Page 115 of Victorious

“Mitch,” she said, her voice straddling the line between gentle and firm. “I know.”

With that, she and Dol slipped into the room, and the door to number 12 swung shut.

IINOW. THEN.

11 HOURS BEFORE THE END

SYDNEY sighed and rolled over on the motel bed, glaringly awake.

The mattress was too hard, the air too stale, the room a jarring contrast with the cabin, which was comfortable and always smelled of woodsmoke. She sat up.

The clock on the bedside table read 2:06 a.m.

She flicked through the channels on the TV, but it was mostly infomercials, and the glow made the room look even more depressing. Sydney needed space. Needed air.

Dol lifted his head from the foot of the bed as she swung her legs over the side.

She ran her hand along his back and wondered for the hundredth time if he was still aging like a normal dog, or if he had slowed down, like her. Wondered, what would happen if he died again. How many times she would be able to bring him back. If there was a limit, a place beyond which even she couldn’t reach. Victor would insist she find the limit, not on Dol, perhaps, but on something, test until she had the answers.

But Sydney couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Sometimes, she’d learned, the truth wasn’t worth the pain of knowing it.

Abandoning any hope she had of sleep, she shoved her feet into her boots, and hauled her jacket on, then swung her backpack onto her shoulder and headed for the door.

Dol leapt off the bed and began to follow.

“No,” she said. “You have to stay.”

The dog ignored her, wedging his head under her arm. But Mitch had been clear about the rules.

“Sit,” she commanded, and Dol did. Squarely between Sydney and the door. Syd sighed and pointed to a square of carpet several feet away. “Sit there.”

Dol huffed, but after a moment, he trudged over to the spot she’d marked, and sat. “Now stay,” she ordered.

The dog whined in protest, but did as he was told.

“Good boy,” she said, tugging open the door. A gust of cold air stung her cheeks, but she bent her head against it, and stepped out into the dark, alone.

Syd spared a glance toward room 13, but the lights were off, which meant Mitch was probably asleep. Good. He needed it. The circles under his eyes were starting to look like they’d been tattooed on his face.

She trudged down the metal stairs to the motel’s sole attraction: the pool. A chain-link fence ran around the concrete plot at the edge of the motel. The metal gate whined softly as she nudged it open.

The pool itself was empty, clearly closed for the season. She kicked a pebble into the basin, and it made a pleasant plinking sound. A row of rickety plastic chairs lined the chain-link fence. Instead, Syd sank onto the pool’s rim, letting her feet hang over the side, as if it were the edge of the world.

Cold air wormed beneath her coat, dragged its icy touch along the base of her neck where her hair—which she’d been trying to grow out for years now—still didn’t reach. She turned the collar up, and unzipped her bag, fishing around until she found what she was looking for. Not the metal tin, or the gun wrapped in its scarf, or the textbook she’d been studying. Her hand closed around a paperback.

It was titled The Mind at Play, the Hands at Work, and a slip of paper on the inside cover declared it to be property of the Newtown Public Library. Though now, obviously, the book belonged to her.

She’d come across it weeks ago, on a featured table near the front of the library. The kind of self-help display that always popped up in January along with signs that said things like NEW YEAR, NEW YOU!

It was the authors’ names on the cover that had stopped her.

Martha and Alan Vale.

Victor’s parents.

Syd turned the book over in her hands. The couple on the back looked so ordinary, their smiles warm but fixed, Alan’s hand on Martha’s shoulder, her fingers laced around her knee, both leaning forward as if ready to share. The photo was in black and white, but even so, she could tell that Martha had Victor’s eyes, Alan had his hair. She knew that was the wrong way round—children took after parents—but she couldn’t convince herself that he had come from them.