The rubber soles of my shoes are quiet on the rough sand as I wander out beyond all the Atlantis structures.   The original two thousand acres have been pared down to barely three hundred over the years as land was sold off to the government at bargain basement prices.  The surrounding area is all part of a protected natural preserve and new construction is prohibited.  Atlantis was grandfathered in and as private property and may remain as such as long as it’s owned by a member of the original family.  If it was sold to the government for peanuts, the buildings would likely be razed immediately and the landscape returned to the authority of the desert.

A faint breeze lifts my hair slightly as I pause and watch the shadows of the mountains disappear into the invading night.  I feel funny, a vague wave of dizzy detachment.  Maybe it has something to do with where I’m standing.  Perhaps some distant part of my genetic makeup recalls that other Savages have stood here before.

Or maybe it’s something else.

How many times had we hiked out here at night, two teens in desperate, frantic love?   I might have stepped right in these tracks five years ago, our hands clasped together, my body in a fire to feel his.

I turn away with a shudder and slowly walk back toward the house.  The activity has died down now that the crew has departed for the night, having rented out a floor in the only motel in Consequences.   On a typical night they’ll wrap up around eight p.m. and return promptly at seven the next morning, unless there’s something interesting going on.

For the hours in between, there were cameras installed all over the property. I didn’t bother to listen too closely when Cate Camp outlined their locations.  As I reach the front door where someone has been thoughtful enough to leave the bright porch light on, I expect that I’m being watched in some way.

It’s late.  I’m tired.  I don’t know what to expect tomorrow or the day after that but I’ve already sentenced myself to being here no matter what.

I wonder if this is how a caged animal feels.

CHAPTER NINE

OZ

Being alone never bothers me.  I’m used to it.  Maybe it’s a side effect of those fucked up early years.  Or maybe some of us are just born that way.  It might not be the worst thing.  Caves and caverns, forests and deserts, all tend to make for better company than people.  People are messy.

I had left the hotel before the sun came up, pausing at a gas station on the way out of town to fuel up and grab some breakfast from a vending machine.  Oklahoma bleeds into Northern Texas and suddenly, without any preamble, I’m in New Mexico.  My phone might be buzzing like a hive if I bothered to turn it on.

Let Gary and his team sweat about when or where or how I’ll turn up.  I said I’d be there.  And I will be there.

New Mexico, at least the part I’m driving through, is full of muted neutral colors.  There’s a gentler look about things here than what I know awaits in Arizona.

My back is unhappy about being pressed against the seat of the truck hour after hour.  I stretch and hear a pop.  It’s doubly unhappy because last night was restless.  A lot of violent tossing that receded into uneasy dreams of Ren.

Ren straddling me on a public beach, Ren dancing naked in a church, Ren in a YouTube video blowing smoke rings at a desert sky and then winking.  None of that ever really happened.  But now every excuse I’ve repeated to myself for the last five years seems flimsy.   I’ve stubbornly remained in my own exile rather than demand the answer she owed me.

But for crying out loud, hadn’t she already told me to leave?   Hadn’t she said the only thing that could make me turn away?

I can remember the way her hair felt between my fingers and the laugh in her voice as she said my name but there’s a big gaping hole between the last time I held her and the first night I spent without her, bitterly alone and resolving to stay that way.  Everything else I can see with crystal clarity but I usually avoid thinking about those other details.

She’d pressed some money into my hand.  I remember that.  Like I wanted fucking money from her.  Her pig of a mother lurked the background, acrid smoke hung in the air and Monty Savage punched me at some point. I might have killed him if Ren hadn’t stepped between us.  None of that was important.  Not the blood in my mouth or the screaming in my ears.  There was just Ren saying something I couldn’t hear and then Ren saying something I could hear.  Something impossible.

“Go.”

“No.” 

“Go, Oscar!”

“You don’t mean it.” 

“Yes I do.  We are finished.  We are nothing.  And you need to leave me alone now.” 

“Then you fucking say it.  Tell me you don’t want me.  Ren, you tell me that and I swear to god you’ll never fucking see me again.” 

“I don’t want you, Oscar.  I don’t want you.  I DON’T WANT YOU!”

Because it’s been so long since I’ve thought about that moment, I can’t even be sure it’s right.  Except the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me it is.  There are some gaps, some puzzle pieces that aren’t quite interlocking; there’s Ren crying, there’s August shaking his head, there’s Spencer chasing me down and urgently pushing the money into my hand, the money Ren had tried to give me before I threw the wad of bills back in her face. Then there’s Spence helping me get a bag hastily packed and stealing the keys to the pickup in order to get me at least to Consequences, where I would have a better chance at finding a ride somewhere else.

Everything still ends with “I don’t want you.”

The hurt feels fresh right now.  I know why I’ve kept that particular memory away.  And it was a valid excuse for a while, when I was still a kid trying to carve out a way to survive.  I’d hitched a ride to Phoenix and the thousand bucks Spence had pushed on me was enough to grab a room in a decrepit motel and get my bearings.

It’s a sad fact that the world isn’t awash with opportunities for a homeless teen with no last name.  I told anyone who asked that I was called Oz.  I wanted nothing to do with Oscar Savage anymore.  He was never real anyway.  Acevedo became my last name on a whim when I was watching a local news broadcast and the cute reporter chirped her name at the end of a segment about the toxic desert toads that surfaced in the summer monsoon season.

I started looking for work in the area surrounding the huge state university but didn’t have much luck without any ID.  I got turned down flat everywhere I tried, a few would-be employers snottily informing me that they used e-verify and can’t hire those who are in the country illegally.  I didn’t bother to argue with them.

During the day I would sneak into the university library for hours at a time, enjoying the free air conditioning and turning the pages of dusty old science books that most everyone seemed to have forgotten about.  That’s where I had a stroke of actual good luck when a man walked by, glanced at the book I was reading, and asked me if I was enjoying it.

“Good,” he said, when I warily nodded.  “Because I wrote it.”

His name was Dr. Lemon and he was a geology professor.   He wasn’t put off by the vague answers I gave to whatever questions he asked.  To him, it didn’t matter that I was a rather tough-acting teen with an obvious chip on my shoulder.  It was enough for him that I sat in the library hour after hour devouring book after book.  He did ask if I had any family who might be looking for me and I said no.  Then he asked if I wanted to finish high school and I said hell no.  He frowned over that and then searched around in his leather briefcase, withdrawing a shiny brochure.   Some friends of his ran a tourism company in Colorado.  He told me to wait until the following day and give them a call.  They were searching for tour guide trainees.