dress in slow motion, drawing it down. Her hair spread in a golden wave, and her dull black eyes looked up at them as she bobbed for a moment before sinking in a froth of bubbles.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
ZACH DIDN'T THINK ABOUT IT. HE DOVE.
When he was a little kid, his mom had taken him to swimming cla.s.ses at the YMCA. He remembered the bleachy smell of the chlorine and the feel of the orange swimmies inflated too tightly against his upper arms and the way all the kids' shouting bounced off the ceiling to echo. And he remembered how to kick like a frog.
He kicked now, over and over, toward the Queen, reaching for her, opening his eyes in the murky brown river.
His fingers closed on a sc.r.a.p of her dress. Striking his other hand out hard, he caught her arm and hauled her to him. For a moment the cold deadweight of her small china body seemed warm against his. Before he could think too much about that, he was swimming toward the surface. His head broke through the waves, and he sucked in a grateful lungful of air.
His whole body was shaking with cold. His teeth chattered. His toes had gone numb. Behind him, Poppy and Alice were fighting, but it was hard to focus on their words.
Then the wake of the barge hit, the waves sending him under again, this time without him holding his breath. He came up choking.
The sailboat was at a strange angle, closer to sh.o.r.e. The waves had carried it to shallower water, where the keel caught in the mud. The Pearl had run aground.
The girls were wading through the shallow water.
They were shouting at each other, but Zach didn't pay attention. The water was too cold, and it took too much energy for him to do anything but put his head down and swim.
He kicked and kicked and kicked.
Clutching the Queen to his chest, leaving only a single free arm with which to paddle, reaching the sh.o.r.e seemed to take forever. And when he finally got there, the bank of the Ohio River was muddy, sucking at his feet, making wading ash.o.r.e even harder than swimming had been.
Poppy was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, looking bedraggled and miserable. Her lips were blue with cold. Alice had sloughed off her coat somewhere and had her arms around herself like she was trying to physically restrain herself from s.h.i.+vering.
”The backpacks are gone,” Alice said. ”They must have fallen out when the boat rolled the first time.”
Zach sank down on the sandy, muddy bank and looked at the doll in his arms. The Queen's dress was torn, and it seemed ready to disintegrate further as it dried. One of her arms had been pulled free from the socket and was hanging limply from a dirty string. He stared down at her and wondered why he'd been willing to jump back into a freezing river to get her.
He hadn't even thought about it. He didn't even remember deciding. He'd just known that if he didn't, he would lose something he wasn't ready to give up.
As the Queen's dull black eyes rolled up at him, he remembered what Poppy had said about breathing in the dead. Maybe when he'd opened up her bag of ashes, he'd inhaled some by accident. And if that was true, then maybe she could possess him anytime she wanted, just like the dead people who possessed you when you pa.s.sed by graveyards. He wanted to drop her on the riverbank, but his hands wouldn't obey him.
”What time is it?” Alice asked. ”My phone's dead.”
He looked at his watch. The center of the crystal face had fogged up, but even if it had stopped, it couldn't be too far off. ”Three twenty.”
”We've got to get moving,” Alice said, clearly panicked. ”Get up. We've got to go.”
Zach's feet felt like they were filled with lead. ”Alice . . .” We're not going to make it, he wanted to tell her. There's no way. We don't even know where we're going. But he could see in her face that she already knew all those things. That she'd figured them out on the boat before she'd hurled the Queen into the waves.
”How could youa”?” Poppy said to her, but then bit off the end of the sentence as Alice stalked off. Poppy pulled the doll from Zach's hands silently. He let her take it.
Alice walked with determination, and although Zach wasn't sure she knew where she was going, he and Poppy followed her.
They stumbled through the woods and then along the side of an empty stretch of road, past a raggedy wire fence that looked like it was keeping zombies back after an apocalypse rather than cows. As they tripped over rocks and stumps, wet hair sticking to their faces and necks, soaked socks squelching in their shoes, the silence stretched between them, making him even more panicked. Zach kept looking at his watch, which wasn't running entirely right anymore but still seemed to be ticking along faster than he wanted.
They were all s.h.i.+vering. Alice kept asking what time it was in a smaller and smaller voice. At three thirty, she kept marching with grim determination. At three thirty-four, she sped up to a near run. At three thirty-seven, she started to cry, quietly and to herself. He reached out a hand toward her, but she gave him such a terrible look that he pulled back and let her alone. At three forty-three, she set her jaw and kept going.
At three fifty-four, when the bus was well and truly gone, she whirled on Poppy.
”You promised this wouldn't happen!” she shouted. ”You promised, and then you broke your promises over and over again, and now my whole life is going to be ruined because of you!”
”You never cared about the quest!” Poppy shouted back. ”You threw Eleanor into the water. You threw her away like she was garbage.”
”I thought maybe if she was gone, you'd go back to normal,” Alice said. ”I know you're just making all this up. Stop acting like it's so important, like you actually believe in it. Maybe you have Zach fooled, but you don't fool me.”
”Is that what you're mad about? About Zach?”
”I don'ta””
Poppy whirled on Zach. ”She loooooves you. That's her big secret. She wants you to be her boyfriend and go to the movies with her and make kissy faces. That's the only reason she even came with us.”
Zach took a step back, glancing over at Alice, expecting her to deny it.
Her trembling hands went to cover her face. She and Poppy were both s.h.i.+vering as hard as he was. But she didn't deny anything and he didn't have room in his brain to know how to process that. He felt a little embarra.s.sed and a lot shocked. And it didn't matter anyway. They were all cold and miserable, and he had to do something before the fight they'd been having all along bubbled over into something so bad that it couldn't be taken back.
”Alicea”” he started, not quite sure what he was going to say, but hoping he'd figure it out as he spoke.