I unbuckle my belt. As I climb over the seat to the front, I see my dad over there with the carts. It’s fine. He’s nearby. He’ll be happy to see my mommy’s friend, too.
Like I do when I pretend to drive in the garage, I hit the locks. They all click.
Before I see the man, I hear Jonas scream. He doesn’t like strangers. I turn around to see the man taking him out of his car seat. Jonas doesn’t like it; he’s crying and kicking.
Then his cries are getting quieter because he’s going away.
“Daddy!” I scream as I watch my mommy’s friend and the man put Jonas in a van. I’m never supposed to get out in a parking lot but I do anyway. “Daddy!” I scream and scream until he hears me and runs.
Daddy listens to what happened and drives fast and chases the van, but we hit a car and that’s all I remember.
Tears are running down my cheeks when Luke rejoins me in the car.
“Take me home,” I say quietly, and he does.
41
“Are you all right?” Mom says as she rushes toward me. When she reaches the chair where I’m curled in a ball, wrapped in a woven blanket and otherwise attempting to shield myself from the world, the back of her hand instinctively flits to my forehead.
“I don’t have a fever,” I say, shaking her off. “I’m fine, I just need your help.”
She takes a step back in her business suit and heels and looks at me warily.
“Okay…” she says.
“We have to go to the police,” I say matter-of-factly, my voice slightly muffled since the blanket has crept up toward my mouth. I push it away and sit up.
“Why on earth would we—”
“I know who did it. I know who took Jonas. I remember them.”
I’m not surprised by the look of shock on my mother’s face.
“Them?”
“Yes, them. A man and a woman. I can see them. I can help the police find them.”
“Slow down, sweetie,” my mom says, sitting on the couch to my right. “Tell me what happened.”
I do, and the tears are unleashed again. It’s all my fault.
“Honey, it’s okay,” my mom whispers, reaching over and stroking my hair. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yes, I did!” I wail. “I unlocked the doors! It’s my fault he’s gone. It’s my fault he’s dead!”
I pull the blanket back to my face and cry until there’s nothing left.
“Shhh,” my mom says, over and over, and I feel like shaking off her kindness. I don’t deserve it. How can she still love me, knowing I’m the reason Jonas is dead?
Will she still love me when she hears the rest of the story?
“Mom, that’s not all,” I say through my tears. As terrible as the past memory is, it’s done. What I haven’t shared is the part in the future that hasn’t happened yet. It weighs on me so heavily that I sink lower into the chair.
“What is it, London?” Mom says in a hushed tone, brushing back my hair and wiping away my tears as they’re replaced by new ones. “You can tell me anything.”
Desperate to tell someone, I open my mouth and creak out the words.
“Luke is going to die, too.”
In a voice so low that my mom has to crouch to hear me, I tell her the future memory that seeing the criminals’ faces has triggered.
I tell her that it must be in five or six years, judging by my reflection in the storefront window on a city street I don’t recognize. Luke is there.
I’m clutching a torn piece of paper with an address scrawled on it. We’re watching, until someone emerges. We’re curious. We plan to tell the police.
A man leaves the brownstone; he’s wearing knockoff dress shoes and a blazer so that he doesn’t look like a kidnapper and a killer, but then and now, I know the truth.
The man veers off the cobblestones to a side street, then again into an alley. We follow without meaning to, and, with just a couple of wrong turns, the bustling city that felt safe doesn’t seem that way anymore. Luke and I turn back, but it’s too late.
The man knows we’re there.
“What gives?” he shouts at us. He seems drunk or high. He’s definitely unstable.
We say nothing for a moment. Then, like that idiot in a horror movie, words that I want to vacuum back in fly out of my mouth.
“You took my brother,” I blurt with false conviction.
“London,” Luke whispers harshly, squeezing the hand he’s holding. Luke is sensible.
“That’s what you think, huh?” the man says, edging closer to us.
I know with every fiber of my being that we’re in the worst kind of danger. This was the wrong move.
The man is chewing a toothpick, tossing it side to side in his mouth like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Instinctively, Luke takes a step forward as if to shield me. The man is no more than ten feet from us.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say quietly to Luke. I’m terrified. I step back and tug on his hand.
Without warning, the man reaches around his back, up and under his jacket, his right hand emerging heavy.
He has a gun.
I shiver as I describe this part to my mom, and she moves to the very edge of the couch so that she can touch my knee for support.
My cell phone buzzes as a text comes through, and I know without looking that it’s Luke. I ignore it.
“Go on, it’s okay,” she encourages me.
I tell her that the man points the gun at us and holds it steady. Of course the murderer has a gun. How could we be so stupid?
“I can’t let you leave now, can I?” the man asks, eyes narrow and dark.
He takes another step, gun still pointed, and Luke must know what’s coming, because at that moment, he does something heroic. Or stupid.
Luke drops my hand, shoves me away toward the mouth of the alley, and shouts, “London, run!” at the top of his lungs.
And I try.
But the bullets stop me.
My mom’s hands are covering her mouth now as I tell her the rest: the world going silent after the shots stop; the rhythmic footfalls of the man fleeing the scene; the minutes when I believe I’m dying, lying faceup staring at a starless city sky. The guttural groans that pull me from my trance and drag me toward my dying boyfriend.
I pause to take a few deep breaths and then tell my mom about Luke’s final moments. No last words. No sentiments. Just Luke, gasping for air, raw terror in his eyes.
42
I blubber my way through the end of the story, nose running, eyes overflowing, shoulders heaving. It’s contagious, and my mom and I cry together for the past and the future.
When there are no more tears, my mom startles me by standing and slapping her thighs as she rises.
“Get up,” she commands me. I am now so buried in the cushions someone might mistake me for furniture.
“Get up, London,” she says again.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“Yes, you can,” she says, leaning over to help me. When she finds one of my hands, she grabs tight and tugs. I can’t help but stand.
“You were right, we need to go to the police,” she says, drying my cheeks with her hands. “You were right. We need help. We’re going to fix this.”
