X weighed her words.
“Yet if I do not go after him,” he said, “someone will surely come after me.”
But still he didn’t move. He lingered on the ice with Zoe, listening to branches break as Stan scurried up the hills in the dark. Why wasn’t X chasing him, Zoe wondered. Why was he doing what she wanted? Why would he care what she wanted?
“If you kill him, you’re as bad as he is,” she said. “It’s not our job to punish people.”
X lowered his head.
“Perhaps it is not yours,” he said.
Zoe stumbled back to Bert and Betty’s house to retrieve Jonah, pausing just long enough to take a picture of the license plate on Stan’s diseased-looking truck. Spock and Uhura followed her. X did, too. Zoe didn’t look back, but she could hear him wading through the snow behind her. He didn’t follow her inside. He stayed on the porch out of respect—or shyness, maybe. He hushed the dogs when they whimpered so he must have known somehow that Jonah was sleeping. Spock and Uhura lifted their heads and eventually X figured out that they wanted to be scratched under their chins. He knelt and rubbed them cautiously and whispered their names. Zoe set a candle on the windowsill and watched for a long moment.
Jonah was still lying on the couch. He appeared to have slept through the chaos. But when Zoe went to lift him his body seemed tense, not the floppy mass of bread dough it should have been.
Holding Jonah made Zoe’s arms ache—she’d never get him home this way. Still, she couldn’t bear the thought of rousing him and forcing him to march back through the woods. He deserved to wake up in his bed, the nightmare over and his Nerf guns and Stomp Rockets right where he left them. She wanted innocence and forgetting for Jonah—all the more because she couldn’t have them for herself.
She laid him on the couch again, her palm cradling the back of his head like he was a newborn. Then she stood and waited for a solution to appear out of the ether.
Through the window, she saw X sitting with the dogs on his lap. His face was damp with sweat, and the snow on his coat was turning translucent as it melted. Spock nipped at him playfully, which seemed to startle him. Had he never played with dogs before? At last he understood what Spock wanted. He pretended his hands were birds and teased the dog by making them swoop and dive just beyond his reach.
X must have known he was being watched. He looked back at Zoe through the glass. She was struck again by how sick he’d become. But he seemed not to be asking for help but to be offering it. Did he have some plan for getting her and her brother back to their house? Because that was the only thing in the world Zoe wanted right now. She met X’s eyes. She didn’t move, she didn’t so much as mouth a word—but he nodded.
After that, she saw flashes of sky and what seemed like a video of the trees blurring by on fast-forward.
X was dizzy and staggering and in the grip of some sickness that Zoe had never seen.
But he carried them home.
Even in the darkness, Zoe could see that the snow in the driveway was untouched, and her heart sank at the sight of it: her mother hadn’t made it back yet. She was desperate to see her, but it was just as well that she wasn’t home. Zoe couldn’t have explained the strange figure who had delivered them and who—after refusing water, shelter, gloves, a hat, a blanket, and even veggie jerky (but then who said yes to veggie jerky?)—was now retreating in the direction of the woods.
She looked out at X one last time. She saw him stagger a few feet, then fall to one knee in the snow. She made herself turn away.
Zoe opened the door of the house, a difficult maneuver now that Jonah was sleeping in her arms. She found the Post-it on the fridge where her mother kept all the contact information for the police, and—holding it between her teeth—struggled up the staircase with her brother.
Jonah’s bed was small and shaped like a ladybug. When Zoe finally lowered him onto it, he rolled onto his side without waking, and began drooling onto the pillow.
She sat on the floor by Jonah’s bed with her phone, and e-mailed the picture of Stan’s license plate to the police, along with a message that read: “This truck belongs to the man who killed Bert + Betty Wallace. With the poker from their fireplace. His name is Stan something. His truck is still at their house. He’s maybe 45 + about 6 feet tall. Skinny. Buzz cut. Messed-up eyebrow. You’re welcome.”
Once she’d sent the e-mail, she scrolled through the clump of texts that had finally broken through. There were some from Dallas (who was “full-on stoked” from “rocking out” in the blizzard), Val (who had missed it entirely because she was napping), and her mother (who was just generally frantic). Part of Zoe felt abandoned by her mom, but she couldn’t help but smile as she read her stream of messages: Roads horrific. Can’t even get out of grocery store. So sorry, Zo … Still horrific. Still sorry … Don’t let J eat cereal before bed. Try gluten-free waffle … ARGH. Radio says snowplows aren’t even going out tonight. No way to get up mountain … Still in grocery store! Will live in grocery store forever, eating chemicals and pesticides, like real American … Are U OK? … U know what? If J wants cereal, he can have it … OMG Rufus just rescued me in his big-ass van, like a knight. NO, he’s NOT in love with me—I heard that! I’m going to crash on his couch … Tell me you’re OK? … Can’t sleep. Worrying about you. Did J want cereal?
Zoe sat pondering what to text back.